in time // h.s.

xxix. harry

Twenty-four years old...

I'd never been very spontaneous when it came to love. I'd also never been able to show myself off as much of a romantic either. I'd always had too many feelings that I'd had to lock away, to hide, to avoid indulging in or risk exposing a one-sided love. What I loved about being with Alex was that I could feel something and declare it straight away. I didn't have to think it through carefully or hold anything back, I'd feel it and I could say it. It was that easy. Unfortunately, as I realized too late, it led me to make big gestures, like proposing, before I'd had a chance to think it through properly.

It took me a few weeks to realize I'd made a terrible mistake by asking Alex to marry me. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became of its error.

There was no doubting that Alex was a wonderful woman. She came along and unknowingly saved my heart from utter torment. She gave me hope and made my world a little brighter each day she was in it. But I couldn't marry her. The heart she'd helped to mend wouldn't let me, no matter how much I tried to convince it otherwise.

It might have taken days for me to regret, but sadly, it took me six months to rectify. We had by that point already booked the church for the following summer, a little place in Essex near where she grew up, and Alex was on the verge of going out with her mum and best friend to find her wedding dress. It was at that point I decided I couldn't have her trying on those gowns knowing that I was doubtful about the whole thing and that, irrevocably, we weren't going to be getting married. There was no way I could ruin that special moment for her. I wanted her to be able to enjoy it one day in the future, when she did eventually marry someone who deserved her. Not someone who'd used her as some diversion tactic to get over his own hankering existence.

She was sitting on the sofa, looking through the bridal magazines that had littered our flat for the last six months, when I broke the news to her. I hovered in front of her for a few moments before the words found their way, from the loop they'd been circling in my head, out of my mouth.

"I don't want to get married," I said.

There was no way I could dress the issue up, or find an easier way to say it. I didn't want to be one of those guys who find faults in their relationships by blaming her for things she hadn't done as I pushed her away, or picking pointless fights in the hope that she would call the whole thing off. I knew Alex was perfect, and I'd meant it every time I told her I loved her, but that didn't change the fact that I didn't want to marry her. I couldn't marry her.

She froze.

She sat there, staring at the magazine as though she was trapped in its world of pretty dresses, blossoming flowers and a forever love, the world I'd promised her months before, but was snatching away from her so abruptly.

"Did you hear me?" It was a stupid question. I knew she'd heard. I just wanted to fill the silence, to get the agonizing moment over with, to stop it from lingering any longer than necessary. "I don't want to get married."

A wave of heat worked its way up my back and to my cheeks, burning them as I waited for her to react.

"What do you mean?" she asked quietly, her eyes still on the page in front of her.

"What I said," I swallowed hard, forcing myself to stay strong. "I don't want to get married."

"Do you not like the church?" she asked feebly, her voice thin and panicked. "Because we can change that. Or if it's the cost, we can invite fewer people. I don't mind doing that. It doesn't have to be anything big, as long as it's you and m -"

"It's nothing to do with any of that," I said firmly and quickly, stopping her from coming up with more petty reasons for my sudden change of heart. Hating myself, I repeated the words, as though she hadn't heard it enough times already. "I just don't want to get married."