Tokyo Drift || HS

26 || Time To Pretend

MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE my conversation with Harry, but I can still remember the look in his eyes like it was yesterday.

I wish I could say I have more pleasant memories to wash away the tarnish it left on our relationship, but our contact since then has been few and far between. Partially due to his schedule, and partially because of me.

He's come by a couple times while he was in New York, but whenever I see him, it feels strange. Like we can both sense the invisible wall between us built up by all the comments left unsaid.

But I don't know what to say anymore.

I don't know how to act.

So I don't say much, and I think he's taken the hint.

Instead of saying anything, we both just pretend.

We try to catch up. He'll tell me about how finishing the album is going. I'll tell him about my job. About Penny. About Sophie and Jalen. We'll talk about his mom and Gemma. Mitch. The rest of the band.

Anything besides us.

None of my friends seem to notice much of a difference, but I can feel it in my bones - can feel the imprint that he's left in my mind.

I knew this was going to happen. I could tell that about him from the beginning.

It seems ridiculous.

To still be impacted so much.

Our time together was not long - if you could even call it that.

Just several nights up until the early morning with each other. Days of silently enjoying one another's company. Periods of vulnerability.

But I wonder if that's what messed me up the most - the fact that I told Harry things that I would never tell anyone else. And that he viewed me as someone that was trustworthy in one of his most fragile times.

Some days I still think about it - think about that conversation where I called everything to a grinding halt, and wonder if it was a mistake. But then other days, when I hear things about him or see him in the press, I remember that this is for the best.

It wouldn't have actually worked out for either of us. We would have just grown apart and never seen each other, and it wouldn't have been worth it in the end.

All of it isn't made any less difficult due to the nature of my job. The pictures I see everywhere. The constant update on all things music, including the wild and luxurious life of the one and only Harry Styles.

He's absolutely everywhere.

Some days I let it affect me more than others. Like when he was in New York hosting the Met Gala.

I woke up in the morning to pictures of his face all over the office. Different co-workers writing up pieces on the event. A slew of updates about him hanging out at night with another one of his model ex-girlfriends, so close that I was less than twenty minutes away from the very building.

I went home that day feeling particularly jaded. So, I likewise spent the night wrapped in the cold arms of another man I met at the bar.

Or when the Rolling Stone article finally came out in September and I had to read about Camille - then I proceeded to spend the night out getting drunk with my friends until the early hours of the morning, so I would no longer remember the words that I saw.

I wonder if he knew I would have to proofread it.

Sections of the interview still stick out like demons warring in my thoughts. Paragraphs cemented as if they're screenshots upon my own mind.