the folklore of harry styles

the 1

if there was one thing harry hated, it was a scorching ass. well, that depended. if it was rosalia's burning ass after he slapped her in bed while whispering coarse phrases in her ear, he didn't mind. he also hadn't minded that one time she slapped his own ass, but she didn't need to know that.

right now, however, his ass was on fire because he was sitting on a burning concrete bench under the july sun, perspiring through his wifebeater and mauve tweed jacket, thinking of rosalia. thinking of her full lips and curly hair, even after thirty years. when would he stop, he wondered. when his balls were grisly and sagging? 

he mentally smacked himself for his vulgar train of thought. he didn't used to be this despondent and unrefined, when he was dating rosalia and he would take her out to spin on the decadent dance floors of new york city. her in her shimmering shimmying dress that showed off her long legs, him in good spirits and drinking spirits. 

she had promised she would come. her clipped voice played back in his head from that phone call a day ago, "harry. i didn't know you even owned a yellow pages." 

"i don't. the library does." 

and then silence. they hadn't talked since the stock market crash. or more accurately, since the day her brother had heard the news of the stock market crash and stepped in front of a tram. how many unsaid sentences had flickered between them, since he found her drunk on vodka in the morgue? how many venomous words had carved a way into their memories of each other, since she threw the bottle at him and called him a scoundrel of a conniving stockbroker who got rich on people's misery? how many wandering wondering thoughts had traced paths between them, since he had walked out of the bar and came home to an empty closet and a goodbye note? 

thirty years' worth. all held in that crackling, tense, silence.

then harry pleaded, because harry would always plead for her and had been pleading the sky for a chance like this for thirty years, "rosalia. may i see you? the park, maybe. please." 

 which made it sound like he was begging to go to the park, not for a chance to converse with the love of his daydreams and regrets and drunk ramblings. well. harry had never claimed to be eloquent, just needy. 

and he did need her, always had. even if it had taken him thirty years to realize it. maybe if he hadn't read her goodbye note and taken the first train out of town, maybe he would still have her. he had played the scene a million times in his head: a gentlemanly, confident harry, walking out of their apartment and buying roses before knocking on her best friend's door. rosalia opening it and embracing him, like a cheesy romance film. but the tapes of that romance film has been melted into acid and corroded with time.

a tall figure in the distance - full lips, curly hair. his heart fluttered and leaped seeing the figure waving to him from the bus stop. and then trembled and shattered, the young woman in front of him couldn't be rosalia. rosalia would be his age now, not in her early twenties. 

the figure walked briskly towards his and stopped a pace away from his shaky figure. "harry, right?"

harry nodded. could it be that - the girl confirmed the terrible thought. 

"i'm one of rosalia's daughters. she's busy, but she wanted me to tell you that things could have been different," she paused for a moment. "she brings you up sometimes as a funny dinner story of the crazy new york city boy she messed around with in the roaring 20s. you don't look like what i imagined." 

for a second, he could see rosalia in this girl, what could have been. if he had been the one for her, not just some fun. thirty years. thirty years of wanting her, thrown in his face in thirty seconds. he felt the sutures he had sewn over his heart with the old threads of his and rosalia's relationship beginning to tear.