Salvation in the Secular Age {MH/GD}

{I Say It Out Loud But You Just Don't Care}

Hey everyone! Hope you all had an amazing holiday. Please forgive me if updates are slow, I've been really busy! Thank you to my lovely friends sunphazed perhapsisjustarumour bigcupofhottea and to my new readers who have been blessing me with their comments and votes! I truly appreciate it! Also, this gif of Matty has me swooning til I die.

{Harper}

It was mid-morning, and I was staring at my ceiling, clove cigarette resting loosely between my chewed-on fingernails, my hair fanned out in a perfect half-circle on my navy sheets. I did this sometimes, just sat in bed for what seemed like hours after I'd woken up, seriously contemplating if getting out of bed was really worth it. I mean, there was coffee, and toaster pastries, but there were also the lesser things. Like other people, for instance.

When the black cigarette was smoked away,  I still wasn't finished wallowing in my own self-pity. The cliched girl who never got what she wanted, looking down at the body she had, the body of a twelve year old boy. The gap between my thighs, how my ribs stuck out nearly as much as my small breasts did, how my knees were knobby and my bum virtually nonexistent.

Technically, I was about an hour late for work, but "work" today was doing the boys' errands for them, the ones they didn't want to do, or didn't have time to do because they were busy with other things, like fucking off in the studio. Not that I was knocking them, they paid me way more than what I actually worked to earn.

Matty and I had slept together and Tinsley and Ross' house, and he hadn't said a thing about it afterward because he knew better. Two broken people finding each other and trying to fuck sense and purpose into each other. He knew exactly what I needed, nothing more, nothing less. There was no warm-up, no stroking my face and telling me I was pretty, no slow, deep kisses that made my toes curl. Matty knew me better than that, he knew not to even try to kiss me. And I loved him for that.

He loved me too, probably more genuinely than most anyone else did. He cared about me. He didn't like it when I was sad, which was most of the time. Despite his flaws, all of them, Matty was a good person. He deserved what he wanted, who he wanted, though I had a feeling she would overwhelm him with her big doe eyes and how soft every bit of her was, inside and out. I didn't know what was worse: Matty still being desperately in love with Claire, or Matty wasting his time and testing my patience with Ellie.

Whatever.

His life, I guess.

I sat the chipped coffee mug on my night stand, and it joined the other three I'd left, making a foursome of stained, dirty coffee cups that I would probably leave for another day or two before my anxiety got the best of me and I spent six hours cleaning. That's just how I was, I had these patterns of screwing up royally, with intermittent bursts of trying to do the right thing. It almost never made up for my carelessness, my laziness, my complete self-absorption.

Today, I showered, and even washed my hair. My reflection looked back at me, unimpressed, in the mirror as I brushed my teeth and sponged the water out of my damp hair. I was cute, sure. Big blue eyes, a little bow mouth and a cute button nose. But I wasn't beautiful, not in the slightest. I wasn't Sports Illustrated hot like Chelsea, I wasn't wide-eyed, innocently pretty Tinsely, I wasn't classic beauty/girl next door/tits for days Claire.

I was just Harper, disappointing everyone a little more each day, my own self not excluded.

My phone buzzed as I spit out the frothy toothpaste and rinsed out my mouth.