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“He’s gone.” My heart leapt into my throat upon hearing Hugo’s voice, making me drop the tablets as if I’d been caught red-handed in the proverbial cookie jar. “Finally. Show’s airing on Saturday. I’m glad, really. Hope the nation sees what I saw; that Ricky Byrne is a fucking dick. Parts of it have leaked online already, though. Response has been great, apparently. Positive. There’s been an increase in streams and downloads. Drew’s pretty pleased with himself. Himself. Can you believe that? He was probably the leak.”
Picking the pills back up, I showed Hugo the medication. “You’re back on sertraline?” My voice sounded sad. I suppose I was. He hadn’t told me. He told me everything, or so I thought.
His eyes widened briefly before he swiped them from my hand. “Oh…no, no. I mean, I was…for a while. Not long. My doctor thought I might need a bit of support getting ready for the tour, but I’m good.” After tossing the box in the bin next to the toilet, he cupped my cheeks, kissed my lips. “More than good. What have I got to be sad about, huh?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that. When did you stop taking them?”
“I’m fine, Heli. Don’t even know why they were still in there.” He sounded convincing but I couldn’t quite trust it. Maybe it was the way he looked at the floor instead of my eyes as he spoke, or the way his Adam’s apple moved slowly through his throat when he smiled.
“Don’t hide from it, Hugo. That never ends well. Promise me if you’re feeling something, you’ll tell me?”
Sighing through his nose, he did catch my gaze this time. Stared me right in the eye. “I promise. Now…do you wanna go back to bed?”
I rolled my eyes. “This is serious.”
“Helen…I’m fine. Better than I’ve ever been. Come back to bed.”
I tried really hard to believe him but, somehow, I knew the thought would keep niggling at me. In the past, Hugo had been a fantastic liar when it came to his depression, right up until the point the illness had him in its grip so tightly, he didn’t have that luxury anymore. “We really shouldn’t…”
We did, anyway.
Hugo never did give me a reason to worry about his mental health. I still did. I found myself watching him closely at times, studying his expressions, over-analysing every sigh.
“I’m fine, Heli,” he’d told me a hundred times, and I believed him. Mostly.
Fine. That’s what you say when you can’t be bothered explaining, or when you don’t want to burden someone. It’s also what you say when you’re actually fine. I was struggling to trust him…and myself. We’d been apart for such a long time, that I wasn’t sure whether I’d lost my ability to read him. His needs and behaviours could’ve changed, and I wouldn’t know. What if I couldn’t detect an impending meltdown anymore? Or sniff out the seeds of depression before they blossomed into vines that strangled him?
Still, the weeks that followed were, undoubtedly, the best of my life. Two days after his final show, he took me to Los Angeles, introduced me to his life there. More beauty. More extravagance. More him. Like a good person, a Samaritan really, I helped Hugo make use of his various black cards. Honestly, it seemed absurd that certain stores allowed people to ransack the shelves, for free, simply because they had a more popular face than the rest of us. Hugo could probably afford to clear their entire stock without even noticing the dent in his bank balance…and yet they practically itched to throw stuff at him. Whatever he wanted. Like a legal burglar.
Crazy.
Hugo hated it.
I…did not.
Unfortunately, the internet followed us. My phone dinged more every day with new mentions and notifications. Since Hugo’s appearance on the Ricky Byrne show aired, he’d yet to stop trending on Twitter. It appeared that being the girlfriend of a trending hashtag bestowed an invisible beacon on my head for every camera within a five-mile radius. It made no sense to me. I’d never felt prouder of Hugo than when I’d watched him overcome his anxieties, break down the stereotypes, tear Ricky Byrne a new arsehole. People should have been talking about that, not posting pointless photos of us walking down the street. What would that achieve? How was that in any way interesting?
Hugo Hayes is Ready to Do Some Cooking After Trip to the Grocery Store…
That was an actual headline. An actual headline that hundreds of people had taken the time to click on and, for a reason I’d never understand, leave a comment.
@Kayla_Hayeszx omfg imagine waiting 4ur shift 2end & then hugo hayes is like hi I’ll take sum bread & sum carrots plz omg id legit die
@HHUpdatesDaily Besties I am CRYING
@dance4m3x love him literally so much!
