whiplash

Letting your friends talk you into a pub night the evening after a transcontinental flight is and will forever be a terrible idea. Why did I agree to this?

“Lads night out,” they said.
“It’ll be fun,” they said.

Well, I can tell you right now that it is not fun.

I’m tired. I’m grumpy. I just want to go home.

Actually, that’s not exactly true. What I want is slightly more complicated than that. The thing I want is what I’ve been thinking about for more time than I’d like to admit at the moment.

I always prided myself on knowing what I wanted. I am not the indecisive type. But then I met her. I met her and suddenly my world turned upside down. She was the ocean and I could never find a break in the waves. I know I fucked it all up. Trust me, do I know. I knew the moment she turned and walked out of that restaurant. Blame it on pride. Blame it on stupidity. Blame it on whatever the hell you want. But the way I feel is all my fault. I thought I could be okay. I thought I could smooth her from my memory with a pretty girl here and a drink there but it didn’t work. The pretty girls were never going to be Harper. They would never be what I wanted. They weren’t the person I saw every time I closed my eyes or the girl who I dreamed of every night.

I flew back a week early because I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t wait anymore to see her. Yet, here I am, stuck trailing a bunch of rowdy boys through the streets of London while all I can think about is the warm bed of a beautiful girl. A beautiful girl who currently isn’t talking to me.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

It started with a 3 am drunk dial. Not my finest moment, admittedly. But I’ve been grateful every day since my need to hear her voice broke through the wall of stubbornness I’d built up. You can only tell yourself you’re fine so many times before the words become hollow and lose all meaning. That phone call came from a moment of weakness fueled by alcohol and it has lead to where we are now. Every phone call since that day has been like a breath of fresh air to drowning man.

But now I’m back to treading water, just trying to keep my head above water.

“It’s fine.”

Two simple words that mean more than a world of trouble.

When I didn’t call her yesterday she’d said it was fine but it is obviously not fine. Even I know when a girls says “fine” it means the exact opposite. And to top it all off I can’t fix it because she won't answer the damn phone.

There is just something about Harper that makes me not know my ass from my elbow. I sat on the plane going back and forth for hours about whether I should call her and tell her I was coming home or not. I didn’t know exactly how she would react. I didn’t know if seeing me would be a welcome sight or if maybe she didn’t want to see me at all. I weighed every option and every thought that might go through Harper’s head until I’d exhausted them all. But by the time I’d come to a conclusion a tiny voice over the speaker told me we were preparing for landing and I knew it was too late. I could’ve smacked myself and I probably should have.

Two nights ago I talked to her. I heard her laugh. I could even hear the smile on her face as she teased me about something dumb that had happened that day. I heard that smile and it felt like my chest was on fire.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance at it, while the boys walk in front of me down a side street. The screen bursts to life when I touch it and the picture there is one that I’ve looked at more and more recently. It’s a picture of her, head thrown back in mid laugh while I sat next to her on the couch. She had no idea I took it but I’ve looked at it so many times since that day that I fucked it all up. I kept it to serve as a constant reminder of what I had let go of. A beacon of what I needed to get back. I shove my phone back into my pocket and let out a sigh that only the universe can hear.

Hopefully this night will end soon.

The lads pause outside of a new pub, all talking at once about going inside. I gaze through the window at the crowded room, wondering how well I can blend in, if I can easily slip in and out without notice because this is what my life is now. As I rake the room my eyes stop on one table. My heart starts to pound in my chest recognizing her before even I fully do.

It’s Harper. She’s right there. My legs start to move towards the door, pulled forward by a force unseen but something stops me. Bile rises in my throat the longer I stare through glass. It’s the arm that’s draped over her shoulder. The arm of a tall muscular man. A man I’ve never seen before. The way he smiles at her makes something inside me snarl. And the way she looks up at him makes my chest ache. She used to look at me that way.

What have I done? My chest feels like it’s caving in. I’m hit like a freight train by the realization that I’ve waited too long and now she’s moved on. Maybe all this talk with me was nothing really. I read too much into her words. I pull my phone out of my pocket and her picture feels like a hot poker to my gut. My fingers dial her number and I wait, my breath held, watching her.

I see her startle and then reach for the phone but she does nothing more than read my name and put it away. Her voicemail starts to play in my ear.

“Hey it’s Harper. Don’t be a loser, leave a message.”

I hang up, call a goodbye to lads and stalk off into the night, pushed down the road by their calls of my name and the ugly voice in my head reminding me of how I fucked up all over again.

I berate myself for the millionth time.

“How could you have been so stupid Niall? Why? Why did you have to drop the ball right when things were so perfect? Why the fuck do you have cold feet at the worst possible moments?”

“I don’t know!” I yell out loud into the street, startling an older woman as she waits for the bus. I murmur rushed apologies and move on, walking nowhere, only away.

“Don’t you remember how you felt that morning? Don’t you remember the absolute madness of nerves you felt every time you were next to her? How you forget the way she made you feel every time she walked into the room?”

“Why do you always fuck up the good things?”

“I don’t know…” I mutter.

After wandering the slowly emptying streets for too long, I grab a cab home but all I can think about is her face as she looked at that man. Once I’m home I mope around the house for a while still thinking of all the things I did wrong. It seems that no matter where I look I can only think of her. Her in this house, her in my bed. My thoughts always seem to go right back to her. I will wake up in the morning with the smell of her lingering in my mind. I find myself rolling over in the night to pull her close to me. The sound of her laugh plays like a song in my memory. She’s like a song I can’t get out of my head.

The lingers in the twilight hours as I grab a notebook and start to furiously scribble on the page. I write it all down, everything I should’ve said the first time, everything I still want to say. I spend those last few hours before the sun begins to rise penning something that is, for now, only a stream of consciousness written on paper.

I fall asleep in a heap on the couch, pen still in my hand and still thinking about all the things I didn’t say. When I wake up, sometime after noon, it is all still there. Those thoughts and a small ache in my neck. So without thinking or planning I grab my jacket and my keys. I rush out of the house on a mission.

A mission to find the girl of my dreams.

Notes