Harry Styles Imagines Book 2

Drive me wild:

“Do you even have feelings for me?”

Celeste was sitting across the booth at their local diner, a half-empty mug of hot chocolate left stale at the table top, her eyes wet and cold just like the December she’d been trying so desperately to feel warm in.

Harry had his hands held together in front of him, his eyes void and stare blank as his mind played back to all the times he’d given his all to her. Sure, he didn’t always do it with a smile on his face or with lovestruck eyes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t happy.

And how could she not see it? How could she not feel it? He didn’t even bother spending his time with anybody else because he didn’t like anybody else. She was his only company, his only kiss, his only friend.

How was that not enough?

“What would make you think that I don’t?”

She laughed, right in his face, like it wasn’t enough to tear him apart.

“You’re kidding me, right?” She looked serious then, her face fallen and lips frowned. He felt stupid because he must have done something he couldn’t remember, or something to blindly hurt her feelings, yet he had no idea what it was. They were doing so good. “Do you even know how you look at me? Like I’m not even here. Like I’m boring you half to death. I can’t even tell what you’re feeling right now.”

Broken, sad, confused. He wanted to tell her that — he really did — but what would it have mattered? He’d still have that same meaningless stare and that same emptiness that had brought them to that very moment. She wouldn’t believe him even if she wanted to.

And it shouldn’t have broken him as much as it did, considering they weren’t even dating — just testing the waters, feeling each other out, wondering if their dreams could ever belong in their reality — but it hurt him just the same. She was the closest thing to a girlfriend Harry ever had, after all.

“Talking to you is like — it’s like talking to a wall. You’re just… there.”

She stopped to look at him more intentionally then — maybe she had missed something all along. Maybe, there was something he did to show the smallest of his emotions, like a shift in his eye, a pitch in his breath, a quiver of his lip.

But just like every other time, there was nothing. He was incurably empty.

“I think you’ve laughed at something I’ve said maybe, five times?” She let out a breathy chuckle because the tension was so thick she could hardly keep herself together, and she was so nervous, and he was so unpredictable. “And then you have this way with your words where, like you say certain things to beat around the bush about how you truly feel about me, and then it makes me wonder if it’s because you don’t even feel that way at all.”

He wanted to argue with her so bad. He wanted so badly to prove to her how wrong she was but how could he have, when she was so right?

Nobody had ever taught him how to do that — the relationships, the emotions, the vulnerability that came with being human. He couldn’t even recall a single time his parents had laughed at something he had said — couldn’t recall his parents ever having friends over, having date nights, even smiling at one another.

And to make matters worse, he was an only child. He was constantly around the voidance of his parents, the empty conversations, the pit of silences — really, that was all he had ever known. And later, that was what he grew into.

And if he could have changed it, he would have. But how does one go from keeping it all inside, to letting it all out?

He’s tried it all — emptying bottles of wine, smoking down blunts, shoving pills down his throat — and still couldn’t he laugh alongside himself, smile at memories that haven’t let him go, pour his heart out to strangers.