golden | A HARRY STYLES NOVEL

"A Fine Line"

Chapter 33.

Midnight Love by girl in red

A year passed.

It was hard at first, but I numbed to it. I numbed to everything actually. I remember maybe 1 or 2 things happening that whole year and the rest was too overly monotonous to make an imprint in my buried head.

Someone published my book for me, I didn't do much. I was nothing but the one forced to endure the sick experiences in it. I felt like a cheat for giving blank faces my incomplete life. No closure touched those pages even once.

The days passed in agony at first, to the point of looking down on streets with blurry eyes and dangling by sanity over my head by a string. The adrenaline rush of my isolation translated rather quickly to my foreseen numbness. My numbness turned to convincing wellness. It was really only a gilded mindset where I was powerful and independent to the world but quiet and sidetracked and desolate in my head.

I didn't write after finally publishing, as if it were some sort of reward that gave my passion the title of Work.

The truth is I did Forget. And I turned my headspace into a mansion of an obsessive coping device. I would live in there until I found something outside of it to live for.

I stayed in Florence but moved in with Anna when my lease was over. She preferred the company and I certainly didn't mind it. And she gave me my space when I needed it. She oversaw everything I'd gone through in as much excruciating detail as I gave her, and with the intuition and ruthless empathy she's cursed with, too.

If my life were a movie I think this is where it would end. I've always preferred endings like this, I guess. I'll tell myself I learned something. It will be the moral of my story.

I can be satisfied in a sequel that only is written unofficially. His movie is not over yet, which is where I think our conflict lies. They don't match up. They have to match up. I don't talk about it much anymore. Anna and I are fantastic at avoiding subjects.

The light in this room is softer. There's only a small lamp, one that i've designated as my focus when I've zoned out. It's tan colored and has sweetly carved initials around the bottom rim. I'm not sure where Anna got it, but I wouldn't assume it was hers. Probably some vintage shop or street market.

"M. L. and--" I spun the lamp slightly to the left to read the other. "H. H."

I huffed to myself. There were no hearts, but their initials were still very much together. I wondered and wondered about them. I hope they are very happy and annoyingly obsessed with each other. They seem to deserve that.

I sat in silence for only a couple minutes after that. It came to me very quickly, and I jumped up from the bed to grab my notebook.

A new, green one. It was much simpler than my last. I untied the side ribbon that kept it closed and opened it hastily.

There is a thing we do when we are in an unexplainable place. To grasp at what is steady is merely a call for something comfortable, and it rarely ever comes when you are falling too fast to grab on. Perspective is too malleable to be given such responsibility as it is. My story feels comfortably unimportant at this moment. I've decided to catch hold of another.

In the sense of merely jotting down my ideas, I let go of my overthought sentences that sound like dying, time-worn flowers. The question spun in my brain, to figure out the kind of people that would carve their legacy into a clay lamp.

hope ur ok by Olivia Rodrigo
They were overly kind to others. And they were never social beyond what was necessary. But they were awfully good actors when it came to it. They found solace in complete darkness and found that typical endings were a system of desire and fantasy that stemmed from an unsearchable place. When the other pushed their way into their life, the peak of light signaled a satisfying end.