Harry's POV
I stretch my arms above my head, groaning with how tight my muscles are from just waking up. The sunlight was pouring in from the window as I opened my eyes slightly, quickly squinting them shut due to the brightness of the light. I roll over a bit, move so I can shield my face from the light in Parker's neck but my face is met with a pillow. I stretch out an arm, tapping around the bed to find her but have no luck.
I open one eye looking around the room in case she's somewhere in here writing or on the balcony. Neither of those were true. "Carolina?" I call out and I'm not met with a reply. I reach over to my nightstand and grab my phone from it, taking it off the charger in the process. The screen lights up with a text.
The Sun:
Went out shopping for paint for the new house. I want to get started on it sometime this weekend if that's cool with you. Also I know you wouldn't have let me leave the house without your card so I grabbed that on the way out. Callie is coming with me. Love you.
I laugh a bit at her saying I wouldn't let her leave without taking my card, which she's not wrong about but still funny hearing her have some attitude about it.
Harry:
No crazy colors please! We can get started whenever. Probably a good time to tell everyone we are moving.
The Sun:
They don't know!?
Harry:
Nope. We will tell them when you get back.
We go back and forth for a bit before she lets me know the person helping her with paint came back but she would text me when she was on her way back. I crawl out of bed, and start cleaning up our room a bit. Our clothes are scattered all over the place since I forgot to do laundry while Parker was at brunch yesterday. I was too busy trying to get a hold of Deaclan, Brent's brother and in my personal opinion the better twin but he never answered my phone call or my email. I don't even know why I was trying to get a hold of him. I mean I do but it was wishful thinking.
I pile all of our clothes into our laundry basket, put our shoes away on the shoe rack in the closet and make the bed. When I finish making the bed I move to tidy up my nightstand and Parkers as well. Parker's journal is open with her pen weighing down the pages. I pick it up and scan the page. It's dated from when she was in rehab, so why is she writing more on this page?
September 29th, 2020
2:32 a.m, around this time I realize that I am not okay. Everyone around me is safe in their dreams while I am kept awake by all the demons that don't let me sleep. My thoughts begin to spiral and downward I go, as soon as my first tear falls, it's like I've called in a storm.
My heart is in tangles and my mind is a mess, I find myself scattered, drowning in a sea of my own sadness. So now I lay awake, wishing I spent the night counting stars, instead of counting all the shit that I've done wrong life.
Shrinking in a corner, pressed into the wall; do they know I'm present, am I here at all? Is there a written rule book that tells you how to be, all the right things to talk about, that everyone has but me? Slowly I'm withering away, a flower deprived of sun; longing to belong to somewhere or someone one... I used to be a wallflower
I was the type of person that held onto things too tight. Unable to release my grip when it no longer felt right and although it gave me blisters and my fingers would ache, I always thought that holding on was worth the pain it takes. I used to think that in losing things, I'd lose a part of me too. That slowly I'd become someone that my heart no longer knew.
I can write for hours upon hours about all the things that I wish I could be, but the truth of the matter is simple, people are not poetry. I wish I wasn't codependent, I wish I could just be alone. I wish my brain wasn't my worst enemy, leaving me scared to be alone. I wish I wasn't an addict, using substances to feel everything and nothing all at the same time. I wish I didn't have trauma, events permanently tainting my view on life. I wish I knew all the right things to say, that sweet words could roll off my tongue, but my time here is too short to just worry.
How each single sentence is strung, it's okay to be rough 'round the edges, to be bruised up and broken and scarred but, it's not okay to let people tell me that it's a reason to change who I am. My life doesn't have to sit neatly, the way a poem sits so neatly in lines. Sometimes I might feel like a word that nobody has defined. I might not be a star that lights darkness, or a bird that can soar above the clouds, but it's okay because I'm far more complex than that to be crammed into a single metaphor.
It's okay that I don't know what I'm doing, since my feelings don't have to rhyme with each other. Though my grandmother once said, "a poem, once complete, is eternal." I have the freedom to change things about me over time. I'm so much more than can ever be written.
I used to be a wallflower, then one day something happened. I dropped what I had once held dear but my soul became so much lighter instead of filled with fear. It taught my heart that some things are not meant to last long, nothing is truly made to last forever. They arrive to teach you lessons and then you continue on with your story. I don't have to cling to people who no longer make me smile or do something I've come to hate if it isn't worth my while. Sometimes the things you are fighting for are not worth the cost.
I've lost myself countless times and I will continue to lose who I am as I grow older but not everything I ever lose is bound to be a loss. There is no title to say, "This Is Me" and I cannot be trapped in the line of a notebook, because people are not poetry.
"Whatcha doing?" Gemma's voice echoes through the room. I am startled by her voice and quickly throw Parker's journal down onto her nightstand.
"Christ Gemma! Don't sneak up on me like that! Have you ever heard of knocking?" I shout at her while rubbing my hands down my face to try and calm myself down.
"Yeah I have, you used to practically break my door down every morning." She laughs out, coming into my bedroom and plopping down on the freshly made bed, now I'll have to remake it so it looks nice for Parker when she gets home.
"I had a good reason for that. What do you want?"
"I just want to hang out with my little brother. I don't get to see you anymore. Is it odd that I sometimes miss you banging my door down at 4 in the morning?"
I sit down next to her, resting my hands in my lap and focusing on twisting one of my rings, "it's a little odd, yeah. I don't miss it."
Doing that every day for 11 years of your life is draining. Every day for 11 years, worrying if this time is going to be the time where she doesn't answer the door, the time where she went too far and ended up dead. I don't miss it one bit and I wish I never had to do it in the first place. I know I didn't have to, it's not like anyone was forcing me but I couldn't just do nothing. I couldn't just let the only family I have left end up like the rest of them, dead.
"You don't miss seeing me every day? That kinda hurts." She jokes, shoving my shoulder a bit.
"It wasn't you Gemma. The person I was seeing every day wasn't my sister and the reason I was seeing that person every day was to make sure that person didn't kill my sister. So no I don't miss it, not one bit and I don't think you should miss it either." I say with all seriousness. "I think it's selfish of you to miss it."
"What? So now I'm selfish for missing hanging out with my brother? I'm not sure what's going on in your life because we don't really talk anymore but you are being a bit of a prat right now." Gemma is taking a back by my honesty but it's something she needs to hear. Her and I have never had a conversation about her sobriety or her drug abuse since she's been sober and maybe that was for the best but, just because she's sober now doesn't mean she and I will be best friends again.
"That's not what I said. I said it's selfish of you to miss me showing up at your house every single day to take you to a meeting when you never tried to get sober, never tried to show so gratitude towards me for trying to help and never considered the effect doing that every single day for 11 years had on me. Also please don't act like you and I have had a genuine conversation about what is going on in my life in the past 11 years either because we haven't, maybe when I told you I was proposing to Parker and asked if you would be okay with me giving her mom's ring but other than that we haven't had an actual conversation in 11 years."
"I never asked you to do that Harry, you did that on your own. I do appreciate the fact that you did it but you don't get to throw that onto me." Gemma scoffs.
"No, actually I do. While you may have never asked me, I would've never been in that position in the first place if you hadn't been using. I wouldn't have had to worry if I was going to be the only family I had every day if you never got high for the first time. I wouldn't have had to worry that every phone call I got was going to be a hospital or officer calling me to tell me that you were dead. That is all on you. All I have done since mom and dad died was worry about you, it's always been all about you. You and I don't see each other much anymore because for once in my life, I'm worrying about me, focusing on me. Maybe that's selfish of me but I think I have every right to be the selfish one now."
"I wasn't okay Harry! I was depressed and fucked in the head! I watched our parents die-"
I quickly cut her off, screaming so loud at her, already feeling my throat ache from the volume, "I watched them die too! Did you forget that I was there too? I held mom, sang to her while she died in my fucking arms! I never got to mourn them because I was too busy taking care of you! Do you think I wasn't fucked in the head after that, do you really think that had no affect on me?"
"You never talked to me about it! How was I supposed to know you weren't okay!" Gemma screams back.
"Who would be okay after that? Not a single person would be okay after that! I couldn't talk to you about it because any time I tried you played the 'I have it worse' card but we experienced the same thing."
"And yet you started doing the same shit that got them into that situation in the first place!"
"Because I had to take care of us! You couldn't even get out of bed and we need money! You used all of the money you inherited on drugs and my money was used to pay the bills."
There's a moment of silence. Both of us are now crying, sniffling and shaky inhales are all that can be heard. Gemma glanced over to my guitars hanging on the wall, the acoustic one and my electric one. "Is that the guitar?" Gemma asks while inhaling sharply and wiping her eyes.
"Yeah it is." I nod, wiping my own tears away.
"What was the song called, that you played for her?"
"Yesterday by The Beatles, it was one of the first songs she taught me how to play." I smile a bit thinking back at the memory.
I was about 7 when she started teaching me how to play actual songs, before that she would let me mess around with the guitar I got for christmas when I was 5, it was a little too big for me then. I would sit in between her legs on my parents bed, guitar in my hands as she guided my fingers with her own, doing the strumming for me until I got a hang of the cords. She would hum the words while I would very messily sing the words. It became something we did all the time. When I somewhat learned how to play a song she would get out our Christmas lights and string them up in the living room of our house in London so when dad got home I could put on a concert for everyone. Gemma would dress me up in what she thought was rockstar clothes and then put on a dress to be my backup dancer.
Dad loved it, he would be sitting on the couch dancing with his arms or sometimes he would stand up and dance with mom throughout the living room, but once the concert was over it was time for my training.
Gemma pulls me out of my reminiscing when she says, "I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I put you through hell with my addiction. I'm sorry it pulled us apart and I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you've always been there for me. I haven't been the best big sister to you."
"Sorry for going off on you, and for being a dickhead most of the time."
"I guess I'll forgive you." She rolls her eyes with a small laugh before digging into her sweatshirt pocket. "I actually came in here to give you this."
She hands me a small black ring box. I open it and see mom's ring in it, fully sized to fit Parker. "I picked it up a couple days ago and forgot to let you know." She informs me.
"Thank you." I set the ring box down on Parker's nightstand, making a mental note to hide it before she gets back so it's a surprise. "Now get out, I have to finish cleaning before my fiance get back."
Gemma stands up and flips me off with a smile before making her way towards the door, "call Frank and ask him to come take me home. I need to feed my fish."
"You have a fish?" I stifle a laugh, thinking back on the last time Gemma had a fish which was when we were kids, it died in 2 weeks.
"Yes I have a fish, he's a betta fish named Walter and he needs to be fed."
"Okay, I call Frank after I'm done cleaning." I say as I shoo her out of the room.
I quickly remake the bed and stow away the ring in the drawer of my nightstand before I go out into the hallway closet and grab fresh towels for us, hanging them in our bathroom and throwing the dirty ones in our hamper with our clothes. I grab the basket and carry it downstairs into the laundry room, sorting the clothes by color and starting with whites. Once the washer has started I take out the kitchen trash and recycle, bring the trash bins up the driveway then come back into the house and grab an apple before heading back upstairs.
I take a couple bites as I walk upstairs back into my room to call Frank. He answers after the second ring sounding frantic, "Mr. Styles, how can I help you?"
"Hey Frank. I was calling to see if you could come pick up Gemma from my house and take her home." As I speak I hear commotion in the background from Frank's end.
"Uh yeah, yeah I can do that. Sorry one second." Frank says before moving the phone away from his ear but I can still hear him speaking. "Sweetheart please get dressed, we have to go meet daddy and we are already late."
"Frank, if you have plans I can take Gemma home myself, she just asked me to call you."
"No no I can come get your sister. I'm just trying to get the little one dressed since our sitter canceled. Corey is hosting a fundraiser for her preschool at the bar and now I have to bring her with."
"I can babysit for you." I offer, "you know she'll have a blast, she did last time."
"Mr. Styles I can't ask that of you. I'll be there in a bit. Penelope Gosser-Welkens put your pants on now!" Frank is erratic but I won't give up on this.
"Frank you do some much for me, please let me return the favor. Plus a bar is no place for a curious toddler."
"Are you sure? She's been in a mood today."
"Yes I'm sure. I'll see you both in a bit." I quickly hang up the phone and shout at Gemma that Frank is on his way. Parker will be in for a big surprise when she gets home. I don't know how well she does around kids but I'm the one babysitting so if she hates it she can camp out in our room, writing away.
-AUTHORS NOTE-
Parker and a toddler walk into a room... what could go wrong.
Also we got a little more into Harry's past this chapter.
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KISSES!