London Love ✔

how long?

a l l   i   w a n t   -
k o d a l i n e

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HARRY'S P.O.V.:

"You know about Adam?," Becca asked, the confusion on her face definitely visible. It would have been almost amusing if it was for other reasons.

"Your friend, Megan, reached out to Louis and at some point, she told him. But I'm not mad or anything. You're a free woman. It's just, after I heard about it, I was even more astonished that you showed up for the concert. I thought you had just written me off and moved on already."

God, I was such a bad liar. I was sure she would notice that I cared more than I dared to tell. That my 'I know about him, but do what you want, I don't care'-lie would be revealed by her any given second. But no, she just sighed.
"I could never move on that easily, Harry. You had too big of an influence on me. Yes, I met up with Adam. Once. But I let him off the hook after that. It didn't feel right."

Her words made a rush of relief woosh through my bones. I didn't know what I would have done if she had told me right now that she had feelings for that Adam. It would have probably driven me crazy.

"And what exactly does that mean?," I tried to get more out of her.
"I don't know... It just didn't feel right, like I said."

At that moment it hit me. The way she absent-mindedly braided a strand of her hair and bit her lip and how her eyes wandered through the shop, restless, looking for something to hold on to that was not my face.
"Being with him doesn't feel the way it does when you're with me, right? It doesn't give you that same excited feeling in your stomach. When he touches you, your skin doesn't tingle the way it does when I touch you. Am I right?"

She flinched and stopped braiding her hair. It just fell loosely over her shoulder and I resisted the urge to touch it. It looked so soft and if I was any closer I would have been able to smell the flowery scent of her shampoo.

"That's not the point, Harry," she said, her voice slightly hoarse. "We're drifting off."
I couldn't help but grin a little. Her words were a pure confirmation of my guesses.

"Are we? I think we're getting closer with every second."
The way she frustratedly let out a breath after my words made my heart jump a little. It was still a mystery to me how such small things about her could make me feel in such an intense way. 

"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Oh, don't play the fool, Becca. You know exactly what I want to hear. And you know exactly what you feel, don't you? You're just too afraid. Being with me would mean you would have to step out of your comfort zone every day anew. And by saying this I don't mean to make you angry. Not at all. I just want you to realize that I'm right, as cocky as that may sound. Becca, we could have a perfectly normal life. You just have to have the courage to take the first step."

She didn't answer for quite a while, only had her eyes closed and breathed heavily. I could see that her hands were shaking a bit and that she was pale.
"Becca, are you okay?"

When she opened her eyes to look at me, after what felt like hours, I saw that there were tears steeped in them.
I couldn't resist the urge to lean over the table and place my hand on her cheek.
It didn't help, though. It only caused one of the tears to fall. And then another one. And another one. I tried to wipe them away with my thumb, but they were just too many.

"I'm sorry. I didn't - I didn't mean to make you cry. Please, stop, I can't stand to see you cry," I whispered to her, but it did nothing. She just cried in absolute silence for the next five minutes. Then she took a deep breath and looked at me.

"Harry, I have to go. I said everything I wanted to say. And I listened to everything you had to say, which doesn't make things easier on me. I need time. God, I don't know how often I said this already, but I need time. This could be a major step for me and... And... Hell, I don't know. Maybe you're right and I'm just afraid. But that doesn't change the fact I want... that I still need time."

With these words, she grabbed her purse from the seat next to her and stood up.
I stood up as well, following her outside in silence. When she turned to walk, I grabbed her arm and forced her to look at me once again.

"How long?"
This question I asked her, knowing I probably wouldn't want to hear the answer. The answer that crashed my soul as soon as I heard her utter it.

"Don't wait for me, Harry."

When she turned to walk away this time, I let her go.