Moon Tower

19.

this chapter has been edited and updated. enjoy!xx

"Hey."

"Hi."

Fiddling with the sleeves of the hoodie I was wearing, I stayed standing at the foot of the adjoining bathroom to the cabin's master bedroom. I'd just come out of the shower, and there was steam filtering out from the doorway where I stood. My eyes stayed downcast, unable to look at Harry. I felt a little ashamed, and a lot embarrassed, at the way the rest of our afternoon went; just thinking it about it made my cheeks flush.

When I finally gathered the courage to look up, Harry's eyes were already trained on me. He was on the bed we'd been sharing the last couple nights, settled under the quilted covers, a book resting in his lap. I wanted to move, to speak, but my feet stayed rooted to the floor, my mouth only moving to nervously bite the nail of my thumb. The look on Harry's face was passive, not giving any of his thoughts away.

I blinked, then blinked again, still unable to make my feet move in any direction. Finally, though, Harry's eyes softened. Setting his book aside, he opens up the comforter to me.

"Come here," he says with a flick of his head, motioning for me to join him. Running a hand through my still wet hair, my feet quickly pad across the carpeted floor, crawling into bed at Harry's side.

Unable to help myself, I nestle into his side, finding comfort in the soft material of his yellow tshirt. Harry sees me, or rather feels me, cozying up to him and pulls me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. Blowing out a sigh, I take his hands out of his lap and bring them into mine, playing with our intertwined fingers, noting the difference in length, the chipped baby blue paint on Harry's fingernails, the lack of polish on mine.

"I'm sorry about earlier. I overreacted," I say, still looking down at our joined hands. I twist one of the chunky rings on his fingers as I wait for him to say something.

My heart drops when he pulls his hands away, but I relax when I feel them on both sides of my face, moving me to look up at him. "I know. I'm sorry too. I should've told you."

***

I was scrolling through Twitter on the way back from our hike when I came across an article. I'd seen stuff like this before, small ads and articles that interrupted my usual feed, but what stuck out to me was that this article had my face on it.

There was a little buzz in the media the first few times Harry and I had been spotted together. It was the usual stuff-paparazzi photos of us on lunch dates, the occasional blog asking about "Harry Styles' 'new flame,'" or whatever. This one, though, was a full-fledged article, about Harry's absence from some talk show in England on Friday. Yesterday. Curious, I clicked on the article, only to find the author was accusing me of being a clingy and needy girlfriend, the phrase, "holding Harry hostage" had even been used. To add fuel to the fire, the article had screen clippings of those stupid Tweets my classmate Lydia had made almost a month ago about me and how I kept Harry all for myself.

I found the article hard to take seriously at first, the fact that they used Tweets as their source of evidence was a bit of a turn-off. But as I kept reading, the article quoted a statement from the actual talk show saying that Harry unfortunately couldn't make it that night and that he had rescheduled for a later date. There were also various photos of Harry and I at the small grocery store in Big Sur Thursday morning  from when we first arrived.

I didn't even see anyone taking pictures of the two of us yesterday, and if Harry saw anything, he didn't say a word about it, likely used to it or completely oblivious like myself. But there we were on my phone, meandering through through the aisles, Harry pushing a cart as I put various items inside. The vain part of me noted the messy way in which my hair had been tied back and the slippers on my feet.