Whatever Chains (Sequel to Where Your Heart is - A Harry Styles fanfiction)

Part Thirty-Two: Fair fight, knocked down.

"Why are you telling me this?" My voice comes out between gritted teeth, as I pace back and forth across the sand, kicking it like a sulking child. "What is the point, Lea?"

I hear the loud sound of the door being shut at the other end, and all I can do is silently pray that she's on the inside of her apartment, and not walking down the hallway towards the elevator.

I just want to scream. Please, be on the bloody inside, Lea. Please, don't be walking down the hallway.

But I don't do that. I just stay quiet and wait for her to speak.

"What? What do you mean what is the point?" She sounds as astounded as she sounds... pissed off? "I am telling you this because, one, I'm learning from my mistakes of keeping things from you, and two, it's hardly a big deal."

I was falling asleep, for fuck's sake. I was calmed and relaxed, surrounded by silence and nothing more. Why did I grab the phone? Why couldn't I just ignore it and stay like that?

I am fully awake now. Every muscle of my body is tense and hard as a rock, my skin is itching all over, and my mind is screaming and cursing incoherently. All the while, I'm wrestling with this burning urge to throw the damn phone into the water. Or to pick up a fight.

"You're meeting your ex for dinner and it's hardly a big deal?" I spit out, choosing door number two. "Think again, love."

"You said... no, you promised you wouldn't do that." And I can tell she's biting her tongue, trying to keep her cool. "That you wouldn't make it about him."

Why don't you say what you really want to say to me, Lea? Fire away, don't hold back. Because I sure as hell won't.

"We've never talked about dinners, have we? You're the one making this about him, not me."

Come on. You woke me up, you poke the monster. Deal with it, fight me Lea.

"That's the thing, isn't it? We didn't talk about anything." There she is, slowly but surely caving in to the anger I know it's building up inside of her. And I am practically salivating. "You said you would, and then you took off who knows where... Where the hell are you, Harry? Because you left me in this bloody limbo where I have no idea how to move around? Where do we stand? What are the rules here?"

I sharpen my ear, clutching the phone against it so I can listen to the background noises. There are no car engines roaring, or sirens howling in the distance. And since it's New York we're talking about, I reckon she stayed on the inside of her apartment.

What I do hear, somewhere at the back of my brain, is the sound of a bell ringing.

Like a boxing match, in which we are the heavyweight contenders, ready to begin. And we are both coming out of our corners, banging our gloves, ready to rumble.

"From where I'm standing you seem to be moving just fine."

There's a gasp at the other end. Like she actually felt the blow in her guts. And I smirk crookedly, looking around me as if I were looking at a cheering audience.

I don't recognize myself right now. With this fire surging from the pit of my stomach, making me fume. But I'm strangely raveling in the feeling. Like it's the first time in weeks I get to experience something other than the blues.

"That's fucking unfair, Harry." He slaps back, although weakly. "That dinner is about nothing more than t0 show some appreciation for what he did to me. He asked me and I just couldn't say no."

I laugh and she quickly asks me what is it that I find so funny about what she just said to me. And I laugh even louder, and way more cynically.