Reign || Harry Styles

35: Harry // Elsie

Under all that static electricity, he could see her. Blond and fair, like she had always been, flaunting herself on the red carpet. Some kind of sports award show, Harry could not bring himself to care for the details. All he knew was that the woman he had been yearning for, the one he had pacified with, the one he had explored, the one he had cheated with, was now in the arms of another man.

Another man. That sounded really alien to him, somehow.

Somehow, somehow, somehow.

For all this time, another man would have meant him. He was the other man.

Especially in terms of this mercilessly enigmatic lady's another man.

He could not help but to feel jealousy coursing in his bloodstream.

American politician Aiden Thompson's arm was linked to hers, like some expensive Gucci clutch begging to be flaunted. Like some property. That ten thousand dollar smile of his, the one showing his perfect pearly whites, made the blood boil in Harry's system. Was all of this a publicity stunt? To date a dauntlessly gorgeous athlete on the rise not for her achievements but for her perennial beauty and vivacious charity work? Get a bit of popularity? Maybe get his face on the front spread of a tabloid, to appeal to larger portions of the society? Or was he planning to let his ten-thousand dollar smile charm his way to Congress?

The other man, the other man, the other man.

For all these time, Harry was the other man. Now he was one of the other men.

One of the other men.

One of the other men.

One of the other—

Harry could have sworn, in his immensely drunken state, that he wanted to burst. To implode. To release a vast amount of internal energy to the open air. But the only thing that wanted to implode was the ball of uneasiness in his throat and it made him hate himself more than he hated himself before.

There he was, slumping lifelessly on the sofa, angry like the seven hells experienced an injustice, and he just wanted to implode.

For he could not take it anymore. This other man Jean was with . . . this suave American politician, in heat of being nominated as a member of the Congress . . . made him want to hurl the telly out of the window. Defenestrate. He wanted to defenestrate himself as well. Maybe he and the telly could defenestrate together, then dramatically crash against the ground, hundreds of feet below.

Into smithereens.

Nothingness.

Unsalvageable.

On the screen, Jean Franco was wearing crimson.

And Harry wanted to scream.

Our point of view is the camera. From Harry's flat, it zoomed to the telly, focusing on it. We could see flashes of athletes wearing expensive formalwear, swimmers to wrestlers, quarterbacks to gymnasts. This was the ESPN Awards show, the ESPYs. Our cameras zoomed out from the telly screen, and we immediately realised we were in a completely different room.

We have left Harry's flat and arrived in another room, far away from the flat. It was the meeting room at Elsie's workplace. We saw three people standing, all enthralled by the figures shown on the telly screen. Elsie was standing closest to the screen, eyes glued. Louis was leaning his shoulder against the wall, seeming to be eyeing the screen with disdain. Or perhaps, it was Elsie he was directing his disdain to.

It took us a bit of a moment to realise that the people in the room were observing the show. Quite intently. The reason why was a mystery to us. The room, painted in industrial grey, was inhibiting an air of tension in its silence.