Facade [h.s]

fifteen

From Callie: What about we go to the party together? Indigo isn't answering and I figured you'd need a ride. Dress nice!

I stared at it for a few seconds, shaking my head at her words before sending her an affermative response, widening my eyes when I checked the time on my phone while typing and discovered that I only had an hour to get ready.

Normally I would've ignored her telling me to dress in a particular way and wore whatever I felt like wearing, but, knowing that Harry would've been at the party as well, I couldn't help but feel like I actually wanted to dress nice, for once.

I jumped to open my wardrobe, staring at the clothes inside and searching a while before taking out a black dress. It was a strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline, long enough to reach about mid-thigh. Overall, it was the kind of thing I would've normally asked Indigo to pay me to wear, but I couldn't deny that, despite being a bit uncomfortable, it did look quite nice.

It took me a while to get ready as I decided to put on eyeliner too, which was way more complicated than my usual make-up, but in the end I managed to get out of my house right when Callie texted me she was already there, almost tripping and falling down the stairs because of the high heels I'd decided to pair with the dress.

The fact that I'd decided to dress differently just because Harry would've been there was probably ridiculous, but I couldn't bring myself to mind. It felt nice to actually put a lot of effort into my appearance every once in a while.

I greeted Callie as soon as I got into her expensive red car, ignoring the little glance she sent me as she noticed the difference in my clothing, and she just shook her head, driving away.

It didn't take long to get to Joel's house, and before I even knew it I was already next to Indigo - Callie having disappeared somewhere shortly after our arrival - and trying to talk to her.

It was clear that my best friend had no intention to make any kind of conversation that day, especially from the way she kept trying to find reasons to interrupt me as I tried to talk to her. At some point I just gave up, following her back and forth for a while as she talked to others, trying to leave every once in a while, just to end up being called back by her.

I couldn't understand why she wanted me to stay with her but didn't want to talk to me, but as the hours started to go by I ended up realising that her behaviour would've made incredibly hard leaving her, which meant that if would've been incredibly hard to keep the promise I'd made to Harry, too.

I hadn't even seen him yet. I knew that he was there - he always was, at that time - and I was also sure that he'd probably already seen me, too, but he was still nowhere to be found for me. He was probably in another room though, or hidden somewhere among the huge crowd of people. Or maybe Indigo was just trying her very best to keep me the farther away from him as possible. That was an option, too.

As midnight started to approach, I stopped trying to leave her, hoping that would've made her stop paying as much attention to me. While it did work, I only found the perfect occasion to leave a little after midnight.

She'd just approached two girls I'd seen a few times and never talked to, and she seemed to be quite taken by the conversation, not even glancing at me anymore.

I stayed next to her for some seconds as she started speaking to the two girls, just to quickly excuse myself when I saw she was distracted enough not to notice and make my way towards the balcony as quickly as possible.

I knew that I was a bit late, and despite what I'd told Harry, I really didn't want my friends to see him anywhere near me - especially now, considering that Indigo knew that I hadn't been staying away from Harry as I should've at all. I could just hope that he'd decided to wait for me to come, and that he wouldn't have come to get me as he'd threatened he would.