This Thing Upon Me [Order The eBook] [Harry Styles]

Chapter 19

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

"A man's at odds to know his mind,

 cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. 

He can know his heart, but he don't want to."

Cormac McCarthy | Blood Meridian

February 2016

After fighting with Jeff over who would pay the check for lunch, he dropped me off at my therapist and left to run errands in the meantime. I had an hour and a half scheduled for today, and knew she would grill me because I hadn't been for a few weeks in a row.

Alone in the private waiting room, nothing but old magazines, daytime TV, and a coffee maker to keep me company, I checked my phone and went through a few messages from this morning. The floors were being redone in the guestroom, and my shipment would be delayed another week. Great. A few messages earlier my dad asked me how to share something to Instagram for the dozenth time. No matter how many times I showed him, he couldn't quite grasp it. Then Emma had asked if tomorrow was OK to meet with Zayn. In an instant, my stomach dropped. He was being persistent. I quickly agreed to noon at a coffee joint of his choosing. Somewhere remote; his side of town. It almost felt like a drug deal. Our people were speaking for us and it felt cold and overly formal; something our dynamic had never been.

I nearly made a list of things to discuss with him at length. First on the agenda, music. I wanted to know everything. Where he wrote, how he wrote, why he chose the subjects he'd chosen. Instruments, beats, producers, co-writers—everything. I wanted to know how much had been written before he left the band and what had been written after. I wanted to know how much of it was about me. I wanted to see his studio. I wanted to see his house. I wanted to see his Bel-Air haunts and hideaways. I wanted to show him mine in the Hills.

It was important I didn't overwhelm him, though. He scared easily, socially speaking. One question too many and he was searching for a reason to excuse himself from the discussion altogether. Next to nothing could keep him engaged if he lost interest in you.

My next line of questioning would then veer towards family. How were they? Parents, sisters, cousins? Everyone. One thing I was glad of when he left the band was that it enabled him to reconnect with his family on a real level. Their absence in the years we spent on tour took more of a toll on him than any of the other boys.

Despite him being an island most days and thriving in isolation, he adored his people and needed to be around them. They reminded him of his roots and kept him "authentic," as he would say. As for his mom, Trisha, she administered an unmatched solace through not only her words, but also in a doting, infinite supply of home-cooked food. Chickens, curries, pastries, soups, you name it. The thought of him getting his fill in her care helped me be at ease in the immediate aftermath of his departure. I had seen too many days in 2014-2015 where he just would not eat a single morsel, in turn making it difficult for me to eat without a sense of guilt. So I know those awful habits had been reversed the minute he got home to her. 

"Harry?" my psychologist called, standing in the doorway of the private lounge, pushing her glasses up over her short silver hair. Dr. Ehrmann was a middle-aged Israeli woman with the figure of a twenty-year-old and all the sagacity of a centenarian. Long ago she had told me to call her Naomi because we were more like acquaintances than anything professional. We had bonded over my Hebrew script tattoo upon first meeting in 2015, since her family were Jewish and my dad's side were as well. Although at some point in college she had defected, and now leaned towards a more agnostic world-view.