The weight of his body settled over mine, the heat between us causing moisture to bead on our skin, and we slipped together and apart more quickly, more easily, with less friction. He lodged his hips between mine again and again as his staggered breaths fell hot and moist on my neck, as his long curls tickled my face and my chest. Then, he ran his lips over my cheek, working quickly to find my mouth, and he kissed me deeply as he slid into me once, twice, three more...
Knocks.
"Maddie?"
My eyes flew open.
And I sat up quickly, yanking my hand out of my pants.
"Yeah?"
Emily opened the door, already in her pajamas, her blonde hair in a high, messy bun, and stared at me where I sat on my bed, all of my books still scattered around me. "Hey."
"Hey," I said, trying not to sound too breathless. My entire body was on edge. Like I was standing on my tiptoes on the brink of a steep cliff, and couldn't quite manage to regain my balance. "What's up?"
"Just wanted to see how you're doing. I'm heading to bed soon." Emily walked into the room, her eyes falling to my books for only a moment. "Almost done?"
"Not really. But I'm calling it quits in a little while. I'm wiped."
She pushed aside some of my papers, and sat down at the foot of my bed. "This semester's going to be the death of both of us."
I breathed a laugh through my nose. "At least we're going out together."
Emily smiled. "A joint funeral. Who's going to tell everyone I want to donate my body to science?"
"Who's going to tell my professors I hate them all?"
We both laughed, and when we fell quiet, I felt her eyes on me.
"How you holding up?"
I couldn't look at her. Only shrugged.
It had only been two days. Two days since he'd gone. And it already felt much longer.
"Has he called yet?" she asked next.
"No," I said, checking my phone anyway. "Should be soon, though. It's almost 9 o'clock out there."
Emily sighed. "I still can't believe he left."
I tried not to wince. "He had to, Em."
"Did he?" she asked, looking right at me. "Did he need to leave now? When things have been so..."
"So weird between us?"
She looked at me. "Sorry. I didn't mean -"
"It's whatever. We patched things over."
And we had. Last week after our fight, I made myself get off of the kitchen floor to wait for him after his shower. Made myself sit still when I heard him turn the water off. Crossed my feet where I'd sat on my bed so that I wouldn't get up and run away when I heard him open the bathroom door.
And I made myself talk to him. Apologize for the way I was acting.
To my relief, he'd sighed, almost smiled, and said, "I'm sorry, too." But after only another moment, he went on, "Which doesn't mean I don't think we need to have a conversation about this."
I didn't disagree. So he sat on the bed beside me, just where Emily was sitting now, except she was fully dressed, where he was in nothing but a towel, his chest and back and arms glistening, his long curls weighted down with moisture. And even though I was still upset, I wanted so badly to just touch him, to have everything be okay enough between us that I could just sit astride him and make love to him, with nothing separating us anymore.
But there had still been so much standing in our way. And even after our conversation, things hadn't felt... right.
"I know," Emily said. "But still. It seems like such a bad time for him to go. What with all your stress."
I sighed, and my voice was louder when I spoke again. "He couldn't just keep waiting for me, Em, cooped up in this apartment. That's not him. And I have too much going on. School is killing me. We barely even had time to talk anymore. Just stolen moments between homework assignments and right before I passed out from exhaustion at night. There was no point in him staying. He had to go."
"Or," she said, raising her voice too, just a little bit. She still said the next part as gently as she could. "He could've waited until you had less on your mind. Another few weeks wouldn't have killed him."
I glanced down at my fingers, still regretting the decision I'd made. The one I hadn't wavered from, even when he'd offered an alternative.
"I made him go," I said softly, not meeting her eye.
It still hurt to think about. Especially now that he was gone.
"Mads," Harry had said last week, clutching his towel around his waist as he shifted to face me. "I don't have to go." He took my hand, touched the spot that was still red, burned from the spilled coffee. He ran his thumb lightly over it. "I can stay here. Wait until things calm down a bit more. There will be plenty of other -"
"Harry," I almost whispered, staring at his hand in mine. Something like a fist clutched at my heart. "I want you to go."
His brows were drawn together, and he opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.
"I want you to go, and do what you do best. I mean it." I squeezed his hand. "I'd hate myself if I held you back now, right when you have the time to do everything and anything you want. Just you. Not anyone else. You do have to go." He was searching my eyes, the little crease of focus between his own as he stared. I reached up, touched his jaw. "Go for yourself. Please."
He looked pained as he held my hand against his cheek. "Madelyn," he said softly, and I knew he was ready to argue me.
"Or if you won't do it for yourself, do it for me," I said. "Because I'm telling you to. Because I love you and I want you to be happy. And doing what you love makes you happy, Harry."
He opened his eyes, still pressing my palm to his cheek. "Not happier than you make me."
I'd smiled then, because it was easy to smile when he said things like that. "Cheeseball."
He'd laughed then, and pulled me close to him in a hug. His body was warm and wet, and I felt a crack of desire shoot down like a pulse between my legs, but I did my best to ignore it. It wasn't the time for that. Not when we still had things to figure out. We'd agreed that it would only be for a few weeks this time, that he'd call whenever he could, that I had to call him if I felt like I was going to have an attack again, that he would talk me through it, that he'd come back after those few weeks and everything would be alright again.
It didn't feel alright now.
"Why?" Emily asked, looking at me with confusion and concern in her eyes.
"Because I couldn't make him stay. Do you know what he said when he first told me he was going to go?" Emily only gave me a blank look. "He told me he felt stifled, Em. He was bored. He needed to create. How could I stop him after hearing that?"
Emily sighed then, her eyelids fluttering like she was trying to make sense of that, trying to believe what I was telling her.
"I had to let him go. It didn't feel like I had a choice, even when he offered one to me."
She sighed once more. "Shit. You're better than I am." She breathed a laugh. "If my boyfriend had said that to me, I would've been way too pissed to think clearly at all."
I laughed despite myself. "I was more hurt than pissed to be honest. But I understood, too, you know? Think about his life up until this point. How could I ask him to stay here and wait around for me?"
"I get it." Emily nodded. "I don't like it, but I get it."
"Welcome to my world," I said, checking my phone again even though it hadn't rung. It was 11:57. "Anyway, enough about that... there's something else we should talk about since we both seem to have all the time in the world right now."
Emily's eyes widened slightly. "Actually, I really should get to sleep."
"You can spare five minutes," I said, grabbing her arm when she tried to stand. "It's about Mark."
Now she squeezed her eyes shut. "Look, Maddie, I -"
"It's okay," I said, enjoying how flustered she looked, and the fact that it was the first time I could remember her being scared to face me, not the other way around. But I put her out of her misery. "Whatever it is going on between you two, I don't mind."
Her eyes were really wide now, and she was fidgeting.
Emily never fidgeted.
"What, uh... what do you think is going on?" she asked, decidedly not meeting my eye.
I couldn't help my smile. "I don't know. I know it's something, but I don't know much. Besides, I'm not sure I want too many details considering this is Mark we're talking about, but whatever you want to share that's rated PG is fine with me."
She heaved a great sigh, like the weight of the world was currently sitting on her shoulders. "Okay... well... I think we're interested in each other."
"You think?" I was already ready to kill him, and we weren't more than one sentence in.
"Well... okay, we're definitely interested in each other. As, you know... more than friends."
"Jesus, Em. Tell me something I don't know."
"Sorry, God, I thought we were being pretty discreet."
"Discreet?!" I couldn't help laughing. "The two of you are about as discreet as a giant elephant sitting in the living room eating all the plants."
She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were going pink. "Well, why didn't you say anything before now?!"
"Because I figured you'd tell me when you wanted to! That there was a reason you hadn't already. I didn't want to push you, especially after everything with Bryan. And I know my brother. If he was just a rebound you needed to help you get past Bryan, then I didn't want to -"
"He's not," she was practically grimacing. "Just a rebound, I mean."
I stared at her for a moment, trying to wrap my head around her words. I was pretty sure that whatever was going on between them was more meaningful than that, but with Mark, you could never deal with absolutes. And what with Emily's long-term relationship ending only a few months before all this started, I didn't want to assume anything where she was concerned.
"Are you mad?" she asked then.
"What?"
"It's okay if you are. I know this is weird, and I never really thought of Mark like that when we were younger, but..." A dreamy smile started to stretch her mouth open, and her eyes went sort of glazed over, her lids at half mast, thoughts I couldn't see clouding her vision. "I don't know. It changed."
"Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you, Em," I said, reaching out to touch her arm. "But I want you to be careful. You know Mark, he's -"
"But he's not like that. Not anymore." She didn't sound angry, just eager to get the words out. "He didn't want me to tell you this—he didn't want me to tell anyone—but you already know about the dark place he was in a couple months ago. You know the kind of toll it took on him."
"Did he tell you why?" I asked, suddenly as eager as she was for some answers.
"Things got really bad after his last breakup. Her name was Abbie-something, and -"
"I know, I met her. But they weren't that involved, were they?"
"No. But they'd known each other for a long time. Apparently they were in the same class in high school, and had reconnected through friends before they decided to give dating a try. So he respected her, even if he he didn't really like her that much after the initial flame. Anyway, she said some things to him before the end. Things that really made him stop and think about the way he was leading his life. And he sort of sunk into that weird almost-depression because of it."
"What did she say?"
Emily's brow furrowed like she already regretted what she had to say. "I can't tell you that."
"Oh, come on!" I exclaimed. "Since when is your allegiance to him more important than it is to me? Your best friend since birth?"
"Oh my God, okay, if you're going to pull the 'best friends since birth' card... she basically told him that no one would ever want to be with him. That he treated women like they were a commodity, and that if he couldn't get his act together, and make a commitment to something other than his job, or himself, he was going to end up alone. I'm paraphrasing, but, for whatever reason, it really hit home for him."
I let that sink in for a moment. "So, if what you're saying is true, and he changed all of his ways because of that, we should be thanking this girl."
Even Emily had to laugh. "You can't tell him I told you."
"No, I wouldn't do that. I just can't believe that was all it took. It's what we've been saying to him for years."
"I don't know," Emily said, shaking her head. "Must've just been the right time for him to hear it."
I laughed again, though I didn't find that much humor in the situation. "Amazing. You're sure he was serious about all of this?"
Emily gave me a cold look. "Do you think we'd even be having this conversation about me being with him if I wasn't?"
"That's weird," I said.
"What?"
"You talking about being with him."
"I'm sorry, what did you think we were talking about all this time?"
I let my head fall to the side and stared at her. "I know what we've been talking about. It was just weird to hear you say it like that. About Mark."
"Well... get used to it, I guess." She was smiling.
I studied her, wondering if there was anything else that had transpired between Mark and Abbie to send him into such a tailspin. He'd done a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn, and I realized in that moment that Abbie's words weren't the only things keeping him in this new direction.
"You're good for him," I said then. "You bring out the best in him."
Emily surprised me by blushing. "We're good for each other, I think. He makes me feel... I don't know. Lighter, somehow."
Seeing her with that goofy smile on her face made me realize how right she was. Emily wasn't one to sink into depressions. When she was sad or upset or heartbroken like she was after Bryan, she threw herself into work. Hence, the rearranging of our furniture.
But since Mark had come to stay with us, she'd let herself relax. She let herself hang around with us when we were watching TV, rather than holing herself up in her room to do work. She let herself hum while she cooked, rather than staring stonily at the stove. She let herself just be, without rushing around the apartment, scrubbing at everything with a vengeance.
And I knew it was because she was happy again.
"I think you're right," I said to her. "I already spoke with Mark. He understands that I'll have to kill him if he hurts you, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about."
She laughed a little, and sucked in a breath like she might say something else, but was cut off by my phone vibrating beside me.
Harry.
I picked it up, and was about to answer it when she stopped me by saying, "Maddie?"
I met her eye.
"The same goes for you with Harry. He hurts you, he's going to have to face me."
She was smiling, but I knew she meant it, and she gave my forearm a squeeze before standing up. I answered the phone, still smiling after her as she walked out of the room.
"There's my girl," he said. "You sound happy."
"Do I?"
"You're not?"
"No," I squeezed my eyes shut, nervous for a reason I couldn't put my finger on. "I mean, I am I guess. Em and I were just having a laugh."
"About what?"
"How we're going to kill each other's boyfriends if they hurt either one of us," I said without pause.
"Glad I asked."
I giggled. "Watch yourself, Mr. Styles. Emily's strategic. She'll plan it carefully. No one will know what happened."
"Don't call me 'Mr. Styles' when you're talking about my potential murder, please. I like to associate that particular name with good things."
I laid back in my bed, smiling as I toyed with the drawstring on my shorts. "What kind of things?"
There was a pause. "Things I'd rather not start thinking about when I'm three thousand miles away from you."
"So, I probably shouldn't mention that I was thinking about you before Emily came in and interrupted me?"
"Thinking about me..."
"Mhmm," I was smirking, waiting for him to finish putting two and two together.
He cleared his throat, and his voice sounded pained when he said, "No, you probably shouldn't mention it."
"Consider it forgotten."
Harry sighed then, and it turned into a breathy chuckle. His voice was much lower when he spoke again. "But feel free to think about me later. When I'm not with other people. And you can call me if you need to."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, laughing myself. "Where are you?"
"Just in the car on the way back from dinner. I'm with Julian at the moment."
"Oh," I said, mildly embarrassed about the conversation topic. "Tell him I say hello."
Harry was laughing. "Shut up you dick," I heard him say, then to me he said, "He says 'hey.'"
There was a back and forth I couldn't make out then. Harry must've put his hand over the phone.
"So," he said at full volume again. "What were you and Emily talking about that led to the offing your boyfriends discussion?"
I could tell he was smiling, but heard the edge of something in his voice. Worry, perhaps. "We were talking about Mark, actually."
"Mark's her boyfriend?" he asked, and now he sounded a little surprised.
"Actually... I don't know if he is. She didn't say if they made it official."
"But you talked about it?"
"She didn't say it wasn't official either, though. Why the hell didn't I think to ask that? It would be just like him to feed her all these great lines about how he's changed and how he wants more but then not actually ask her to be his girlfriend. If that's what he's doing, I swear I'll -"
"Kill him?" Harry sounded amused.
"Yes. And I'll make it slow."
"Wow. Your own brother, too."
"Blood may be thicker than water, but water cleanses. Blood only makes a mess."
"Getting philosophical whilst justifying fratricide. You're starting to scare me a little."
He was still smiling.
"Good," was all I said. And Harry laughed.
"I'm changing the subject before you really start to frighten me. How was your day?"
"It was alright. Not nearly as interesting as yours was I'm sure."
"Mine? I was in the studio all day. Not that interesting at all."
"It's interesting to me. Did you finish a song?"
"We finished two."
"Two?! Wow... that's impressive."
"Yeah, we got into a groove, and -"
"Pun intended?"
"Absolutely," he said with a chuckle. "I was really happy with the way they turned out."
"When can I hear them?"
"Mm, probably not for a while."
"Why not?" I asked, outraged.
"What do you mean, why not?" He sounded like he was smiling.
"I mean, that I'm your girlfriend. Shouldn't I get to hear stuff before the rest of the world? Isn't that some kind of perk?"
Now he was laughing. "It would be if it was my music we were writing. We're writing for other people though, Mads. I can't just let you listen to it. It doesn't technically belong to me."
"But you wrote it."
"That's not how it works, I'm afraid. Besides, I wrote it with several other people."
I huffed dramatically. "Fine, but I've got another bone to pick with you."
"Oh boy."
"You never sing around me. Ever. Why is that?"
He was quiet for a moment, but had the decency to sound completely baffled when he answered, "I don't know."
I didn't like that answer. "You don't know?"
"Well, I mean... probably because of the tour for the last year. It was work that I didn't want to bring home."
After a moment of thought, I said, "Alright. That's fair, I guess."
"But it also would probably feel a little forced to sing to you, you know?"
"Would it?" I asked doubtfully. "I feel like I'd enjoy it."
"Would you?" he asked, amused again. "So you're asking me, but really, you're telling me that you want me to sing to you."
"Not all the time. Just occasionally." I waited a beat. "Like now would be good."
Harry chuckled. "You're getting to be rather demanding, aren't you?"
"I resent that," I said, jokingly. "Considering my boyfriend is an international pop star, I feel like asking him to sing for me isn't asking for much."
"Well, I'm sorry I haven't up until this point. I guess I thought it just didn't matter to you all that much."
It was such an offhand delivery of a rather pointed comment, and I felt my eyebrows furrow and my happiness plummet. "Of course it matters to me!"
"No, no, Mads I didn't mean I was upset that it never mattered to you..."
"I always used to ask about your shows!"
"I know you did! I didn't mean it in a bad way. Why are you getting so defensive?"
"I'm not!"
"You're not?" Harry's laugh this time wasn't anything other than disbelieving.
I took a breath. "No, I'm not,"
"Okay then," Harry said, breaking off there.
I didn't know why I'd gotten so worked up. Didn't know why all of a sudden it was hard to get a good breath. Didn't know how our banter had so quickly turned into a tense back and forth. But I did know it seemed to be mostly my fault.
"Sorry," I said sheepishly. "Let's change the subject."
Harry sighed. "All I meant was, that's never been what our relationship is about, and I... well, I like it that way."
"Okay," I said, ending it there, afraid that if I pried anymore, I wouldn't like my own reaction.
"How are your classes going?" Harry asked after a few quiet moments, voice soft and almost monotone.
I was breathing a little easier. "Pretty good. Still a shit ton of work though. It's a good thing you left."
My regret hung there in the brief silence. It was like the words kept on coming, and they didn't sound the way I wanted them to when they were already gone, racing through the phone line between us where I could do nothing about them once they were already said.
"Madelyn," Harry said, and now he sounded remorseful.
"I saw Frank and Ceci today," I said, cutting him off. I didn't want to hear him sound remorseful anymore. And I didn't want to make him feel any worse than I already had. "Only for a couple of minutes right when I got home from class. They were just getting back from their lunch, and I bumped into them in the lobby. They were asking for you."
"That's nice, but Mads -"
"Well, Ceci was asking for you. Frank didn't say anything actually. No surprise there. But Ceci wanted me to tell you that she was thinking of you and sending you love. She can't wait for you to get back either. She hadn't even realized you'd already left."
Harry didn't sound as animated when he spoke again, but I was glad he'd gotten off the track of apologizing or explaining. "I told her the date I was leaving, but I guess she forgot."
"She must've. But I told her you'd be back in a couple of weeks. She felt better knowing you weren't going away for months this time. They invited me in for tea, but I couldn't with all of the work I had to do."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah. I think they miss the company. Or at least Ceci does," I said with a laugh, wanting him to talk more. I was afraid I'd upset him. So I kept going, "Hey, did I tell you when I have spring break?"
"Uh, I think so. The beginning of April, yeah?"
"Yeah, that first week." I waited, he didn't say anything. "I was thinking..."
"Uh oh." To my relief, he sounded amused again.
"Maybe..." It was ridiculous how nervous I was. "Maybe I can come visit you out there."
His voice was muffled for a moment, as if maybe he weren't actually listening to me. I held my breath until I heard him laugh, and was frustrated when I heard him say a dulled "Goodbye." Then there was silence save for the sound of a car door closing. I counted the seconds in my head: One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi...
"Sorry. What were you saying?"
I sighed loudly, hoping to make my frustration with him evident. "Just that my spring break would be a great time to come visit you out there."
There was the sound of keys jangling, and a door opening. "But I'll be back by that time, Mads."
"Oh. Right." I scrambled for something more, reaching for anything that might help, but felt like I was being weirdly pushy. I had to fight through the feeling. "But I've never been to Los Angeles before. And if you don't have work to do, maybe that would be even better."
"You want to come here on your spring break?" He sounded unimpressed. "I mean, of all the places we could go, L.A. isn't exactly -"
"Why do you do that?"
There was a beat of silence. "Do what?"
"You don't want me to come to L.A. Why?"
Harry sighed. "Don't be ridiculous, Madelyn."
"Don't give me that, Harry, I know it's true."
"How do you figure?" he asked, sounding completely incredulous.
"You never bring it up, and the few times I have, you couldn't sound less enthused. Like right now."
Harry laughed, like all of this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "That's only because one, I'm supposed to be home that week, and two, there are so many other places you could spend your spring break, I just don't understand -"
"No, you really don't," I said, way past the point of frustration now. "It's just completely unfathomable to you that I might like to see where you live. That I might like to see what it's like where you work. That I might want to share that part of your life with you. So ridiculous, isn't it? I can't even believe I brought it up."
"Mads, I -"
"It's late," I practically growled. "I've got to be up early tomorrow."
"Madelyn, what -"
I hung up.
I didn't appreciate being treated like I was stupid. Like I had no idea what I was talking about. Like I didn't know what was good for me.
My phone rang again moments later, but I rolled over, knocking a few books off of my bed, and let it go to voicemail.
"How's it going today, handsome?" I asked, sidling up to the bar.
"What do you want, Maddie?" Mick grumbled, not even looking up from the tap as he poured a beer.
"Nothing," I said with a smile as I sat. "Just wanted to see if I could rattle you."
"Me?" He flicked his eyes up. "Totally unrattle-able."
"One of these days I'll get you," I said. "Just wait."
"Doubt it," he said before taking a long sip.
"Rough night?" I asked, watching as he downed half the glass.
"Busy," he said with a nod. "Ready to get out of here, that's for sure."
"You and me both."
A long, loud sigh interrupted us as Shantal dropped into a seat beside me. "Where the hell is Julian?"
"Didn't you just come from the back? Isn't he there?"
She narrowed her eyes in thought. "I don't even remember. Too tired." She let her head fall onto her arms on the bar.
I was about to say something along the lines of, "Two of whatever you got that's strongest," to Mick when someone knocked at the front door.
"We're closed!" Mick thundered, startling Shantal awake again.
"It's David!" called an all-too familiar voice, only a bit muffled through the glass door, the shade pulled down.
"I got it," said Julian, who seemed to appear from out of nowhere.
It figured, I thought as Julian headed for the door. I have a fight with Harry and ignore his phone calls all day, then he shows up. It was almost like he knew.
"Quick, engage me in conversation," I said quietly to Shantal.
She blinked at me. "What? Why?"
I rolled my eyes, and heard the lock click open. "Just... look really interested in what I'm saying."
Her eyebrows furrowed impossibly more as she stared at me.
"Now you just look disgusted by what I'm saying."
She looked past me to the door, and I heard his voice as he greeted Julian, then her eyes flicked right back to me. "Is this about David?" she asked, looking wide awake now.
"You're so subtle, it hurts."
"Alright, you guys," Julian announced a second later to the group of us still sitting around. "Here you go."
Everyone stood as he handed us our share of the night's tips. And I tried my best not to meet David's eye where he stood just beside Julian. But I knew he was looking at me.
"Get out of here, you animals," Julian said then, bro-hugging Connor as everyone headed for the exit. "I'll be right back," he said to David before walking into the back.
Shantal and I stood up, and I tucked my money into my bag, ready to head out with her and get away from this situation. A theme for the day, it seemed.
"Hey," his voice said before I could get past him.
And I had to look.
"Hi," I said, trying to sound cheery while averting my gaze from his.
"How are you?" he asked after a moment, his hands tucked deep into his pockets. His brown eyes were wide and eager when I looked into them again.
"Good. I'm good. You?"
He nodded, and started to smile. "I'm good. It's been a while."
Shantal touched my arm then. "I'm exhausted, I'll see you tomorrow?"
She pulled me into a hug, and before I could scold her for leaving me here, she turned around, saying hi and bye to David in one breath.
"Bye," I said pathetically when she was almost entirely out the door.
I didn't know what to do. It felt rude to just walk out behind her, even though I wanted to. So I stood there, trying to come up with something to say.
David looked good. His brown hair had gotten longer, and was tucked under a baseball cap, the ends that were sticking out from beneath it curling slightly. He was wearing a red plaid coat over black jeans and a pair of Timberland boots. His brown eyes were as deep and penetrating as they always were, and I had to look away after only a moment, afraid he'd see too much.
"I was just thinking about you the other day," he said when it had grown uncomfortably quiet in the restaurant.
Where the fuck was Julian?
"Oh?"
"Yeah," David said, and his easier smile grew nervous. "I was... well, I've been thinking for a while actually..." He brought a hand up to the back of his head, dragged it around the front, where he played with the bill of his cap. "That I owe you an apology."
I sucked in a quiet breath.
"And I realize it's months late, but I haven't seen you, and I don't know when I'll see you again," he smiled endearingly at me, and guilt felt like it was eating away at my insides. "So I'm saying it now. I'm sorry for what happened at that party. It was stupid. I was being an ass."
I think I was stunned. My mind was going in a million different directions. I'd avoided him for the last several months because of what had happened at that stupid party. But I wasn't even angry with him anymore. Just uncomfortable. Not in a this-guy-skeeves-me-out kind of way—in a shit-I-think-I-underestimated-something-here kind of way. So I had to ask.
"Why did you do it?"
David looked up at me through his lashes, and almost laughed. "You don't want to know that."
"Yes, I do," I said, and looked down at the floor. "Because I think I probably owe you an apology, too."
I wasn't looking, but I sensed him snap his gaze up. "What? What do you mean?"
I shook my head, regret and guilt welling up inside me like a glass overflowing. "Cause I didn't see it. The way you felt. And I'm sorry for that. It wasn't fair to you."
"You have nothing to apologize for," David said firmly. He took a step forward. I looked up again. "Look, I've always been a betting kind of guy, Maddie, so... I know a losing battle when I see one. If anyone's at fault, it's me. This was never even a battle. I knew it from the start. I knew it then as well as I know it now."
I don't know why, but that made me inexplicably sad.
"You owe me nothing," he said then. And before I could stop myself, I reached out and hugged him, let his arms around me hold everything together for just a moment. A moment that felt longer because of the way I fought to keep my tears at bay.
It was so hard, I thought. Being so painfully in love with someone. It was like having blinders on, and bumping into everything and anything that wasn't right in front of me. Everything that wasn't Harry. He was all I could see. All I wanted to see. And now I was bruised and cut up from chasing him, from having him right in front of me, but I'd barely noticed the hurt all that time. Not to mention, I barely noticed the damage I caused other people. The pain I'd caused David.
And I could do nothing about it.
"Am I interrupting something?" Julian asked, and David and I pulled apart. We smiled at each other.
"The moment's over," David said to his friend. "You're good."
"We just missed each other is all," I said, sniffling a little and hitting the brim of David's cap down over his eyes to hide my emotion.
"Well, time to miss each other some more," Julian said, shrugging his coat on while he met David's eye. "We've gotta get going, dude."
"Where you off to?" I asked looking from him to David.
"A party. Where else?" David said.
"Wow. The life you boys lead," I said with a shake of my head.
"Want to come?" Julian surprised me by asking.
"That's okay," I said, and winked at David, "I've got an appointment to keep."
"Appointment?" Julian looked confused. "It's after 10 o'clock at night, who the hell has -"
"She's got a phone call with Harry," David said, smiling at me.
"Oh." Julian was totally uninterested now. "Have fun with that."
I hugged David once more outside the restaurant, and made Julian hug me too before we went our separate ways. It was freezing out, and I huddled into my coat as I walked to the subway, already dreading the amount of work I'd have to do when I got home.
But there were more things on my mind. Like the way David had looked when he said, "You owe me nothing." He was all big brown eyes and sincerity. I felt something twist in my gut just picturing it.
I should've seen it. I should've seen the signs. Should've known that a guy wouldn't spend that much time with a girl just to be nice. Just to be friends. Friends who discussed her relationship almost constantly. Should've picked up on the way he latched onto the problems in my relationship with Harry. The way he tried to advise me in those situations, and how that advice too often felt like manipulation of some kind. Well-meaning, but still. Should've known from the ever-present look in his eyes—that concern mixed with something more—that there was something else going on.
I saw all of it in hindsight when there was nothing I could do about it, which was endlessly frustrating.
The subway car was pretty empty. A group of girls around my age were laughing together at the far end. And I sat across from a guy in a business suit who was fixated on his phone. Nothing to distract me from my current predicament.
I had to call Harry when I got home. I knew that. I wanted to call him as much as I was still angry with him. Nothing felt right when we fought.
Nothing had felt right for nearly a month.
But as usual, talking to David changed my perspective of the situation, even though we hadn't discussed it at all. And we wouldn't be discussing my relationship problems ever again if I could help it.
David liked me. And I didn't know if he liked me from the beginning or if it was a feeling that had developed over time. But there was no denying it. He hadn't even tried to say otherwise.
There was a reason I didn't know, though. A reason I didn't see all the signs. He was never in my face about it. He never tried to compete with Harry outright, save for that one time at that goddamned party. Sure we'd discussed Harry, but we also discussed school and books and movies and our favorite kind of ice cream and whether or not we'd like to stay in New York when we were older. He was interested in me as a person, not interested in making me like him back as more than a friend.
So he kept his feelings to himself, where they could only hurt him. Where they couldn't do me any harm. He kept it so close to the chest because he knew that things—our relationship, our friendship—were better off that way. That's how I knew, even now, he really cared about me. He would've rather caused himself pain, than hurt me with the choice. Anyone who didn't really care wouldn't have minded getting in the way of my relationship with Harry.
Harry.
Maybe I had been wrong. There was obviously a reason Harry didn't want me to come to L.A. to see him. But maybe that reason had more to do with protecting me from something than it did with not wanting me to share that part of his life with him. Maybe we had a little more growing to do before we could get there. And maybe I could be okay with that.
What I wasn't okay with was the way he'd been acting. The way he'd tried to cover it with pathetically weak lies. And I would let him know it.
"Mads," he said later, once I was shut up in my room, his voice strained and relieved all at the same time.
"I'm talking first," I said. And took a deep breath. "I don't need to know."
When I didn't go on, I could practically hear his confusion, "What?"
"I don't need to know why you don't want me out there. I'll respect it for now. But Harry, I swear to God if you lie, and pretend like I'm seeing things where I'm not again, you're going to have to go a lot longer than twenty-four hours without hearing from me."
Harry's sigh was like static over the line. "Deal."
That one word confirmed everything I already knew, but it still felt like a knife driving into my chest regardless. He had been lying to me.
"I have to believe it's for a good reason that you're keeping things from me. That you're keeping me from coming there. If it's not, tell me now."
"Madelyn," he said after a moment. And he sounded weary. "I... I hate this."
"I'll take that to mean it is for a good reason, then."
"What's wrong with us?" he said after another moment, and he sounded so defeated—as defeated as I felt—that for the first time since England, it was like we were on the same page.
"I don't know," I said, wishing I had the answer. "But I do know that I love you."
His sigh was so relieved, I wanted to reach through the phone and touch him. "I love you so damn much." His voice was shaky. Like he was...
"Are you crying?" I asked, horrified and heartbroken.
"Don't do that to me again." He sniffled a little. "Don't let it go to voicemail again. Please."
Tears burned hot behind my eyes. "I'm sorry," I whispered.
He took a deep, gasping breath. "Me too, Mads. Me too."
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing him to feel just how much I meant it, just how much I loved him. But loving him hurt.
It had never hurt this much.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Author's Note:
HARRY'S LONG CURLS ARE GONE. AND I WAS EDITING THIS CHAPTER WANTING TO CRY BECAUSE I HAD WRITTEN ABOUT THEM AT LEAST TWICE.
So.... did this one add to your pain like it did mine? *cries* Please let me know what you thought by commenting and/or voting for this one. I'd love to hear what you think! CAUSE I'M FEELING ALL THE FEELINGS AND I CAN'T DO IT ALONE. And I have to say, your comments always make my day, but the ones on the last chapter were particularly amazing. You're all so thoughtful and have such insight about these characters! It made me feel some type-a way to read what you have to say, and what you think of their situation, and just how PASSIONATE you are about them. Not to mention, I had a BLAST responding to all of them. I got to see everything from your perspective. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside, so PLEASE LET'S DO THAT AGAIN!!
I don't think there's anything new to tell you guys, and tbh I'm sitting here trying to come up with stuff, when really, I'm still too stunned to think clearly because Harry's long locks are gone. So I won't keep you today, haha.
BUT before I go... I've posted 7 chapters of my other story Somewhere in the Middle here on Wattpad, and that's all that's allowed! The rest has to remain exclusive to Radish. It would be AWESOME if you guys checked it out, and if you like it, you can read the rest on Radish by downloading the app for free! Android users, this month, it's available for you too! Not to mention, I've already posted up to Chapter 12 there. So if you've been reading and want more, what are you waiting for?! My username is laura_writes there, too :)
Okay, that's it. I love you all so freaking much, and we're getting closer and closer to 25K now and I'm still amazed and so damn thankful. Never thought this story would even reach this point, and it's all because of you that it has. Sending you ALL THE LOVE. xx