My Fake Fiancé

Chapter 7 : Home Town

"Hi Mom", I said, with a genuinely happy smile.

I was back in my home town as my parents wanted me to stay with them for two weeks. I never thought returning would feel good. This was a place I had always wanted to escape. Once, it felt like a prison. Once, it felt like it was suffocating me. 

But now, it felt like... Not home. Home was somewhere you felt loved. Somewhere, you felt like you belonged. This would never be home for me. It was just a house that held all my childhood sorrows. But it felt good to be back.

I never thought I would, but I'd missed this place. I'd missed my mom's face. I'd missed my mom's scoldings. Now seeing her happy face made my heart feel content. It was almost too good to be true.

When I was away, my mom would call me at least twice a day. I didn't talk much, but it still felt good talking to her without it ending in me crying.

'A distance that's close enough yet not too close to hurt each other'.

When I first heard this quote, I refused to accept it. I guess it was true after all. If I maintained this perfectly crafted distance, maybe I would start to like my family too.

The first day at home was just work, work, and work. I occasionally helped my mother, but most of the time it was work. I had a huge goal to achieve in a short period of time. So I couldn't waste even a minute. But when the sun set and the moon adorned the darkness, everything started to go back to normal. Depressing. Just like the old days.

My mom was nagging me about going to sleep. I said I had work to do, but she wouldn't listen. Every time I felt like I could be happy with my family, all they did was say a single sentence, and it was more than enough to drag me down the pit of sorrow. Destroying every inch of hope I'd foolishly built.

And for the millionth time in my life, I heard the words, "This is my home, not yours. What you do and how you behave will be decided by me. When you get married, you can freely do whatever your husband allows you to do. But here, you can't do whatever you want".

These words broke my heart once. But as time flew, my heart grew numb. Now that the new path of my life had kickstarted my heart, it was able to feel every shitty emotion. The pain I'd been pretending not to feel. The hurt I'd deceived my brain into ignoring. Everything came crashing down on me in that one instant. All the broken emotions. I was really surprised by how my mother's words still held the power to shatter my heart. I thought my life had changed. But had it for real? Would it ever change enough to stop hurting?

I was a bit of a fighter even when I was stuck here, with nowhere else to go. Now that I was independent, I was ready to go to greater lengths. I put up a fight, and luckily, she left me as I was and went to bed, cursing me under her breath. There was no way she didn't know why I was always awake late at night, but she pretended to be ignorant. She didn't care. She just needed everything to go her way. But I couldn't help if my mental problems didn't listen to her when she was the reason I got them in the first place.

Just when my heart was curling into the corner like a wounded dog, I heard the buzz of my mobile. I picked it up, and when I saw the caller's name, a smile lit up my face unconsciously. Normally, I wouldn't have been in the mood to talk to anyone when I'm upset. But when it was Jamie, I couldn't resist.

"What a surprise", I said as I picked up the call.

"So you didn't sleep yet?", he asked. I could clearly hear the combined feeling of relief and guilt in his voice like he had already spent an hour thinking about whether to call me or not and then decided not to care about my sleep. It was adorable.

"You probably would've noticed by now. I'm a late-night lunatic. So, No. I'm as awake as an owl". He laughed, and for the first time in my life, I could feel the sound travelling through my whole body. I'd never noticed how carefree and luxurious his laugh was. It almost sounded like music.