How I Heal

#16

"You ever realize how Harry looks at you?"

My attention was caught at the sudden words, the strange combination sounding unnatural.

"Harry doesn't look at me," I huffed tiredly. "He doesn't even like when I stare at him."

"You ever wondered why he doesn't like it?" Henry piped up, giving me a knowing look.

It had only been a day since Harry and I had officially called whatever we had going on quits, but I was officially over this conversation.

My eyebrows dipped as I wondered what in the world my best friend was getting at.

"No. Why would I-"

"He probably doesn't want you to notice him."

I sighed, still not comprehending anything, as he rolled his eyes at me.

"C'mon Vi. Don't be so damn dim. Every time Harry looks at you, he does it like he's seeing you for the first time all over again. You want to know why he probably doesn't want you to stare? Because he knows he'll be caught staring. He's looking at you like he doesn't know how to do anything but look at you, and honestly, I've never seen anything like it."

I shook my head in blatant disbelief. "No Henry. You're wrong. If he looks at me like he never wants to lose me, why does he continuously try to push me away then? Huh? That doesn't make any sense."

"Oh cmon Violet, He's obviously scared," he deadpanned. "He's probably never met anyone that actually has good intentions so he's suspicious about you being in his life. You once told Henrietta and I that he always thinks people will walk out on him. It's obviously something he's fed himself to the point where his mind is conditioned to think that way."

I turned my gaze away from Henry knowing that everything that came out of his mouth made way too much sense to dispute.

"I'm honestly tired too," he quipped. "You always say he's hard to understand, but I'm pretty sure you have him more figured out than you let on."

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I sat under the tree, tiny snowflakes falling from the sky and landing on my green coat.

It was a prettier day than usual, but I couldn't help the gloomy mood that cast over my being like a spell.

Outside may have been an ice
Wonderland, a blanket of white cotton candy and soft dreams, but inside my mind felt like a thunderstorm.

Conflicted was an understatement.

I was downright lost, confused and in shambles.

I didn't know what the right move was, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to find out.

I looked down at the snow covered ground, using the bottom of my sneakers to pat down the weird lines that others made when they ran in the snow.

Once it was relatively even, I reached into my pocket with the intention to grab my iphone but felt the length of two cigarette sticks, instead.

My fingers reclined at the unexpected touch, but in no time I took a deep breath and drew them from my pocket.

The first cigarette was the one that Harry had given me yesterday when he just dropped it on my desk without a care in the world.

The second cigarette was the one he gave me the day of our fight.

I had obviously been so busy, that I forgot to throw them out.

I couldn't help but think of what a coincident is was that I would find now, at a time like this, when my entire mind was just a mess of what if's and broken promises.

I looked at both sticks, playing with the cigarettes, before spinning it between my fingertips.

Less than a second later, something caught my eye.

I brought it closer to my face, just now realizing that there was ink on it, definitely smudged but not unreadable.

Harry's number.

It wasn't something that I was looking for before so it wasn't surprising that I only just realized it, it was more surprising that it was written there in large writing.

It was something he purposely intended for me to see.

I had to find him.

.

"Why are you pushing me away?" I remarked, the minute I walked up to him.

I found him exiting the school's gate. He was probably doing his usual routine of walking home periodically, and I used that information to my advantage.

Harry looked away from me with a hurt expression, his eyes meeting the ground, but never my own, as he whispered, "C'mon Violet. Please don't do this."

"No, I'm going to do this," I choked out. "Do you think you just get to take my heart and do whatever the hell you want with it? Is that it?"

"Violet-"

"Because it's never going to work like that Harry! I know you're scared of letting me in. I know you think I'm going to hurt you, because you're so used to it. But you need to comprehend that the last thing-"

"Hold on-"

"I would do,
Is hurt you-"

"Violet," he snapped, his hands going up to his hair. "You think I like being this way?! You think I like looking at you every single fucking day and never being able to hold you the way I want?! Do you know how fucking sick it makes me when I think of you with somebody else? Somebody better? Somebody less.....

He took a shaky breath. "Somebody less sick."

I halted, my thoughts ceasing.

"Is that what this is about?" I cautiously whispered. "You don't seriously think that, do you? Harry, I said it once and I'll say it again, I'm going to try with you. We can make it work."

"How do I know that huh," he choked out, his voice wavering like he was trying to hold back every possible emotion. "It's temporary. We're temporary. Everything always is."

I held his hands, bringing myself closer to him as I looked into his eyes.

"Stop worrying about something that will never happen," I told him earnestly.

"Yeah well, what happens when I'm gone," was his simple reply.

"That's not gonna happen either, Harry," I squeezed his shoulders, looking him in the eyes meaningfully. "What you put in is what you'll get it out. You have to feed yourself positive thoughts. You have to take this one day at a time."

"I can't tell the last time I had a positive thought," he voiced. He was unraveling now. He seemed to have broken every wall in the span of a few minutes. "My mind has felt like the darkest place I've ever been in. I want to tell myself that it's possible. That I'll survive and I'll be around and I'll get to come to school, or college, or life everyday and you'll be here with brown highlights, and your OCD and your considerate nature, ready to hold me with open arms."

He paused, swallowing.

"But then reality reminds me that only good guys get happy endings. And I'm anything but."

I could feel the emotion in everything that he was saying and it was weighing heavily on my thoughts.

I tried to say something, but I also felt like there was nothing to say that he hasn't already heard twice.

"It's okay Violet," he simply said, his eyes a slight tint of red. "You don't need some deadweight like me hanging around."

He shrugged my hands off of his own, before he took a step back and turned in the opposite direction.

What good is a heart-

If every time I wore mine on a sleeve,

Harry would take it and walk away with it.