Moon Tower

41

this chapter has been edited and updated. enjoy!xx

August

Italy. France. Austria. Ireland. England. For the last two months, I was all over Europe, watching Niall perform and trying to see as much of the places we visited as I could. It reminded me a little of my time traveling as an athlete, jetting off to different places and only staying for a night or two until I had to move onto the next place.

Having Niall here with me was just the icing on the cake. As promised, Niall and I had the time of our lives when I could get him out of the hotel. I was surprised that he went out with me as much as he did. I figured he would be too tired after a long night of performing or he didn't want to risk being spotted in such public places, but Niall was almost always up for an adventure, and was even the one who had to pound on my hotel door to get me up and moving most mornings.

There were times I had to venture out on my own, but I liked those moments too. On those days, I would just wander a city's streets for a few hours, poking my head in a shop or two (or five) every now and then. It was funny. In general, I wasn't a huge fan of shopping; but being in a new country or city every two days or so stirred something in me, and suddenly I was coming back to my hotel room and trying to fit more and more stuff into my suitcase.

I even got to work a little. Niall may have been joking when he was trying to convince me to tour with him in the first place, but I knew his knee often gave him a hard time. So in between the performing, and the exploring, and the shopping, I was walking Niall through stretches and massaging his knee when it really gave him trouble.

Word must have gotten out that I was a physical therapist because one minute I was just watching Niall do soundcheck in Stockholm, the next I was giving adjustments to crew members on their breaks. I didn't mind very much, I actually quite liked putting my degree to good use. It also helped me get to know Niall's crew a little bit better, which made me feel less awkward when I was backstage or by myself at a venue while Niall had to give a radio interview or something. After a few days of this, I was waving to sound engineers and saying hi to lighting techs by name.

Throughout all of this, I tried to take my mind off Harry. It was easier to forget that our relationship was up in the air when I ran around tourist sites or spent a whole afternoon shopping and ended the day with a concert or collapsing onto my bed from exhaustion. If I tired myself out enough, I only had to think about him in the dead of night when no one else was around.

I was texting Harry. It wasn't a lot, and it felt like the time before we started dating where we were just friends, but it was something. That's what I kept telling myself. It was something. The night I sent those two texts saying that I hoped he was doing okay and that I missed him, I put Harry and my phone out of my sight and mind for the rest of the night. I knew that if I thought about it too much as the night progressed, I'd end up calling him drunk off my ass and leaving him a terribly embarrassing message. So I focused on spending time with my brother and my best friend instead of worrying about whether he would respond or not. When I woke up the next morning, I had three new texts from him.

harrybee: I'm doing well, thank you.

harrybee: I miss you too.

harrybee: I love you.

Seeing the last text, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. I didn't even realize I was worried he wouldn't text me back, or worse, say he didn't love me back, but I felt an all-encompassing sense of relief as I read the messages over and over again.

Despite the increase in our communication, I still didn't really know how Harry was doing. We kept our conversations very surface-level, and I didn't know what to think about it. On the one hand, I was glad to be talking to him more frequently again, but at the same time I still wasn't sure where that left us. It didn't help that as fans started to realize that I was touring with Niall and not Harry, and they wanted to know what was up. My phone would blow up with Twitter notifications every now and then, a surge of tweets saying that I was cheating on Harry with Niall, or that Harry and I had broken up and that's why I wasn't on tour with him. Some fans were bold enough to ask me in person what was going on, or why I wasn't with Harry, and while I admired their shameless approach to get answers, I politely told them that that was between Harry and me.