If you go out tonight, I'm going out 'cause I know you're persuasive
You got that something, I got me an appetite, now I can taste it
2 years ago
London
The air was thick with the smell of marijuana, cigarettes and spilled alcohol. My shoes were sticking to the wooden floor from the beer. I was sat around a table with people I never really knew. Meg was there, laughing with her friends. A whiskey sour sat in front of me. Harry was nowhere in sight, he'd disappeared a couple of hours ago. His debut album had been released the night before. We had been somewhere like this 24 hours ago. I had been watching people dance yesterday too.
Only a day before would I have been in the centre of the dance floor, taking whatever was offered to me, Harry's hands smoothing down the bumps in my heart rate. His lips tasting like whiskey and our nights a haze of senses.
But that night, I smoked a couple cigarettes. I took a few sips from my drink. I smiled when I was supposed to and I laughed when expected. Never included nor excluded from conversations, just present. Then again, not really.
But this night, I got up and I danced too. Kiwi was playing and it felt good to dance to a song written about me.
Someone was racking up some lines in the corner of the booth and passed me the tray. I looked at the poisonous medicine, neat little lines, so easy to slip away - so tempting to misbehave. Before I took the bill I felt something in my stomach seize. My heart pausing. My mind screaming.
I put the tray down gently and made my way over to the bathroom. The door hinges were loose and I pushed all the stalls open trying to find him. Where was my boyfriend? Where was the man I loved?
"Harry?" I called out.
I heard a murmur. "Harry?" I spoke stronger, my voice finding itself.
He was sat on the top of a toilet. His leather boots on the seat. His arms rested on his legs. His head was hung in his hands.
He was half a man.
"Just give me a minute will you?" He slurred.
"Harry, it's me." I whispered, taking his hands off of his face. He refused to look me in the eye.
"Don't look at me." He begged.
"Baby, come here." I tried to wrap our fingers together, trying to soothe him the way he calmed me - trying to say the right thing like he always did. "Come on - let's go home."
"No." He shook his head. "Just leave me be."
I pulled his head into my stomach, holding him to me. Trying to hold him together. Trying to hide my tears.
"It's about him, isn't it." He sighed. His voice breaking when he referred to the man of my past.
My eyes squinted, hurt, tired and scared.
"Harry, come on." I tried to pull him up but he pulled away from me instead and looked up.
His eyes were red, they almost looked bruised from exhaustion. His pupils were like pinpoints. Forcing me to stand, on the spot, shaking in front of him.
"What did you take?" I whispered, reaching out a hand to his cheek. He pushed it away lamely.
His eyes went blank. No recognition, no love, no emotion. "Some pills." His words were monotone.
"What kind of pills?" I asked. I could feel my lungs giving out. I felt for the door with my hands and leant against it.
"You wrote that song for him, didn't you?" He asked, pointedly.
"Harry what kind of pills did you take?" I ignored his question.
"I wrote that song for you. I wrote all those songs for you. They were meant to be ours." He could barely hold his head up.
"Baby, this is not about some fucking songs right now - what kind of pills are you on? You're fucking scaring me." I held his head up by his chin, studying his face.
"The last song on the album, I wrote that about you." He looked up at me, looking me in the eye. "I slept with someone else before I asked you to by my girlfriend." I grimaced. "Yeah, you feel betrayed. But you fucked us, Cara, you fucked us."
"Are you trying to get me to leave you?" I asked in disbelief. "That's what you want?" I scoffed, watching his reaction confirm what I feared. "Really? After everything?" I inhaled to speak but it just got stuck in my chest.
"I love you." He spoke. "But you love him."
"I've given you everything I have, why can't that be enough." I shook my head.
He sat back. Hands in his lap. He turned his head and closed his eyes.
I kissed him on the cheek. "Come home," I whispered, "come home to me Harry." I begged.
He didn't say anything, his silence like a slap of rejection. I stumbled out of the bathroom.
I left the pub. Hailed a taxi and drove back to our hotel room. I lay awake all night, with the lights turned off, flinching at the sounds of ambulances and police cars, terrified the phone would call any second and I'd be told something awful.
The alarm clock on the bedside table haunted me. 2:37am.
And then. 4:16am.
Finally. 6:49am.
I heard the door swing open. A jacket fall to the floor. I felt a body slump beside me. He fell asleep almost instantly. I let him lay for a minute before putting him in the recovery position. Pulling the blinds down.
I sat up in bed and I looked at the wall.
He stirred at around 1:30pm and slung an arm around my legs.
At five, I got out of bed, showered - and I left.
I walked around London looking for answers. How could I help him? Would he really hurt me the way he said he did? Did that matter, I loved him, I couldn't leave him. I wasn't going to give up on him.
I came back. I came back to the hotel at around ten that night, to see the bed empty.
That night I didn't sleep either. I didn't sleep for three nights when we were in London. We never spoke about it again. He never took drugs around me again, we never wrote another song together.
