Matilda | Harry Styles

FORTY-THREE

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I murmured tiredly in response, my thumb tracing over a particular freckle near the corner of his mouth. I smiled, slightly. "So, I'll say yes..."

A small grin played on his lips, as he dropped them to my forehead another time, nudging his nose against it for a second. He met my eyes again, that familiar green achingly soft as I admired them.

"Happy birthday, Iz."

I felt a twinge in my chest. I looked at him for another moment, my expression slightly blank as I tried to figure out how it felt to hear those words directed at me, by him. It was weird. I could feel my heart begin to race, but I couldn't truly pinpoint if it was good or bad. It was... different. It was weird, and it was different.

He'd remembered and I hadn't. It wasn't a surprise to me that the day wasn't at the forefront of my mind; it never was, but his gestures would never fail to surprise me, in their own right. He remembered everything - everything I told him, or showed him, it mattered and he remembered it. He placed more value on myself than I ever had, and it was difficult to wrap my head around.

I simply closed my eyes, breathing out as I struggled to muster a response. I leaned into him again, feeling his hand rise to stroke my hair as I buried my face into the warmth of his neck, not knowing how to do much else. He pulled the covers back over us, enveloping me in the warmth of the sheets as he held me against his body, just letting me lay there, breathing him in.

I couldn't even be upset. Each year, Grace would say it just once - just to say it - it was funny how he'd done the same thing. Each time she'd say it, I didn't really feel much at all; and I wasn't sure exactly what I felt, now. I couldn't pinpoint it; it caused a particular shift in my stomach, but it wasn't unsettling, by any means. He cared so much that it was hard to comprehend it.

For the first time on my birthday, I had a number of texts waiting for me when I finally picked up my phone. Harry had eventually peeled his body away from mine to go to the kitchen, and I'd finally reached for my phone that had managed to cause so much upset, yesterday. No more missed calls - and if there had been, they were drowned out by much nicer messages. Elin, Pauli, Sarah, Mitch - even Ally; everybody had texted me within minutes of each other, as if they'd all done so the second they'd woken up this morning. Everybody had remembered it was my birthday - I even had texts from a couple of members of the tour crew, who I supposed had learned about my birthday through one of the others. I couldn't quite believe it - each text, with its own kind, individual message. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced.

Grace, of course, had sent a text of her own, and Johnny had sent me an email early into the morning. Nobody had forgotten, even though I had - nobody had thought it was too unimportant to mention, like I had. I didn't know how to feel.

I put my phone down, sitting on the edge of the bed for a moment. I brought my face into my hands, closing my eyes for a second and taking a deep breath, in and out. Was this what I'd always wanted?

I didn't know what to do, or say, or feel. I didn't recognise my own life, now. I could hear my boyfriend moving around the kitchen in our apartment, in Italy, whilst we were on a brief break from his world tour. My friends - plural - had just texted me paragraphs of appreciation to celebrate a day that I'd never once celebrated, because they wanted to celebrate me.

I walked into the kitchen, slightly dazed. For the first time, I wasn't thinking about my family - my mother, or my father, or my sister, or what I could've done to fix things, or make them better. Today was however many years since my father had died - but it wasn't at the forefront of my mind, at last. I was here - I was living this, now, and it was real. It wasn't how I'd always seen myself, but it didn't mean that it wasn't me. This was mine.