The Story of us

Chapter 32: Sometimes you get your happy ending

London, England 

The first thing that I noticed about Harry was how tired he looked.

His eyes were red and almost puffy looking, which must have meant that he had been staying up for nights on end. The dark circles illuminated underneath them almost looked like they had been drawn on with a felt tip pen. His face was slightly scruffy like he hadn't shaved in a while, even though I assumed by his wet hair and towel wrapped around his neck that he had just stepped out of the shower. And yet despite all of this, I watched as a glint in his eyes slowly began to ignite when he realized that it really was me standing in front of his doorway.

"Lexi...what are you doing here?" Harry asked me slowly. He sounded just as nervous as I felt, and somehow that was enough to ease me a little bit. At least we were in the same boat here.

Part of me wanted to tell him that if he had seen any romantic comedy, ever, all of this should have been quite self-explanatory, but instead, I asked him, "Could I come in?" Breathe, Lexi. It's just Harry.

Except for the fact that he wasn't just Harry, and he hadn't been for a long time.

"Oh, shit, yeah, of course," he stammered, stepping to the side so that I could come in. "'M sorry, I kind of froze for a second there."

"Understood," I smiled awkwardly. I glanced back and forth at his couch for a minute, before sinking down into it. He paused for a second before joining me, and after that, we were both silent. I took that as an opportunity to take in my surroundings. I had never really thought about what Harry's apartment would look like before, but now that I had seen it, I understood just how him it really was. Everything was neat and organized to a fault, and it looked like the living space of a mature, accomplished adult. But then you looked at the walls and that's when you noticed all of the posters. There was one for just about every band or artist I'd ever heard of, and tons with names that I didn't recognize. He even had a wall dedicated almost entirely to Fleetwood Mac, and for some reason, seeing all of this made me feel like crying. Maybe because it was a part of Harry's life that I had never witnessed before, and all it did was remind me how in the dark I was about this side of him.

"You...you really took me by surprise, Lexi," Harry broke the silence after a few minutes. I looked away from his walls to stare at him, only to notice that he had put on a shirt now. It was his signature Rolling Stones T-shirt, one that I recognized all too well. I couldn't even count the number of times I had stolen it from him; it was almost as if I could still feel the fabric on my skin. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Well." He didn't want me here, did he? Had all of this been a mistake? It felt like there was a ticking time bomb in place of where my heart should be, and with every word that he spoke, it grew closer and closer to exploding. "Here I am."

Harry nodded a few times before saying in a voice so low I could barely even hear him, "All of this has been so much harder than I thought." He paused before adding, "I missed you, Alexa."

I could feel the bomb in my chest slow down for a second when I heard him say my name. I had always hated it, had tried to hide it from people my entire life, and yet, whenever I heard it fall from his lips, I felt like I could turn it into a CD and listen to it over and over again for the rest of my life.

"I missed you too," I finally responded. "And that's kind of why I came here right now."

"I thought that you were supposed to be going back to Florida last night," he commented. I didn't ask him how he knew this.

"I was," I shrugged, "but....clearly, I didn't."

"Why not?" he asked. He was staring at me so intently that it felt like he could see into my soul, and for a second, I wondered if he really was able to. Could he see how desperately I was yearning for him? How every nerve, every vessel, every bone in my body was playing the same song over and over again–I need you, I need you, I need you.