After the End: Book 4

71. Her Chance

A/N: I edited this chapter at the zoo. The elephants helped.
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Harry's POV

There's something particularly scary about corpses. It doesn't matter who it belongs to or how messy it is. They're always scary. I haven't seen that many, but I've seen enough to know that. I've had nightmares about all of them. I had nightmares about them that morning.

"The bed that Louis got me is uncomfortable," I said. My voice was laced in agitation. I knew it was clearly displayed in my face too.

It wasn't even the truth. The bed was fine. It fit into the space perfectly. When I'd told him it could be small, I'd expected a twin but it was actually a full. He got a bed frame and mattress and everything. Super comfortable. The bedroom still looked nothing like a bedroom, and my clothes were still in a box in the other room, but it was progress. Or something like progress.

Was I supposed to tell the therapist about any of that? I was probably, but I was busy lying to her about Louis' perfectly good bed purchase. She'd asked me about the deep circles under my eyes that indicated a lack of sleep, and I'd said that instead of explaining the nightmares and the way I stayed up at night agonizing over the fact that everything was collapsing.

"You have a bed now?" She asked recalling the previous conversations we'd had about the sofa situation.

"Yeah, and a bedroom."

There. Honesty. I'm winning at therapy.

I thought maybe I should tell her about the things with Clarissa. Or the fact that I'd found myself melting into the sofa, stuck in a thought loop and obsessing over what the media had to say about me like it mattered the previous day. Clary had pulled me out of it by dragging me to a support group, which consisted exclusively of people of retirement age. We were probably the only people under the age of 50. When I questioned it, Clarissa reminded me that nobody in the room was likely to know my name. Geriatrics weren't listening to boy bands or pop stars. She was right. Nobody recognized me at all.

I also thought I should tell her about Louis and the way he was quietly losing his mind. I didn't bring it up because if I thought about it, I'd maybe have another panic attack. I'd hyperventilated in my shower directly after leaving his flat after what I'd seen. I was embarrassed by how fragile it made me feel to know he was so alone.

"Harry, you seem really distracted today," she prompted me.

I was distracted. My brain was everywhere and I was tired.

"I'm not distracted," I lied. That didn't feel conductive to the therapy thing. "There's just a lot going on. For everyone else. Not for me. I'm unemployed. According the internet though I'm at number one for the second week in a row. I'm unemployed and number one at the same time."

"I think that implies that there's a lot going on with you too," she reminded me. "We didn't get to speak for very long about that last time I saw you."

"That was Clary's fault, not mine." I knew that was a lie. Clary was the only reason I even made it at all on Monday.

She just looked at me for a moment. She had that trying to break into the filing cabinet look on her face again. I just stared back and willed myself to be less annoying than I was being. I was so tense and locked up. I couldn't break out of it.

"They stopped sending me emails," I added in an attempt to breach something useful. I'd already wasted a lot of the session. I looked down at my hands and started picking at the remnants of the black nail polish I'd let them put on my fingers at the festival. It was almost completely picked off already.