Fooled (Larry Stylinson) ✅

15. Reflecting

Harry's Point of View

When I went to Payless  the next day for work, I could hardly think straight. And it wasn't just because of my pounding hangover and the bruise on my stomach where Liam had punched me last night after I tackled him. I could deal with the physical pain. It was the emotional pain that was eating me up onside. 

I really had cared about Louis, een though I had went about it all wrong. I liked the way he got all nervous and jittery when I asked for his number. How surprised he seemed when I was able to spell his last name right. How anxiously excited he had looked to see me in the restaurant. I enjoyed the way his face lit up when I got him talking about Shameless and his crazy Irish roommate. And I couldn't stop thinking about how silly he had looked when he whined about going to Brooklyn. 

Louis was amazing to me, in every way possible. He clearly had his flaws, but who didn't? I, for one, had more flaws than one could count on two hands. 

Louis' low self esteem was pretty upsetting to me, though, and it made me hurt a little inside when he called himself boring or stupid or put down his hobbies. I wish he could be more proud of himself, more confident. 

But the truth of the matter was that his self esteem was probably just going to plummet even more after what I had done last night. And I couldn't have felt more guilty about my selfish ways.

Louis was clearly damaged -- he said it himself that he had been led on a lot. But who wasn't damaged? I sure was. And the way he stood up for himself, the way he asserted himself last night, well that made me smile -- or it would have if it hadn't been me who he was directing his anger at. 

As I stood at the cash register, waiting for a customer to come by our cheaply made, weird smelling shoes, I wondered if what had happened between Louis and I was for the better. 

After all, he hadn't completed ended it... he said he'd think about it. I still had his number. I could still do damage control, though I would have to fix this abominable mess of a relationship with Sharon before I did any of that.

We had a date tonight, Sharon and I. We were supposed to go to some restaurant downtown. I always hated going on dates with her. She was aggressive and always people watched out the window and made fun of pedestrians as they walked past. She was kind of my worst nightmare in more ways than one -- only she was a part of my real life. Not my dreams. 

Sighing, I thought about texting Louis, but I knew it was too soon. I knew he needed time to process this shit. And he didn't owe me anything. We had been on one date -- barely. He didn't know me. All he really knew was that I was a flirty liar. And that's not really a good impression to go by. 

Because yes, I'm flirty. And yes, I'm a liar. Did I lie for selfish reasons? Yeah. Was I doing something totally immoral to two different people? Most certainly. 

But at least I could acknowledge that shit. At least I knew right from fucking wrong, unlike Liam who just wanted to get ahead no matter what the cost. Or unlike Chris, our other bandmate, who just followed Liam's lead, quietly agreeing with his pathological ways despite quite clearly feeling guilty about it. 

As I put a pair of shoes back in their box -- customers were always mixing up and mismatching our shoes -- I shuddered with disgust as I thought of how different Liam had become. That story I had told Louis about Liam and I moving to New York had been true. We had been best friends and we did move here together. 

But what I neglected to include in the story was how selfish New York had made Liam. How sick and twisted he had become. In Cheshire, we had been two kids with big dreams and a simple upbringing. But New York was a huge city full of apathy and stress and chaos. Everything was moving quickly, racing by, and there was never any time to breathe. 

The rapid-paced atmosphere crushed more than I had ever anticipated. When I first moved here, I had panic attacks nearly every day just going on the train, just walking through a crowd of people. I had worked in midtown originally, one of the most crowded areas of the city, and people were always pushing me, weaving past me -- I could hardly think at times because of how crowded it was. 

It took weeks before I even got comfortable taking the train to wherever I needed to go. I would often try to avoid the train as much as I could, sometimes walking twenty blocks just so I could beat the crowd. 

It got easier with time, but it didn't make me any happier. I just learned to be more apathetic, to not react to train delays or fights or homeless people. To push back against the crowd when they pushed me. To be a New York. 

New York had crushed my soul, my happy-go-lucky English attitude, and I still feel like I left a part of my humanity behind in Cheshire. 

Liam on the other hand, thrived in this type of environment. In high school, our little town had always been way too small for him. He never felt satisfied -- there were never enough things to do, sports to play, plays to act in. He was restless. 

When he got to New York, it was like his personal paradise. He cruised through the streets with a big smile on his face, hitting up a different club every night, trying out the boogiest restaurants. 

We hardly had any money, but he didn't seem to care. He would often leave without paying the tab or charge a fake card that didn't work. Sometimes he did pay and he quickly developed huge credit debt -- that I'm not even sure he's managed to pay off to this day. 

Liam was living young and wild and free, while I was barely getting by, collapsing into bed every evening at 6pm and crying over how lonely I felt, how lost I was. 

With Liam always out, music was the only thing that got me through it, and I wrote more than 25 songs that year, most of which we still play live.

 I was the one who got Chris on board as our drummer two years ago after meeting him at my shoe store -- he was carrying his guitar and I asked him to play something. We hit it off from there. 

But what really hurt me the most was that Liam was fully aware of my issues and anxiety surrounding the big move to New York. He knew how hard it was for me to adapt, and he walked in on me crying way too many times to count. 

But he never tried to help me. He never even said "feel better" or "can I get you something?" And when I tried to tell him about how awful I was feeling, he would change the subject or tell me to write about it in the next song. 

I wasn't just losing myself -- I was losing my best friend. And after last night, when he punched me in the gut until it was purple with bruising, I think I finally lost him 100%. 

I crashed with Chris last night after the fight, and I was planning on staying with him for a while longer. 

I agreed that I wouldn't end things with Sharon. But I was giving it one more week and that was it. Liam said okay to that, and I packed my stuff, wondering if I ever even wanted to come back and live with him again. 

I was leaning towards no.

As I sat in the empty Payless, pretending to fix a pair of shoe laces, I couldn't help but wonder if my life could have turned out differently. 

Because in this very moment, I've never felt like more of a god damn fuckup.