HARRY
With outstretched arms, I rose from my slumber, half expecting to feel Charlie’s hand on the other side of the bed I realized I was left in empty sheets. My blurry vision regained focus in the foreign room, and as the scenery grew clearer it clicked where I was. My palms on either side of me I pushed myself backward, sitting up in bed, vulnerably pulling my knees to my chest and resting my head in the crook between them. While yesterday’s intentions were to clear everything up, to rip the past events from the pad of paper and start fresh with a new blank sheet, my gut just wasn’t letting in be that easy. I found myself sitting alone in the blank room trying to convince myself that I had done the right thing, but if it was why did I have to convince myself of it? I tried to think of it as a good thing, to see Charlie’s minor memory loss as a blessing, sparing her from the effects of my bad decisions and habits of being at the wrong place at the wrong time with the undoubtedly wrong person. I wasn’t simply afraid of Charlie finding out, I was afraid of breaking her heart. After everything she had been through, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself adding to her heartbreak. I shook my head between my knees; it wasn’t that I was with her out of guilt, if anything she could do better, but I loved her too much to be the one to hurt her again, I wanted to fix her and love her forever, I wanted to be her superman, but in reality I was the villain along with my unwanted sidekick. Emma recently kept coming around, and while the photos of me leaving her apartment weeks ago had yet to resurface, I feared the hurt and betrayal that would reflect in Charlie’s eyes, changing the way she’d look at me forever.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my feet just dangling above the cold linoleum floors, holding my head in my hands with my elbows propped up on my knees. My heels kicked the sides of the bed as I remember myself doing as a child; the only thing missing was the innocence and bowl cut. I felt as if I was keeping my head from falling, holding it up as the weight of the world and the fear of a potentially heartbreaking mistake. A light, hesitant knock broke me from my thoughts, my tired lifeless eyes followed the sound, which lead me to face my best friend’s body leant up against the doorframe.
“Can I come in?” Louis asked softly and I nodded patting the space next to me on the mattress. Louis dropped beside me sat up with one bent leg on the bed and faced me.
“Where’s Charlie?” I said to the floor.
“They’re checking her out down the hall to make sure she is all set to take the flight to go home.” My heart sunk in my ribcage realizing our week in paradise had fallen through our fingertips and hadn’t quite ended on the kind of ‘bang’ I had hoped for.
“You know I was just talking to Charlie,” Lou said, her name grasping my attention, I turned to him, making eye contact for the first time my chin rested on my fist as he continued to speak.
“She doesn’t remember much of last night.” The fact hurt in more ways than one.
“Yeah, I know. She remembers the important things though,” I said plainly but mostly optimistically. Louis pressed his lips together into a fine line nodding until finally he put a hand on my shoulder “Harry there were some important things last night she doesn’t remember, like why she slapped you and ran off in the first place…”
I shut my eyes and exhaled slowly, “can’t we just move on?” I wondered aloud, opening my eyes a single tear slipped from the lids barrier, drawing down my cheek and splattering to my knee like a drop of excess paint dripping from a paintbrush. I wiped away its path on my cheek with my thumb before pushing my hair from my face and returning eye contact.
“Harry, don’t you think she deserves to know about Emma? Its not her fault she’s forgotten.”
“Are you trying to say last night was my fault?” I blurted out, something I had felt from the first phone call but truly didn’t want to admit. The words hurt escaping my lips, like saying something and almost instantly wanting to suck it back in and swallow hard.
“No Harry that’s not what I’m saying at all. I never want to hear you say that. That car accident was no one person’s fault, it was just bad timing. Please don’t think that mate,” he said genuinely concerned and it relieved me, “but I do think her knowing about Emma is important.”
“Emma is irrelevant Louis,” I started getting defensive, pushing myself back further from him on the bed, “she means nothing to me, Charlie is better off not knowing about her, it only seems logical that perhaps she forgot her for a reason.”
Louis let out a sarcastic laugh, his eyebrows rose in sass while his eyes simultaneously narrowed in my direction, “I happen to think Emma is extremely relevant in your life, Harry. During all the lowest points of the last few months she was always around, when you first left Charlie hanging in Cheshire you spent that summer around Emma. You took her to the Ed concert where you knew Charlie’d be for Pete’s sake. And then you got a huge ego and spent all your time with her and your crew, not to mention you seen leaving her flat early in the morning a few weeks ago. And lets not forget only hours ago she showed up in Ibiza and shoved her tongue down her throat, have you maybe tried telling her she’s irrelevant? Perhaps then she would get the picture” the volume of his voice increased as he spoke, I found myself absentmindedly checking the door, in fear Charlie could hear every ounce of the hurtful truth Louis spilled.
“Louis stop acting like you understand, you don’t understand!” I shouted through a sheet of tears, flooding from my eyelids as they could no longer be contained like a damn crumbling under the pressure, my voice filling the crisp white room “you don’t know what it’s like to be in love with somebody and to have someone else do everything and anything in their power to ruin it for you. Emma doesn’t love me, she loves her face on magazines and her name in the headlines – her thirst for fame is making her trying to ruin the best thing about my life, the greatest love I’ll ever know. And I thought maybe, in the split second last night trying to decide what to do when Charlie couldn’t remember, just maybe I thought this could be the first step to forgetting Emma. Maybe what Charlie didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, and what she didn’t know I could teach Emma to forget. I just want to be happy, Louis. Don’t make me out to be so selfish, I’m trying to protect her, I love her and you know that.”
Louis put an arm around my body and pulled me close as my face melted into the crook of his neck, “I’m sorry” was all he whispered for some time. He pulled away and looked at me until the tears stopped flowing and I caught my breath, “I know how much you love Charlie, but aren’t you afraid of her finding out? The entire story of our lives is on the internet and in the news, don’t you think she will find out and when she does its going to hurt a lot more than it would coming from you? You’re my best friend Harry and I’m not trying to be a dick, but she’s practically my little sister… I don’t want this split second decision to hurt your relationship in the long run.” His voice was calm and quiet as he tried to sooth me while still laying down the truth, and in reality it was true. He was right. But even knowing that…
“I’m just scared,” I admitted “what if I tell her and it backfires and this is the end of Charlie and I? I can’t live without her Louis. I can’t willingly jeopardize our love over something she doesn’t and may never have to remember knowing what the outcome would do to us. I’m not going to let it end like this, I can’t let it end at all.”
“Harry, it’s up to you mate,” I could sense the uneasiness in his voice but I knew he was trying to be supportive of me. “I would just hate for her to find out on her own, you best sort this out because if you break her heart, I have a feeling she’s not going to let you be the one to fix her this time. It’s going to end up being you tell her or someone else does.”
“Does what?” Charlie chirped happily as she entered the room, the tone of her voice a comforting giveaway that she honestly had not the slightest clue what we were talking about, however my eyes continued to widen and the lies knotted up in the back of my throat like a ball of yarn. The space between Louis and I suddenly was filled by Charlie who took each of our hands in one of her own. She collapsed on the bed lying back to stare at the blank ceiling and Louis and I did the same, falling beside her.
“Tell you how much we love you and how lucky we are you’re still with us” I heard Louis voice replace the lack of my own and my eyes closed gently in relief. Charlie’s small body cradled between mine and Louis made her head measure up to our chests, so when I turned to face Louis his eyes were waiting for mine. My dark pink quivering lips mouthed ‘thank you’ and all he did was nod. My eyes dropped from Louis’ and found hers smiling up at me as her grasp tightened onto each of our hands, and by the way her right arm moved I could tell she only did this to me, squeezing my hand reassuringly three subtle times. I smiled down at her in the moment, reassured of how much she loved me, but a shadow of doubt in the back of my mind helplessly prayed she always would.
CHARLIE
As most daily events seemed to be, leaving the hospital was chaotic with paparazzi – it seemed as if every pap on the island was crowded around the glass double doors waiting for the departure of me and my two handsome escorts. Harry and Louis protectively wrapped themselves around me and while I tried to conceal my face my choice of company was a dead giveaway that it was I, with the boyfriend and the best friend by my side. By the time we arrived at the airport meeting the rest of our friends, there was already a trend and a Sugarscape article on my behalf. Sat in the private plane with Harry by my side I scrolled through my mentions I found that everyone and their tumblr best friends wanted to know what the hell happened to me. I had a splitting headache and the amount of attention in my direction was extremely overwhelming, and reading me like his favorite book Harry took to his phone and his thumbs went wildly across the screen, his point unable to be across in 140 characters or less he turned to a twitlonger. The moment he hit send, it was the first thing on my screen.
@Harry_Styles: the love of my life was in a car accident last night; forever thanking the angels in heaven looking out for her. please respect charlie during this overwhelming time. she was extremely lucky as everything is fine except for a few scratches and bruises and a broken wrist, as well as myself being lucky to have had her wake up next to me this morning and hopefully every morning from now on. last night was a reminder not to take things for granted, and i'm glad it didn't take charlie being gone for me to realize how much she means to me. with every tragedy comes a lesson, and this new year my mind set is to worry less, laugh more, love passionately and live carelessly. if it wasn’t obvious before i’m begging that everyone respect and love charlie, because I can promise you she is going to be around for a long, long time. she is everything to me, and I hope you all see that. massive thank you to all the nice thoughts her way #weloveyoucharlie is my favorite trend, I love you guys so much & HAPPY NEW YEAR! big love, Harry :)x
I could hear his slow, cautious voice in my head as I read his carefully chosen words, and without even realizing I felt tears escaping my eyes. My eyes wandered up to him and he gently took my chin in his hand, pulling it forward and lightly placing his lips to mine. Even the softest and sweetest of kisses made me fall hard as the feelings ran deep throughout my body. The pilot spoke and I closed my eyes, taking Harry’s hand in mine as we took off into the air homeward bound to London.
The flight no pun intended flew by, and suddenly we found ourselves in a culture shock back in the chill of London. Transporting from the plane to the actual airport you could almost feel the presence of the fans awaiting their idols. A hiss of screams erupted from the other side of the airport, sending a jolt of pain to my head almost instantly. I held my forehead in my hand and suddenly Harry’s hand dropped from my other as he approached Paul, whispering into his ear. Paul nodded guiding Harry to the sound of the noise and when he entered through the doors the frequency of the screams skyrocketed. Suddenly out of the mass of vocals I could hear Harry’s take control of them all.
“Hello London!” he said excitedly and the fans went wild, I smiled to myself which quickly turned to shock, in one weeks time Harry would be having a nostalgically magnified greeting to thousands of fans from a stage of his first tour. My stomach almost hurt realizing how quickly and how soon things were going to change, but Harry’s voice drowned out my thoughts.
“It really means a lot to the guys and I that you’re all here, however I have a favor to ask you all,” like obedient students listening to a professor the fans simmered down attentively. “As some of you may know from the news and from the tweet I sent out earlier, my lovely girlfriend was in a car accident just very recently,” I could hear him getting choked up behind the megaphone “she is still recovering and we’re all really lucky to still have Charlie around, but I ask if you can please be quiet as we walk through as her head is still very, very sensitive. We would love to stop and chat with as many of you as we can but we need it to be reasonably quiet in here, for Charlie. Do you think you could do that for me?” I could feel my heart smiling as it glowed through my skin. “Yes!” they said in unison and he paused, “I love your signs,” he said with tears in the back of his throat. With a nod of approval from Andy to continue on, we had all our bags ready to go before walking through the main lobby, hundreds of fans crowded the area with signs quietly composed themselves, waving and calling out respectively without screeching the way so many times previously they had. I scanned the crowd and my jaw dropped when I noticed a trend in the signs, the familiar letters of my name drawn out in poster painted bubble letters on bright colored paper spelling out “GET WELL SOON” and “WE LOVE YOU CHARLIE!” along with the typical “GIVE ME SOME OF YOUR GRAVY” “MARRY ME” and the eye-roll-worthy “I LIKE CARROTS” posters for the band. It was such a pleasant surprise to be just a normal girl arriving home from a scary experience knowing so many people who barely even knew me wanted to wish me well. As the boys stopped at random clumps of fans, taking selfies and signing numerous posters both handmade and ones of their faces ripped from the bedroom walls of every girl aged 12-18 in London, I began to hear my name called out shyly from a few different groups of girls as I walked on by, waving sweetly in my direction.
“Charlie could you come here?” a group of girls hesitantly called in my direction, their sign drawing my attention as I smiled at them as I walked over. “Hi girls, I love your sign, that’s absolutely wonderful of you” I eyed the detail of their work, glitter glue rimming the edges and outlining the text “FEEL BETTER CHARLOTTE THE FANS LOVE YOU, CHAZZA FOREVER <3” – it was enough to tug on my heart strings.
“Could we have a picture with you?” I was honored but all at once, I wasn’t famous.
“I can’t really take pictures with fans, after all I’m not in the band” I laughed awkwardly but their smiles were understanding, some of the most genuine sweet smiles I’d ever seen, rare smiles you’re only lucky to be granted few times in life. “But can I tweet it? And follow you all?” their eyes lit up as they nodded their heads before smiling behind the lens of my iPhone before I handed it to them and they typed in their usernames.
“@CharlieParkerxo: @onedirection have the best fans in the world! #thankyoudirectioners I love you xo pic.twitter.com/iFLgs2myO
Caught up in conversation I hadn’t realized Harry calling out my name as he stood with the rest of the crew, holding each of our bags in his hands. I turned to the girls before following his motion to come along, and just then I realized because they had spent their chance to meet a member of One Direction on me they didn’t get to talk to any of the boys.
“You better catch your car Charlie, can we have a hug?” my heart melted as one of the girls said quietly to me as my eyes met back with hers.
“Of course you can,” I heard my voice crack at the kindness.
“Harry come here for a second?” as I pulled away from the four girls, motioning him over with my hand. He settled down our bags next to Paul before jogging over.
“Hey babe,” he said snaking his arm around my shoulder, “would you introduce me to your friends?”
I smiled dumbly up at him, loving how sweet he was when it came to his fans – he truly did love them.
After giving each of the girls a cuddle his eyes lowered to the sign in their hands.
“May I?” he said pointing to it, and who appeared to be the eldest girl handed it to him. I watched his eyes as he read over it, tearing up a bit the way mine did.
“This one has to be my favorite,” he said honestly, scanning it carefully with his green eyes as they glossed over in evident happiness and pride in his faithful fans.
“Chazza?” he said confused and they started to giggle.
“Its Charlie and Hazza – the fanbase liked it better than Charry… its your relationship name…” one said almost embarrassedly, as if they had revealed too much. “Your names smushed together to put it simply” another added and Harry smiled so widely you could almost count ever tooth.
“I love that!” he said and the girls all grinned from ear-to-ear, like a four-sided mirror around him. “Can we all take a picture with it ladies?” he said to them and their eyes doubled the size they were before, actually speechless. Holding up the sign in the middle with the girls on either side of him I snapped the picture and smiled at it.
“Thank you girls so much. Unfortunetly we have to go, but I love you all!”
“Bye guys we love you both!” one called as the others waved happily as we took off hand in hand to rejoin the others. As we walked Harry released my hand and returned his arm around my shoulder, squeezing me to his side as I cuddled into his body, kissing me on the top of the head.
“I love you,” he said as I reached up for his hand hanging from my shoulder before holding on to it.
“I know” was all I said, squeezing his hand three times.
Walking through the door all I wanted to do was peel off my clothes, leave them in a scattered path from the door to the bedroom and slip into bed, but the urge to wash the plane and hospital off of me took over the craving to close my eyes. The boys carried all the bags to their rooms as the girls dispersed ourselves to our respective boyfriend’s bathroom. Eleanor was planning on moving in this semester, as we both went to the same university and we were the only two girls who weren’t busy with their similar hectic career to the boys, but tonight since we arrived home so late from traveling all the girls were crashing here before returning to normality that existed before the two weeks of bliss.
I escaped into Harry’s bathroom, mechanically turning on the water and stripping off, leaving my clothes in a pile on the bathmat and not bothering to pick it up when I was finished. Before washing my hair I let myself just stand under the water, the heat warming my chilled body, the pressure feeling good on my skin. I washed my hair twice with my coconut shampoo before conditioning it and washing my face and body with a Bath & Body Works scrub. Stepping out onto the fluffy white carpet I patted my body dry, and unable to even think about holding up a hairdryer for the typical twenty minutes to dry my thick long hair, I towel dried it before gathering it on the top of my head and twisting it off into a messy bun. I could barely keep my eyes open as I erupted from the bathroom and climbed over what I thought was an already sleeping Harry and onto my side of the bed. I sunk into the luscious bed that felt just the way it did when I’d left it, taking in the scent of my shampoo and Harry’s bleu de Chanel that lurked on the sheets. Harry rolled over and sat up a little shaking his head sleepily – I loved watching him when he was tired, he was such a little cupcake and had the bottled up cute factor of a newborn baby or an entire litter of puppies. He gave me a small slanted smile noticing me admiring him before crawling onto my side of the bed before dropping down beside me, melting into my mold he cuddled next to my body resting his head on my shoulder. I could feel him breathing onto my neck with his ear pressed to my chest, listening to the beat of my heart that sang out to him. He had his eyes fixated on something before they slowly closed, the feeling of his eyelashes brushed lightly against my clean skin, giving me goose bumps where they touched. He kissed my collarbone with the warmth of his soft pink lips before murmuring against my skin “Charlie?”
“Yeah Harry?” I yawned closing my eyes too.
“Never stop loving me,” he said finally in his deeply raspy tired voice and my heart flipped in my chest, even half asleep he had this way of saying the perfect things. He told me he loved me without even outwardly having to say it, and sometimes his fortune cookie jargon made my heart flutter more than the sacred three words. I loved the feelings his little actions invoked, my heart unleashed with floods of feels with a simple “I love you” and the warmest of smiles. He must have opened his eyes to see my face after he said it because I could feel his lips break into a small smile across my skin that reflected the one on my own face. That night I fell asleep with Harry close beside me, and that was when I felt most complete, drifting off to sleep as my heart continued on in an alternate journey, drifting deeper and deeper in love.