Race

Chapter 16

Harry's POV

"Harry. Harry, wake up. HARRY."

My eyes opened to blinding sunlight. My head was pounding painfully, the throbbing ache in my temples only increasing when I slowly sat up. I was sprawled out on my bed, wearing black jeans but topless. Jake stood at the end of the bed, eyeing me carefully.

"What happened?" he asked.

For a moment, I wasn't sure why he was asking. What actually had happened? I looked around and took in the rather disturbing sight of my bedroom. The floor was littered with empty glass bottles. The whole room smelled like liquor and there was blood on the bedsheets. My right hand was wrapped in a towel and when I pulled it away, I saw that my knuckles were bruised and there were cuts all over it.

Jake cleared his throat. He looked at me as if he thought I had lost it, which, looking at my bedroom and adding the fact that I couldn't remember anything, I probably had.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, my voice coming out hoarse and deeper than usual, probably a side effect of all the alcohol I had drank.

"I used my spare key. I just came back home and I had a text from Vee, telling me to check if you were okay. She seemed worried," Jake explained, still watching me cautiously.

Vee. It all came back. I put my face into my hands, trying to hide my expression. Nobody could see how weak I was, how much she had hurt me.

"Her name isn't Vee," I mumbled into my hands.

"What?" Jake asked, sounding extremely dumbfounded.

I took a few more seconds to breathe in deeply, trying to pull myself together, to get my face blank, to rid it of every kind of emotion. "Her name isn't Vee," I repeated, this time without the hands in front of my face, staring straight at him to catch his reaction. For one second, one endless seeming second, I was scared that he had actually been in on it. That he had known it all along. That it all was a joke my friends had planned to hurt me. But then I saw the look of utter disbelief on his face and knew that he had had no idea. Just like me.

"What do you mean her name isn't Vee?" he asked, seemingly confused.

"Her name... Her name is Valerie. It was all lies."

Jake sat down next to me, obviously in shock. "Explain."

Slowly, leaving out a few details - like our fight in the car - I told him what had happened between me and Valerie. And Bryan for that matter. Throughout the whole story, he looked at me as if I was trying to tell him the earth wasn't a planet and that the sun didn't exist.

"But she told me she was single!" he exclaimed afterwards.

"Yeah, she also told me she liked me and she also kissed me," I said and then I lost it. I put my face into my hands again, feeling the tears well up, threatening to spill over. I didn't want to cry in front of him. I didn't want to cry in front of anyone for that matter. "Why doesn't she love me?" My voice was muffled but still clear enough for Jake to understand me. I could feel him looking at me from the side.

God, it was such a stupid question. Just because I loved her that didn't mean she had to love me. How many stories were there about unrequited love? Thousands. Loving someone didn't make them love you too. But still, the question had slipped out. And as it did, I realized that it was the question that had plagued my mind. Why didn't she love me? Why had she hurt me? What had I ever done to her? Why had she played me?

It was ridiculous. Every objective person would've thought I was the player. Even I would've thought I was the player in our relationship. Even though I had stopped sleeping around as soon as I had met her. I wasn't a player. Anymore. But she was one. Oh God, how she had played me. Pretending to be an innocent little girl, no boyfriend. She had let me beg and beg for her attention.