Moon Tower

33.

this chapter has been edited and updated. enjoy!xx

I should have known something was up when I didn't hear from Harry.

It was Valentine's Day, and I was back home in California, back to school and work full time. The last month or so has been pretty tough. I had to miss Harry's birthday because he was in Miami for a concert, which ended up not performing because of the hurricanes.

Harry had called me that night pretty shaken up by the whole thing. He was upset that he couldn't perform, but more importantly, he was worried for the safety of his fans. That night when I picked up the phone, I was a little taken aback, having never heard such raw emotion in his voice before. Despite the pile of work staring at me from my kitchen table, I stayed up with Harry most of the night, talking him down from his distressed state and trying to cheer him up the best I could. It took a couple days, but he started feeling better as he moved on to a new city, another performance.

He was back in London now, working on different projects and doing radio interviews there. Technically, some of that stuff could have been done from LA, but he was also preparing for his Brit Awards performance, and we both grudgingly agreed it would be easier for him to just stay in London for now, and I would meet him the weekend of the award show. It wouldn't be quite like my last trip for New Year's; I would more than likely have to bring homework with me, and I wouldn't be able to stay as long. But at this point, I would take what I could get, and I was positive Harry felt the same.

So Harry was in London on Valentine's Day, and I was in Los Angeles. I'm normally not one for celebrating this particular holiday, it had never really been my thing; but I would be lying if I said I wasn't bummed that my first Valentine's with Harry wouldn't be spent with him, physically anyway.

If I was bummed, Harry was beyond upset, feeling absolutely terrible about the way his schedule had lined up, keeping him in London. He kept apologizing to me about it, saying he'd had all these big plans for us and our first Valentine's Day together. I had to be careful about how I responded. I didn't want to wave him off to the point where he thought I didn't care, but I didn't want him feeling worse than he already did. We ultimately decided to have a FaceTime date on the fourteenth and save Harry's plans of grandeur for a day where we were actually in the same time zone. The last part was my idea, an attempt to reason with him that the day we celebrated didn't really matter; it would be like a belated birthday and Valentine's Day celebration all rolled into one.

Luckily for me, Valentine's Day landed on a Friday this year, and it had worked out that my one day off was on Fridays this semester. I had the whole day to myself, something that was already becoming a rarity, despite only being back at school for a couple weeks.

Taking advantage, I drove out to Malibu, eager to surf after not having done so in a while. I felt like these last few months have been such a whirlwind that I haven't had a moment to myself. I was either in school, at work, or with Harry, and it felt good to spend time by myself with just my board and the open ocean to keep me company.

One of the pitfalls of not surfing in a little bit was that you became rusty quite quickly. It took a few wipeouts and tumbling through unrelenting white wash before muscle memory began to kick back in and I was able to ride the waves properly. I stayed out there for a few hours, the only thing alerting me to the passage of time being the sun moving through a cloud-riddled sky. When I'd finally had enough, I took one last wave, riding it all the way to the shore.

Back at my car, I stripped out of my wetsuit and immediately threw on a pair of sweats, goosebumps already appearing on my skin from the cold air. I tried dusting the sand off my ankles and legs the best I could before getting in my car, not even bothering with my hair until I got back to my apartment.