elevator, leon draisaitl

fifty two

3RD PERSON POV

tw: depression, unhealthy thoughts

It's been five days since the reveling happened. Riley hadn't left her bedroom once when Matthew was home. She wasn't herself. He wasn't himself. She didn't answer his texts. He sent a text every hour.

She laid in bed and stared at the wall numbly for hours on end. He threw himself into hockey and playoffs. Johnny came by once to see how she was, seeing as he was the only person on the team who knew. All of the guys knew what happened, they all sent pity looks and claps on the back to him.

The worst part is she just avoided him, she didn't directly break up with him. He was left wondering what happened, what Matthew said to her. She knew what was going to happen and that's why she said 'I love you' as a goodbye. He constantly replayed her face when he left, he should've stayed. They could still be together if he did if they faced the issues together as a couple. But, he left and now they weren't a couple, that's what he thought.

Now, they suffer apart because of one ill-tempered person.

Matthew didn't tell what he did to his family. They constantly asked why Riley wasn't responding to their messages, he didn't know what to say. He knew that their family would get extremely mad at him for what he did. But, they knew and didn't tell him who Riley was dating, so he was going to take his frustrations out on them too. He ignored them, only responding to something crucial. It was the longest he hadn't talked to his family, the longest he hadn't talked to Riley. He watched her door wondering if it was going to open, it never did.

He started to ease up, but then he got into the mindset of hockey. Kassian is her new 'best friend' he is Matthew's enemy. Leon has publicly announced his extreme hatred for him. She started to go to the Oilers games, and Riley before Leon would never do that. She would never go to something where people violently hate him, she always thought that meant they hated her too. They were the same person, so if you hate Matthew, you hate Riley too. She didn't think that anymore, she voluntarily when to the Oilers games and hung out with the players all the time. Leon had changed her and this was the right thing.

Riley wasn't mad at Matthew anymore. She wasn't mad, she wasn't frustrated, she didn't cry. She did nothing and she felt nothing. It felt like a section of her soul was ripped out, and she couldn't do anything about it. She stared at a wall for hours and thought about Leon. Every little thing he did, she had thought about. She imagined his face when she broke up with him then, cried for an hour. She imagined doing things with him if they never broke up—her going to his games, movie nights, taking bowie on walks—she was living in a constant cycle of dreams in her mind.

She looked at her photo album of him every second, all of the pictures they took together. It was all a loop in her brain. And she didn't know how to get better. The thought of getting better and moving on from Leon sounded worse than death. She couldn't bear the possibility of being without Leon, and that might just be a possibility.

She left her bedroom when Matthew was at a team dinner. She walked around the apartment with a frown on her face. Memories of him were everywhere—they made cookies in the kitchen, movie nights on the couch, Riley forcing Leon to do face-masks, or just Leon sitting at the bar watching her cook. She watched the happy memories happen all around her as she stood there watching with eye bags, 5-day-old mascara stains, and a permanent frown. She kept repeating 'this is your fault, this is your fault, you did this to yourself, he never deserved you in the first place, you're dumb to think it would actually work out, you're not pretty enough for him' until she felt so sad and tired to even move.

She finally got the motivation to move when she heard the front door open. She couldn't come face to face with Matthew, not right now. She left so abruptly that she forgot her phone on the side table in the living room.