[HarryStyles] Pop Meets Hardcore

Twelve.

“You look amazing,” Harry whispers, his eyes running up and down my body. A blush warms my cheeks as I pull at the seat buckle that’s keeping me in my seat, because Lord knows that if I wasn’t locked in I would have bolted from this car the moment he said we were making our first public appearance as a couple. He notices, laughing lightly, because I'm struggling to unbuckle it; it’s stuck. “Let me help you.”

Unbuckling his seat belt, Harry leans across, his arm inches away from my chest. His hand grabs the belt, tugging at it, easily being able to make it move, and his hand presses down on the little black button on the buckle, and it springs out of the buckle. I frown, grabbing it from his hands. “It was stuck when I was trying to get it.” It was suffocating me, I was dying. With the seatbelt keeping me stuck against the seat, I felt even more like a person with agoraphobia.

Rolling his eyes, he laughs, sitting back in the driver’s seat. “Don’t worry about it. I'm surprised that Niall or Louis hasn’t broken it yet.”

I nod, buckling the seat belt once again now that it wasn’t locking me into place, looking out the window. Biting my bottom lip, my mind debates on what to discuss. All I can think about were the paparazzi, how drastically my life will change once I step out of the car, how I would be known as Harry Styles’ girlfriend. I’ll no longer be known as Braelyn Breaks, which I like. I like being known as Braelyn Breaks. I like being known as me.

It was all a lie. My life wasn’t full of lies; I've always been told the truth by my mother, and, well, the sperm donor. “Where’s Riley, dad?” “He’s either out buying drugs or already injecting heroin into his veins. Go and play on your GameBoy; he’ll have to come home sometime, he needs money.” He was blunt, and at seven I didn’t need that much honesty in my life, but I welcomed it all the same. I was noisy, curious, and the more truth I was told the more I wanted to tell the truth.

Harry presses a button, turning on the stereo. The bass is heavy, the drums as loud as the other instruments; a girl’s voice was heard, my voice. I look at him, seeing him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and I'm pretty sure my mouth is hanging open in complete and utter shock. “You bought my album?”

He shrugs, returning his attention to the road. “I thought that I would listen to my girlfriend’s music, try to understand the words she sings so I can understand the lyrics. She told me that some of her lyrics mirror her life, I'm trying to figure things out about her.”

“She seems like a freak. I mean, a girl in the rock industry dating the pop sensation.” Immediately, I regret the words. Looking at my hands in my lap, I hear Harry sigh. One thing I hate to do is judge someone out loud. It’s different to judge a person in your head, because only you can hear it. But, saying it out loud makes me feel as if I'm jumping to conclusions that he clearly didn’t want me to make.

Shaking his head, he turns down the volume of the music. “Just because my girlfriend and I are from two different worlds doesn’t mean that we can’t be together. I think it’s kind of hot that my girlfriend made it big in a male industry, as she would call it.”

Glancing at him, I notice his gaze was still on the road. A blush warms my cheeks and I’m glad that he hadn't looked at me. The words ‘my girlfriend’ kept on playing in my mind; it wasn’t what I was to him, just something I'm slowly wanting to become, because I don’t know how long I can pretend to not like his personality and his accent and his eyes and his tattoos and his arms and everything else about him. “I'm pretty sure she’s just your fake girlfriend.”

It was his turn to blush, a light pink color that I wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn't stopped at a red light, shining into the car. “That’s what I meant. She should know what I mean when I say girlfriend. It’s what the world thinks she is but she knows that she’s just a new friend that’s helping me out.”

Nodding, I look back out the window. Knowing that I put myself in the situation to hear what he had said, about me being a friend helping a friend out, in order to make myself realize why I was doing this.

We’re not an item; we’re a lie.