Sweet Tooth [HS]

TWENTY NINE

Later.

Max pouted as she stood by the door. She felt her pathetic heart already thumping in longing. Felt that cold, crumbling feeling of missing him creeping slowly up and over her shoulders and sitting heavy in her stomach like a dead weight.

She looked down at the bag by her feet and had to resist the childish urge to kick it. She wanted to throw a tantrum. It was like she was a little kid, wanting to stomp her foot and push her bottom lip out to get her way.

To get to stay with him, even if just for a minute longer.

"I don't wanna leave yet," she whined, like a baby, and she despised how desperate it made her feel.

Harry only smiled. He moved closer to her, looping his slow hands around her waist and pulling her tightly against him. "I'll see you tomorrow, I promise."

Max sighed, unsatisfied.

She knew she'd see him soon, she just didn't want to leave him now. She just couldn't get enough of him. Couldn't bring herself to care about anything other than him, and this warm feeling of his body next to hers, all alive and warm and beating beside her.

"I don't care," she pouted harder, her hands clinging onto his t-shirt.

Harry chuckled and bent down to place a kiss on her forehead.

"Maxie, its not long. And besides, you can't come with me to the studio. I can't have you watch me get told off."

"Hey, you won't be getting told off."

Harry released her then, shaking his head. "I dunno, Max."

And he didn't.

Tom, his manager, had told him his label wanted to hear some new content. Apparently needed to, after his two-year-long inability to create anything of substance. He'd already told Max about the problems he'd had in LA, all the drinking and all the drugs and all the people. And he knew he had to prove to his label that he hadn't got too wrapped up in it, hadn't got drowned in the lifestyle out there.

Being back here had already been good for him. Not only was there Max. But he'd managed to do a little writing, too.

And that was probably because of her, really, he thought.

But still, just because she, because this was good- that didn't mean what he had written was.

And Max knew he felt like that. Could see it in his little frown and the way his lips turned down at the sides. He looked so sweet, so vulnerable. So delicately innocent then, despite their morning of anything but.

"Hey, Harry," she stepped closer, this time looping her arms around him. "Harry, it'll be fine. You're not Harry fucking Styles for nothing."

She leant up on her tippy toes to kiss his cheek and could feel him soften against her. Could feel his tension ease away as she held onto him too-tight.

"We'll see," he sighed finally, and Max moved away. Only by a fraction, though. She didn't want to let him go just yet.

"Well, it will be, I just know it," Max tutted and she felt like Lexie. All knowing in her best friend's black-and-white way.

But it was completely true, though.

She'd heard his brief melodies that he strummed on the guitar, had heard a few beautiful echos of his lyrics, and it wasn't even just that. It was the fact that Harry was actually incredible at what he did. His words and his melodies and the sound of his voice. Everything he made was always so beautiful. So masterfully done. And she was astounded that he could doubt himself like this. How did he not realise that he was where he was today, that he was in this fucking palace of a hotel room- because he was so good? Max couldn't comprehend it.