Guilty Pleasure (A Harry Styles Fan Fiction)

Chapter 33

Eventually I had to go back to my dorm and leave Harry to do his work and get ready for the rest of his day. My bed was cold. Even as I laid between the sheets and tugged them up to my chin, it was missing body warmth and the scent of sugar and cigarette smoke. I decided to skip my classes that day for the first time ever in my college career. I couldn’t seem to shake the uncomfortable feeling that settled over me.

I couldn’t quite decipher how I was feeling, but it wasn’t relieved after Harry and I’s conversation. I felt slightly sick; like I was selfish to cry over my own life’s tragedy when his was so much more real than my own, the wound much fresher in his memory than in mine. I was grateful that he had opened up to me, though, and talked to me about his parents and the terrible experience with his brother. I felt for him, a few tears escaping my eyes just thinking about the broken sound of his voice when he shared what he had hidden behind layers of tough exterior.

Despite not feeling relieved to have revealed my own history, I felt as if I understood him better after our chat. He was rude and always on edge so no one could get to him as they had his brother. He didn’t touch alcohol because he resented the man that his father became after a few drinks. He missed his mother as much as he did his brother and wished that his father didn’t send her away from them; he believed she was at a hospital somewhere in Scotland, but he was unsure. His father paid every person possible to rid her from his life. The initials of his two family members danced on each of his shoulders: G for George and A for Angela. Although he knew that his mother was still alive, he felt that she deserved just as much tribute as his brother did.

Then I thought about the intimate realization that we shared not too long before we revealed our true selves. I told him that I loved him and he returned it. When I said it, it felt as if I had lifted a thousand pounds of weight from my shoulders; finally admitting to myself and to him that I was, too, falling in love. We admitted that neither of us had any clue how to handle a real relationship, let alone love. Harry had never had a girlfriend and the relationships that I had in my past were too guarded to truly develop.

I never understood how a real relationship worked, how true, raw feelings could eat me alive from the inside out until I came to terms with them, how undeniable need was a pull stronger than magnetism. That was, until I met Harry. We were both so new to the feeling, so new to the desire, that I wanted to test the water a couple days longer than Harry had before I dove in and spoke the few words that haunted my thoughts aloud. But after I had immersed myself, I had never felt better. Never felt safer. Never felt like I belonged somewhere more.

My feelings for Harry were indescribable and somehow I knew that he felt the same way that I did. Even when we couldn’t stand each other, something always brought us together. I remembered the day that Harry had found Blake kissing me by the pool in Cancun and the jealousy that was clear on his face. In that moment, I was angry with him for being there, for ridiculing Blake and I. To think back on it, I felt so silly. Why hadn’t I realized it then? If I had only allowed myself to come to terms with my feelings for him sooner, maybe our relationship would’ve began as amazing and not have had to transform. But, I wouldn’t take back a second of anything that Harry and I had gone through together.

I laid in my small bed under my too-airy comforter still wearing Harry’s clothes. I decided that it was a better idea to hurry into my room in a boy’s t-shirt and boxers than to return wearing the same outfit that I left in the night before. His t-shirt was practically a nightgown on me, the soft black fabric hanging off of my tiny frame and coming down to my knees. I knew that I was thin, but I never felt so dainty as I did in Harry’s monstrous clothes.

In my mind flashed memories of how I had gotten into the clothes: the night before when he had dressed me in his kitchen. My heart sped up at the thought of his lips against mine, his muscles still as I bravely reached for his belt before he stopped me. Did I want him to stop me? When he confessed to wanting to make love to me, did I actually mean it when I told him that I wanted to take everything one step at a time? I reached for my phone and sent Harry a courageous text.