Nowhere In Particular // H.S.

Forty-Three: What's Easy and What Isn't

The thing about falling in love is that while it's happening you don't really think about the big what if... because there isn't time to. At least that was the case for me. I didn't question it. I didn't even consider what would happen if for some reason it didn't work out because it never even crossed my mind that things would turn out to be like this with Harry.

There isn't a manual though or a handbook that gives you instructions on the proper way to do it, and rules don't really feel like they belong with something like that anyways.

So the thing about falling in love, it's easy... at least when Harry's involved it is. The hard part is now, when I'm forced to make sense of it all.

There's a memory with Harry that feels like it's on a continuous replay in my head and no matter how much I try to think of something else, I somehow still end up back in the same place. I didn't realize it would be this significant moment that would have a new meaning within a few months, but it feels even more important now that I've had this time to reflect on it.

It was one of those nights that we didn't sleep much because it was hard to stop our conversation as it rolled from one thing to the next. I remember it was dark in the hotel room that was our home for the night. We had intentions of sleeping rather than moving our talk to a conversation that was verging on a discussion of the meaning of life. But even if Harry and I have high ambitions of something, that doesn't mean we'll get there in the way we think.

He was lying next to me with his head on the pillow and his eyes on the ceiling. I was turned on my side to face him, pressing up against his arm that was resting next to me. His shirt was off and my pants were too. We weren't sleepy, but we were relaxed so conversation was slow and easy. It's the kind of memory that causes my heart to clench up, because everything felt perfect at that moment and I hadn't even realized it at the time.

But it wasn't perfect, because it was never perfect to begin with. And Harry isn't perfect and even if he told me to remember this, my brain didn't do a good job of keeping that thought for a large portion of our time together.

I was telling him a story from when I was younger, which was something that happened fairly often. Harry loved to hear the different memories of my childhood and he would always make this face, biting his lip until a smile pulled through as he listened. I could always tell he was thinking about his own memories whenever I shared mine, but he didn't often reciprocate the story telling. I think it was because a lot of those memories were with Jackson and verbally reminiscing about it wasn't something he felt he could do.

The story of our conversation was one involving a bicker with Pat, which I could easily write an entire book consisting of. At the time and still now I can't entirely remember what the argument was about, but that detail wasn't necessary... it was the part after that mattered anyways.

Pat never showed any signs of being upset after we got our yells out when we were younger, but in this particular fight there was something different. He was sad and it took my young mind seconds to figure that out. I remember I sat down next to him on the ground, much like I would do years later when he came home drunk and broke our mom's vase. He sniffled for a few seconds as I moved my hand to his back, but when I whispered "It's okay," in my tiny voice he didn't feel sympathetic after that.

My brother told me that I cared too much. I took this to heart at the time because I was only five or six and his voice was harsh and felt like the truth. I cared too much and that was a bad thing.

Of course Harry automatically, without much thought at all, told me that it was nonsense, that it wasn't possible for me to care too much. I believed him just as quickly as he said the words because his voice also felt like the truth, and it wasn't harsh.