Grey Street // H.S.

Chapter 34: "Your love, not enough."

"No," he huffs out. "The whole relationship. It wasn't all shit."

I look at him curiously. How is it that I went from not wanting to know any details of people's sad lives to wanting to know everything about Harry's? Months ago I didn't even care enough to ask him why his 'relationship' was complicated and now I'm staring at him, licking a popsicle, impatiently waiting for him to continue.

"There were good times," he talks as though he's trying to convince himself as much as he's trying to convince me. "Especially toward the beginning, we used to be able to spend hours together doing nothing. We grew up together and she always knew how to put a smile on my face. The problem was as we grew up she stopped wanting to do that as often.

"That's what I was talking about, only loving her on the good days. They were becoming less and less frequent leading up to her death but there was still enough to keep me from fully giving up. I wanted her to be that person for me so badly. I had imagined it for years when I was kid... but she just wasn't."

I wish I could have known Harry then and maybe have been able to somehow make it better. It's difficult enough to see him now, still feeling the pain from it all. I don't know how to respond because the closest thing I have to relate to this is my awful cat Georgia when I was five, which isn't even the same at all. I don't think I can even try to claim that I understand what Harry is going through.

"The sex was good too," he quickly adds, laughing quietly to himself.

"You're such a boy."

"You're the one who asked!" he tries to defend himself. Of course I'm only teasing him. If anything I'm the one who is 'such a boy' for assuming sex was the only reason he stayed with Lauren as long as he did.

"Yeah, yeah," I roll my eyes. "I mean I can't blame you, good sex is hard to pass up."

"Can we please not talk about this," he looks embarrassed, which only makes me want to talk about it more.

"Why not, Harold?" I smile deviously. "We're two mature people, friends at that. I think it's perfectly acceptable to talk about the intimacy in relationships."

"Elle," he glares at me as we continue to walk down the street.

"C'mon, we've had plenty of conversations about blow jobs in the past. One more isn't going to kill us." I laugh loudly as his face becomes more mortified by the minute. I've forgotten how wonderful it is to make Harry uncomfortable like this.

"It's not the same."

"And why not?" I question, hoping our encounter a few nights ago didn't ruin our ability of having inappropriate conversations. I've always enjoyed those.

He looks at me annoyed and I don't understand why he is getting so worked about this. I want to think he's joking around and soon enough he'll start laughing hysterically like he normally does. However I don't think that's the case this time as his eyes don't show any sign of easiness.

"I-don't-want-to-talk-about-blowjobs-while-you're-eating-that-popsicle," he says the sentence so quickly that I wouldn't have even thought it was him if I wasn't watching his mouth move. Considering his normal calm and slow speech I find this surprising. It takes everything I have in me not to laugh at him. I really try to hold it in, already sensing the weird sensitivity in the subject.

"Because I'm eating a popsicle," I chuckle slightly, desperately fighting the fit of laughter. "That's why you don't want to talk about it?"

"Yeah," he says quietly, looking down at his feet as we walk.

I so badly want to give him a hard time about this and part of me wants to do something to put him on edge. I don't though for some reason. I'm not sure what the exact reasoning for this is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that Harry isn't smiling about it anymore. In fact he seems to be thinking very hard about something.