Scrabble | Harry Styles

EPILOGUE

I lift my head from my pillow, a shrill cry filling my ears and breaking me from my slumber. My chest initially clouds with panic, before it settles; an exhausted sigh leaving my lips.

"I can go," a tired murmur sounds from beside me, and I shake my head despite being aware that the darkness of my bedroom would conceal the movement.

"I'm already up," I return, allowing my palm to curl gently over the front of his shoulder and squeeze. His eyes remain shut, his lips puckering slightly in an invitation for me to meet them. Instead, I draw my thumb over the pair of them in a silent conclusion to the already brief interaction, lifting my warm covers and slipping out onto the carpeted floor. My feet sink into the surface, and I'm desperate to crawl back to sleep, but instead, I draw onwards. The cry sounds again; this time louder.

I slip out of the bedroom door, and cover the short distance across the hallway into the room parallel to my own, the cry growing louder yet again. I flick on the lamp directly inside of the doorway; the warm, yellow light filling the room just enough to light my way ahead of me, and I pout my lips.

"Are you ever going to let me sleep?" I ask gently and rhetorically, but my slight irritation is erased as soon as I lay eyes on the crib in front of me. I lift my child in my arms. "Five nights in a row, love. You're doing anything but keeping me young."

I draw the pad of my finger over the small, pristine face of my daughter before I curl my finger around the strap of my nightgown, slipping it beneath my shoulder in order to feed her. I glance at the clock mounted upon the nursery wall, reading the time as only half-past eleven. I had passed out at barely nine o'clock. I yawn.

The room is finally silent as she begins to drink, and I appreciate it for a moment; I revel in it. I haven't felt silence in a long time.

I drop my shoulders, realising they were tensed up to my ears, and I exhale. I'm happy. I am, or at least I feel that to be true. I have everything I ever wanted. I have a husband; we have a newborn. She looks like him, too - she earned his most beautiful features; his chocolate brown eyes, his blonde-ish hair and his skin, far more tanned than my own. She's far more beautiful than I am, or ever was.

I bite my lip as the seconds pass, lost in thought. The silence then becomes too much. Though I often yearn for it, now it's in my possession, it feels wrong. Loud.

"Are you planning on sleeping?" I glance down at her, and the glint in her eyes answers my question with ease. I sigh, pressing a kiss to her forehead before pulling the strap of my nightgown back to its original place and heading towards the stairs. I make my way down them and into the kitchen, flicking the light on to illuminate my path.

I cuddle my daughter to my chest, shifting a few things about on the kitchen table and pressing the occasional kiss to her temple before I take a seat on one of the chairs in place.

An empty wine glass is in front of me, left by accident from dinner only a matter of hours ago. Two years ago it would have been stained with a lipstick mark from my mouth; I didn't have time for lipstick anymore. When I glanced in the mirror I knew I looked unkempt; untidy. I was a first-time mother; a sleepless one, who didn't have time for face powder or eyelash curlers anymore. I knew Daniel looked the same; his hair often dishevelled from our sleepless nights, eyes darkening with tired circles, but I still loved him anyway. He still looked gorgeous to me, and he would often whisper in my ear about how beautiful I looked, despite my own hesitations to believe so anymore.

I love him. I truly do. He is one of two relationships I've ever had. I met him in 1993, in London. He was made for a big city, and I loved that. I was maybe twenty-one or twenty-two years old at the time, and I wasn't looking for anything. I didn't dare to. But he approached me in a pub one night, and I liked his smile. The rest was history.