Composed after a good night's rest

Despite everything, after a good night’s sleep I was feeling way better about the whole Charley situation than I had been when it was first dropped on me. Realistically, there wasn’t going to be a problem – I was twenty now, not the hormonal, love-struck teenager I’d been during puberty.

Regardless, this whole living situation was really not that bad – we’d be in the same house, yes, but it’s not like we were going to school together anymore. And given that Charley was as social she was, and that I was planning to spend as little time not on my PlayStation as possible this summer, we would probably barely see each other. That’s how it usually was whenever she’d fly back, anyway.

We got on well, but we were pretty far from inseparable; while I had known that I would benefit from our lack of contact while she was at uni, it wasn’t like she’d been messaging me every day and I would just ignore her. It had been a kind of mutual dwindling of contact, like every family goes through as they get older. I didn’t see why things would be any different now.

And luckily, the next few days were pretty much as good as I could have hoped. We’d run into each other every now and again, in the kitchen, or sometimes in our shared bathroom just before bed, but she was so busy reconnecting with all of her English friends that she was barely at home. Of course, every now and again there’d be something distracting – a glimpse of her slipping into her room half naked after a shower, or seeing her sitting out on the small balcony connected to both of our bedrooms in the morning, the sunrise gleaming in her hair. But for the most part, it was smooth sailing.

With my luck though, I probably should have guessed that it was only a matter of time before it all came crashing down.