Muse

Chapter Nineteen

I decide to hurry and shower before Liz gets home and questions me about last night. The warm water trickles down my body and I close my eyes, telling myself to relax.

My brain has been all over the place since Harry left. I'm not sure what to think. Well, I know I shouldn't make anything of what happened but I can't help not to. He acts so sweet when we're together. Except for whenever he's nice, we're always alone and that really stresses me out. He shouldn't get to act certain ways around certain people. No matter how upset I get, I know I have no right to be mad, because I agreed to this. I agreed to being friends with benefits. Which means I agreed to letting him continue to put on a show for his friends, and for our shitty friendship to just coast along. Ever since we met, we've never really gotten along, everyone knows that. But he has slowly started to mold into someone different when we're together, when I find myself alone with him.

I put myself in this position. I've allowed him to trample my walls to the ground and I know he's going to hurt me, that's undeniable.

Going to Niall's party is going to determine a lot between him and I. If he treats me decently, that probably means he's warming up to the idea of us while being around people. If he treats me shitty, it means we're going to keep on pretending, the same way we have been for the past few days, annoyed with another in front of people and nice to each other when we're alone. I hope for my sake and my uncontrollable emotions that he treats me nicely, I don't need to cry at the party.

Before he left this morning he made it clear he wants us to stay a secret, that part I don't mind much, it's fun sneaking around I guess. The part that makes my heart strings slowly snap in half is the idea of being invisible to him in a crowd.

I proceed with my shower and shut the steaming water off and step out. Fluffy white towels are hung on the rack and I pull one off, drying my body. I tie it around me and grab another, piling it on top of my head, soaking up the moisture from my hair.

The mirrors are steamed up from my long hot shower and I trace a smiley face onto it. My fingers begin to make a heart and a little smile forms on my lips. I run my fist over the heart, smudging the perfect shape and then unlocking the bathroom door.

I'm not in love with Harry but I've found myself catching feelings as fast as one does when they shouldn't. Something about the secret and the chase makes my heart lunge forward, craving attention from that certain someone I cannot have. Feelings have always erupted inside me too quickly, always fighting their way to the surface and successfully making it, destroying the blooming relationship. But not always did my feelings get the affection they wanted. In high school I began to notice myself always giving these boys my undivided attention only to be shut down and replaced by someone else. We would talk and then we would hang out. Then I always stupidly thought we formed a bond, but certainly only I felt it. I'd offer myself to them, they would take it, we'd lust for each other, and feel each other in more way than one, until one day they felt it wasn't enough. They wanted all of me, and I was just never ready to give them that. So they left.

Being taken advantage of never crossed my mind when I was with guys like that. I always told myself I liked this whole benefits thing just as much as them. I always told myself I didn't want a relationship, that they never worked out and they just weren't for me, so when the opportunity arose for someone to want me in sexual ways, I let it happen, I went with it. But then I would fall for the simple gestures they made and the little things they would do. Although they only ever did sweet things to keep me around, not because they cared, but because they thought with their penis and wondered how often they could get some.

Since high school I've learned to control myself. Not to dive in too deep, to withhold the feelings and just kiss guys I most likely would never see again. That whole approach wasn't my smartest idea, but it kept my heart whole and it kept me away from feeling things I didn't want to feel.