Dear Friend,

chapter 12

Harry Styles

I've been trying to put some space between me and Lennox since Thanksgiving. It may have been a cliche thing for her to say but she said she was thankful to have me in her life again and hearing her say it made me feel something I wasn't sure of.

Of course I initially felt a wave of happiness, I almost had butterflies in my stomach when she said it, no matter if she was just joking around or not, but I think she was at least a little bit honest about her feelings.

The album comes out this week and I'm scared of how she'll react if she even decides to listen to it. I get really vulnerable when I write my music, but usually, those are the ones that just get kept in my songbook and never make it for other people to hear.

Some of the songs on the album are the most open I've been, and there is one that I'm the most scared for Lennox to hear. I wrote it after she had told me about the date she went on and I ended up digging into an old voicemail she left me to add to the end.

The day she called she was in Paris with Evie and I'm assuming they had to be a little drunk. She picked up the phone and started rambling in French, phrases I couldn't understand but maybe that was the whole point.

It translated to her apologizing for calling while I was sleeping then she went into asking about my day and how she went to the beach with Evie on their day off and the rest of the phrases seemed to cut off when she started saying something new.

I woke up that morning seeing I had missed the call from her, then I listened to the voicemail and tried to brush it off because of how we said goodbye before she left.

At their goodbye party, we spent as much time as we could together and I still remember how everything went down. We were sitting on the couch laughing as we told stories and when Lennox was finally ready for bed I helped take her upstairs and we ended the night falling asleep together in her bed. I sang her favorite song as I scratched her back somehow letting the words 'I love you' slip out before she fell asleep.

It wasn't weird for us to say to each other, we said it all the time but that night I know I said it differently and it had a different intention as I said it.

The next morning after she had left it felt so weird without her. For the first few weeks, she sent me pictures of all the places she had gone and stuff she had seen and I just gave her small responses.

In all of her pictures, she looked the happiest she ever had been, it was like she was really glowing. It felt like when she was there she was at her best, and when she was with me I was only dragging her down or holding her back from who she wanted to be.

She eventually caught on to my short responses and started sending me less and less while she was there and our friendship started to naturally fizzle out.

It wasn't what I wanted or planned on but it's what I thought would be best, to let her be on her own and have the experiences she was getting.

I don't know which one of us took it harder but I know I was the one who was coping with it in an unhealthy way.

I wasted so much time on people that reminded me of her.

I was trying to find anyone who brought me the same feelings that I felt when I was with her, but it just turned out that I was sleeping with anyone so I wouldn't feel alone. I was using bodies to get me through the nights. 

The night I got the voicemail from Lennox I went out with some of my friends and caught eyes with one of the girls across the bar.

She had on a black silk dress and almost every person in the room was looking at her as she would walk by. She had on bright red lipstick that left an imprint around the glass of liquor that she was sipping on.