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

Chapter 59

(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.)

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"We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall..."

Joni Mitchell | My Old Man

I didn't know if there were textbooks on the pathology of heartbreak, or on the illness of love; I only knew that I felt too inexperienced to handle myself in this state. I wanted to get out of my head. I was so tired of crying and revisiting every sentence we had spewed at each other. Following our fight, for the next few days in LA, I felt like we'd been given a terminal diagnosis. There was no longer any hope for recovery. All the power lied in his hands at this point, as to whether we would see another day, and I was positive he would pull the plug on us at any moment. I planned to make my final breath a curse on all those hard-hearted, archaic fools who still considered queer love a social ill.

The morning after we fought, I found out she was flying in to be with him for the remainder of the LA shows. That's it. He'd made his decision. He'd called in the reinforcements and there was nothing I could do to reverse it. He'd chosen her, his reputation, and his family's ideals over me.

I was nothing in comparison to those things. I was not a point of consideration when he thought of his future. The nerve of me to think I ever stood a chance. I was (without doubt) the most inconsequential aspect of his day-to-day, and this situation had finally confronted me with the depth of my own insignificance.

According to Louis, Z had popped the question the minute she arrived. He had shopped for rings with him moments before they drove to the airport. Immediately after, he regaled the crew in the green room before the show and I had the misfortune of overhearing. Louis was always so f—king loud it was hard to escape his stories, and this evening was not the exception. Now I knew all the unbearable details Z had probably worked hard to shield me from.

Word travelled fast. Some days the fans found out where we'd be located before we even found out ourselves. News of the engagement would break at any moment, and when it did, the worldwide reaction would annihilate me. Each day I awoke from then on, the first thing I remembered was that we were over. That dreaded reality had come true at last. Now I feared the coming media storm like I feared death. Nothing was enjoyable. Not music, not food, not the camaraderie of friends. The only thing that helped to alleviate my mind of these rankling preoccupations in the least was tequila. Patron Silver, my weapon of choice.

It was illegal for me to drink in the states, but I didn't give a f—k. I was Harry Styles. A member of One Direction. Who had the gall to tell me no? Technically if we were in the UK, I'd be perfectly within my civil liberties to pick up an alcoholic beverage and chug until it poisoned my blood and helped me to black out. F—k the US for saying differently. At 19, if I was old enough to vote, get married, buy a gun, and smoke substances that knowingly caused cancer, I was old enough to drink whatever the hell I wanted.