boys don't cry. [h.s]

thirty four

It was only when Isabel met the others at the pub that evening, having come straight from the library with a bag so heavy it landed on the floor with a crashing thud, that she realised this was not just a Thursday, but it was an occasion. Because it was 8pm and Harry was already drunk.

This might not have been especially alarming if it weren't for the fact that the rest of them were tipsy at best, and as soon as Isabel walked in she knew they all knew something she didn't. She sat down opposite Harry and smiled at him, and he grinned back, his eyelids drooping and his skin flushed, and when Liv slid her phone across the table towards Isabel with the words 'Adam's bday today' typed in on a note, Isabel's mouth dried up.

Harry was quiet, just drank until he ran out of money and then stared dazedly at the table for the rest of the evening. The rest of them humoured him, chatted and kept up a jolly pretence like they hadn't noticed he was completely out of it, like they hadn't stopped drinking about two hours before him. And when they left, Harry slung his arm around Isabel's shoulder and leaned into her as they said goodbye to Liv and Caitlin, walking unsteadily down the drizzly road back towards the boys' house.

"Annual tradition," was all he said, and then he didn't say anything more.

When they got back to Harry's he asked her to stay over, and she didn't have any classes the following day so she agreed, mumbling her answer, her heart thumping. Finally, they were alone - just the two of them in his room with the door shut, but Harry didn't seem to have noticed. It took nearly ten minutes for him to wriggle out of all of his clothes, giggling like a child when his jeans got stuck around his ankles and he nearly toppled headfirst into the wall. Isabel was already in bed by the time he was ready to go and brush his teeth, and he tripped back after a long while with a wet mouth and chest, like he'd managed to throw water all over himself in the process. He kissed

the tips of his fingers and muttered "Happy birthday, bro", pressing his hand to the wall of the chimney breast to steady himself as he swayed on his feet, before finally collapsing face first onto the bed next to Isabel.

"Okay?" Isabel whispered after she'd turned the light off, yanking the covers from underneath Harry and throwing them over his back. He nodded into the pillow.

Adam had died on the twenty-first of October, just over three weeks before his twenty-fourth birthday. There was no way Harry was okay, but Isabel nodded back even though he wasn't looking at her, and then she burrowed down under the duvet next to him. He was breathing hard, like there wasn't much oxygen in the room and he had to gulp in order to get it, and she smoothed her hand across his back gently in an effort to make him feel better. She wasn't sure whether it even helped a little bit, but she did it anyway.

"I feel like..." Harry started after a while, his voice muffled by the fabric his face was pressed into. He shifted so that his cheek was pressed against the pillow and his face towards Isabel, but he kept his eyes shut. "I feel like this day'll al–" he hiccoughed "–always be sad even when... even when I stop being sad all the time."

Isabel was surprised by how sophisticated this statement was given Harry's inebriated state, and so it took a moment for her to respond. Perhaps for the first time, Harry seemed to recognise that getting over Adam didn't mean he could never be sad again, and Isabel's heart lifted, positively brimming with hope.

"I think you're right."

"Y'know when you eat loads," Harry went on, reaching up a hand and wiping over his mouth roughly before letting it fall on the pillow beside him, "and you think fuck, 'm never gonna eat again. 'nd you can't remember what being hungry's like."

"Yeah?"

"'s what being sad used to feel like," he said. He sighed heavily, his eyes still shut, and Isabel shut hers too. "Doesn't feel like that anymore. Is that bad?"