Silk || hs

Stress Shopping

As you might imagine, despite Harry's comforting hold on me, I have just a bit of trouble sleeping. The raging storm of worried thoughts that had been temporarily driven away by Harry's touch has returned with more ferocity than before. With every puff of air Harry breathes against the back of my neck, I find myself delving further into the chasm of my anxiety, and no amount of reasoning I try to offer myself seems to be working to pull me out. Sleep evades me as I desperately attempt to let the night take hold of me, but every time I feel myself slipping into the darkness, my pesky subconscious reminds me of Harry's presence behind me and I am suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of distrust.

It's funny that I should feel this because I literally told Harry that he shouldn't go to bed without settling things with his mom, and now here I am acting directly against my own advice like an idiotic hypocrite by not talking to Harry about Gabrielle's text. Clearly, it upset me, so I really should have mentioned it before Harry's mumbling turned into soft snores. But alas, I did not and now I'm being eaten alive by my paranoia and frustration. I really should start practicing in my own life the advice I give to other people.

After an hour or two of sleeplessness, I come to realize my tragic error in judgement and begin to wonder whether or not I should just wake Harry and get this conversation over with. However, my rationale convinces me that having such a serious discussion so early in the morning would only lead to disaster, so I refrain from trying to wake him.

Instead, I slip away from Harry's grasp and grab my iPad from the side table before making my way to the bathroom. This is probably going to sound a little crazy, mostly because it is, but sometimes when I can't sleep, I do a little online shopping. It's terribly unhealthy to deal with stress or restlessness in this way, and I'm not even going to get started on the damage it does to my bank account. But however much I know I shouldn't do it, buying things I don't need brings me such calm and satisfaction that it makes me forget about my problems. Let's just say, the last presidential election resulted in an ungodly number of purchases, none of which I returned. Honestly though, it was totally necessary.

Shutting the door behind me, I flip on the bathroom light and sit on the floor with my back against the cabinets. When I unlock my iPad, Amazon is already pulled up so I begin the endless cycle of scrolling for things which couldn't possibly have a use. I don't really know how much time goes by, but by the time I actually feel myself getting tired, I have added probably about seventeen things to my checkout cart. As my eyes begin to flicker shut, I decide to scroll down one more page of authentic Italian leather journals before I go back to bed.

However, in the spirit of inconvenience and embarrassing conversations, of course, the bathroom door opens and Harry is standing there in nothing but his boxers looking down at me. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Harry manages to keep one eye open to actually see in front of him, but keeps the other one mostly shut as if he his holding onto sleep for as long as possible.

At this point, I'm too tired to react much to how sexy Harry looks right now, what with his toned body and disheveled hair, so I end up just turning my face towards him with an awkward smile. I really don't know how I'm going to explain myself, so I'll leave it to Harry to ask the questions.

"What are you–" Harry begins groggily, squinting at the brightness of the room and forcing both eyes to stay open. He appears to be understandably confused, but once he sees the Amazon logo on my screen, he seems to be in a state of disbelief.

Harry sighs, already knowing the answer to his question, "Are you shopping again?"

"Uh, yeah," I shrug, feeling the embarrassment of the situation beginning to take hold of me. But more than that, I realize that with Harry awake and aware of my terrible habit of stress-shopping, he might question me to the point where our little conversation happens right now.