I Can Change Your Life

I sat on the front porch to Louis and Harry’s house for about an hour before school even got out. I was trying to muster up enough courage to do what I was about to do, and standing on his front step seemed to help. It finally neared two forty-five, and that meant Harry would be pulling up any minute. I pulled on my shirt a bit. For some reason I was worried about how I looked – I wanted to impress him, I guess.

His car pulled into the driveway and I stood up just as he walked toward the front door. He stopped once he saw me and looked up to the sky before slightly turning himself away from me. He turned to walk back toward his car.

“Josh and I were in love, you know,” I started. “Well, I loved him, at least. It’s debatable on whether or not he felt the same. The black eyes and bruised ribs should have been enough of a reason to convince me that he didn’t love me, but I still stuck around.”

Harry stopped walking, but didn’t turn to face me. He only turned around just a little bit. He walked straight up to the door and unlocked it. He grabbed my hand very gently and led me into his room. At this point tears were dripping from my eyes. I sat down on the bed and he shut the door before taking a seat next to me. I crossed my legs and turned to face him. He did the same. I scooted closer to him just enough so our knees were touching.

He looked into my eyes and waited for me to continue. I froze up. I just didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say all of it, but I knew that I had to try.

“I don’t think I can get into details, not even Louis knows all of it, but I just…” I paused to think about what I could say to him. “He abused me, Harry. Physically, emotionally, sexually. And I know it seems like that stuff doesn’t happen too much in high school, but it did happen. I gave him everything, and he took it, but threw it back at me so it would hurt me. I bottled myself up, thinking that maybe it was all my fault, and that I deserved what he was doing to me. And that’s…that’s why I have such a hard time communicating how I feel.”

Harry continued to stare at me. His eyes were now in wonder. “You don’t have to go too much into detail, but I just want to know. How did things end between you?”

“Something horrible happened between us, and that’s what that note from yesterday was talking about. And he didn’t handle it very well. And I finally mustered up enough courage to leave him. That’s when he twisted everything that had happened in our relationship to make me seem like the bad guy.”

Harry placed his hand on my knee and gently squeezed it. “I’m not going to say all that sympathetic crap, but just know that it’s good to acknowledge these things. As much as we want to bury the bad, we have to face it to make things good for the future.”

“Yeah, that’s the hardest part though.”

“I don’t want to pressure you or whatever, but, maybe seeing a professional about this can really help you. It might be easier to talk to someone you don’t really know about it. Plus they are sworn to secrecy, so that’s always a plus.” Harry gave me a genuine smile before he pulled me into his arms.

I sat in his lap and pressed my head against his chest. I felt the rise and fall of his chest and listened to the gentle rhythm of his heartbeat. We sat like that for a long time.

“Hey Harry, can I borrow your—“ Louis pushed open the door and stopped as soon as he saw me in Harry’s arms. Without hesitation, I pulled myself from Harry’s grasp and ran over to Louis. I hugged his torso and put my head on his chest. He kept his hands in the air, slightly confused. After a minute he gave in and wrapped his arms around me. “Oh, Gianna.”

“Don’t say anything, Louis. I’m sorry for snapping. I love you so much and I miss you so much,” I rambled all in one breath. “And please don’t try to apologize. I just want my best friend back.”

“I’ve been here this whole time, Gianna. I’ve never left and I never will.”

I continued to squeeze Louis I didn’t want to let go of him. I didn’t want to ever go a day without him ever again. These people were my true friends, and although it took me a long time to realize that, I’m glad I eventually did.

-

That night Louis decided to celebrate the rekindled friendship of the group by taking us out to Shakey’s pizza. It had a small arcade, decent prices, and was usually dead on a Wednesday night. We all went: Niall, Liam, Louis, Harry, and I. It was the first time we had all hung out as a group. It would usually only be four of us. If I was there, Harry wouldn’t be there, and if I wasn’t there, then Harry would be there. I still wasn’t sure as to why that was, but it really didn’t matter now.

We all scooted into one of the corner booths. I was sitting in between Louis and Harry, of course. Liam and Niall were right across from me. Niall kept giving me and Harry strange looks, but I tried my best to ignore them. I just wanted to focus on having a good time.

“Yay! Food!” I said a bit too enthusiastically as the pizza, chicken wings, and breadsticks were placed onto our table.

I immediately began to dig in.

“Oh God,” Liam said after a minute or two of silence at the table.

“What?” I asked, looking up at him.

“I just had a disturbing thought,” he said as he cringed his nose.

“What was it?” Louis asked.

“I don’t wanna say, it’s weird,” Liam laughed.

We all began to pester him until he finally decided to give in.

“Well, I was looking over at your three,” he motioned to Harry, Louis, and myself, “and I just…I don’t know…I envisioned Gianna in a Larry Stylinson sandwich."

Niall and Louis each began to laugh hysterically. Niall was laughing because of what he knew about me and Harry, and Louis was probably just laughing because he was my best friend and knew that it would never happen. I tried my best to laugh along with them, but when Harry spit his soda all over his plate, I couldn’t try to laugh anymore. I immediately reached for a napkin and helped him clean up the soda while he continued to cough.

I handed him my water and told him to take a drink to clear his throat. Niall, Louis, and Liam all stopped their laughter a bit. I tried to go back into the conversation, but I just couldn’t focus.

Louis would still giggle a lit bit every now and then about what Liam said, but Harry and I had immediately withdrawn from the conversation after that.

“I want to play the arcade games,” Harry whined. “Gianna, will you come play with me?” When he asked that he placed his hand on my upper thigh and gently squeezed. I tried to keep my breathing relaxed as he moved his hand higher and higher.

I pushed his hand away. “Won’t somebody else go with you?” I asked as I tried to refrain from biting my lip.

Harry looked up to the rest of the guys and they all groaned. “The games here suck,” Liam said.

“I’m too full,” Louis complained.

“You guys go,” Niall said, “have fun.” He gave us a look and after that I was kind of glad to get out of the booth. Niall’s stares were slowly going to drive me insane. I wasn’t going to tell Louis about me and Harry, especially when things just got better between us.

We walked into the small arcade area. Nobody else was in there. In fact, I was pretty certain that we were the only people in the entire place. Harry put a five dollar bill into the coin machine and gave me half of the coins.

“Win me lots of tickets,” he said. “I want to get the cat stickers.”

“Of course you do,” I laughed as I rolled my eyes.

We spent like ten minutes playing games and we already had enough tickets for Harry’s cat stickers. We went to get his prize and then headed back into the arcade.

“What should we do with the rest of the tokens?” I asked, holding out the tokens I had left. “Let’s play Dance, Dance Revolution!” I pulled his arm toward the machine in the back and inserted four tokens into the first player slot, and four more into Harry
’s spot.

“I don’t know, Gianna,” Harry stood back. “I’m not good at this.”

“Neither am I, but its fun.”

“Can’t I just watch you play?” he pleaded.

I turned around and leaned up against the metal bar that was between us. “No, that’s awkward! Just play with me, please.” I puffed out my bottom lip and batted my eyelashes.

He leaned forward and kissed me really quickly, taking me by surprise. “Stop being cute, you make it impossible to say no.”

“So does that mean you’ll play?” I perked up and leaned closer to his face. I kissed just under the left side of his mouth. I let my lips rest against his lips as I tried pleading again. “Pleeeassee?”

Harry groaned and stepped up onto the machine. “Damn you and your alluring ways,” he said as he inspected the arrows beneath him.

I went through the options, making sure to pick the easiest difficulty for Harry and the medium difficulty for myself. I picked a random song that I had never heard of: upbeat, foreign language, anime girl dancing – the typical Dance, Dance Revolution display.

The arrows started to come and I tried my best to keep up with them. Harry, on the other hand, was stomping frantically and was still so horribly behind. Every now and then he would get one. He ended up giving up half way through the song and just leaned up against the metal railing behind his dance pad.

“Harry! What the heck!” I said in between breaths. I continued to stomp away, getting ‘Excellent’ on most of the steps once I had gotten the hang of the rhythm. Harry just continued to stare at me as I played. I could feel my cheeks heating up as Harry’s eyes continued to observe my movements.

Before the song could finish, Harry reached out and grabbed me by the belt loop on my shorts. He pulled me over to his dance pad. I ended up accidentally getting an ‘Excellent’ on his dance pad as my feet made their way over to him. He pulled me up against him as he continued to lean against the metal bar behind him.

“Harry,” I said quietly, “you’re going to make me fail.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You just drive me crazy when you wear shorts.” He started to massaged down the side of my thighs.

I didn’t know what to think or say. I almost wanted to tell him to stop because he was starting to act too much like he was my boyfriend, but at the same time I couldn’t say no because he was just way too irresistible and he made me feel so alive and appreciated.

“God,” he said into my ear, “I love your legs.”

He tried to kiss behind my ear – he was starting to realize that it was my weakness. I didn’t like not feeling in control, but at the same time I wanted to put all of my trust into Harry. I wanted to let him have control over me, but I just couldn’t seem to let myself completely give in to him like that.

I squeezed onto his arms as he reached his hands around to squeeze my ass in each of his hands. The fact that we were in a public place made everything so much more exotic and arousing. I tried to keep myself as calm as possible, but the way his hands continued to search my body was definitely making my blood race and my skin to heat up.

“Harry, we’re on a Dance, Dance Revolution game,” I said, to try and get him to slow down just a bit.

“Oh, my bad. Should I bend you over the pinball machine instead?”

I gasped. “Harry,” I said, shocked. “You should know that I’m much more of a Pacman kind of girl.”

Harry smirked and took a quick glance around the small arcade room. “No Pacman here,” he said.

“You’re sweating,” I laughed as I ran a hand down the side of his face.

“Your cheeks are pink,” he said as he bent down to kiss one. He continued to place small kisses all down the side of my face before he reached my lips. He placed several short kisses on my lips before pulling away and straightening out my hair a bit. “You’re so fucking sexy.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I just bit my bottom lip and blushed, but he probably couldn’t see it since my cheeks were already so pink.

“We should probably go back to the table now,” I said. I began to walk away from him, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back over to him.

“Wait,” he said. “So, is Niall right about us?” he asked quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Are we really ‘just fucking’?” He put air quotes around the words and looked down to the floor.

I sighed before getting up on my tippy toes and planting a small kiss onto the tip of his nose. He looked up a bit with a smile. “I don’t know, Harry. I told you that I don’t want to try to label anything like that. I just…I don’t know.”

“But, am I really just somebody to distract you from everything?”

“No,” I admitted. “I…I don’t think this is just fucking. But I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to string you along or anything, so we can slow down a bit if you want, I just –“

“No, no, no. I definitely don’t want to slow down. After what just happened?” Harry motioned toward the pinball machine. “No fucking way am I slowing down. And don’t worry about stringing me along, I’ll take you in any way I can get you.”

His words made me so incredibly happy. “Just, I know it’s not completely fair like this. But please, let’s just not bring up feelings… if they’re there. I just don’t think I can handle that.”

“If,” Harry laughed at the word. The look in his eyes told me that there was no if necessary, because Mike had feelings that were there. And as much as it frightened me to admit it, I had feelings, too.

Notes

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