How Cliche (Narry Storan)

How Cliche (Narry Storan) END

I think depression, besides jealousy, is the worst thing anyone can feel. I wanted to believe that without Harry, I was better than ever.

Moping around by myself and doing nothing, I was at my best. It didn't matter that I missed him and longed to talk to him with every fiber of my being. On the outside, I was doing way better. Better than Chelsea with her new tennis-team-perfectly-constructed-perfectly-perfect-boyfriend, I liked to think.

But then I stopped thinking that. I couldn't lie to myself anymore. It suddenly hit me that I had never told a bigger lie than "Nothing's wrong." The house was suffocating me. My bedroom itself was even worse. Songs I wrote for Harry hung from the walls and pictures of us were stuffed in random books as page markers and some were taped to the backs of notebooks where our notes of boredom during class had been written.

So I opted for the playground. The sky was threatening rain with dark grey clouds and that hazy kind of light the sun gives off when it's lost the battle against the sky. I stood behind the gate for a long time, staring out at nothing. I found myself doing that a lot lately, but I suppose it was better for me to have my mind completely blank than to mourn over the fact that I was completely alone.

Finally, I entered and sat on a swing to once again stare at nothing.

My gaze may have been blank, but my mind sure wasn't. A roll of memories played back in my mind like a movie while I watched the jungle gym stay completely still like good inanimate objects are supposed to. And suddenly, I was seeing Harry and I when we were five and our parents had taken us to the playground. We were on the jungle gym and Harry had accidentally pushed me off. My knees got scraped, but that was all. Harry cried harder than I did because he felt so bad. I smiled slightly at the memory.

I don't know how long I sat there before I felt I wasn't alone. As if reading my mind, Harry was walking towards me with his head down and his hands shoved his pockets. And although my heart jumped to my throat and I wanted to run and hug him, I stayed sitting and staring out at nothing once more. With every footstep I heard that he took that crunched the mulch beneath his feet, my heart beat a little faster. And soon, he was sitting on the swing beside mine with a small sigh, the old swing set creaking with the newly added weight of another body.

"Am I supposed to say something to you?" Harry finally asked after we had been sitting there for a few agonizing minutes of silence with the exception of the squeak of the swings.

I shrugged, still avoiding looking at him. "If you want," I answered flatly, looking instead at the slide, surprised at how I continued to sound calm in situations such as this. I wondered then how many kids had went down that slide, pretending they were pirates saving their gold at the bottom of the sea like Harry and I used to or acting out any other farfetched fantasy we had. The only noise came from the consistent slight creaking of the swings as we moved back and forth. Finally, Harry sighed.

"I've been thinking, Niall," he started.

"Gee, what a surprise," I murmured.

He cleared his throat and ignored my comment which was so like him. "And you were right. Chelsea...I...we-we weren't exactly your everyday couple, I know that now. And, well, I think I may have been caught up in the fact that...caught up in the satisfaction from gaining something I had worked hard for. I never really got to know her. It was superficial. But what I did learn, though, was that she hates pinball. Can you believe it? I wasted fifty cents on her-not to mention precious time that could've been spent beating you and having electronic bikers yell at me-just to find out she doesn't like the game. And of course, I couldn't stay with someone like that."

I laughed a little, trying to stay calm. I was ready for a thousand I told you so's to be spilling out of my mouth but what came instead was completely different. "I wanted to be her, Harry," I said quietly after another moment of silence.

"What?" he asked.

"I wanted to be in her place. I've always wanted to be in her place."

"You wanted to be a shallow, hated ex-girlfriend?" he inquired, cocking his head at me.

I managed another chuckle and shook my head. My tongue would have said it was easier than I thought but my heart disagreed. "You know what I mean."

Then he smiled softly and nodded. "Yeah, I do. And I wish you would've told me that before I realized I liked you better than I liked her."

Normally, I would've thought he meant he liked me better as a friend than he liked her as a friend. But this wasn't normally. I had to bite back the biggest grin I think I've ever been graced with. My voice was slightly shaky when I said, "And, uh, about this..." Harry's smile turned to a frown, like he was apprehensive of what I was going to say. I wanted to tell him that it was nothing bad, that I had been feeling this way for a long time but never had the guts to say it...but I couldn't do it point blank. We weren't like the cliché Colin Farrell love stories that Chelsea worshiped. No, we made our own clichés. I let the grin go so he knew it was nothing too horrible. "I believe you owe me fifty cents."

He grinned as well and I'm sure he would have breathed a sigh of relief if he didn't say incredulously, "What? I do not. That fifty cents was mine, thank you very much."

I shrugged and pulled his swing with mine so we were synchronized when we swung back and forth, the swings now warmed up to our bodies being there and no longer made that high pitched squeaking sound reminiscent of Chelsea's fake giggles. "Yeah, but I had to deal with her."

Harry chuckled. Then he gasped and said, "Oh, I almost forgot..." He dragged his feet through the mulch underneath us until his swing stopped, then he stood up and moved in front of me, getting on one knee. I raised my eyebrows when he took my hand in one of his and reached in his pocket with the other. "Happy belated birthday, Niall," he said, pulling out a flimsy plastic ring.

The green plastic jewel was held in place by gold plastic notches. I smiled and allowed him to slide it on my pinky finger because that's the only finger that would fit. I held it out in front of me and watched a slight ray of sunshine that peeked its way through the grey clouds glint off the plastic. "It's beautiful," I told him. And my heart soared at the pleased smile he gave. "But it's got to be only twenty-five cents. You still have at least $4.75 to spend on me, you know."

Harry nodded and stood up again. He held out a hand to help me up but when I was standing, he didn't let go. "That's why," he explained as we began walking, "I'm taking you to the diner for a slice of birthday pie."

I pushed on the gate to let us out of the playground. "But I don't like pie," I told him even though he already knew that. One of the duties of being a best friend: knowing and remembering that said best friend does not like pie even after you've been through more than your fair share of heartbreaks.

He sighed in a faux-aggravated way. "Fine, fine. Since you're the birthday boy...how about...nine games of pinball? Loser has to carry winner home."

"We've got all day," I agreed.

Harry grinned at me. "Did you hear they rehired Jerry?"

For the first time in awhile, I gave him a sincere grin back. And it wasn't just because my favorite cook was back. "Oh, really? They're much better off without that guy from the city, anyway. It's just not the same."

He squeezed my hand and we walked the rest of the way to the diner, knowing that maybe clichés aren't so terrible after all.