When I first started writing about Lia and Harry, it was supposed to be nothing but a one-shot, inspired by one single picture of him. A rude bartender who works across the street from this very socially anxious girl.
And then I got attached to the...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Harry never texted her.
Of course he didn't. And it wasn't as if Lia actually expected him to, but then why did he even bother asking for her number in the first place? Why pretend he wanted to talk to her? Why pretend there was the slight chance they would ever interact again?
Lia tightened the grip around her grocery bag and sighed. Her mind was about to explode. It really was. She was too tired, and not even the fact that it was already Friday and the weekend was ahead of her was enough to cheer her up.
There was just too much going on. She couldn't stop thinking, so she hadn't been sleeping very well.
After Harry had left her apartment, Lia had locked the door and leaned her back against it. And then she'd closed her eyes and recalled everything that had just happened - from Harry running after her, to him looking one last time over his shoulder and waving one final goodbye before walking down the stairs.
Their interaction had started for the wrong reasons, but it had been too good to be true, and not at all a fantasy of her mind.
Harry standing in her living room had been real. His words, his stare, his smile. The sound of his laughter. The way he had cared about apologizing to her...
It had all been real, it had all actually happened.
And it had stirred a new feeling of excitement in the pit of her stomach. It had made her walk to the kitchen with a massive grin on her face, then giggle to herself while preparing things for the next day.
Then of course, as minutes went by, everything she had just spent weeks promising herself she wouldn't do anymore, happened all over again.
She wasn't proud of it. She tried to stop herself, but she couldn't. No matter how innocent his actions had been, they were enough to fuel her with endless ideas and possibilities of how that night could've ended instead. And although she felt terribly embarrassed to admit, for more than one second she'd allowed herself to truly entertain those thoughts.
She imagined a conversation where she had been interesting and fun enough to captivate him. Or to fascinate him, just as much as he had fascinated her. She imagined her acting confident enough to seduce him, confident enough to flirt with him. She imagined Harry reciprocating the feeling. And a moment where, instead of leaving to go back to work, Harry ended up touching her freely and thoroughly. She imagined him hugging her, kissing her. Making her feel everything she so desperately wanted to feel. She so desperately needed to feel.
