Lonely Nights // H.S

13.

'I don't ever wanna leave'

*

Warm sun seeps through the window. The kind of sun that you see in those post sex montages in the movies. The kind that almost doesn't seem real, because it's so bright and inviting and reveals only the most beautiful parts of a person.

But it is. I feel it on my skin as I awake from my sleep, the subtle heat of it hitting the parts of my body that aren't covered by the duvet.

And next to me, his back turned and body exposed, is Harry. Sleeping ever so peacefully with a steady rise and fall of his lungs, naked in my bed.

I've been spending the past twenty minutes just watching him, noticing the subtle way he sighs between his breathing, the way he hugs his pillow, the way his skin seems so much smoother at the start of the day. I could do this all day, I think. Could trace the curves and dips of his skin and the subtle details of the texture.

A work of art. Perfection personified. If the Gods were to make their ideal human, free of sin and temptation, perhaps it would be Harry. The flush of his skin and the carving of his muscles, all made in the image of definitive beauty. Adonis or Apollo, whatever myth may describe the image in front of me.

I could draw him like this, too. Without causing a stir, I could grab my sketch pad and let my pen try to do justice to what my eyes see, what my heart feels. It may well be the greatest thing I've ever drawn if I do. I wouldn't even need to watch my hand, because at this point every inch of him is memerised. Etched into my mind like the carvings of a pencil to paper.

Yet, the workings of his body are hardly as pure as the sight. Not after what we did last night, not after he stayed and slept next to me while another woman was at home. Something we still haven't discussed, and I know we should, but the thought of it terrifies me because it would signify the end.

It cannot continue, not like this. Whatever it is.

An affair is hardly something I'd ever thought myself capable of, much less with Harry. I have been on the other side of this, the laughingstock when a partner has decided I wasn't enough, and I know I am the woman that will cause that same humiliation for Prue. All I've ever wanted to do was to make others happy, to not be too loud or too much. To never become the centre of attention, to never overstep my mark, to never look too far.

All these things, for the benefit of others, and the one time I decide something for myself it comes at such a cost. A price far too high, and I knew it when I made the first move and kissed him.

God, I've known it from the moment I allowed myself to accept what I feel for Harry.

But somehow, that only makes the whole ordeal much more exciting. Wanting something I can't have. Doing something I know is inherently wrong but feeling so damn good after.

What a contradiction.

A sick joke, one that we deserve.

Part of my brain is searching for reasons to justify it. Maybe Prue isn't as nice to him as she presents herself, maybe he feels trapped, maybe she's done this to him before. But in all those scenarios, I always come out as an object that's been used, not a person that mattered enough for Harry to choose to be selfish with me. I am the person caught between them. I am the one that leaves without a prize.

And it's not that I did this for a prize, for anything really. But to acknowledge that regardless of Harry's role in this, I seem to be the one losing the most respect, it hardly seems fair. We both made a choice, it's true, but he knows the consequences of his, and mine are still so unknown.