Halfway There | COMPLETE ✔ + Sequel

Chapter 35 - Choosing Bravery

Friday came a lot sooner than I would have cared for. Since recently I was surprised with how much extra time I had on my hands. Not only the amount of extra time I had but also how quickly that time actually went by. Sleep escaped me most nights and since I never wanted to bother Bella or Kendall a lot of my time was spent either in the lobby of the dorm room or The Lounge.

    I preferred The Lounge a lot more than I did during the day. A night you didn't have the constant visitors coming and going, interrupting the sweet moments of quiet time. And even though sleeping had been an issue for the last couple of days, what was even worse than trying to find the urge to fall asleep was finding things to do during that time that you are awake.

I have always had a wandering mind and up until recently I didn't mind. Recently, more specifically the last few days, I was really starting to hate it. I couldn't just lie in bed staring at a wall without the sound of my own thoughts driving me insane and that is because Nova, always Nova, occupied my thoughts.

I hated it. I hated thinking about what he was doing and how Stella was and if he was doing okay. He didn't deserve my concern. He didn't deserve the space that he occupied in my brain. So to keep him away, I started drawing.

I put all of my concentration into art I didn't know I was capable of. I put in headphones and sat at one of the tables down below the rest of the sleeping buildinh, hoping that somehow a sense of exhaustion would come to me but it rarely ever came and last night was no different.

I had managed to crawl myself up back to the dorm and fall asleep for only a couple of hours, just like most days, but waking up to the sound of the annoying alarm, exhausted, was never easy.

Will still met me up every morning just outside my dorm and every morning was always the same. I had learned to adapt to this new routine that I gave myself to keep all thoughts of Nova at bay as much as possible.

As Will and I walked down the icy path he turned to look at me but I stopped him as soon as he opened his mouth. "I'm fine, Will." My lack of sleep also made me more irritable.

"Dani, this isn't normal. You weren't even with him for that long." I didn't respond to him as I looked out towards the almost blinding white campus.

He was right, of course. The way I was acting and feeling wasn't normal. It was far from normal actually but I still couldn't stop the way I felt. Nova and I had something different – or at least I thought we had.

"I'm fine, Will. You and Bella are just over exaggerating. Stop treating me as if I am someone who is just going to break anytime something remotely similar to Nova is mentioned." I could see his hands clench into fists beside him.

"That's because you look like you are going to break when someone mentions something even remotely similar to Nova." He snapped. I had to turn around to face him since he stopped walking.

"You don't see what we see, Dani! You don't see the way you flinch every time someone says something that reminds you of him or even mention his name. You don't see the way you look now because of what he did to you. Do you think we don't notice when you zone out and look as if your entire world has collapsed? We see those things, Dani.

"He crushed you and we see that. So stop trying to act as if it didn't happen because it did. We care about you, Bella and I especially, and we ask if you're okay it's because we want the truth. Not this bullshit excuse of "you're fine" all the time. So cut the crap and start acting like a human being."

I scoffed and looked away from him. Not sure I if I could control of my emtions if I did. I couldn't think of anything else to say, "How am I not acting like a human?"