Brew Books

Chapter 57

Harper's shoulders loosen. 'You know I've had feelings for you since you showed up, months ago, in the bar with Kitty, right? I thought you were beautiful, but that there was always something deep inside you. Some deeper layer than the one you show to the world.'

I almost laugh.

'I'm serious,' Harper says. 'I like discovering the deeper parts to you. Like your secret love for fantasy. I somehow didn't suspect it.'

'Maybe you're not very good at reading people,' I tease.

'Maybe you're hard to read.'

'I think I'm just scared of showing the real me to the world,' I tell him.

Harper steps forward and pulls me into a hug again, and I'm blanketed by the feeling of security as he hugs me.

'I don't want to screw this up again, Jane,' he murmurs. 'I want you.'

I lean into the hug, gripping onto him tightly, savouring this last moment together, in this blissful state where I can pretend that everything is good, and that we can be together, and that I never have to worry about anything else.

It'd be so easy, right now, to just kiss him, and pretend that nothing had happened. To fall into his embrace, to fall into his love, to let it all play out the way I've imagined it a million times in my head. But sometimes the right path isn't the easy path.

So I pull away.

'I want you, too, Harper,' I tell him. 'But I want this more.'

As I say it, I gesture around me, meaning the flat, the bookshop, the café, the bar. This group of friends, fucked up as they may be. I want the feeling I get coming home to all of them.

Harper's expression changes, and he straightens his back. 'You don't want...?'

'I want to figure out who I am without a boyfriend,' I say. 'I want to work on being present, here. I want to work on my relationship with Kitty, and everyone here. I want to figure out how to be a good friend. I want to discover the parts of my personality I'm too afraid to confront.'

Harper reaches to take my hand, but I pull out of his grip.

'I'm serious,' I say firmly. 'I need to do this. For me.'

Harper withdraws. His gaze searches my face, and I can feel him reading me, looking for some tell, some avenue, through which he can change my mind. I put on what I hope is a determined expression.

'I'll move out,' Harper says suddenly. 'If that's what you want. If you're worried about the others, and living in the same flat as me, and everything. I'm starting university in September, but I can move out before then.'

'No, Harper,' I say. 'I don't want you to move out. You're part of this. I want this, the way it is.'

'Jane,' Harper says, and my heart breaks a little to hear my name on his lips, and see the sadness in his eyes.

'I want you to be the fun, carefree Harper I've always known,' I say. 'And I want to figure out who I am. But I've spent so much of my life depending on someone else... depending on a boyfriend, to bring me happiness. I want to figure out how to be happy with myself, first.'

'But you would be happy with me.'

'Of course I would,' I say. 'That's the problem. It's too easy, if all my happiness comes from someone else. But then what if you leave, and I'm not happy anymore? Or what if you go to university, and I don't know how to be myself without you?'

Something flickers across Harper's expression, and I can see that he's imagining that scenario - and imagining me cheating on him, the way I cheated on Drew.

'I can't just turn off my feelings for you, Jane.'

'Neither can I,' I say. 'But that's part of it. Figuring out how to be myself, without relying on someone else. I want to figure it out.'

'So you're not going to run off with some other guy in two weeks time, right?' Harper asks.

'I'll try not to,' I say with a smile.

Harper sighs. 'Fine.' He rolls his eyes at my sceptical expression. 'Fine,' he repeats. 'I understand why you want this, and I admire you for it. Although, I don't know. I want you to know that right now, at this moment, I have strong feelings for you, and it's really hard for me to know that you don't want to pursue something. But I also don't want to make some dumb claim about how I'll "wait for you" or something stupid like that, okay?'

'I wouldn't expect you to,' I say firmly.

'Then... good,' Harper says. 'This is weird. How do we do this? Can I kiss you, one more time?'

My tummy flutters at his words, and I let out a laugh. 'Really?'

'You know, a kiss for good luck or something,' Harper says. He leans towards me, and then let my eyelids flutter closed as he presses a single kiss to my lips. But it doesn't last as long as I want it to, and before I know it, he's pulling away.

'See you round, Jane,' he murmurs.

'I'd hope so, since we're flatmates now,' I say, and I follow him out of Ed's flat and across the hall, into the living room, where Harry Potter is still playing on the TV.

I settle down on the sofa, just in time to see Harry running through the maze in the Triwizard Tournament.

• Author's Note •

Thank you for reading! I hope you're as much in love with the Brew Crew as I am by this stage in the novel. So now that we're almost done, I have a question for you?

Who do you like the best?

elle xx