When He Holds Your Hand

By early December I gave up completely on hearing from Harry, blocking his number and deleting it from my phone. I was taking no risks that I wouldn't message him when I was drunk, even though I knew he wouldn't get it. I went back to switching off if ever Will mentioned them and avoided listening to the radio or watching tv; to all intents and purposes Harry was dead to me.
To keep myself busy I organised a night of cocktails with Rose and her new girlfriend, Dionne. They'd only been together two months but were sickeningly in love, which made me equally jealous and overjoyed for them.
I bought a drink and tried to find somewhere for us to sit, regretting that I'd arrived early. To my relief Rose and Dionne had been early too and I found them in a booth doing a shot of tequila each.
"I didn't know it was that kind of night." Laughing I watched as they pulled faces and tried to greet me at the same time.
Dionne was beautiful, her dark skin and tall frame made her look like a model. Rose was head over heels and from Dionne’s smile and the way she'd always touch Rose or look at her, I think the feeling was mutual.
"Hello you! And it's always that kind of night!" Rose was already tipsy. She hugged me and thrust a shot into my hand, "I got you this so catch up."
We drank. A. Lot.
By ten I was demanding we went somewhere to dance. I hadn't had this much fun since...well, I hadn't had fun in a while and I was determined I wasn't going to let the party end early.
Finally Rose agreed; she normally worked Fridays so this was a rare treat to be one of the drunk people.
"There’s a great club near Covent Garden, let's go there", Dionne suggested, getting her phone out to call a cab. "They have a few different rooms with different music in each one."
Agreeing that that sounded like fun, we finished our drinks and went to wait outside for the taxi to turn up. The air was refreshing but it hit my drunken state like a tonne of bricks. I looked over to Rose who was staring at her phone with a frown; she was turning red and suddenly I was worried.
"What's the matter?" I slurred, reaching for her shoulder, "are you..." Rose snatched her phone from my hand but it was too late, I'd seen it.
A Facebook status by her friend saying she'd seen Harry Styles in a restaurant in LA with some super model.
"Let me see it." I tried to ask calmly but my voice was shaking and there were tears forming in my eyes. Dionne watched with confusion that I was suddenly demanding to see her girlfriend’s phone.
"Taxi, ladies?" A thick cockney shouted from a black cab.
Rose practically dived into the cab making sure that Dionne was between us, knowing I wouldn't wrestle her to the floor if someone else was there.
My heart was racing as quick as my mind. I wished desperately that I wasn't drunk so I could think clearer but I also wanted to be drunker so I wouldn't be giving two fucks about Harry and some model. I hated him and I hated her, but mostly I hated myself for caring, for feeling jealous, for not seeing this coming and for getting involved with the lanky prick to begin with.
Outside the club, Rose told Dionne to go in ahead and we'd follow her. She reluctantly agreed and left us alone.
"Are you ok?", she asked. Afraid I'd burst into tears I simply shook my head. "I didn't want you to see that, I was going to tell you tomorrow. I'm so sorry, Lil, that's a shitty move and I expected better than that from him."
"Why? I should have expected it. He hasn't spoken to me in two and a half months, of course it was going to happen that he'd be dating someone a thousand times better than me." I dabbed at my eyes to save ruining my make up. "Maybe the 'I love you' was his way of saying ’this has been fun but I'm about to starting a ten foot tall, mega rich, younger than you, thinner than you and less married model.’"
"Please don't think like that. You're gorgeous and Harry thought so too or he wouldn't have gotten involved with you - twice!"
"A notch on his bed post."
"Bullshit!" Rose waved her hand dismissively. "If that was the case then he would have fucked you and you'd never have heard from him again."
"You mean like when I didn't hear from him until he rocked up to my party and he gave some bullshit excuse about thinking my marriage was suddenly healed after I'd slept with him." I wanted a drink, in fact, I wanted several large drinks. "Fuck it! Fuck him! If that's how it ends, then so be it, I'm not going to let him ruin my night."
"Will you be ok?" Rose stroked my arm and looked concerned, worried that the anger behind my words would lead to me ending up in some bar brawl.
"I’ll be fine." But the wave of sadness washed over me once more. "He’s broken my heart, Rose, I can't deny it. But I've been through worse and I'll be damned if I'll let him get the better of me."
I hadn't had the dream for years.
When I was younger, before I met Will, the dream was almost nightly and in some strange way it was a comfort to be somewhere familiar when I moved to Ibiza.
It was different this time; before I was always a child but now I was an adult. I was sat on the dirty purple sofa in my clothes that had been worn so many times I could practically smell them in the dream. My mother was stretched out on the floor, a needle in her arm and her face contorted and twisted but completely still.
In the tiny play pen my baby sister was stood in a filthy nappy she'd been wearing since the day before, her big blue eyes filled with tears as she looked at me to ease her discomfort and hunger. I couldn't move, I could never move, just sit and watch the nightmare of my mother’s overdose.
Harry was suddenly stood by the window opposite me, his feet inches away from my mother’s corpse. He looked down at her in disgust, then turned his green eyes on me. I tried to look away, to escape the feeling of hatred he felt for me.
My eyes flew open and I was sweating. Will’s face was looking down at me with worry as he shook my arm hard enough to wake me.
"You were having a bad dream," he said, stating the obvious as I sat bolt upright in a need to break away from the haunted feeling that nightmares bring. "Was it the usual one?"
"Yeah." My voice sounded foreign, the real Scouse accent I'd hid years ago slipping in during my moment of vulnerability.
Will scooted closer to me and hugged me to him, and I remembered that for all his faults, he was always there to comfort me when childhood came to remind me where I had come from. Every time this dream crept into my sleep, he would sit up with me and talk, make me a hot drink and do what he could to soothe me - it was the one thing I could rely on him for.
"You haven't had one for so long." He got up out of bed and grabbed his dressing gown, "come on, I'll make you a hot chocolate, it'll help you get back to sleep."
My pyjamas were damp with sweat so I changed before following him down, and I needed a second alone where I could remind myself that it had not been real. Harry knew nothing about my childhood - well not the real story - only Will and Rose knew that. He hadn't really judged me or looked at me with hatred, so my upbringing was not the reason for him cutting contact. I repeated this to myself over and over as I went to join Will in the kitchen.
He yawned at me as I entered the room, his normally perfect hair was sticking up in all directions and he looked so boyish and sleepy that he was simply missing a teddy bear to complete the look.
"Thank you," I smiled as Will placed my hot, steaming drink on the counter in front of me. "Go back to bed if you want, I'll drink this then be up."
"No," he shook his head and sat opposite me at the breakfast bar, "I don't like how sad you get when you have this dream, I wish you'd tell me what it was."
I pursed my lips tightly and repeated his head shaking, "it makes me sick to talk about it every time I try."
"I know."
I'd never been able to tell him the full truth. The details of that day were locked tightly in my head no matter how much I wanted to unload them, to unburden myself from the guilt of that being the last time I'd seen my sister, that I’d been in such a state of shock that I hadn't been able to help of protect her. I wanted to share with Will and Rose that I’d sat there for two days before someone called the police because of the baby crying, but I couldn't; my mouth would dry up and the ability to make the words form into anything other than a long, painful howl became lost to me.
I told them nothing about that day other than I'd come home from school to find my mother’s overdosed body on the living room floor and then I was sent to live with a nice, normal husband and wife for two years until I was old enough to leave and got to the one place to me that was the exact opposite to what I'd grown up with - Ibiza.
Back in bed, it wasn't long before Will was snoring away once more, but I couldn't switch off from the picture of Harry’s hatred burned into my memory. It felt wrong that I was no longer phased by the scene; well, not in the way it used to affect me, but what had me so rattled was the way Harry hadn't been there to help. He wasn't there sort the situation out or rescue me, he was disgusted by what he saw.
What made my body break into cold sweat was that Harry was never with me because he wanted to take care of me, he was with me because he was fascinated by the mess of my marriage. My marriage was the car wreck at the side of the road that people were watching with interest, and Harry had just gone one step further and got into the car with us for a closer look.

Notes