The short walk to my back door has this sinking loneliness to it, a feeling I can’t quite comprehend. I’ve been alone a lot, especially in the past months without Grandma around, but I’ve never felt quite the same loss as I do when I leave Harry. It doesn’t correlate to the stricken grief I feel in the face of death, but it’s just as profound.

Because I’ve felt solitude before, when I’d rather be alone than face anyone. I almost wish I could feel it now, but I can’t. I don’t want to be sad by myself anymore.

The hardened, callous armour I constructed over my vulnerable heart through the years has begun to crack. All from one event with Harry Styles—he has me questioning my decision to suffer alone. And I don’t even know him.

I know I should be right and I should take comfort in the fact that this is the right thing to do. I shouldn’t be feeling any of this. The fissure in my mask, however brief, causes more pain than all the other times I’ve been scared or upset or lost control. This is all new and all raw.

Only when I close the door and lean back against it do I feel my ever fluctuating heart, as if my own body can’t cope with the distance I’ve put between myself and Harry.

Leaning against the kitchen counter beside the door for support, I take a gasping breath and cry. I know I have to calm down before I faint from the stress and the heartache, it’s just so hard. All the breathing exercises I learned after I was diagnosed are forgotten, and now all I can focus on is the panic of my heart’s relentless tremble.

Outside I hear my car door slam shut and then several heated, muffled curses. I try to calm down, but the palpitations only get worse when not thirty seconds later I hear Harry’s heavy fist connect with my front door. Just like this morning. Only this time it sounds as if he’s beating on the thing, and I’m on the verge of passing out all the way back in the kitchen. On the other side of the house.

“I’m not leaving, Jules.” Even back here I can hear him loud and clear. I can’t quite believe he’s still here, that he’s still trying. It’s good he’s angry. He should be for what I put him through today, the emotional rollercoaster.

I can’t think about how much of a pathetic mess I am because as soon as I hear him, my ears begin to ring and black spots appear at the edges of my vision, a sure sign that I’ll faint soon. It’s only now at perhaps the worst time possible I remember with a frightened jolt that I haven’t taken my medication in what—almost a week now? If I do faint, I might as well call myself dead.

Harry’s still here and I realize seeing him is my only hope. He still pounds on my front door, shouting every few seconds, but I can’t make sense of what he’s saying. I imagine he’s calling me out for being such a coward. I launch my shuddering torso from the counter and scramble through the hallway toward the door, suddenly afraid Harry will give up on me like everyone else who’s ever left me.

I don’t even remember unlocking the deadbolt and the chain, but I must, because Harry bursts through it. He probably had his hand twisted on the knob the whole time. He crashes into me, and I grip onto his arms to steady myself, then so far out of it I can’t stand on my own. It all happens in maybe two or three seconds, but things for me seem to occur in a dazed slow motion. When he figures out I can’t keep myself upright he tightens his hold around my waist and hoists me up, nearly holding me off the ground with his strength.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he curses again, assuming he hurt me when he barrelled through the door. None of this is his fault, not even what happened at the door. I realize that at the same time my heart constricts painfully and I lean into him with a stifled gasp.

“Jules?” Harry calls, concerned. I can hardly hear him, though he’s probably caught on that there’s something else going on. Something wrong.

I’m sure now that I was too late; that there’s no way I can come out of this spell. Not this time when I’m so far gone. When I really allow myself to lean into him, though, and I listen to his steady, strong heart beat while my eyes remained closed…

It calms me.

In a reassuring way that begins to drown my panic and causes my chest to release its unforgiving tension. “Harry,” I breathe, scared when my head starts to spin. Hands still secure around my waist, Harry maneuvers us both into the living room and we collapse into a tangle on the sofa.

“Julia,” Harry says loudly, and he’s panicked now too. When I don’t respond, he gives my shoulder a firm shake and repeats my name. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong? Do you need an ambulance?”

“No,” I waver. The last thing I need is the added stress of medical professionals picking me apart over my own stupidity. And then Harry would find out. “I just need a minute. Please.”

I dare to open my eyes and look up at him, pleading. He’s half on top of me, his torso flush against my chest, while we sit in an odd position curled together on the couch. I can’t even think about the intimacy of such a position. I realize thankfully, fortunately, everything pauses in motion when I focus only on his green depths. Relief washes through me and my rattled nerves begin to settle when he relaxes and pulls my still shaking form closer.

I can’t think about how tight I must be holding onto his jacket—I’m probably damaging the leather, or how close we are. I can’t because I’m stuck on only one fact.

He calms me.

So I listen to his deep breathing, the beautiful sound of his healthy heart, and I try my breathing exercises. His hand travels from around my waist to underneath my coat, onto the fabric of my t-shirt, and his fingertips dance up and down my spine in the most soothing of ways.

“Everything’s fine,” he murmurs, chest vibrating as he speaks. I nod through closed eyes still, caught up in him. He surrounds me—his masculine smell of woods and spice, the edges of his messy curls tickling my forehead as I lay practically on top of him, his hand underneath my coat.

It takes minutes of this before my heart’s quivers become less frequent until they stop all together. After they do, I still lean against his chest, having never felt quite so relaxed and at ease with another person. When we will inevitably part, I will realize what a mistake it had been for me to let him inside. On top of that, I can’t help but to recognize Harry is the only person to pull me back from that close of a call.

Sure, I think of all these things and I scare myself—but I’m not scared of Harry, of being here with him. I’m not a nervous or stuttering mess, and I know this side of me won’t last long, so I revel in his touch for as long as I can.

“Are you better now?” Harry asks after several more minutes pass. He must be getting bored with this, although I’ve been caught up in how our breathing is perfectly synchronized, and how his heart calms mine. I could fall asleep on him, which is a feat in itself.

Realization stuns me—of what I’ve just done, what I’m doing. Here I am cuddled up on the sofa with some guy… a guy I barely know. His hand is still underneath my jacket and I can feel it more than ever, hot as a branding iron, as he gently moves it up and down my back. He stops the soothing movement when I stiffen, and there’s no going back now. The moment’s over.

“Jules?” He questions, still deep and rough and hypnotic.

In a rush of embarrassment I try to push myself up and off of him, humiliated that I’d pretty much pushed myself on him when he got through the door. Well, when he tumbled into me. But still.

His hand, still on my back, forces me to remain in place. “Tell me you’re alright,” he demands. “What was that? A panic attack?”

Lost, I look up at him pleadingly. I don’t want to leave the warmth of his embrace, but I feel as if I need space or I might melt down again. “I…”

I’m so close to spilling my heart disorder to him, but then I realize how much I secretly love the feel of his hand, both comforting and hot, holding onto me. He calms me… how can I possibly let go of that? How can I consciously ruin it?

Because I know without doubt no one in their right mind would ever stay with me. Not when I’m so broken, both physically and emotionally.

“Yes,” I agree, blinking hazily while I look up to him, still a little out of sorts. I wouldn’t be the same for the rest of the day. Already I feel guilty as hell for lying so outright, but I reason with myself that even though I’ve shown him several crushing aspects of my life, he’s still a total stranger. He searches my eyes, the green of his iris darker in dim light of the living room, and I can tell he doesn’t quite believe me. “Sort of.”

It isn’t something I just lay out for every random person who’s interested—not that there have been many.

Harry is far from random, I realize, but I’m all of the sudden afraid he’ll look at me different, that he’ll think I’m weak. I can’t have that, not when I’ve come so far and I’m so close to proving to myself that I can succeed in life. I can’t. Not when I can’t even force the words out if I wanted to.

“Something like that.” Guilt overrides my thoughts and I throw that out there, as if it would make me feel better about lying to him.

Suck it up. He’s still holding you. Calm down before you make it weird.

“Did I scare you?” Harry poses the question hot and quietly in my ear with guilt. This is the first time I’ve ever heard or seen an ounce of hesitance in him, and I recall with a start Harry pounding on the front door. Yelling. Angry. But I’d been so out of it, I hardly took notice.

“No, no,” I say quickly. He hadn’t scared me, though he might have had I been in my right mind. With a little effort I push myself away from him, nervous and awkward while I sit hunched forward on the edge of the sofa. I feel cold at the loss of contact, and for a second I’m afraid I’ll go back into the heart palpitations if I’m not close to him. “Sorry I freaked out on you.”

How embarrassing. I refuse to even think about it, because I’m sure it would only bring on another bout of panic.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s my fault,” he says, still looking at me even though I can’t look at him. There’s this sort of wonder in the way he looks at me, as if he’s never met anyone quite like me before. Lord knows he hasn’t—he’s probably never had a girl tackle him into a stranglehold as soon as he gets through the door. My face heats even further just recalling my reckless actions, and Harry’s intense focus on my form only adds to my mortification.

“Still—I shouldn’t have—at the door,” I stutter out, all feelings of calm vanished.

His lips quirk up into his signature smirk. “Trust me, I don’t mind.”

He must be trying to kill me. He must. I release a small ruffled laugh—I can’t believe through all the intensity of this moment he has such nerve. Since I can’t find it in me to tell him the truth and why I really stumbled into his arms, I have no way to ease my guilt. It continues to fester, low in my chest.

“It’s not going to make me leave,” he says with abrupt seriousness. Damn, I almost forgot why he’s here in the first place. “All of that, what you showed me? It won’t make me leave.”

He waits for some form of response. Instead, I sigh in defeat and lean forward, resting my elbows on my thighs while I hold my head in my hands. Reality swims around me now, shocking like the chilly wintry water of Lake Michigan. I can’t cry in front of him. Not again.

“Julia,” he says, and I know he wants me to look at him. He buckles forward and pulls one of my hands from my face like he did at the nursing home, the action gentle. This is another gaping difference from how I witnessed him when I left him in the car. All the other times I saw him, he was so composed. Today he cursed and yelled and nearly beat down my door.

I realize now that perhaps there’s more to Harry than meets the eye, too, like me. Except I’m sure whatever he keeps hidden is no more than a slight anger management problem and not a potentially life threatening heart disorder. Under his calm, collected businessman exterior there’s something much wilder. It doesn’t even scare me, however, not when I have so many secrets of my own to keep. Yes, they’re definitely much worse than his possible anger issue.

“You should go,” I decide finally, staring at his hand on top of mine where he’d left it so carelessly. Does he even know what he does to me—how much I would’ve really loved to have gone out with him last night like he offered?

If things were easier. If I was normal.

The words felt sour before they even left my mouth, but I steel myself and take my hand from underneath his, bringing it to my lap and clasping it together with my other hand nervously.

To my astonishment, he waves me off and acts as if I didn’t just tell him to leave.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” A trill runs through me at the term of endearment—it sounds entirely too good on his lips, aimed at me. “You’re not going to scare me away by throwing those things in my face.”

Oh, god. He knows about Caleb and he knows about Grandma, and now he thinks he scared me into having a panic attack. In his eyes I must be a basket case.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for today.” I can’t stop apologizing. “You really need to leave. I’m sorry.”

When he doesn’t move or give any indication to bending to my will, I throw my hands up in exasperation. Harry watches in amusement when I stand in a huff. So he thinks this is funny. What part of I’m too fucked up he understand? I cross my arms and settle on his lithe form, still stretched deliciously on my sofa, with a glare. “Go home, Harry.”

“No,” he challenges, bold and sure of himself. It’s as if he’s made his mind up and there’s no reasoning with him. It frustrates me to no end, simply because my problems don’t make him queasy and they should.

“No one has to deal those kinds of things one their own, Jules, and they shouldn’t. You’ll only end up killing yourself by trying that.”

“I’ve done just fine all my life,” I snap, but I want to say since Dad.

“Why are you so set on suffering alone?” The intensity returns, sparking the jade in his eyes to light. I take a subconscious step back when he leans forward to peer up at me, expectant of my reply.

“It’s easier this way,” I say, numb, and I don’t understand why he wants to get into this mess. Surely he doesn’t want to know what’s gone wrong inside my head from all the grief—he doesn’t want to know all the coping mechanisms I’ve developed and adhere to.

“What I saw today didn’t look easy. Do you know what I saw, sweetheart?” He asks, soft, though his eyes portray just how strongly he feels.

I keep my arms crossed protectively over my chest and don’t answer him, turning away. But just as I knew he would, he continues anyway. “I saw a broken girl today. I saw a girl desperate for someone’s understanding, for comfort. And when I offered it to you, you shut down. I don’t know why, but I do know that no one truly wants to live life so alone.”

“Stop,” I say, but it doesn’t sound forceful and confident like I want to. Like him. It comes out as a plead.

Of course he doesn’t listen. Harry’s right, he knows he is, and he won’t let it go. “I know you have your friend. Do you show her the things you showed me today? Do you tell her about them? Have you ever let your guard down and cried to her like you did with me today?”

From the sound of his voice, gravelly and rough, I can tell he’s growing frustrated with me again. When I turn back around to face him while shielding my stinging eyes, surely ringed red and puffy, I’m shocked to find him standing with perhaps a foot of distance between us.

When I catch sight of my journal in his right hand, thumb hooked between the cover and the start of its pages—right where my list is… I feel the blood drain from my face as panic is quick to set in.

If he looks at it… well, he’ll think of me with a whole new understanding of ‘pathetic’.

Held limply in his hand, it’s as if Harry doesn’t realize he even picked it up—and I remember belatedly that I left it on the couch all those days ago when I stopped taking my pills. He must’ve sat on it, and then moved it from underneath him at some point when I was all over him.

“You think I don’t have problems, Jules? I do. The difference is I don’t hide them. You have to let someone in, sometime.”

Throughout his speech his words only gain in fervor, but I can’t pry my eyes from the journal still in his hand. It’s painfully obvious, and he catches on when he follows my line of sight, then he looks back to me with a subtle smirk.

I make a mad grab to pluck it from his grasp, launching forward in a clumsy action while dodging the coffee table. His reflexes are far superior to mine, however, and he makes literally steps backward and over the coffee table to avoid me. He snatches the book back and holds it high, looking down at me with a roguish twinkle in his olive eyes.

“Is this your journal?” He asks quietly, having probably noticed the delicate cursive ‘J’ embroidered on the cover. My face burns, and he only backs away while holding it higher, far out of my reach. It’s as if he enjoys seeing me flustered out of my own mind, and my blood boils at the thought.

“Don’t be a jerk,” I snap, wondering how productive it would be if I try to tackle him. “Give it back. Now.”

“So it is,” he guesses. My heart begins to leap when he brings it closer, as if to open it. “Is this the only place you have to vent? To record your true feelings?”

“Put it down!” I shout, overwrought. No one has ever read my journal, and the idea of Harry—a near total stranger—invading my privacy, just about sends me into a whole new set of convulsions. I jump for it again, but Harry has no trouble keeping it out of my reach. My eyes burn with withheld tears.

“If I read your journal, Julia, I wouldn’t pass judgement on you.” Despite his laughing, dimpled smirk, I can tell that he’s sincere.

It doesn’t make me feel better. Just because he says one thing doesn’t mean he will or will not. He doesn’t have the right in the first place, and I begin to grow even angrier with him. Who does he think he is? What if I barged into his house and started toying with his personal possessions? I bet he wouldn’t like it very much, either.

Still, it’s not even the entries that worry me too much. They do, sure. About enough to warrant a few heart palpitations, but what’s worst of all is the list.

The list. Dammit, the list.

“Harry,” I demand his attention, but he still seems so focused on the journal even though he hasn’t opened it yet—thankfully. He purses his lips and looks at me, eyebrows raised when he hears my threatening tone. I bet he thinks this is all so funny. I regret ever letting him inside—surely fainting and possibly dying couldn’t have been a quarter as humiliating. “If you don’t give it back, I’ll… hurt you.”

To my disappointment, Harry throws his head back and laughs. It’s deep and melodic and sounds so carefree, but I can’t allow myself to get caught up in his raw beauty. “You don’t scare me, Jules.”

Out of options, I wonder how much I’ll hurt myself if I really do try to tackle him and wrestle it from his stupidly large hands. Before I can chicken out I mimic his earlier leap over the table—much less graceful, of course—and I crash into him. We land in a heap after Harry stumbles back onto the sofa. He’s still laughing and I don’t even think about the fact that I’m straddling him. He may think this is all a game, but to me, in reality, I’m very close to outright sobbing. He can’t read it.

Harry stretched his arm behind him during the fall, and with his free hand held tightly onto my waist to keep me in place, it feels farther away than ever. His eyes dance with such jest and they’re so alive, as if windows into his playful state of mind. They’re so mesmerizing that I spend a moment too long on top of him, staring into his eyes.

Shaking myself from my ditzy trance, I fling my arm forward in a valiant effort to rescue my journal. As soon as I make a move Harry’s hand leaves my waist and moves to my back, pulling me down so my chest is flush against his.

“I’ve got you now,” he teases, arm tight around me.

“Harry! Let me go,” I shout out of pure desperation. His hair tickles my cheek as he presses me further onto him and he laughs as he shifts. I curse myself and my weaker strength; I can’t see what he’s doing.

“Hm. Now seems as good a time as any to take a peek…” the pages of my journal are rustled as he opens it with one hand.

“No! I’m serious, Harry,” I brace my hands either side of his torso, pushing against him while I wonder how on earth I ever got myself in such a position. His hold around my waist is rock solid, however, and he barely moves an inch under my applied pressure.

On top of a gorgeous, childish, bastard of a boy, I become hot and flustered from both our struggle and the intimacy of our position.

“Julia Elise Townsend,” Harry reads teasingly from the return address on the inside cover, and I panic. If he turns the page. If he turns the page… “Elise. That’s a pretty name.”

Okay, one last attempt. I may be weak in physical strength, but my willpower is far from lacking. I bring my fingers to his sides, poking and prodding playfully at his ribs. He jolts, stifling a laugh, and I can’t help but to smirk. This, however lesser in comparison to stealing my freaking journal, is how I’ll get him back. My fingers are merciless in tickling him, and he ends up twisting around so much to get away from my fingers and keep the journal away that he rolls us both clear onto the floor.

“Jesus, Harry,” I gasp, even though he had his arm underneath me to soften the fall. I’m not freaking out over the drop or any sort of pain. No, I wish. It’s our position, a complete opposite of how we were on the sofa. His knees are snug against either side of my thighs with one hand braced onto the floor by my head as he leans over me. We’re frozen, Harry panting and pink-cheeked, and I can’t take my eyes from the sight of him. His smile, the way his fair flops onto his forehead after our struggle, and how the corners of his eyes crinkle with his smile and cause his dimples to pop and deepen.

So caught up in him, I’m not quick enough to realize the reason why his smile fades straight away, and why he stares so intensely at the space above my head. When he leans up from his elbows to sit straddling my hips, eyes focussed yet distant, I know something is wrong.

“Harry?” I question, and then finally I recall what pushed us to a wrestling match in the first place.

My journal.

I sit up, unbearably close to him, and try to block his view. He merely cranes his neck to the side, so I turn underneath him as best I can to catch sight of the damned book, strewn open to exactly where I knew it would be because of its cracked spine. In a heated movement I push him off of me and scoop my journal up, cradling it to my chest before he can get any more a of glimpse at exactly how pathetic I am.

But he’s seen enough. He stands up slowly, watching while I scramble backward and to my feet, my breathing fast and hard and telling. I watch him run his hands through his hair—an action I notice is done out of stress and frustration. I clench my jaw and look up to the ceiling to keep myself from crying. Even though it doesn’t matter now, I can’t cry in front of him. Not again.

“Say something,” I don’t know why I’m so desperate to hear it from him; because I know it will break me. But I need to. I need the reassurance, just like I need the reassurance from my list he is disgusted with. He blows out of a puffed breath and shakes his head.

How far my heart plummets when he turns away—it scares me, and it’s only now I realise how deep I am with Harry.

Not another word is spoken for several seconds. I bring my free hand up to brace my chin, still holding tight onto the journal that’s caused such trouble.

“Is that—is that…” he cuts himself off and swears. Then, without a single look back to me, he stalks out of the living room. I close my eyes, feeling this pain for all it’s worth, because I know what this means. He’s leaving and it’s my fault, and I can’t ever allow myself to be close to another person like I did with Harry.

It hurts. It hurts so much I want to collapse back onto the sofa and cry, but all I can do is stand there, in such pain that I hunch forward in a vain effort to keep myself together.

What else did I expect? Nobody else knows me or any of my secrets, the magnitude of the loss and loneliness I feel, and of course Harry would react this way. I curse myself now, too, for showing him all these things today. I basically asked for this, this hurt I don’t even want to admit I feel.

Rejection.

I should have left him out by my front door. He would have left eventually. Either this morning or just minutes ago, after I aired out all of my sadness to him. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. If luck would or wouldn’t have been on my side, I would have passed out… and I might have died. Isn’t that why I stopped taking my medication?

Out in the hallway Harry swears again, loud and rough and it sounds like he’s in pain, too, even though I don’t understand why. That’s when I can’t hold it in any longer, and I allow myself to cry. The tears fall from my cheeks and onto the top of my journal after I duck my head, and once again I wish I wasn’t so fucked up.

When I hear his sharp, heavy footsteps turn around and come closer, I wipe furiously at my cheeks. Harry only pauses momentarily in the threshold, probably to get a good look at my piteous display, before he closes the distance between us in three long strides and rips the book from my hands.

I gasp at the rough action, though I don’t even bother to try to take it back, eyes blank and fixated on the floor. It doesn’t matter anymore; I’m sure Harry is only still here to rub salt in my wounds. Even so, I’m intimidated by his furious stance and shuffle backward until my legs hit the edge of the small loveseat adjacent to the sofa. He follows, towering over me.

“What is this?” He demands, jabbing his thumb onto the open page. I can’t look at him.

“A list,” I reply, faint, hollow.

“I know that,” he snaps, and I flinch. Yes, he’s definitely angry.

After a frustrated huff, he places his free hand under my chin and forces me to look up at him. I do through watering, bloodshot eyes. I look him square in the eye, silently begging to just leave me alone. To leave, to forget the design job and pretend we never met. “What is it—a bucket list?”

No, sort of the opposite. I shake my head, the movement jarring my already scattered thoughts.

“Explain then!” He sounds desperate and I don’t understand why he’s asking or why he didn’t leave when he had the chance. None of this makes sense.

“It’s just a stupid list, Harry. That’s all.”

He lets go of my chin, and while I miss the contact I duck my head again in an effort to hide my useless crying. Shaking his head, he peers down at the list with sad disbelief. “None of these have been completed, have they?”

Of course I don’t answer him, and my lip quivers when I choke back a cry. Why does he have to ask, and put all this on display? It’s breaking me. Reality, for so long, I’d been able to ignore. Now it’s here in the form of confrontational, furious boy and it hurts. It hurts so much.

My silence is enough. He closes the journal, and he doesn’t look away from me while he tosses it back onto the sofa. Where he found it, and where I so stupidly left it. In my defense, however, I’m used to being alone. I hadn’t thought Harry Styles, of all people, would charge through my door and read my list.

I can’t quite decide whose fault it is, however, because Harry is close to me again, and not in the angry stance he was just a moment ago. His body is close to mine and his stare is passionate in a way that makes me feel self-conscious and insecure, but I can’t bring myself to turn away.

I look up at him, showing him the full extent of my sadness through inflamed, teary blue eyes and flushed cheeks. It’s a daring move, but I convince myself that none of this matters now. He knows. Almost all of it. His eyes soften at the sight of me, jaw jumping.

Grasping my hand like he did so many times today, his other trails up to cup my face and he uses the pad of his thumb to wipe some lingering tears away. I have to fight the urge to lean into his spellbinding, comforting touch. He’s doing it again—making me feel better, with the slightest, most innocent of caresses. And while it might be innocent, I’m not so naïve to ignore the way my body reacts to his.

Like magnetism.

When he tilts my face up all I can do is look into those pretty, jaded olive eyes of his as they search mine for something unknown. My pulse increases, though not in a way that scares me. In a totally new, exhilarating way that I’m equally afraid of.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, raspy, deep, and accent thick with conviction. My breath catches as soon as he speaks, and when I process what he’s said I clutch onto his arm to try and steady myself. I’m shocked. Floored by what he’s just said, such a small phrase that means so much. More than he could possibly know. He called me beautiful even after all he’s seen today, all that makes me ugly. As soon as I touch him, he returns his arm to around my waist and presses me against him so I feel every part of his body against mine.

When his gaze flickers from my eyes to my mouth, I’m frozen in anticipation. I know what he’s going to do, and I’m absolutely helpless to stop it. What’s much scarier, perhaps, is that I don’t want it to stop.

“Harry,” I mumble, breathless and unbelieving from the abrupt turn of events.

“Shh,” he whispers and leans closer, his hand leaving my cheek and tangling in my hair at the nape of my neck. For a long lingering moment we stay like this, nearly mouth to mouth and unmoving. Then he presses his mouth to mine, his plump lips soft gentler than I had pictured, and I don’t comprehend what’s unfolding for several short seconds.

Harry is kissing me. Harry is kissing me in a way I never thought could come from such a brash, forward man. He’s gentle, testing, non-threatening in how he moves his mouth against mine. As if he knows what a total inexperienced idiot I am when it comes to this—and I realize he’s seen my list. He does know. It doesn’t cause more insecurity to bubble up and ruin the moment like I’d have thought. No, it’s almost as though his knowledge of exactly how vulnerable I am under my front is… is reassuring.

Finally, I snap from my daze and take the initiative not to ruin this. My first kiss. My first kiss with Harry Styles. Christ. I move my frozen hand held at my side and use it to hold onto the edge of his open jacket, cautiously tugging him closer.

I move my mouth against his, and my stomach twists while I can’t begin to comprehend the rush of feelings our kiss brings forth. The only thing I can think about, in this moment, is how I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else but here, with Harry against me and holding me and his mouth covering mine.

The kiss might not be the most intense in the world. He is for certain holding back. But if it had been, if Harry was rough and forced it on me it would be reasonable to assume I’d have just totally been freaked out by it all. Maybe he knows this, too, how nervous I am, because at my waist his fingers are under my under my jacket, rubbing soothing circles into the flesh of my hip. He continues the movement after he pulls away and leaves us both panting and at least one of us shocked. Neither of us speaks a single word, and when Harry leans his forehead against mine our lips brush tantalizingly as we both breathe in ragged gasps.

I want to kiss him again. In fact, I want to take this stupid jacket off too; we may be inside but that’s not what’s gotten me hot and flustered. No, that’s definitely on Harry.

An ever annoying ding comes between our moment, still wrapped in each other. I jump from the interruption, as if reality’s finally struck me, and in the process create some still heated space between us. Harry begrudgingly steps back with a soft sigh, running a hand through his hair while he fishes his phone from his pocket. He shakes his head as he scans the screen, reading the text message, and I only realize now that I’m shaking like a leaf.

“And it’s true.” I don’t understand what he means by that, but his stare is intense and it’s as if he needs me to believe him. I can’t shake my head or agree with him verbally, left reeling from the intensity of the previous moment.

Of my first kiss. Of my first kiss with Harry. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I’d say in a heartbeat it’s the best I’ve could have ever dreamed of. No, more than that.

“I have to go,” he says finally after realizing he’s rendered me speechless, staring at him with wide, stunned eyes. Though he sounds apologetic, the soft tip to his slightly swollen lips tells me he’s smiling and that just maybe he felt what I felt during our kiss, too. He must have. Feelings like this can’t be one-sided. It’s deafening, all consuming.

“It’s fine,” I say, shaking as I try to gain control of myself.

“Alright.” He deposits his phone back in his jeans’ pocket, and I can’t even become annoyed at his satisfied, lazy smile, because he still looks serious and perhaps even a little rattled himself.

“I’m sorry I have to leave. But I’ll see you soon—and don’t ignore me this time.” I release a shaky laugh at his light, teasing words. No, he’s impossible to ignore. Especially now.

One more time, he closes the distance between us and I freeze in anticipation, wondering if he’s going to kiss me again, though he opts to place a lingering kiss to the corner of my mouth.

"Oh, and the design job is still on." With one last deep chuckle, Harry is gone.

And I’m a mess. An absolute mess, gooey and melted into a useless heap from an infuriating, way too handsome man’s kiss. When I hear his car start up with an exotic growl before he leaves, I collapse back onto the sofa and wonder what the hell exactly just happened.

It takes me several minutes, of just sitting there with my fingertips touched to my tingling lips, that I realize what he’s done and what he meant by ‘it’s true.’

In just one short minute, Harry crossed two things off my list.

Number three: to be called beautiful, and for it to be true.

And number two: have my first kiss.

Notes

Intense chapter, hey? I want to mention that this is the first time I've ever tried my hand at romance, and I have no idea how good/bad I'm doing with this. Please do tell me, I'd love to hear from you!

Also--I can't tell you what's on Jules' list or the reason behind Harry's persistence. That information will all come in time.

Comment? :)