CLOSER | H.S.

58.

A first-person narrator is never reliable.

Harry didn't always hate Angelina. In fact, he once came to like her in their younger days. The year was 2004 and they were both in college looking to feel something. Harry was in his early twenties, sad, horny and alone. Angelina, in her mid-twenties and forced to go through college by her father, so she really wanted to make the best of it.

Angelina as a young woman was hard not to look at. Her hair in a natural shade of blonde with beautiful highlights caught every woman's eyes and her voluptuous body caught every man's attention in the corridors. Harry could deny it as much as he wanted, but he was just another dude getting caught by the bombshell she was. Make no mistake, Harry had to spend some time trying to win her over, trying to prove her that he was worth her time. Angelina came from a very wealthy family, so the fact that Harry at a very young age had an international business under his name did not make her look twice at him, made him want her even more.

Angelina was a freak.

That's what Harry wants in his lovers, his mates, even his business partners. He enjoys crazy. He feels comfortable around it. Angelina became friends with guys from Harry's inner circle, so before they even had a first kiss she was introducing him to heavier drugs. Harry would never admit it to anyone, but it was her who gave him his first line of cocaine. She drove him crazy in each of their encounters, snorting cocaine for breakfast, pissing on fancy cars on the streets, having long conversations about Hegel or whoever they were reading that week. All of that before Harry even gathered the courage to kiss her. He lived a long crush and enjoyed it before he decided to do anything about it.

"Hey, Mrs. Holland Tunnel", he came up to Angelina at a bar near the campus where they were hanging out with friends.

"What's up, Little Tiger?" They teased each other.

"Can I kiss ya?" Harry's youthfulness and innocence showed through his words. They had this unspoken hierarchy between them, because Harry was younger and inexperienced in so many things that Angelina just wasn't. So this poor boy's legs were shaking as he came up to one of his good friends who also happened to be his crush for over a year, a monument of a woman who deserved nothing but respect and that's what Harry was trying to give her.

Angelina, on the other hand, had never thought of Harry that way. He was her freshman, younger, stupider, inexperienced, so she looked down on him for that reason and built walls that forbade her to think of Harry as a man. They had fun together and intellectual debates happened from time to time and that was about it. At the end of the day, she was the one showing him how things worked around there.

"What? No", her instinct spoke. Harry tried to laugh it off and apologize, leaving her alone for the rest of the evening.

But he had planted a seed of which he would reap for the rest of his life. From that day on, Angelina would pay more attention to him, notice how smart he actually was and how sexy his mannerisms were. He was obviously good looking, she knew that from day one, but that wasn't enough. The first time they spoke he was ridiculously drunk and stumbling in his words, so any chances of her being actually attracted to him were nulled.

She watched him kiss every girl he wanted and that didn't bother her before, he was just a dude hooking up with whoever would accept him. Well, somehow it began to sting. She caught herself craving that kind of attention from him, she wanted to be in those girls' shoes. So young Angelina did what young Angelina would do.

"Hey, Tiger", she called for Harry's attention — to which he responded by breaking a very heated kiss with a brunette he had met that night. "C'mere", she pulled him by the wrists away from the girl he was with and away from the party altogether.