London, England
The first thing that I noticed about Harry was how tired he looked.
His eyes were red and almost puffy looking, which must have meant that he had been staying up for nights on end. The dark circles illuminated underneath them almost looked like they had been drawn on with a felt tip pen. His face was slightly scruffy like he hadn't shaved in a while, even though I assumed by his wet hair and towel wrapped around his neck that he had just stepped out of the shower. And yet despite all of this, I watched as a glint in his eyes slowly began to ignite when he realized that it really was me standing in front of his doorway.
"Lexi...what are you doing here?" Harry asked me slowly. He sounded just as nervous as I felt, and somehow that was enough to ease me a little bit. At least we were in the same boat here.
Part of me wanted to tell him that if he had seen any romantic comedy, ever, all of this should have been quite self-explanatory, but instead, I asked him, "Could I come in?" Breathe, Lexi. It's just Harry.
Except for the fact that he wasn't just Harry, and he hadn't been for a long time.
"Oh, shit, yeah, of course," he stammered, stepping to the side so that I could come in. "'M sorry, I kind of froze for a second there."
"Understood," I smiled awkwardly. I glanced back and forth at his couch for a minute, before sinking down into it. He paused for a second before joining me, and after that, we were both silent. I took that as an opportunity to take in my surroundings. I had never really thought about what Harry's apartment would look like before, but now that I had seen it, I understood just how him it really was. Everything was neat and organized to a fault, and it looked like the living space of a mature, accomplished adult. But then you looked at the walls and that's when you noticed all of the posters. There was one for just about every band or artist I'd ever heard of, and tons with names that I didn't recognize. He even had a wall dedicated almost entirely to Fleetwood Mac, and for some reason, seeing all of this made me feel like crying. Maybe because it was a part of Harry's life that I had never witnessed before, and all it did was remind me how in the dark I was about this side of him.
"You...you really took me by surprise, Lexi," Harry broke the silence after a few minutes. I looked away from his walls to stare at him, only to notice that he had put on a shirt now. It was his signature Rolling Stones T-shirt, one that I recognized all too well. I couldn't even count the number of times I had stolen it from him; it was almost as if I could still feel the fabric on my skin. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."
"Well." He didn't want me here, did he? Had all of this been a mistake? It felt like there was a ticking time bomb in place of where my heart should be, and with every word that he spoke, it grew closer and closer to exploding. "Here I am."
Harry nodded a few times before saying in a voice so low I could barely even hear him, "All of this has been so much harder than I thought." He paused before adding, "I missed you, Alexa."
I could feel the bomb in my chest slow down for a second when I heard him say my name. I had always hated it, had tried to hide it from people my entire life, and yet, whenever I heard it fall from his lips, I felt like I could turn it into a CD and listen to it over and over again for the rest of my life.
"I missed you too," I finally responded. "And that's kind of why I came here right now."
"I thought that you were supposed to be going back to Florida last night," he commented. I didn't ask him how he knew this.
"I was," I shrugged, "but....clearly, I didn't."
"Why not?" he asked. He was staring at me so intently that it felt like he could see into my soul, and for a second, I wondered if he really was able to. Could he see how desperately I was yearning for him? How every nerve, every vessel, every bone in my body was playing the same song over and over again–I need you, I need you, I need you.
"Because it isn't supposed to be like this," I whispered to him. "Not just you leaving me, but us having to be apart in the first place." Part of me couldn't believe that I was actually saying all of this to him, but it had been weighing on me for a month, and now I finally had the chance to release it. "I was about to get on my plane to Florida–" (Well, sort of. I was allowed to exaggerate a little bit, wasn't I?) "–and that's when I realized I didn't want it to end like this. And so I took a plane here instead." I left out the part about how I had to beg four different people before I met Rose and I was finally let onto the plane.
Harry took a deep breath before saying slowly (but, then again, he said everything slowly), "It's kind of funny how you say that now, Lexi. And how things work out in general."
"What are you talking about?" I asked him.
He paused, blinked a couple of times, before telling me, "I was going to fly into Florida tomorrow night. Come and surprise you at your flat and tell you that I had made a mistake and I was sorry and that I loved you. It was going to be a proper romantic gesture and all."
"I guess I beat you to it then," I whispered. The time bomb was beating so fast now that I was sure he was able to hear it, but if he could, he didn't say anything. Then, in a softer voice, I added, "You still love me?"
Harry nodded his head. "Yeah, Lex. I still love you."
It all came rushing out of me so quickly after that. "My family...they're okay with us now, really. Brielle, too. In fact, she's the one who encouraged me to come here and go after you, and if you think about it, it all seems too good to be true. And usually, when things are like this in my life–you know, things that seem too perfect to be real–I get scared and so I back out before it can fall apart, but I don't want to do that with you. You mean too much to me, and I want to stay if you'll let me, even if that means I might end up getting hurt. Because I love you, Harry. I love you so much that it hurts, so much that it makes me feel stupid for all of it. And sometimes I get nervous that I might never–"
I'm cut off by the sudden movement of Harry crossing over to the other side of the couch to reach me, and before I can fully understand what's going on, he's pressed his lips to mine. For a second, I felt so happy that I might have cried, but then I realized that I had become far too emotional lately, and so I decided to snap out of it and focus on the fact that Harry's lips were on mine.
"I wanna make this work, Lexi," he murmured into my jaw once we had pulled away from each other. "We're going to make this work. Okay?"
I tried to tell him that yes, I understood, and this was quite possibly the best idea that he had ever suggested, but I couldn't because his lips were everywhere now: on my chin, on my throat, on the base of my neck. And that's when I thought to myself, If this is a dream, please never let it end. But then I felt Harry's eager hands tug on the straps of my shirt, and I realized that this was something that was better than a dream.
"I want these off," he told me, and he didn't have to say it twice before I had slipped my shirt off my head. Then, his hands were fumbling with my buttons and brushing across my skin, and I felt like I might scream. "These too."
This left me in only my bra and my underwear, the most exposed I had ever been in front of him. Harry kept on muttering things under his breath like you're so beautiful and I love you so much and I felt like the bomb in my chest was going to explode any second now.
"I'm so happy I'm here right now," I whispered to him as I began to desperately pull at his shirt, wanting it off his body right away.
"Me too," Harry whispered back, his breathing sounding slightly more disgruntled. "Now let's get this off of you." He had my bra unclasped in a matter of seconds, and at the same time he sucked in a tiny breath, I laughed.
"What's so funny?" he demanded once he had picked me up off the couch and relocated into his bedroom. I was lying with my back against his pillows now, naked except for my underwear, and while he was staring at me with a bothered yet slightly amused look on his face, I was still laughing.
"Nothing," I giggled. "I'm just happy right now."
Harry leaned into me, a smile instantly curving up the corners of his lips, but he frowned when I pushed my hands up against his bare chest so that he fell onto his side. "Don't tease me," he almost begged.
Shaking my head, I grabbed his hand and began to press a kiss onto each one of his knuckles. The time bomb was going to explode, and I didn't have a problem with that anymore. "I want to savor this moment right now. I don't want to ever forget it," I told him. I paused for a second, and then added, "Also, I haven't taken a shower in over twenty-four hours, so I probably smell like shit right now."
Harry laughed after that too, and the sound spread throughout the room like a symphony, and I could feel my heart inflating right along with it. "I don't care what you smell like," he whispered, his fingers curving along the sides of my hip bones. I gasped, and his familiar smirk immediately resurfaced. He lowered his body back on top of me before pressing a kiss to my lips, and then he slowly pulled the last piece of fabric I had off my body.
Boom.
NINE MONTHS LATER
"Harry Styles."
Harry's family and I rose out of our seats as we began to scream for him, but no one cheered as loudly as I did. We watched as he walked across the stage to receive his diploma, and I felt my heart inflate when his eyes found mine in the massive crowd and he smiled at me.
"I can't believe that my little boy did it," Anne whispered from beside me, her eyes filling to the brim with tears. "He graduated from Harvard, just like he always dreamed he would." I squeezed her hand and shot her a tiny smile.
The rest of the commencement went by faster than I might have expected, and once it was over, we all stood outside of the courtyard, waiting for Harry to show up. He did a few minutes later, decked out in his cap and gown and his diploma in his hand. I watched with a smile on his face as he hugged his family, and once they had walked off and given us a moment to ourselves, I felt my heart begin to beat rapidly in my chest.
I immediately pulled my camera out of my bag to snap a photo of him, but he quickly made his way over to me and snatched it out of my hands before pressing a kiss to my lips. "Not even gonna congratulate me?" he whispered disapprovingly. "Your Harvard graduate boyfriend is very disappointed."
"His non-Harvard graduate girlfriend is even more disappointed that he won't let her take a photo of him," I told him, swatting him on the side lightly. "So is that it, now that you're some big shot lawyer? You think you're better than me?"
"I'm not a lawyer yet," Harry reminded me. He still hadn't let go of me, with his arms wrapped tightly around my waist. "But pretty much, yeah. I've always been better than you."
"Excuse me!" I laughed loudly, shoving him away from me. "Someone's cocky."
"A little bit," he admitted. "And, oh shit, there's one of my other lawyer friends. I better hide you before he sees that I'm choosing to spend my time with someone like you." He gently pushed my head into his chest, which only made me laugh even louder.
"You're insufferable," I shook my head at him but pressing a kiss to his cheek nonetheless. "You know that, right?"
He shrugged before saying, "Yeah, but you love me."
I looked up at you after that, Harry, really looked at you, and I didn't even need to say anything for you to understand what we already both knew: you were right–I loved you.
"Remember when we first met, and how you thought that I was stupid?" you chuckled to me as you began to run your fingers through my hair. "Yeah, well, who's laughing now, Crazy Girl?"
I clasped my hand into yours before shaking my head and whispering, "Not me, Fedora Boy." You grinned at my use of the old nickname and pulled me even closer to you like you just couldn't get enough of me. Maybe you couldn't. I know that I certainly hadn't. And even after all this time, after all of the fights, the laughs, the long nights, the kisses that I wanted to last forever, I knew that you were the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Because it's like you told me once before–sometimes, you just know. And that's why I'm telling you right now–I know. Trust me, I know this more than anything I've ever known in my life.
And that, Harry, is the story of us.
THE END