get him back! | h. styles

CHAPTER FOUR.

GET HIM BACK!

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' so i miss him some nights when i'm feeling depressed, until i remember every time he made a pass on my friends. do i love him? do i hate him? i guess it's up and down. if i had to choose, i would say right now i wanna get him back. '

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PRESENT DAY

JULY 8TH, 2017
los angeles, california

josephine forgot how many mixed emotions she felt on her birthday. when she was younger, it was different. she'd count down the days until she was a year older. until she was double digits, until she was a teenager, until she could drive. until her tenth or eleventh birthday, she would wear a crown, and a princess dress, and a sash that said 'birthday girl' on it every year on her birthday. she'd wear her plastic disney princess heels, and when she was six, her mom started letting her do her 'makeup' (the plastic, fake, little kid makeup).

now, she didn't count down to her birthday. it felt more like her birthday was the countdown.

in the music industry, men could be as old as they want and still make music. no one would bat an eye. women, however, could only get so old before the media began critiquing them. saying they needed to 'settle down' and 'stop reliving the past', and a bunch of other bullshit. once you were thirty, you were too old.

that was why last year on her birthday, she had released teenage dream. she had gotten her fame as a teenager, and that would be considered her 'prime years' when she retired. or died. and she knew that.

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ONE YEAR AGO...

JULY 5TH, 2016
new york, new york

josephine was in new york for her twentieth birthday. alisha's idea.

she wasn't looking forward to it. what would happen to her, to her career, when she wasn't a teenager anymore?

she was sat at her piano, with her song book open.

"when am i gonna stop being wise beyond my years, and just start being wise?"

'you're wise beyond your years' is what she'd always hear when people complimented her songs. when would she be the age that she was just.. wise? she wasn't smarter than anyone else, just average.

"when am i gonna stop being a pretty young thing to guys?"

her new boyfriend, james blaese, notoriously only dated younger people. would she eventually get too old for him?

"when am i gonna start being great for my age, and just start being good?"

most artists nowadays weren't teenagers. so, she was great for her age. but as she got older, the competition would change. she wouldn't be so amazing anymore.

"when will it stop being cool to be quietly misunderstood?"

as a teenager, that was cool. that's what you wanted to be. would that change?

"i'll blow out the candles, happy birthday to me. got your whole life ahead of you, you're only nineteen. but i fear that they already got all the best parts of me."

what if her best years were already over? what if she couldn't go up from here? what if she'd already peaked and had no clue?

"and i'm sorry that i couldn't always be your teenage dream."