Unrequited

Chapter 18 (Part 2)

“You feeling any better now?” I felt all my muscles tighten as I spoke. 

“Yeah, fine thanks. Must have just been a nerves thing.” He spoke without turning to look at me, apparently hooked on the screen. After a long, uncomfortable silence, he spoke again. “He’s a good friend of mine, you know.” He spoke conversationally and gestured lazily to the TV. 

“Oh.” Ed Sheeran gazed out of the screen at me; his usually sunny smile now seemed mocking. “‘Oh?’ is all you could say, Charlotte? Nice,” he seemed to jeer. I blinked hard and turned to Harry despite the fact he was so determined not to look at me. I felt like I had to add something to my weak reply. “His music is beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed absentmindedly. Either he really was still unwell or he was beginning to act the way he truly felt towards me. There was no way he would have been this awkward or untalkative with me before - even last night he was his usual affectionate self. We watched Ed be interviewed and neither of us spoke again until a couple of ad breaks later. The friction between us seemed to reach a new high and I felt something in the room explode, like a balloon bursting or a glass breaking. “Oh for God’s sake!” Harry muttered under his breath turning towards me suddenly, lifting one knee up to rest on the bed and grasping his shin with both hands. He looked down at the bedspread for a moment, his jaw visibly clenching and unclenching. I wanted to ask him what the hell was going through his mind but something told me to wait. He shook his hair and pushed the front curls to the side, the little mannerism I’d become to accustomed to. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.” My stomach dropped at those words. His eyes were shadowed and serious and they bored into mine with such acuteness that I had to look away. I reached for the TV remote and turned the volume down. 

“Go ahead then.” Harry scrunched and rubbed a palm across his forehead. “Something I wish I’d let you know a long time ago...so I wouldn’t have had to keep all this up for so long.” He spoke with his eyes directly on me the whole time like he was absolutely sure of what he was saying and meaning every word. Keeping eye contact with him for too long made my heart feel like it was physically breaking, having him about to say those words to my face. 

“Keep all what up?” I asked blankly, holding up the ‘clueless’ pretense, as if I’d never heard him speaking to Louis about me. My tone was neutral and calm but my body language suggested otherwise - my hands were shaking so badly that I made myself grip onto the bedcovers so it wouldn’t become obvious. 

“This...” He looked beyond me, searching for the right word. “This...act,” he finished, his burning gaze flicking back down to me. This is it, I thought. He was taking Louis’ previous advice, he was going to ‘let me down lightly’.  He was going to tell me I shouldn’t really be hanging out with the boys, that he had kept inviting me along with them so as not to hurt my feelings and to please my Mum. “All this time I’ve been -”

“Harry,” I choked out. My throat was becoming tighter as the tears threatened to appear again for what seemed the millionth time that day. Harry’s mouth twisted as he watched my rapidly crumbling mien. 

“No, Charlotte. Let me speak.” His tone was almost demanding. “Since I first met you I’ve felt I had to act a certain way with you. I had to respect the wishes of Sam and of your mother and while on tour, do my best to keep them happy. That meant treating you like you were part of the group, sixth member of the band.” My heart was jolting painfully, my cheeks were becoming flushed. “It was fine for a bit but after a while I realised that wasn’t the way things were meant to be. It was like...swapping parts in a play at the last second. It causes you to forget your place and what you’re supposed to be doing.” I realised I was the actor who’d swapped parts at the last second; I was playing the wrong character and blurring the lines. I was the tour manager’s daughter, not the sixth member of the band. “As time went on, things got worse and worse until I felt like I couldn’t control the way they were going anymore.” The low timbre of his voice and the way he stared unrelentingly into my eyes made his words all the more solemn and all the more poignant. His next sentences seemed carefully chosen and were delivered almost gently. “Things all came to a head today didn’t they? Facades were shattered with one single overheard conversation.”