In This World (Harry Styles)

15

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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You're mine, my northern star

Lighten up the days and show me the way

Flood my veins, flood my veins

Flood my veins, my veins

Veins – Palace

The next morning I refused to leave my room, even when Gray texted and asked if I wanted breakfast or wanted to write. I declined both and stayed in bed, dreading laying eyes on him again. Recalling the night before brought a weird atmosphere upon the room, like a million eyes were watching and judging my every move. They'd seen the nasty things he had done to me, and worse, they'd seen the nasty things I'd allowed him to do. And the guilt was pulverizing, leaving me to believe there was some untold calamity waiting in the wings. Some dire karmic consequence for daring to entertain his advances in the least. My actions would not go unpunished...I was sure of it.

It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped, because the things I'd felt for that man last night were things I hadn't experienced since I first met Z. Some were altogether novel. My go-to was to compare everything I experienced with another person to what I felt for Z, because for a while I'd stupidly believed he was the standard. It didn't take a rocket scientist to eventually figure out he positively was not the standard. Not by a long shot. He fell comically short of it often. But for the longest time I'd forced myself to believe he was the standard because he was so good at the physical stuff. The lovemaking.

Yet, truth be told, he was a horrible boyfriend. He knew nothing about love or companionship or unity, apart from the bedroom. Gray was the polar opposite. In fact, he and Z weren't even in the same galaxy in terms of the way they treated me, or in terms of a potential path to a relationship. Gray treated me like a king, despite the fact that he had zero obligation to; Z treated me like a bothersome serf. Gray abided; Z abandoned. Gray healed; Z wounded. Gray restored; Z drained. Gray gave; Z gained. Gray was selfless; Z was self-serving. Always, always unapologetically self-serving. Gray was the epitome of humility and openness and diplomacy; Z was arrogant and closed off and so full of disdain for so many people and so many things. If Gray embodied light, then Z was static darkness. A black hole obliterating everything in his orbit.

Amazingly, what happened last night had not been meaningless, unlike my time with the escorts or with Jūrō. This didn't particularly bode well, as it meant I was falling. Trouble was, I couldn't handle another relationship this transforming. I already knew how it would end: me bartering away a heaping chunk of myself for yet another person I groveled to be with, and all to no avail. I needed to get out while I still could. Fuck's sake, I wanted to be me for a change. I liked being me...most of the time anyway. I didn't want to become yet another version of myself in pursuit of pleasing someone new. But was Gray even asking that of me? Had he even demanded that? The answer was: No. Truth be told, he was perfectly ok with me being myself as long as I was sober and healthy. That's all he'd ever demanded of me. And the simple fact that our relationship didn't require mind-numbing substances for us to tolerate one another's company was already foreign to me. We were breaking new ground it seems. And that I had the capacity to connect with someone on this level without hiding or routinely getting buzzed was astounding. Whenever we'd bonded, he and I had both been stone-cold sober, and this continued to be a conceit of utter amazement.