Human [Harry Styles]

Chapter Eighteen.

Marley

            Healing, that’s what this is.

            I’m currently in what’s referred to as “the healing process” and am doing just fine. I don’t feel like that stupid, depressed, broken girl anymore, as least not as much.

            The murderer has been behind bars for two days now and I think I’m slowly getting better. The only thing I can think to reference it to is like when you’re a little kid and you see one scary picture that scars you for a week and plagues your sleep, but as you grow older you can see ten and it only bothers you for the second that you see it.

            It’s a slow process, probably going to take just as much time as that does, years, but it’s getting there.

            I’ve even taken the initiative to try and clean up a bit, get rid of the old boxes and dust around my house. It’s actually starting to look like a place fit for living, instead of one of a person who doesn’t give a crap.

             My mood has been impeccable since waking up. I know it probably won’t last like this forever, but at this very moment, for this very day, there seems like there’s nothing to be truly upset about.

            The past is the past, what’s lost is lost, so at least I have something now. I have the bakery to preoccupy myself, I have the murderer gone, and Harry has become the best friend that maybe even Amy wasn’t.

            He cares so genuinely, manages to stay strong through his own problems with mine added on top. I don’t really understand how or why, but he’s managed to save me, or maybe we’ve managed to save each other.

            Either way, it can’t be ruined now.

            As I’m making my way to the kitchen to feed Travis, I hear my cell phone ring from the living room. It only manages to make my cheery mood increase, considering the only person that really calls anymore is Harry.

            “I’ll feed you in a second- Hello?” I sit down on the couch and allow Travis to jump up and rest his head on my lap, fur soft and silky as I absently stroke over it.

            “Hey Marley,” Harry’s voice is a bit dim, quiet even. I can’t tell if he’s in a place where it’s just hard for him to speak or if he’s upset about something, but something doesn’t feel entirely right in my gut.

            “What’s up?”

            I hear a sigh on the other end, deep and almost sorrowful, like it’s taking all his strength to speak. “I- I have something to tell you,” he says slowly. It’s almost like he’s stalling for time, like whatever he wants to say can be avoided with enough moments in between.

Eventually though, he comes out and says it. He says what feels like being hit by a truck and flattened by a bulldozer, emotionally, at least. “We- we can’t see each other anymore.”

            I stop for a minute. A very deep part of me knows exactly what he means, but can’t really accept it. So instead I let out a short, nervous laugh, shaking my head a bit as my body stiffens. “Well we’re not seeing each other like that in the first place, so-“

            “You know that’s not what I mean.”

            I gulp, biting my lip for a moment as my mood plummets. Harry cannot be saying what I think he is, he cannot be trying to leave me alone in this world. There’s no way he would do that, not when he knows everything.