[Summer Hols Drabble: The Various Definitions of Growing Apart]
Some people believe that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but apparently this was not the case with Taylor. Apparently absence according to Taylor makes the heart want to leave school forever and work in a pub in some town Anora had never even heard of. Apparently absence according to Taylor meant that he and Anora would most likely never see eachother again, or something equally frusterating. He seemed to be under the distinct impression that they'd 'grown apart,' that because of his summer job turned career they could or should no longer be together. Well, he could call it whatever he wanted, but Anora felt abandoned and alone, not pleasantly distant.
She'd been practicing archery at home in the back fields when she gotten the owl from him. There was never an official 'break-up', just his assumption that because he wasn't coming back to school and neither one knew how to Apparate (legally) that things between them were irrevocably over. Anora wanted to write a pleading response, telling him that she could deal with the distance, deal with not seeing him every day. It was summer and she hadn't seen him in two weeks and she was doing all right, wasn't she? Wasn't there some possible way of making this work? Long-distance relationships were commonplace these days, if other people could do it, then why couldn't they? Anora had been so frusterated by this that she tossed the letter aside and ignored it for a few days, refusing to accept what it said.
Eventually on a rainy July afternoon, she pulled it out once more, this time making sure to examine it carefully, scanning it for some glimmer of hope tucked away in the lettering, but she found none.
She should've seen this coming, should've known that this would happen. Eventually, everyone she'd ever loved would leave her; her mother, Dom, and now Taylor. It was getting to be too much. Sure, people joked that Anora could bounce back from anything, 'the human boomerang' as she was often referred as. Anora didn't even know what in the bloody hell a boomerang was, nor did she have nay intention of becoming its human counterpart. For now, she was perfectly content being angry. At least the anger distracted her from the empty pit of loneliness that was looming nearby, shifting and expanding, waiting for her to fall into it.
A week later she finally went careening headfirst into the reality of the situation, hitting it with such a force that it nearly knocked the wind out of her. She lay in bed, hiding tears inside her pillowcase. She didn't understand, they loved eachother, didn't they? She felt hurt and confused and worse than she had the first time they broke up...
Maybe there's someone else.
She suddenly felt physically ill, what if this whole scenario was just a sham to let her know in the easiest way possibly that she simply wasn't good enough for him anymore? This new development was..something Anora did not want to face. Ever. Sure, she could stand on her own two feet well enough, but it was surprisingly easy for someone who she'd let in so willingly to knock her into the ground.
She loved him, this wasn't something she could just forget so easily, and the fact that he seemed to have forgotten what they'd had, what they'd given to eachother without so much as a backwards glace was hurting her the most. She would have given him anything, everything, all he would've needed to have done is ask..
And now apparently it was too late.
She hated feeling like this, when had she become so dependant on someone else for her own happiness and sanity? She stormed over to her writing desk, intent on writing a thousand horrible things to him, sending him Bubotuber pus, or something equally nasty. But at the end of furious quill scribbling at two in the morning, all she had accomplished was to litter her floor with crumpled after crumpled piece of parchment. She threw down her quill, surveying the damage. It was almost funny, this minefield of balled up parchment and ink blotches. Laughing humourlessly to herself, she wondered when in the bloody hell she became so pathetic. If Taylor didn't want her anymore? Fine, his loss. She refused to dwell on the fact that perhaps he'd met someone better and was tossing her aside like an old rag. It was summer, there were plenty of things she could distract herself with, prove that she was worth a damn. Even if she couldn't use magic outside of school yet, there were hundreds of non-magical activities she could learn...like perfecting her archery. But she couldn't do archery all day, she needed to learn something new, something challenging, anything to keep her from thinking about her own feelings.
In an instant, she knew exactly what to do. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, she marched over to her parents' bedroom on the other side of the manor, and promptly slammed open the double doors. "Mom, Dad, I'm going to learn how to swordfight," she declared, stating this as if it was the most important undertaking she'd ever announced. Her parents, unphased by her sudden appearance in their doorway merely answered sleepily, "Whatever you want, love. Just don't stab your brother," before drifting back into their slumber. That was enough to satisfy Anora, and she closed the door quietly on her way out.