Nightmare {h.s | au}

1.21

"We'll name our children Jackie and Wilson, raise 'em on rhythm and blues!" Harry and I sang together. It was impossible to keep up with him sometimes as we listened to the music. He sang so well as he sat on the hood of his car with his back against the windshield. I took to dancing like a fool around in the field. I crashed to the ground as the song ended with his laughter.

"Get up here!" he said loud enough to cut through the music and rustling of the weeds in the wind. I crawled up slowly onto the hood and lay back beside him, watching the clouds block the sun. "So how was the day overall?"

"Nothing's changed here. I hoped there may be something majorly different, but that's what I get for hoping I suppose," I said without looking away from the sky. It was almost pointless now to wear the sunglasses, but I couldn't find myself wanting to take them off.

There was a silence between us that I couldn't compare to any other. This one was calm and confident yet at the same time it was upsetting in the way it rolled through me as if it was trying to devour me. I was comfortable in the most unexplainable way. Did Harry feel like this too?

"Hope is a bitch, Eden," Harry said quietly. It was almost impossible to hear over the music.

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience," I replied.

We both knew how experienced we were with hope and what it wouldn't bring. That's what living in Manchester was for us—a never ending cycle of disappointments.

"You sound like him sometimes," Harry said and I could hear the smile in his voice.

I tried to think of everyone he could possibly be talking about. In the end, I came up blank. I didn't know of anyone that would be remotely the same as me and vice versus. Everyone I knew was so different from each other that there was no way for anyone to be relatively alike in any way.

"Like who?" I finally asked, turning my head to look at him.

He was staring at me, eye to eye. Our sunglasses clashed from how close we were so we both moved apart slightly before Harry cleared his throat and said, "Like Louis...you guys must have been close."

"You could say that," I shrugged and turned my head away.

Louis was and would always be a touchy subject. The falling out we had experienced was one for the books and something that had cost me the rest of my friends as well. And I understood that; I had still been new to them despite everything we'd been through. It would always be them before me.

"My mum said you guys were a thing," Harry said.

I wanted to leave.

I wanted to walk home and forget all about today.

I wanted to forget about Harry Styles.

I didn't need him.

I certainly didn't want him.

What made him so special anyways?

"I suppose so," I heard myself say. "What else has your mom told you?"

I believed wholeheartedly that I had shut down. It didn't feel like I was really talking even though I was.

"She told me..." he trailed off like he wasn't sure if he should tell me or not. I turned my head and rested it against the windshield to look at him through the lenses of my sunglasses. He was staring at me—I could tell that much from his frown and crease between his furrowed eyebrows.

"Why are you such a paradox, Eden?"

You're predictable in your unpredictability.

"It's a gift maybe."