About (Harry Styles)

58.

Songs:
Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
Say Anything - Ashley Nite
Pieces - Red

Elaine's POV

"I think it would be best if you went back home," Harry continues.

Back home? He wants me to go home all of a sudden?

He's not making any sense. One minute he tells me loves me, then the next he's telling me to leave. I don't understand him.  The more I think about it, the more I feel revolted that I'm feeling anger manifesting itself within me.  Furthermore, I've never considered that place home. Everything that has happened there, I can't even walk through the front door without feeling my shivering body and my sweaty palms.

"Was that your strategy all along then?" I question, my hands involuntarily balling up into tight fists at my sides. "Y-you build me up with these expectations and then you tear me down so easily like it's nothing." I feel my voice rising with each word, and I have to remind myself to calm down because Anne and Robin are just downstairs.

"What? No," he protests hurriedly. Before he continues, he pulls me inside the room by the arm and quietly shuts the door behind him. He, too, is obviously worried that his parents could overhear us. "What are you talking about?"

"You left me that day after we ...," I trail off, unsure of how to put it lightly. "Shared a bed and now you're leaving me again, right after you tell me that you love me? How do you expect me to react?"

"I expect you to say them back at the very least," he fires, his words cutting. "I mean, if they're honest feelings."

He doesn't further this argument, the intense silence boiling our words in the back of our minds.

"Okay, fine. But you can't tell me that you love me and then leave me hanging the next. Did you even mean it when you said that you love me?" I whisper the question as if afraid of his answer.

At the exact moment the final word escapes my lips, Harry grabs and pulls me forward, his arms embracing me so tightly, my lungs almost feel deprived of air. But I barely even notice the near suffocation. I'm so confused and so hurt that the absence of air doesn't even phase me.

"I do mean it!" He assures, his arms pressing tighter, desperate to convince me.

"Then why are you leaving?" I manage to speak, my words coming out shakier than I expected. My eyes are burned with prickling tears, pondering why every time something special has happened between us, it's ruined in only a matter of time.

He breaks our embrace but his hands remain gripped on the sides my arms as he bends down to my height, his eyes locked on mine. The ferocity in them a few moments ago have disappeared, replaced with a visible atonement.

"I'm right here, aren't I? I wasn't going to leave without telling you," he mutters under his breath. "I was on my way to tell you. Someone on my team just called and it's urgent. They said they need everyone to be there as soon as we can. I figured since you have to be home in a few days and you're probably fed up with the food here, I thought you might want to go home for the time being."

Harry does know me well. Too well, sometimes. I've forgotten that he's caught on to my irregular eating aversions since we've arrived in the UK. But he doesn't know everything. He doesn't know that I don't want to go back. He doesn't know what happened.

His hands gently cup each side of my face as the pads of his thumbs softly wipe away the recent streaks of tears that had managed to break through.

"I should have started with that, but I'm not thinking straight. So much is going on. I'm an idiot, aren't I?" He waits patiently for my answer. I nod slightly before his hands round back to the nape of my neck, bringing me towards him again and I let him, slightly embarrassed that he saw me crying over something so foolish. I rarely ever cry. I didn't even shed a tear when my best friend left the country. Not even when Harry left me at the airport with those words to linger in my mind which I so deserved.