Meet Me In The Hallway

Takeoff

I woke up and was momentarily disoriented by the unfamiliar room. I used to wake up in a new place every few days and I barely noticed. The room may be unknown, but my bed mate was not and I rarely woke up alone. This time I was, thank God, or I may have said Harry's name after the night of dreaming of cloudy skies and green fields and Styles' children.

We flew tomorrow and I felt as though my sickness had led me to sleep away the usable hours of the morning and I had laundry and packing to do. I dreaded it, but I picked up my phone and turned it back on to check the time. The first thing I saw was an apple - then a text from Harry.

Well, quite a few texts from H.

'Melly-are you ok?'

'Melody'

'M'
'E'
'L'
'L'
'Y'

I smiled at that a little. When I wasn't answering or couldn't find my phone, he would text me separate letters to maximize noise or vibration. Sometimes I got the alphabet. Sometimes I love you.

'Seriously, this is rude, I'm worried just tell me you're alive, please.'

'Listen, I just got off a five hour flight, and you still haven't texted me. This is juvenile. Fuck off'

'Are you alone? Why isn't Milo taking care of you?'

'Jesus Melly, I'm about to call Michael for fuck's sake, don't make me do it.'

I could just see his face, a grounded jaw and glowing eyes, angry but concerned. I would have laughed if I did not want to cry. I also didn't want him to call Michael.

My brother had turned up while we were in Australia and he and Milo got on like a house on fire as they had their first couple meetings. Michael also seemed to take the demise of me and Harry personally. I think he also felt left after that last tour. I'd once tried to explain Harry to him.

"Michael, it's not personal, yeah? He just gets really invested in the people he's physically with. I guarantee if you saw him he would treat you as though no time had passed and you would still hold the same place in his oversized heart." I'd pleaded and reminded myself at the same time.

"Mel, you can make excuses for him as much as you want it if helps you. But I figure if he gave a fuck, he'd stay in touch. Yeah?" He mocked.

It knocked my confidence then and helped the erosion of my patience pick up. It didn't cause the landslide but it still helped bring me down, bring us down.

So, I needed Harry not to call Michael. My brother had pulled me aside when Milo and I were home and asked point blank if something was going on with Harry.

"No, Why would you ask that?" I'd tried to act like he was being ridiculous, but he just looked at me like I was a pane of glass.

"Styles called me for your number one day, which I gave not so willingly and then your address the next. So I assume you saw him. You two are like fucking magnets. After I figured out you were hiding that you were together for bloody ages, I thought back on it and realized how you were puzzle pieces and it was easy to put everything together. I didn't want to give him shit, but he told me he needed to apologize to you and I think he most certainly fucking needed to. But, he knows about Milo, cuz I told him." He gave me a 1000-pound look. "So, I hoped that kept you two clothed and such. I may think he did some unforgivable shit to you, but he's not a total shit!"

I hid my guilty look in my arms. Milo had not kept my clothes on, but SHE, the girlfriend, seemed to keep Harry in check. "No, we just had a post mortem on a three-year-old break up. It was shit."

"You guys friends?" Michael tried to ask casually, looking at the rocks he was kicking in my parents' backyard.

"No, too much water under that bridge." I made a sweeping motion with my hands.

"Good, I don't think anything good could come of that." When did Michael get so wise?

"Yeah." I said to the ground.

"And you have a good thing, Stench. Remember that. Or I could call Harry and tell him you're engaged. Put that final nail in." The suggestion stopped my heart. Harry was so hurt by my living with Milo, I didn't want him to hear through the grapevine about me marrying another man. Once the important immediates were informed I'd find a way to tell him. Maybe.

"No, unnecessary. I think it wouldn't matter now." I was sure of that two weeks ago when I talked to Michael. That was two weeks after I had seen Harry and we had flayed the skin from the bones we had left undisturbed, so now it had been a month since the autopsy. The pain was so fresh in my mind when I talked to my brother, my answers were truthful. I couldn't imagine we could be anything resembling friends. But as our opened scars were healing and I was living in a cloud of memory, a relationship with Harry, a friendship was a hope I hadn't named yet.

And I'd wanted him in my lowest place. Lying out on a floor when I'd come undone. It was Harry whose voice I sought. There were probably lots of reasons to run from that. I wasn't fast enough to outrun myself. I could tell my brother it didn't matter.

Except apparently it did, and I knew that Michael would drop that conversational bomb if Harry called him and made it clear we had been in contact. I wanted to avoid that conversation for Harry's sake. My own selfish reasons too. And I wanted to talk to him.

'I'm ok Harry. I had food poisoning. Rehydrating. Going home tomorrow.'

I hit the send and then typed another message.

'I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you.'

The gray bubbles appeared for a long while, then disappeared, then appeared a moment later for a bit then disappeared. This happened again and I wondered why he was editing himself. I never accepted the edited version of him. Finally a sentence came through.

'You can always call me.'

'No, I shouldn't.' I gave him what I wanted, gut response.

'Maybe. But you can.'

I didn't respond to that. I had no idea what I would say, or do. But the idea sat on the back of my brain like the lyrics you hear once and bind to your DNA. I didn't respond. And he didn't either.

Life went on. Because sometimes life-changing things happen and no one can see them. There is no physical evidence, and though it felt like it at times, nobody had actually died. There was no sympathy card to send, and I wasn't sure who deserved it. And like the line from some old 90's song, something was beginning from that other beginning's end. I was engaged to a man I loved, who loved me. And I had an old love that was just freezing my toes a tad. This is what I had decided on the flight back to Australia.

The flight back to Australia was long, but not tense and my jealousy over Harry's girl or the realization that I did want Milo, that I loved him, and had him, and that he was not on the other side of the world with another woman, made me settle into the engagement I had whole-heartedly accepted at first. This was my life, high rises, and occasional business trips and FaceTime with my best friend Kara and my mom.

It wasn't what I had once imagined. Not the life I'd hoped for when I was younger, I think I thought I'd be a starving author sharing some urban flat. Then I grew up and my brother got a little famous and chasing his ascending star gave me another view of a possible new life entirely. One that looked a lot like hallways and hotel rooms and planes before it settled into country life and babies. Then I left that behind in a cloud of dust.

The life I was inhabiting was my own though, I had built it. And I had regrets, but who doesn't? Every choice has consequences. This was my mother's favorite phrase when I was growing up, especially while I wanted to do everything academic possible in school.

"A yes to one thing is a no to another. Every choice has consequences, sometimes great ones," were Wanda's favorites words of wisdom while I angsted on the way home from a debate team event that I missed a school paper meeting for. Or whatever I was torn between that day.

I was torn now, not that I thought Harry was even an option. I had no idea if that was true and I'd already made the choice once to make a hasty exit, and was living with the consequences. I didn't want to do it again, even if some of the repercussions of my flight were joys!

Like Kara.

"So, how wild can your hen-do be?" I could hear the grin in her voice.

It had been months since we had seen each other other than through a screen. Weeks since we had talked at all. My eyes welled and brimmed.

"I miss you!" I gasped and Kara's face softened and she gave me her own watery smile.

"I miss you too!" She promised. "What's going on, Mel? Are you menstrual?" Her eyebrow was doing the thing I loved. One night, after I'd had a whopping three glasses of wine I'd tried to learn how to raise one eyebrow then the other like she did.

I remembered that night well. It was one for the books. "Am I doing it?" I asked excitedly. I was flexing my right eyebrow as hard as I could.

Kara took my picture, handed me her phone and then literally fell over laughing at me. I was definitely not arching one eyebrow. Instead I looked like a Neanderthal mock up at a natural history museum. So I fell over laughing on top of her. I missed our wild nights. Well, they weren't all that wild, but she was the second person I felt like knew me and didn't let me hide out and loved me anyway without familial obligation. Seeing her face and hearing her gentle ribbing was often too much, but especially when I was paper thin and flimsy, my tears were no surprise to me. But the volume was.

"Melly! What in the bloody hell is wrong? Is it your mom? Is it back?" Her brows were knitted and she was visibly scrambling. I could feel her need to hug me. That's a cruel thing about our technologically advanced world. It makes long-distance relationships easier and simultaneously impoverishes them. You can see the person and hear them, but you can't touch them. You knew exactly what you were missing. Kara longed to comfort me. I recognized that look. Harry would often caress the screen and sometimes I swore I felt it. But mostly, it made me more aware of not feeling it.

Did I tell her what happened? She had been about my story with Harry. Maybe the only person who really knew it all. If anyone can. Even me or him. We were party to it and therefore imprisoned by our perceptions, and she was fed on my bias.

"Melly! I'm about to call Milo!" She warned.

"No, or I won't be able to tell you!" I gasped.

Her brow furrowed. "Did he do something?" She looked puzzled.

"No, no. He's the same. Wonderful and imperfectly perfect. And about me. My dad was lukewarm about him. But that's well, that's because of Harry...."

"What about the wordless wonder?" She scoffed.

"Well, turns out he wasn't so wordless. Hold on." I grabbed my phone and sent 'If I Could Fly'.

"Oh, I know this song! It's so bloody sad."

"It's written on my bedroom wall."

"What, now?" She looked around like she could see my walls.

"No, no, not here. At my parents. Apparently he came for me. And he'd written me another song. And he wrote it out there on my quote wall hoping I'd see it." I sighed. And thought about the lyrics: And I hope that you don't run from me. I ran a marathon with a huge head start. "But I didn't know until Milo read them off to me."

"Wow!" Now her eyes glistened. "That's romantic!"

"You are not helping." I pointed at her.

Kara shrugged and asked the question. "What difference does it make, Melody. It's been years and you're engaged and in love."

What difference did it make? It may have made no difference. Had I only seen him, and not touched him. Had I not numbered my regrets like trying to count the stars.

"Um," I bit my lip and I knew that was a tell. If she was here the stiffness of my spine would have had her putting on a movie and getting the wine to give me time to talk. Another limitation of technology I guess. "I saw him. In Shanghai. And we talked."

Kara didn't respond, mostly because her jaw was wide enough to fit her fist in, a talent of hers, but an awkward way to talk.

The air was silent for much to long and I was ready to shut down the call and do some yoga to calm me down. "Kara!"

"Sorry! I'm just surprised, how'd you all wind up talking? I would expect you to run the minute you saw him." She put in.

I rolled my eyes, but knew she was right. I blew out an exasperated breath. "He sang a song about me and it pissed me off. I had to tell him so. I figured it couldn't hurt after such a long time."

Kara was giving me this look.

"What?" I asked and threw my hands up at my sides.

"You figured it couldn't hurt." She was on the edge of laughter and her suppressed smile was pissing me off.

"What's that mean?"

"Melody, when I met you, you were walking around with this albatross around your neck that said, 'I've had my heart-broken. Don't ask me how?' And you didn't think talking to the author of your heartbreak would hurt. Babes, for a smart girl..." she trailed off.

My eyes watered and her face softened.

"So," she cocked her head to the side, "It hurt."

"Yeah—"

"And now you can't stop thinking about him?" Uhhh, she looked like my mother did when I didn't make editor for the school paper.

"We..." Damn I felt guilty even saying this. "We hashed it out. And he had me listen to his album, which is like all about me and us and—"

"I could have told you that!"

"You've heard it?" I gapped.

"Course, I was curious. After your story. If you loved him like that...." She shrugged and left it open to interpretation.

"What? What then? If I loved him like that?" I grit my teeth a little.

"Then I figured he loved you the same. Maybe more, because I know you. Lived with you. Don't think anybody could be that close to you and not love you, babes." Her spongy smile unclenched my jaw.

"Kara—" I didn't know what to say.

"Have you guys been talking?" Mind reader.

I hunched my shoulders, "I wouldn't say talking, like present participle, but we've talked—"

"And you want to talk to him more? Regret leaving him? Bit of cold feet?"

God, what a soft place to land. I bit my lip and nodded.

"Want my opinion?" Loved her for that too, she knew when to just spew truth at me and when to give me the ability to not be near the flood.

"Milo is amazing, and he will be a really good husband. You'll be happy and have a nice life, and good sex and babies. But it won't ever be like it was with Harry."

I exhaled.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing. He can hurt you, but you'll recover from any heartbreak Milo gives you. You aren't supposed to marry your first, your heart is too soft for them, and they're like primary school, a training ground. I think you learned a lot there. But, I think Harry took a big piece of you away with him." Half of me. "And that might be too big a piece to ignore entirely. If you talk to him, you need to give up Milo, because you'll be acknowledging you are still Harry's. You might as well get on a plane and go be with hi—"

"Can't, doesn't want me. He's got a new girl."

Kara gave me a lopsided smile, "Melly, do you really believe it's her and not you?" You can always call me, rang through my mind again. "Because I don't."

"Fuck," I lay down.

"Or!" Came sailing towards me from her side of the world.

"Or?" I sat up, I wanted a better alternative option. Part of me acknowledged that I fell really hard at 18, and had never got up again. The rest of me needed to believe I wasn't gonna live my life down there.

"Or you just are stuck because it felt unfinished and you have what if's." She shrugged.

"So what do I do then?" I could feel my eyes bugging out at her.

"Two options-you either talk to him and deal with the consequences, like tearing apart your life, which you worked hard to build, and it be for nothing. You may wind up without either of them—"

"Ughhhh!" I lay back down.

"Or," I sat up and realized this conversation was giving me a core workout. Her pointer finger was aloft. "You realize its over and it should be, and you get closure and move on and have that happy life with your hot Argentine."

I bit my lip.

"Ask me—" Kara said softly, which was not a range she orbited much less Inhabited.

"Do you think I can be happy with Harry?" The question slipped through like when you finally get a needle threaded.

"I don't know." I frowned. She rushed to speak again. "No, Melly, I didn't know you with him. But I guess my feeling is that if he could make you as fucking sad as you were when we met, still, then he could make you bloody happy."

"This is horrible!" I whined.

"Oh yes, having to choose between the world's most famous pop star and the man of most women's dreams!! Poor you!" She grinned like the damn joker.

"Your face is gonna stick like that!" I loved her.

"Look at it this way, I'm gonna plan a shit show of a party and we are gonna celebrate your marriage or drown your sorrows in style! And—-"

"And?"

"No matter what, you have a brilliant best friend!"

I really really did.

I lay in bed that night and listened to Milo breath and looked around at the world we made, the actual permanent home we had together. It wasn't worth ending it. It was safer to protect the house I built than try to go back to the foundations I'd left unfinished.

And yet, every time I looked at my phone I did the math of what time it was in London, where I thought he might be living.

So when I called him as the dawn was breaking one morning a few days later I think I figured he would be unable to answer.

That's what I told myself anyway.