Bad Friend

23- Conversations in the Dark Part 2

"It is!"

"It is not!"

"Oh my God, G. How can you believe something like that?"

I rolled my eyes. "How can you? And what do you know? It's not like you finished school."

"Low blow," Harry replied, scoffing. "And you're studying business. It's not like you have any real authority on the matter."

"I know more than you," I muttered, but it didn't take long for my smile to creep back onto my face.

Harry had found me again. I'd been walking back from one of my classes to my dorm when a car honked at me. I'd startled a little, but ignored it, thinking it was just a coincidence. When the car honked again, my head turned, and there he was.

He looked mostly the same since the last time I saw him. His hair was a tad bit longer and wasn't all swept to one side the way it had been the last couple times we'd hung out. He looked older, his boyish features now more of a young man's. Though from the way he was waving excitedly at me out of the driver's side window, he was still very much more boy than man.

A flutter of excitement and anticipation fluttered in my stomach, but I tried to stamp it out. It was never easy to wake up and find Harry gone, and the morning I woke up in Tokyo and he was no longer pressed to my side was no different, perhaps a little worse than usual. I always tried so hard to pretend that I didn't care that he left without saying goodbye, or that I never heard from him until he was ready to see me again. I usually threw myself into my schoolwork or drove home to see my dad for a day or two, and sometimes I flirted with the person sitting close by in one of my classes until they asked me on a date and ended up in their bed.

It helped. Usually. But something about Tokyo had been different. Maybe it was that the night he showed up at my hotel room we had a serious conversation for the first time ever, or maybe it was that we stayed in instead of going out for a night. I'd always trusted Harry, I wouldn't have done half of the stuff I'd done with him if I didn't; but that night when he opened up about his breakup and all of the stress the media was causing him, and...I don't know, it was like a final piece of a puzzle falling into place. Things between us just felt wholly and intrinsically right.

And then he'd left, and in a fit of anger and hurt feelings, I blocked his number from my phone.

Harry normally texted maybe five or ten minutes before he showed up, sending an ominous message about being ready or packing something I felt comfortable moving around a lot in. But since I blocked him, he couldn't, and had clearly resorted to other forms of communications, which was apparently honking at me in the middle of the day and practically falling out of the driver's side window as he waved to get my attention.

I'd thought about just ignoring him and continuing to walk back to my dorm, but I knew Harry wasn't above honking enough to draw other people's attention or follow me in his car parallel to the sidewalk and yelling at me through the window until I finally acknowledged him.

He could really be a little shit.

Bracing myself, I'd walked over, ready for him to harp on me about blocking him, but he just slid back inside the car so he could open his door, come out and squeeze me hard enough to crack my back. And for all of the hurt and the anger at being left alone yet again, I still found myself melting against him, his embrace feeling like no one else's ever had.

Harry didn't tell me what his plans were until we were on the road leaving virtually all civilization behind. When there was only desert surrounding us on all sides, I finally forced him to tell me where we were going. "Joshua Tree. I've never been, and I've heard good things," he said simply, like he wasn't driving us out into the middle of nowhere.