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Summertime & Butterflies

Twenty-One

“Can you just answer your phone?” Stephanie pleaded, rolling her eyes exasperatedly as Olivia’s phone vibrated against the coffee table. “He’s phoned, like four hundred times!”

Olivia let out a sigh. “I don’t want to talk to him,” she told her sister. Since leaving Harry’s house the night before and hiking down to some sushi restaurant on Sunset to wait for Stephanie to pick her up, Harry had tried to call Olivia countless times – maybe not quite four hundred, but a lot. Each time, she ignored him. She didn’t know what to say to him. She didn’t know if she was overreacting or underreacting or perfectly reacting. She didn’t know if she could forget about Taylor kissing him. Every time she thought about it, she felt a painful cocktail of rage and anguish.

“He loves you,” Stephanie reminded Olivia. “He’s going to keep calling you. Just… talk to him! I don’t really think he did anything wrong, anyway,” she added matter-of-factly, an opinion she’d stated to Olivia numerous times over the last twelve hours.

“He kissed another girl!” Olivia reminded her sister. “On what planet is that actually fucking okay?” she asked, forgetting – or not caring – about the kids in front of the television.

Stephanie rolled her eyes dramatically. “Another girl kissed him,” she corrected. “He was just caught in the line of fire. It probably happened so fast, he had no time to react. I think you’re being a bit harsh on him,” she told Olivia with a shrug.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” Olivia sighed, standing up. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Your Team Harry t-shirt’s in the mail,” she added sarcastically, stepping over the kids sprawled out on the living room floor before making her way upstairs to the guest room.

She flopped onto the bed, pulling her knees to her chest. Was Stephanie right? Was Olivia in the wrong, and not Harry? Or was Taylor the only one in the wrong and getting what she clearly wanted – a rift between Harry and Olivia? She wished she could rewind and make the entire night different, and slam the door in Taylor’s face the moment she arrived. She knew she couldn’t, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

She huffed out a loud groan. She didn’t want to be at Stephanie’s house, curled up alone in the spare bedroom. She wanted to be with her boy, dancing in their underwear on the couch, skinny dipping in the pool, watching horrible D-list movies in bed. But he let a girl kiss him, and while Olivia didn’t expect him to forcefully shove Taylor away from him, he could have easily stepped aside and prevented that troll from making out with him. But he didn’t.

Olivia rolled over, stretching her legs out and draping her arm over her eyes. She drew in a shaky breath, her mind still racing with thoughts from the night before. She hadn’t slept much, and the wine she’d drank before leaving Harry had given her a headache, but she didn’t think her brain would slow down enough for her to have a nap. She sighed again, closing her eyes. Maybe she could try.

The sun was different when Olivia opened her eyes, indicating she had managed to fall asleep. Looking at her phone, she saw she missed three hours and two phone calls. She covered her face with her hands; her nap hadn’t helped her determine what to do about Harry, but she knew she couldn’t ignore him forever.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, grabbing a hair tie from the bedside table. She could smell Stephanie’s barbecue outside and realised it was nearly dinner time. Suddenly, she felt ravenous and couldn’t remember the last time she ate. Though her sister was a terrible cook, Olivia was hungry enough to eat almost anything.

Stifling a yawn, Olivia wrapped the elastic around her hair as she descended the stairs to the living room. As the couch came into view, Olivia stopped short when she saw Harry tucked into the corner of the sofa, hands clasped in his lap. He looked up at her as he heard her footsteps, his sad, red-rimmed eyes tugging on Olivia’s heartstrings. She was still so angry at him, but he looked like such a sad little boy.

He stood up, meeting Olivia at the bottom of the stairs, blocking her exit. “I want to talk to you,” he told her, his voice sounding hoarse and tired. “Please?”

Olivia exhaled loudly, blowing her bangs from her face. She wasn’t ready to talk to him; she didn’t know what to say, but then nodded, ever so slightly. Harry looked relived, as though a massive weight had been lifted off his shoulders, and led Olivia to the front door. He stepped out behind her, sitting on the bench beside the door. He looked up at Olivia, lightly gesturing for her to join him. Rather, she crossed her arms haughtily across her chest, making no move to sit. He sighed, wringing his hands.

“I don’t know what to say…” Harry whispered to Olivia after a few moments, his voice wavering. “I’m… fuck, I’m so sorry, honey. I should have made her leave when you wanted her to. I never should have let her stay, and make you feel so bad.” He was crying now, but Olivia kept her arms crossed, her eyes focused on her feet. If she looked at him, she feared she would cry too.

“I don’t want this to wreck us…” he added quietly, tentatively lifting his head to look at Olivia. “Please… I love you so much and I don’t want to lose you… I’m so sorry, I just… please say something…”

Olivia avoided Harry’s eyes; examining a mosquito bite on her bicep instead. She loved him, of course, but she wasn’t about to forgive him so quickly. She was hurting. She turned her attention to a healing scratch on her forearm, aware of the fact that she was stalling longer than probably necessary, but also remembering that she wasn’t the one who kissed someone else. “Why did you want her to stay?” she finally asked, keeping her gaze on her arms.

“What?”

Olivia looked up at Harry, her brow furrowed incredulously. “Uhm… why… did you want… her to stay…?” she asked, slowly enunciating the words as though Harry was slow – though, Olivia wouldn’t argue against the fact at this point.

“I… I mean, I didn’t!” Harry sputtered out, sounding taken aback by her question. “I didn’t want her to stay! I told you that! I didn’t… want… I wanted it to be just us!”

“You say that…” Olivia answered slowly, nudging her toe against a faded chalk illustration on the cement. “But… you didn’t do that…” She allowed herself to look up at Harry for just a moment. God, did she love him though. “You didn’t respect me enough to make your ex-freakin-girlfriend leave, Harry. Why should I think you’ll respect me for anything else?”

Harry’s eyes widened at Olivia’s accusations before he stammered out a convoluted response. “No, that’s… I do, I respect you! I didn’t… I don’t…”

“Are you bored?”

“No!”

“Are you lonely?” Olivia pressed, tightening her arms around herself. “This long distance shit isn’t easy for me either, Harry! But I can do it, because I love you! But I will fucking not do infidelity!” As the words continued to pour out, Olivia’s volume intensified and she didn’t either didn’t notice, or didn’t care that their domestic fully on display for any of Stephanie’s neighbours.

“It wasn’t like that!” Harry tried to explain. “I wasn’t into her!”

Olivia scoffed loudly. “You call not asking her to leave, and fucking laughing at her stupid jokes and serving her drinks not being into her?” she demanded. “You like the fucking attention, admit it! You do, don’t you?” Olivia added, noticing Harry’s head droop for just a moment.

“I said, she kissed me!” Harry reiterated, his voice still wavering but getting louder. “How many times do I have to tell you that? It was Taylor, not me!”

“No, it was you!” Olivia argued. “You like the fucking attention! She was God damn draping herself all over you, laughing at everything you said, twirling her wretched hair around her nasty fucking finger, and you liked it! Does your fucking ego need to be stroked that much? Because if that’s the case, let me know now and I’ll back the fuck out of this,” she told him, indicating between her and him.

Harry exhaled disbelievingly. “That’s… not the fucking case…” he told Olivia, bravely rolling his eyes at her. “I didn’t want her to fucking touch me or look at me or fucking kiss me! I was being nice to her and she got the wrong idea! Why is me being nice to someone getting me fucking screamed at?”

“Because you let her kiss you, Harry!” Olivia yelped incredulously. “I’m allowed to fucking scream right now!”

“Yeah, because you’re always looking for something to be wrong!” Harry shot back, the wavering in his voice gone. He stood up, now towering over Olivia rather than her dominating over him. “You always… you don’t think you’re good enough! You’re always fucking comparing yourself to all these other fucking girls! You’re wrong as shit, but you don’t want to believe it! You keep fucking trying to push me away from you!”

Olivia threw her hands up, exasperated. “You fucking kiss your ex-girlfriend, and I’m the one pushing you away? Unbe-fucking-lievable, Harry!”

“It’s fucking true!” Harry told her, pointing an accusatory finger at her. “You always think everyone’s looking at you bad, or judging you, and nobody fucking is! And now you’re trying to make it my fault that you feel that way!”

“How else am I supposed to feel!” Olivia snapped, slapping his finger away from her face. “You keep me locked away in your fucking house like I’m some God damned Disney princess, damsel in distress shitting thing! You can’t even fucking pick me up at the airport! Of course I think everyone’s going to judge me, because you made me feel that way!”

“No one made you feel that way but you,” Harry bit out.

Olivia exhaled; pacing across the deck. She was fuming. Her mother would scold them for not fighting fair, and bringing up issues that had nothing to do with Taylor Swift kissing Harry, but Olivia’s mother wasn’t there. “Right, and you totally helped me not feel that way by… following me on Instagram? Or posting about me? Or, oh yeah, when you were asked in an interview about having a girlfriend, and you said, oh yes, I do! Or when you let me escape the fucking confines of your house so we can have a fucking coffee? Yes, you did all of that! Oh wait,” she finished, her voice deadpanned as she glared at Harry. “You did fucking none of that.”

“You want me to fucking follow you on Instagram?” Harry exclaimed. He pulled his phone from his pocket, feverously tapping through it. “I’ll fucking follow you on Instagram! Apparently that’s the only thing that fucking matters in a relationship, then!”

“Yeah, that and not kissing other girls!”

“It was her!” Harry shouted at Olivia. “Jesus Christ, Liv! Can’t you just fucking… get over it?”

Olivia let out a stunned, humourless laugh. “Get over it…” she repeated. She snapped her fingers. “Yep, oh look! Over it!” She stared at Harry, shaking her head at him. “Do you really think it affected me so little that I can just get over it?” she asked, her voice sounding more hurt than she wanted it to.

Harry sighed, running his hands through his hair. “I just don’t… I said I was sorry!”

“That’s supposed to be good enough?”

“What else do you want me to do?”

Olivia shrugged at Harry, sitting down on the front steps. “Have you kissed any other girls since we’ve been together?” she asked him, forcing the words through the steel wall in front of her. If she had been asked yesterday, she would have easily known the answer. Now, she wasn’t so sure if she knew, or if she wanted to know.

“Are you serious?” Harry asked, sitting down beside Olivia. She inched her body away from him – he was too close to her. She didn’t want him to touch her; not now, not yet. “Of course not…”

Olivia clasped her hands in front of her. “Well, since it seems to be a game of semantics today, I’ll ask you this… have any other girls kissed you since we’ve been together?”

Harry shook his head disbelievingly, scoffing before he stood up. “I think I should just fucking go,” he told her, stunning Olivia. He wasn’t supposed to leave until they had finished yelling and could work on getting through Taylor-Gate. Olivia was nowhere near finished yelling.

“So, that’s a yes, then,” she determined, looking down at her clasped hands. The realisation that Harry had kissed other girls hit her suddenly, and the tears she was desperately trying to hold back came flooding out. She covered her face with her hands, not wanting him to see the effect he had on her.

Harry held his hands out, defeated. “Believe whatever the fuck you want, Olivia,” he told her. “I can fucking sit here and rehash this whole shit and try to get you to believe me until I’m fucking blue in the face, but you want to believe that I’m some dirty, rotten cheater who doesn’t give a shit about you, so what am I supposed to do?”

Olivia angrily wiped her eyes before glaring at Harry. “Tell me the fucking truth!” she demanded. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, Harry, it shouldn’t be that fucking hard to be honest with someone you claim to be in love with! Or are you lying about that too? Need some new fucking material for album number two? Can only write so many songs about Taylor and Kendall, can’t you?” she added spitefully. She knew she was hitting below the belt, and later, she would feel tremendously terrible about it. Right now, she only cared about getting the deepest dig in.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Harry spat out, shaking his head at Olivia. “I can’t fucking believe you right now. You’re being really shitty. I know you’re pissed at me, and I get it, but fuck…” He trailed off, stunned. “You actually think I’m lying about being in love with you? Really? Really? You’re a real fucking piece of work.”

Olivia shrugged uncaringly. “Says the guy who made out with Ghost Number One last night.”

“I told you that song wasn’t about her,” Harry reminded Olivia. “But hey, I guess since I’m a fucking liar, why the hell would you believe me, right?”

“Mm-hmm…” Olivia hummed, pursing her lips together as she stared at Harry. She didn’t think she could ever be this angry at someone she was so head over heels in love with.

Harry scoffed again. “I’m going,” he told her. “I’m not going to sit here and play this fucking game with you. I’ll call you tomorrow, because I’m not about to lose this over this –“ he told her, manically gesturing between the two of them. “So I guess it’s up to you whether or not you learn how to answer your phone,” he added snidely.

“Whatever, Harry,” Olivia muttered, standing up and stalking back to the front door. “Tell Taylor she can use my toothbrush,” she snapped over her shoulder before stepping inside and slamming the door behind her.

As she heard Harry start his car and angrily accelerate down the street, Olivia covered her face with her shaky hands, sliding down to the floor. She started to cry as the realisation of the fight hit her, and the nasty words they’d spewed back and forth to each other played over in her mind. She had wanted things to get better, not worse, and after what they said, she had no idea if they could ever get back to where they’d been.

~*~*~*~

The buzzing of her phone roused Olivia, but it took her a few moments to realise it was an incoming call. She sat up on her pillows, rubbing her eyes as she blindly felt around on the nightstand for the cell. It was three in the morning, she had four missed calls – Harry, she imagined – but the late night caller was Glenne. Yawning, Olivia slid her finger across the screen, assuming the call was nothing more than a phone-tangled-in-the-bedspread dial.

“Hello?”

“Olivia?”

Hearing someone on the other end of the presumed pocket dial surprised Olivia and she sat up straighter. “Glenne? It’s like three in the morning!” she told the girl, running her hand tiredly through her hair. She wondered if Glenne and Jeff were out at a club and drunk dialling their friends. It’d happened once before, not long after Olivia had met Glenne. It took her twenty minutes to remind the girl that Olivia couldn’t join her at the club, that she was in Canada, and it was a Tuesday. She hoped this wasn’t one of those calls.

Glenne’s voice was muffled through the phone, as though she was speaking to someone else. “One sec, here’s Jeff,” she finally answered. A beat later, Olivia heard Jeff’s voice greet her.

“What’s going on?” Olivia asked, the background noise sounding nothing like a club. “Where are you?”

Jeff sighed, sounding tired. “It’s, uhm… it’s Harry…”

Olivia’s head shot up and she gripped her stomach as it dropped. “What about Harry?” she asked urgently. “What’s going on?”

“Fuck, there… there was an accident. His car was hit. We’re at the hospital. You have to come."

Notes

Comments

@Kammy.
Oh I know. It hurt me too. When this idea first came to me, I was like "fuck... Noooooo!" But... I felt it was realistic (and stupid and dumb and dumb and stupid!) too. Sigh.

harambejtrump harambejtrump
4/26/18

this hurts, I'm broken...you have ruined me... (I still love you, but omg does this kill me)
You know I love this story, Olivia is my girl...but my heart hurts now

On that note....the realistic way they ended, wow...I could see this happening in his life easily, poor H...

Kammy. Kammy.
4/26/18

@Prinny1321
Thank you!!

harambejtrump harambejtrump
4/25/18

I'm sad that they didn't get back together but I love how realistic it was <3 I loved this though

Prinny1321 Prinny1321
4/25/18

@morrison_hotel
❤❤❤

harambejtrump harambejtrump
4/25/18