After the End: Book 4

66. Someone Like Me

A/N: My partner genuinely broke the bumper off my car somehow before leaving it, and they "don't remember how it happened," so I'm just staring at it angrily trying to figure out if it's a duct tape solution type of job. I want to scream into an endless abyss. Enjoy an update while I just sit here stewing about it.
I wrote and rewrote and edited this chapter so many times. It literally looks nothing like the first version. That's why I write chapters several days before they are ever posted, because this took multiple days to be what I wanted it to be.
Also the final round of edits on it were not sober edits, RIP for the typos lol
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Harry's POV

I'd just quit.

What was I thinking? Was I insane? I had to be insane? After all that... after everything Louis had done for me... I'd literally just done that.

It didn't feel real by the time I'd made it out of the lobby. Even with the adrenaline still coursing through my body, it still didn't feel real. Not even the security trailing behind me, no doubt making sure I left, felt real. It all felt like a dream.

Throwing my badge back at the closed glass doors behind me didn't feel real either, but I still did it as hard as I could. It hit with an unsatisfying clatter, but I didn't even stop to watch it. I just kept storming away from the building.

I just quit.

No more label. No more Harry Styles the superstar. Well, that was a little dramatic. I was still me. Wasn't that the whole thing we'd been talking about in therapy? Wasn't that the very thing I was supposed to be working on? I was sure we'd talked about something similar. I'd have been able to recall it if not for the way that my brain was spinning.

I kept on across the parking lot with the same angry adrenaline. This had been a very sudden decision. There wasn't much of a plan.

I hadn't been treated right by the label on Friday. I was regularly not treated right (that's just how the music business worked), but I'd really not been treated right on Friday. I knew that with a new clarity all the sudden. I deserved better. I shouldn't have ever been put in that position.

Then Melvin had said that, and I'd just snapped. I'd snapped like a rubber band held too tight until all of the fibers gave out at once. It was loud. It was ugly. I couldn't take it back.

Melvins use of that stupid word wasn't even that bad. Was I just overreacting? Louis seemed sure that I wasn't. He seemed kind of in awe of me actually.

I started pacing my way down the street. Louis had yelled at me to call Naomi, and in a corner of my brain, I knew that's exactly what I should have been doing, but I just kept walking. The streets were familiar. I hadn't walked that way in a very long time, at least not sober. I'd been high all the times I'd walked home the previous month.

I'd managed to make a whole album while on drugs, but I couldn't get through an single argument with Melvin sober. That was so pathetic. Louis had literally bent over backwards to make sure I could have a career despite my issues, and I'd just shit all over it infront of him.

As the adrenaline faded in to the autumn breeze, I started to feel more panicked. What I'd just done wasn't something I could take back. I'd messed up badly. I had no idea what happened next, but what I did know was that my heart was beating faster, and my brain was speeding up. My fingertips started to feel numb with anxiety.

Get high.

That wasn't a nice voice. It was pervasive and ever present, looking for moments of weakness so slip the suggestion in. I was definitely weak at the moment. Life changes were big triggers, and ending my contract infront of everyone like that was kind of a huge life change.