Moon Tower

38

this chapter has been edited and updated. enjoy!xx

three months later

"Is he really not coming?"

"No, he's not, and I told you it was fine."

"It's not fine, Luz. What's it been, like, a month since you spoke to him?"

"Three weeks."

"When are you going to tell me what happened?"

***

three weeks earlier

Harry and I were going through a little bit of a rough patch.

I guess I would say things started to change a few weeks after the Brits. I had flown home to LA, and Harry had stayed, getting ready for his upcoming tour in April and to do all the events and interviews before his first show. Harry traveled from place to place, while I pretty much only went back and forth between school, work, and my apartment, with the occasional session with Hayley and the girls thrown in.

We were strong those first few weeks, solid as a rock as we called, FaceTimed, and texted constantly, no matter the time difference. Each time I got off the phone with Harry, I found myself thinking about how people always said long distance was incredibly strenuous on relationships. Not for us, I thought, and my phone chiming with a text from Harry seconds later only confirmed it. We loved each other deeply, of course we could make it work.

Then the interview with Howard Stern happened.

I didn't actually know what was said or what Howard had asked Harry while on the show, the interview having been released a couple days after it was filmed, but when Harry missed our scheduled phone call for the night, I knew something was up.

It was actually Mitch who called me about an hour later. He didn't divulge much, only enough for me to know that Harry had been asked some deeply personal questions about family, the robbery, and his relationships, and it had left him in a bad way. I wasn't entirely sure what Mitch meant by that, if Harry was in an angry rage, or if he was crying uncontrollably, or some mixture of the two.. I hung up shortly after that, calling Harry the second the line went dead.

"I need you."

My heart cracked at the sound of Harry's voice over the phone. He sounded so lost, like he didn't know what to feel anymore. "I'm right here, baby," I'd told him, hoping my voice could soothe some of the ache he was feeling.

"No, I need you here. With me."

I found myself floundering a bit after that. For about ten seconds, I considered pulling out my laptop and booking the next nonstop flight to New York. But as my eyes traveled to my computer, it landed on the open textbooks, the study packets, and pages upon pages of notes that were on my bed. I had midterms for the next couple of days, and there was no way I could possibly fly to Harry and make it back home in time to take my exams. Not to mention that my clinicals were becoming more intense as I approached graduation. It killed me to tell him that I desperately wanted to be with him and kiss all the pain away, but I couldn't.

Harry was silent over the phone, and when he spoke again something was off. I couldn't really explain it, but there was just something in his voice that was missing; the warmth to it that made him so loveable and endearing, so Harry. He told me he understood, but when I asked him if he wanted to talk about what happened during the interview, he said everything was fine and that he'd overreacted. We both knew he was lying, but I didn't want to push him, and he didn't want me to either, so we had a stilted conversation about nothing until he made up some lame excuse to hang up the phone.