Shattered Dreams [EDITING] - Chapter 7: Chapter 7

NADIA'S POV.
The front door slamming woke me up from my sleep about half an hour ago, indicating to me that Maddy arrived. My hands are too shaky now which means I am unable to apply my own make up and I want to at least look somewhat good, so Maddy offered to come round mine to do it for me. She is now applying a soft pink eyeshadow onto my eyelids whilst I am trying my best to ignore the expanding headache and the constant gnawing in my spine from sitting up for this long.
There is a party tonight, like there usually is every saturday. Maddy and I agreed to get ready together so that we can look hot as fuck. She wants to get laid by one of the hockey boys and I want to look good for Jasper but more importantly I want to look good for myself. I haven't felt like I have been looking pretty at all recently, I feel like I look like shit because I feel like shit. I want to feel good for a change and if I look good then hopefully I'll feel good too. Jasper is coming here in half an hour to pick us up and take us to the party because he won't be coming home and will stay at the party overnight. I'll have to catch a ride home with my brother and whatever girl he decides to bring home with him.
I want to surprise Jasper by dressing up, as I rarely look good these days. I know that he loves me but it's just hard for me to believe that he would still love me when I look as awful as I do. I haven't been bathing or brushing my teeth as often as I should so that's going to be something he is easily disgusted by, as I have greasy hair and I smell. It may even change his feelings for me completely, that's what I'm so terrified of. I'm the type of person to say everything is okay even when I have tears filling my eyes but it's very easy for people to see that I'm not okay when I look like I haven't washed in a week.
Willem is currently at Corey's house and they are arriving together, as they always do. They are so romantic. I want to look nice and healthy for my brother too because I know how he is always in a state of worry about me and I hate it. I hate being the cause of everyone's anxiety, I hate being seen as weak to people, especially my brother.
I love him and I don't ever want to hurt him.
I stayed in bed all day today to make sure that I would have enough energy to go to the party for a few hours. It will still be extremely difficult for me to go but I want to pretend to be okay for one night of the week. Although I have rested all day to feel well enough, I still feel like shit. I am cloaked in nausea and my head is as full as my bladder right now. I don't want to go to the bathroom though because Maddy is concentrating on my eye make-up.
If I go to this party, that means I am fine, so I am forcing myself to go just to pretend.
I'm wearing a pink satin dress to match my eye makeup paired with my favourite pair of white flats. I don't want to wear heels due to my fear of falling. My legs are still extremely weak so, flats it is.
Maddy is rocking a black body on dress, with nude heels and I'm jealous that she can wear them without feeling the effect of it until later on tonight. She did her makeup before she came here, she's wearing nude colours on her eyes to match her shoes. It looks really good. I'm always fascinated by how people can do their makeup so beautifully, I've never been very good at makeup, Maddy has always been one to show me the basics of it.
"Okay, Done." Maddy makes me jump a little when she speaks right in front of my face, her minty breath making my eyes water a little. She passes me a mirror and I am captivated by my own reflection, my eyes have never looked this bold before.
"Wow, Mads," I say dumbfounded. "You have outdone yourself. How did you manage to make me look like this in less than fifteen minutes?"
"I'm a natural." She gives a little turn to show herself off and she smiles at me. I remember to smile back.
I can't remember the last time I truly smiled, I have seemingly forgotten how to do it naturally. I have to force my muscles to give myself a smile. If I smile that means I am okay and if I don't that means I am not okay. If people don't think I am fine then they will ask questions and worry about me which I don't want, especially not tonight.
Tonight I want to forget about everything and be the old Nadia again.
"Do you think he will like my dress?" Maddy says and I furrow my eyebrows.
"Who?" I ask her, as what she said wasn't very specific at all.
"I don't know, just whatever guy I set my eyes on tonight." She clarifies for me.
"Of course," I tuck a loose piece of hair behind her ear. "Whoever is the lucky guy tonight will be just that, lucky. They'll be honoured to have you interested in them, especially in that dress." I tell her, and fan myself in exaggeration.
"Oh stop, your dress is so much better. Oh and your makeup, it looks amazing!" She speaks excitedly, prying my hands away from my face.
I'm excited too but I am too afraid to show it. It's been hard cooped up inside my room all this time with no one but my own thoughts to keep me company inside of these four walls. Loneliness, you never realise how lonely life is until you realise you are the only person that's actually looking out for you.
I wasn't that lonely when I first started feeling like this though. I was fine with sleeping all the time, only speaking a few words to someone a day. But overtime, the loneliness seeps its way into you and never seems to go away. Now, I am alone even when I have everyone by my side. The only place I don't feel alone is when I am on the roof talking to Archie.
It's sad really, I am more myself when I am speaking to someone that died. I feel less alone when I talk to someone who can't even speak back to me. I think it's because I can still feel him with me and I know he will never judge me for anything I say. I know he is looking down on me from the stars and he believes me when I say I am sick.
God, I miss him so much.
"Yeah, I wonder why it looks amazing," I roll my eyes at her. I need to put my focus back on Maddy so that my mind doesn't go to Archie again. I want to have a good night and thinking about him won't help me achieve that. "Your boobs look awesome." I look her up and down whilst smirking at her and she blushes.
She's never had a relationship so It's always been my job to shower her with compliments. I love being able to be that support person for her, it makes me feel good making her happy. She made me come back to myself after Archie died, so I want to make her happy in any way that I can. I feel like I owe her that much at least.
She has always been such an amazing friend to me, never letting me down. I feel like I am letting her down by being poorly so I want to try and stay the whole night tonight. She deserves to have some fun instead of worrying about me. If I do have a bad turn I will hide it because what she doesn't know can't hurt her.
I'm used to hiding how I feel mentally so hiding how I feel physically won't cause me too much of an issue. I hope so anyway.
"Yeah well. We both know and everyone knows that you have the prettier face and body." She says under her breath so I almost don't hear it. There was some sort of iciness in her voice so I chose not to reply, I don't want to have an argument with her or anything. If she wanted me to hear what she said then she would have spoken up louder so I keep it to myself that I heard it.
I plaster on a smile before I change the conversation completely. "What perfume are you wearing tonight? You smell so good." I was going to ask her what type of guy she will be having her eyes on tonight but knowing her it will be her usual type, blonde boys. I have never seen the hype with blonde boys, the darker the better is what works for me. Jasper is Brazilian-American so he has tanned skin and dark brown hair. He is gorgeous, and that makes me a little bit blind. He doesn't have the best personality sometimes, he gets a kick out of bringing other people down. This is why he and Maddy got along so well and why I gravitated towards Archie, we weren't fans of how they would treat and speak to other people.
It didn't stop me from falling in love with him though, so what does that say about me?
The people we choose to surround ourselves with are the people who will inevitably raise or lower our standards of who you are. They will either help you become the best possible version of yourself you can be or they will encourage you to become the worst version of yourself. The longer we hang out with them and the closer we get, the more we become like our friends. We adapt ourselves to be like them as we feel like that's how we should be to keep them but sometimes it's not.
I don't hang out with Maddy that much that I would change to be like her, I couldn't think of anything worse. I love her and who she is, I just can't get past the way she is with other people. I'm terrified to call her out about it though, because losing her will hurt. She is the only friend I have now aside from my brother.
Archie helped me to become the greatest version of myself. I liked who I was with him but now I just feel lost without him.
Pain feels so infinite these days.
My mum is a very wise woman and she has raised Willem and I to be the people we are today. She put us to bed reading out an inspirational quote to us every night, every single one of them stuck out to me. She would tuck me in and tell me the quote then I would pretend to fall asleep, going over and over the quote until I had it memorised. When she left I would sneak out of my bed and write what she just said into my notebook. The amount of notebooks I have gone through over the years that are filled with stuff she has said is crazy. She doesn't know about them but I know how much she would appreciate the fact I did that.
When my mum dies, which I hope is a long time from now, I will have all of her words to read over. It'll help me feel like a kid again.
"I'm using some Dior one, I think? I don't know, I chose it because the bottle was pretty," She shrugs, She hates sharing where she gets things as she likes to be the only one who has that thing. I would hate to break it to her that she really does wear the most basic stuff but who am I to say anything.
"You should really start buying perfume based on their smell and not just how pretty they look." I say to her, acting oblivious to the fact she just doesn't want to share the name of the perfume.
"Well, it still smells good doesn't it? " She laughs because yeah, it genuinely smells really good. Isn't Jasper going to be here in a minute?" She asks me and I nod. "Okay, I'm gonna head to the toilet and then we can start heading downstairs."
"Alright, use my brothers though, he's round Corey's house." She gives me a funny look but doesn't say anything on the matter. I don't want her using my bathroom as I have all my medicine bottles sprawled out on the counter so I remember to take them when I wake up. I don't want her seeing them and getting worried, she will make it out to be something it's not and then soon the whole town will find out because she has such a big mouth.
I use her going to the bathroom as an opportunity to read one of the quotes sprawled into my notebook. I need a bit of reassurance right now. I come back to this notebook when I need a reminder of who I am and that I can get through anything. I am slowly getting through the loss of my best friend so I do truly believe that I can get through anything.
I open a random page and read what is written there in my messy handwriting and it's one I remember very well.
Surround yourself with the people who you know have aspirations and goals; those are the types of people who will help push you and will help you realise what dreams you want to set for yourself.
I am perfectly fine with the people I surround myself with now because we all have the same goals in life. Ever since we met, Maddy and I have always wanted to go to the olympics together and so we have been working on that dream ever since we started skating and I truly believe that we will make it. We deserve it after everything we have been through and all we have done to try and make our dreams happen.
I hear Maddy's footsteps approach and I quickly dispose of the notebook under my duvet. It's my most prized possession and no one knows I have it apart from Archie. I told him the deepest part of my soul and he never judged me for any of it. I doubt I will ever find myself in a friendship where I felt as comfortable as I did with him, he is truly irreplaceable. Not Maddy, not even Jasper knows me the way he did and it hurts because he was the other half of my soul, when he died, a part of me died with him.
No matter what, my mind always goes to Archie and I hate it. I'm glad I haven't forgotten about him but it does hurt me every time I have a thought about him.
"We better get going then." I am thankful for her distraction because I don't think I will be able to handle another thought about Archie today and as Maddy says this my phone pings with a text from Jasper saying he is here.
I walk downstairs with Maddy following behind me. I try to avoid my parents, especially my dad because I don't know what they will say about me going out. I know they will encourage it because that means I feel better but I don't feel better so I am pretty much forcing myself to go out. Forcing myself to be normal.
There is a note on the side table in the hallway with a note from my parents saying that they have gone out for a date night. I forgot it was a saturday, that's their designated date night. This is their first one in a while because they have been so worried about leaving me alone so they have stayed in and ordered a takeaway from themselves. I feel suddenly guilty that I have kept them from a three decade long tradition.
I'm glad Willem pushed them to go out tonight, they deserve to have a break from me.
Willem doesn't know I am going to the party either and I am sure he will give me a good telling off if he sees me there, so I will be trying my hardest to avoid him and Corey. Maddy pushes me slightly, silently telling me to move my ass cause I was frozen in place as I was deep in thought.
I get in the passenger seat and Maddy climbs in the back. I feel bad that she has to sit alone back there but we have to pick up Jasper's friend Zack on the way so she won't be alone for too long.
Before I even manage to get situated in my seat and put my seatbelt on Jasper tackles me with a kiss on the lips. I welcome the kiss and he slips his tongue into my mouth. I haven't seen him in a few days and I missed the way his lips felt against mine. I feel him smile against my lips, he clearly missed this too and I can feel my heart squeeze in admiration.
"Ugh, can't you two wait until I at least have someone of my own to kiss." Maddy groans from the backseat and Jasper and I pull away from each other and we have to bite my lip to hold back our smiles.
Jasper and I have always been fond of PDA, we are that gross couple. I like showing off what is mine and we don't even realise we are doing it half the time, we are so caught up in loving each other that we didn't even realise the setting we are in when we show our affection.
Maddy has been putting up with our antics for years so I will spare her the couple shit for tonight. This is mine and her night too, I haven't had a night out with her in a while so I won't only be focusing on my boyfriend tonight.
"Zack is newly single, Maddy." Jasper says as we drive along the road. It's a short ride to Zack's place so my body won't hurt too much as I am not sitting up straight for so long.
"He had a girlfriend?" I turn my head and ask Jasper, shocked. He smiles at me and shakes his head.
"No babe. But, the girl he was fucking ended things so he is basically single." He explains as he puts his hand on my knee and rubs it with affection.
He keeps his hand placed on my knee for the rest of the ride as he has an automatic car so he doesn't need to change gears. Zack gets in the car swiftly as his house is on a main road so we can't stay on the double yellow lines for long, the traffic wardens are pretty strict in this area. My brother got a ticket for overstaying his parking limit by two minutes, he was running late because his appointment was late but the guy who gave him the ticket didn't think that was a plausible enough reason.
Traffic wardens are some of the most moody people I have ever encountered. I get it, I would be miserable if I had to walk around the city all day and get into arguments with people about their cars but they need to give us the benefit of the doubt sometimes.
On the ride to the party, which is also a short car journey, Maddy and Zack are in a deep conversation in the backseats so Jasper takes their distraction as an opportunity to slowly inch his hand up towards my sensitive spot. I squirm slightly on the seat, not because he is turning me on, but because I am genuinely not in the mood.
My sexual desire has gone down astronomically, I used to get wet from the slightest touch from him and now I don't seem to be responding to his touch at all.
Something is seriously wrong with me. I move his hand away from my underwear and hold his hand on my knee so he can't move it back there. He snaps his head towards me and I can tell he is looking at me like I've grown two heads. I can't bring myself to look back at him, I don't want to see the disappointment that I know is written on his face.
As it was a short drive, I'm glad it took less than five minutes to arrive. We get out of the car and instantly Maddy drags me along to the house and I don't even get a glance at Jasper before we are inside and a drink is being shoved into my hands.
"Drink up, you're gonna need it," She says and takes her shot, not even wincing as she does so.
That girl can really handle her alcohol.
I shake my head and pass her my drink. "Not today, Mads."
"Why not? You always drink with me." She pouts her lips, trying to look adorable but she looks more like a child about to throw a tantrum.
"Jasper can't drink, I don't want to rub it in his face." I lie, it's a shit excuse I know but I can't tell her the truth because then she will worry. If she notices I'm lying, which she most likely does, she doesn't let on as she just downs the drink that I gave her.
The girl doesn't even care what the drink is, she will genuinely drink everything, even Gin (the worst tasting drink known to man). I used to be like this and honestly I don't know how I allowed myself to act like that, I suppose I was too drunk to allow myself to do what anyone thought. I would go to parties, drink my bodyweight in alcohol, dance with Maddy and then go upstairs to hook up with my boyfriend.
Now, it doesn't feel like me at all. The music is too loud and my head is pounding. I feel so out of place. At least I won't be the only one not drinking as some of the hockey guys don't want to drink because of training, it doesn't stop them having a few beers though. They mostly abide by the rules that their coach sets as they take the sport seriously, which I am sure Coach Grayson is thankful for.
I watch Maddy down another drink and I feel a pair of arms wrap around my shoulders and I instantly relax. I feel safe with Jasper. He leans down and kisses my cheek. "I'll finish what we started in the car later." I look up to him with a fake smile, I don't want to disappoint him. We haven't had sex since we got back together, not even doing anything other than kissing and hugging. I feel bad that I am putting myself before his sexual needs. I'll see how I feel later. I think I might be able to manage it, he doesn't last too long anyway.
I turn back towards Maddy and she is downing yet another drink. I roll my eyes as she will probably be sleeping around mine tonight and I'll be left to look after her. I will gladly take care of her so she doesn't get too sick but it will be exhausting. I wish she knew how to pace herself, it really ruins the whole vibe when she gets instantly drunk as soon as we enter parties.
"You," Maddy points at Zack. "Me," She points back at her own chest. "Dance, now." She points towards the middle of the living room where there is space to dance and then grabs his wrist to pull him along with her but he doesn't even make an attempt to protest.
I can't help but smile at them as I watch them dance. It looks like Zack is who she has her eyes set on tonight. He won't take much to seduce because he has been looking at her with lust in his eyes ever since he stepped foot in Jasper's car. Maddy whispers something in Zack's ear and I can see his cheeks blush from here.
She's such a little whore, I love her.
I hear Jasper chuckle in my ear. "Come on you, let's go dance."
I don't feel one bit like dancing but if it will please him I will do it. Dancing may help take his mind off sex for at least a little bit so I will gladly push through the pain and dance all night if it means we won't be having sex.
Sex is the last thing on my mind lately, something which Maddy can't seem to relate to.
We dance for a few minutes and I feel him press himself against my behind, I would normally welcome it but now I suddenly feel like I am going to throw up. The adrenaline is wearing off me and my whole body is starting to internally scream in pain. I carry on pushing myself to dance as I don't want to draw any attention to the fact I suddenly feel like I'm dying. I have to ease into escaping the dancefloor to find a seat.
"Hey man!" Liam comes to my side and bumps fist with Jasper and then looks at me. "Hey Noddy." I roll my eyes. The hockey team has taken it upon themselves to give me that nickname and honestly I kind of like it but they don't need to know that so I pretend to be annoyed by it. Jasper laughs before going into a full blown conversation with Liam, them having to shout in each other's ears because of the music.
I can use this as my chance to escape. My head is killing me so I put my earphones in to try and drown out the noise as best as I can. It doesn't do much to settle it but it gives me a little bit of relief at least. I just hope no one tries to talk to me because I can't be arsed having a conversation right now, plus I won't exactly be able to hear them.
I just want to lay down, my legs feel like anchors dragging me down.
I look around the room to see if I can find my brother but he is nowhere to be seen, he is usually with Corey at parties, surprise surprise. I spot Corey near the kitchen talking to some girl with brown hair, it looks like he will be getting laid tonight. Willem probably is right now, I can't think about where else he will be. It looks like everyone is getting some tonight but me.
The brunette is clung to his side, whispering what I imagine is seductively in his ear. He looks up and meets my eyes and my lips part and I feel my cheeks heat so it makes me look guilty. In my defence, I didn't realise I was staring. I seem to be getting lost in my own head lately.
Dissociating from myself helps me deal with the pain. If I forget I'm here, it numbs my body for a few seconds. A few seconds of relief feels like a lifetime with the pain I have to endure lately.
Corey smirks at me then turns back to the girl by his side but keeps his eyes on me as he puts his mouth on hers. He takes his eyes off me after a few seconds and I'm relieved, he shouldn't be looking at another girl whilst making out with someone that is a whole new level of wrong. But it was kind of hot.
What the fuck? I am just going to pretend I never thought that.
I shake my head and turn to look for Jasper but he is by the beer pong table with some guys on his team, there are no girls there so I can go and sit down in the corner of the room. I'm not a jealous person at all, I trust Jasper but It's the other girls I don't trust. They know he has been loyal to me since we were early teens and yet they still try and get something from him. Sometimes they even go as far as doing it in front of my face which is beyond disrespectful.
I find a sofa in the living room that is surprisingly empty and turn on my own music so I can listen to a calmer melody in replace of the party music. As soon as I sit down my body is filled with relief. The way that my body is reacting to doing simple tasks really does make me question why the doctors think it is only depression.
I'll book another appointment and ask my mum to come with me. I don't think I will be able to face it alone.