Sugar (Harry Styles)

11.

Daphne sat curled on Harry’s couch in the living room and she silently took in everything around her, finding his bachelor pad to not be anything she had pictured in her mind. It was clean and orderly. There were a few pictures around the apartment, people who had come in and out of Harry’s life, some permanent, others temporary. She could hear Harry’s large bare feet pad around the flat’s hardwood floors and her eyes were taken away from the collection of movies and video games in a corner to see the curly-haired male wandering around the kitchen pacing back and forth and he collected ingredients for dinner.

Daphne smiled faintly at the boy, the slight tingle in her lips from his kiss still lingering as she watched him with her gray eyes. She adjusted the blanket that was draped around her lower half as she brought a hot mug of tea to her lips. Harry was so caring after their kiss. He offered to make her dinner and relax after her little incident after work.

He tucked her legs underneath her and covered her up with one of his blankets that she was sure from when he was a child. It was soft and tattered a bit at the corners. She could tell it had been loved and washed many times. He brought her a cup of tea and pain killers for her bruising face and sore body. She couldn’t remember the last time when someone took such good care of her. She had been on her own for as long as she could remember. There was no one to bring her hot water bottles when she was sick, or tuck her in at night. She didn’t have anyone to stroke her hair or ask her how her day went when she was upset. She had missed it. She almost didn’t know how to react.

As Daphne’s eyes watched Harry in the kitchen her stomach dropped and even the tea couldn’t ease the unrest that happened within her. It was only a matter of time before she had to tell Harry the truth. She had to tell him about her mother and her father. Why she was always moving around. She had to tell him why Evan had screamed at her in the street and treated her so roughly. She would have to explain why she knew so much about Greek Mythology. Why her baked goods were so delicious… She would have to finally tell him that she was a daughter of Aphrodite. She knew the moment she did he would run. Call her a witch. Call her a temptress. A seducer. Selfish. Horrible. Whore. They always did.

Daphne’s eyes shut and tears filled her eyes again as she thought about him kicking her out of his home, firing her from the bakery, and writing her off the same way others had in the past. She didn’t ask for help in her life. She didn’t ask for anything, only that she lived to see another day and that she was happy. She knew that Harry was different; he wasn’t all over her demanding her attention and affection. He didn’t demand her to make love to him every day or say sweet things. Harry cared about her not about whom she was or what she did to drive his senses crazy. Harry cared about her happiness and not appeasing her every wish. He would purposefully do things to make her angry and she liked that. She wanted him to be difficult.

Daphne caught the delicate scent of Harry’s cooking from the kitchen in her nose; something with bell peppers and onions. She smiled faintly as her eyes remained shut and she rested her head against the back of the couch as she thought about her statement to Harry to not fall in love with her. She knew that it was silly to ask such a thing since she knew it was already happening, but she had to try and warn him. She thought about what she had told him, and there was only one explanation: blame it on Aphrodite. It was true. She had battled with her blessing and curse her whole life. There were perks to being the daughter of the Goddess of love, but there were so many pitfalls that no one could ever explain to Daphne until she lived through them. Men fighting over her was one, women shunning her was another. It was a lonely life. Everyone liked you for reasons you couldn’t control, an unexplainable force that surrounded her heart and soul and radiated out at the simplest of actions… like baking. That was one gift she was able to control, sharing happiness and love in her food.