Other Side of the World

“Did you break into here?” Haley said accusingly with a raspy voice as she tried her best to glare at the intruder standing at her door. “Where’s my aunt? Surely she must know something is amiss. She doesn’t let hooligans in and out alive, you know.”

“I put on my best angelic face.”

Haley snorted in laughter at the sudden image of him with big puppy dog eyes and pouting lips, swinging from side to side and begging her aunt to see Haley.

Liam ran his hand through his hair, looking conflicted. “Belle dragged me along here,” he said bitterly. “She said that she felt bad and wanted to apologize because while you were off sucking my face and being drunk, she was off being drunk and sucking Aaron’s face.”

She blinked and got up, an instant pain shooting up throughout her head. “First of all, Liam, I didn’t kiss you. You kissed me.”

“Sure I did,” he replied, sounding sarcastic.

She mentally screamed to herself.

“No I didn’t!” She shrieked. “I just…reciprocate.”

He chuckled. “Whatever you say, Dumont. Your aunt’s out to work. Where’s your uncle anyway?”

“Offshore. He should be back tomorrow—wait why am I telling you this?” She said, dazed before standing up and walking to her bathroom to brush her teeth. “Get out of my room, please. And my life, if you can,” she said. His presence was unnerving. “Why are you even here, anyway? Belle likes to have a company by her side but you? The devil himself?” She scoffed.

Liam shrugged. “I just wanted to check on you. You were pretty drunk last night. You even vomited in my car. Four times.”

Haley didn’t know if she should be proud or disgusted by that little ‘achievement’.

“Well, I’m fine,” she said curtly, lying to her gritted teeth. There was this massive ache and pain hitting her head like a sudden tsunami and she felt as if the only way to get rid of it was to bang her head against something. Like the wall.

She shut the bathroom door close before Liam could say anything else that might ruin her morning more. She looked up at the mirror as her hand reached for her toothbrush. Her brows furrowed in confusion. Her cheeks were all tingly and red and a part of her wanted to swing the door open and fall into his arms once again – the part that loved his touch so much.

Both of her hands were on the either side of the sink, her fingers tapping the smooth porcelain surface, trying to calm her heart down. She was so exhausted, she was probably being deluded. Her hormones were probably trying to play a trick on her. Nasty hormones.

“Nathan is here, by the way,” Liam said a few minutes later.

Haley rolled her eyes. As if.

She felt so frustrated at herself. She couldn’t believe herself for making out with Liam the night before. Her hands instantly shot up, banging the mirror in front of her. If Nathan was still alive, wherever he was, what would she do?

And then she suddenly saw the absurdity of the entire situation.

She didn’t know whether her boyfriend was alive or dead. She went to Australia to escape her parents’ divorce, the parents that she began to loathe because they basically lied to her and didn’t even give much thought about what would happen to her once they decided to get a divorce and float away with their ‘affairs’. She didn’t want to be just another ‘thing’ for the divorce settlement. She vowed to herself that she would never follow her parents’ ‘footsteps’ that somehow seemed to be trampling on her life.

And then she did. With Liam Taylor – the notable guy with the ‘uncontrollable libido’ as Belle nicely put it – no less.

She sighed, feeling as if she couldn’t breathe for these past few weeks. When did everything go so wrong? How did she spiraled down and crashed this bad in such a short span of time? There was a pain embracing her heart that refused to go away or die already. And it felt as if the pain had been dragging her down more and more to the bottom of a very disturbing ocean.

It was just too exhausting to even try anymore.

She spit the toothpaste out and rinsed.

The first person she saw when she opened the door to her room was not Liam.

Haley did a double take. Her jaws dropped and her eyes widened. She definitely did something wrong to the world. And karma somehow came back to bite her before swallowing her whole.

Nathan was the first to actually do something. He gave her that sweet smile – the smile that he reserved only for her – and scratched the back of his neck lazily.

“Good morning.”