The Book Of Celeste

Chapter five: The episode

Cole loved to love.

By fourteen he had already had 3 girlfriends, each lasting only a few months but he was serious about them all nonetheless.
One of them actually made it to 5 months though, the crazy thing is that he had such a big heart that it wasn't even his fault that he kept falling in love. He saw the good in people to the point where it overshadowed any bad about them.

I'm sure you would fall in love a hundred times if you saw things the way he did too.

He had his first depressive episode at fourteen.

He had a girlfriend named Celia, they had lasted 5 months but he had feelings for her a few months prior to them dating.
Every relationship had ended the same way for him, they all felt like he was too close with Celeste.

"I see the way you look at her"
"You sit way to close to her"
"I've never seen friends be so close"
"Your lying"
"Your cheating"

Truth be told Cole did love Celeste.

However she had no idea and was very much in love with Milo, that wasn't changing anytime soon. But Cole and Celeste were each other's safe space since childhood, they met at only 3 years old. Of course they were close in a way others didn't understand.

Milo understood that and was confident in their relationship, he knew Cole wasn't made for Celeste the way he was so it never bothered him.

This case was no different for Cole, Celia felt that he loved Celeste just as the others did.

"Im sorry, I know you say you don't feel that way about her but I think you just can't see it or accept that"

"That's not true, okay. You're being ridiculous. Besides, she literally has a boyfriend and they've been together for years"

"If that's honestly what you think, I'm right to be breaking up with you. Feelings don't care about whether or not she has a boyfriend. Your actions are what matters, your actions are what you can control"

Celia had actually cheated on Cole.

Hypocrisy is an illness. 

Three days later, Celeste was coming back home from a weekend a few hours away from home to film, she had been staying in a hotel with Milo and his parents a couple minutes away from set.

She came through the front door with her bags and went straight upstairs to the floor Cole and her shared. They had separate rooms on opposite ends of the floor with a living room like space and a bathroom in Cole's room.

She made her way to her bedroom to unpack quickly and wanted to take a shower after she greeted Cole.
After throwing the last set of dirty clothes in the hamper she was off to see him.

When she opened the door, she noticed he was still asleep even though it was nearly six,
she went over to wake him and noticed he was in fact awake but was just laying there in bed staring out his window.
"You good? I don't think ive ever seen you still in bed by this time"

"Im okay, just leave me alone"

She knew something was very wrong, but she had never seen him like this, his hair was a mess and his clothes were the ones he was wearing when she left. There was an obvious dip in the bed showing how little he had moved in days. He smelled awful, his room was full of paper plates that looked like the food on them hadn't been touched at all, there was a ton of empty water bottles and some filled with questionable yellow liquid.

She genuinely did not even want to know.

"You know i'm not going to do that" she said as she pushed him over and laid down. She wrapped her arms around his chest from behind him and just laid with him for awhile, she could tell he needed it.
After awhile she released him and turned him to face her,
"We can't stay in this bed forever, so you have two choices, both have to happen but you can pick what comes first. Option one, you can let me clean your room and clean yourself up and option two you can tell me what's going on hun"

He laid there in silence for a minute then said, "Celia left me. She thought the same as the others. And then," He pulled out his phone from underneath his pillow and pulled up some screenshots that appeared to be sent from one of Celia's friends.

"She was cheating on me the whole time"

The texts seemed to be conversations between Celia and this friend where she admits multiple times that she was sleeping with the senior boy, Logan and because she was a couple years older than Cole her excuse was

"Logan has a car, Cole can't drive me anywhere and we can't even do anything. Logan takes me to the mall and he's gonna take me to vidcon with him in the fall. Cole has to have his mommy bring him, besides everybody knows the older guy is the hotter one. I just don't know how to end things with him so i'll just have the best of both worlds until i figure it out, he'll never find out"

Everything had started to make sense to her now. Cole always had depressive spells but they were never like this one. Out of all the years since Cole was diagnosed with depression he had never had his heart broken like this, she tried to think of what it would be like for her if Milo cheated on her and the feeling was unimaginable.

She knew this was going to be really hard for him but knew they could get through anything as long as they had each other, just like they always had.

She decided he needed some food and water first.