"Harry, what the hell was that?" Liam demanded after Harry just stood and stared at him in silence.
Harry's hands fidgeted by his sides, unable to look Liam straight in the eye and lie. "Nothing, relax."
Liam looked Harry up and down, the evidence of his dishonesty written all over him. From his body language, to the mussed up appearance of his clothing. "Your zipper is undone."
Glancing down, Harry found he'd left the fly to his pants unzipped and promptly pulled it up. "So? Am I not allowed to pee?"
"I've been looking all over for you," Liam revealed. "You left Sophie by herself for, like, twenty minutes and she got worried and asked me to check on you, and I find you locked in the bathroom with Aubry. Are you kidding?"
Harry pinched his brows together, "I didn't realize you were my mother."
Liam shook his head disbelievingly, Harry's stubbornness conflicting with his own. "Don't turn this on me, you know this is wrong."
"I didn't do anything wrong."
"Taking a girl on a date and ditching her for someone else isn't wrong?" Liam pressed.
"I didn't ditch her," Harry defended. "I came to the bathroom because I was this close," he held up his hand to show a small space between the tip of his thumb and pointer finger, "to having an anxiety attack and Aubry followed me in." The taller boy scoweled, "Sorry I panic in uncomfortable situations and need time to calm down."
His friend backed down slightly after hearing what he said. He knew Harry had problems with panic attacks and understood what he went though when he had one, he'd watched him break down several times before. This one, however, was slightly different. "Harry, I heard you guys through the door. Don't act like you weren't doing something else with her."
Harry's cheeks involuntarily turned a slight shade of pink. "What did you hear?"
"Enough to know you're not telling the full truth."
He shook his head, refusing to admit what he was actually doing for two reasons. He didn't want to admit to his best friend that he received his first blowjob in a bathroom stall, and he didn't want to admit he was wrong. "It doesn't matter," Harry dismissed as he brushed past Liam on his way to the door. He went to leave, but not without ending the conversation by saying one last thing to his friend. "It's none of your business, and Sophie will never know."
He was wrong.
Harry stopped dead in his tracks as he stepped out of the bathroom, where he found Sophie to be standing, staring at him with hurt in her eyes. She heard what he said. He didn't get even half a second to explain himself before she took off running down the hall to get as far away from him as quickly as she possibly could, leaving Harry standing in the doorway, shocked. Harry turned to Liam, "You could've told me she was waiting!"
Harry ran after her, but she moved quickly and he lost track of which way she went in the short time he looked away to speak to Liam. He tried listening for the sound of her steps, but the thud of the soles of his own shoes downed out any possibility of hearing hers. He called out her name, glancing around every corner in the school he could find. Eventually his run slowed into a jog, and slowed even more until he walked alone through the empty halls. The school wasn't very big, and Harry began to worry he'd never find her.
That is, until he passed by the stairwell and heard a sniffle. He stopped to listen, thinking his ears were fooling him, but then he heard it again. In the one place he failed to check, he found Sophie. On the floor behind the staircase, hidden away to be by herself. Harry breathed a sigh of relief, "Sophie." That brief wave of relief he felt vanished completely when he noticed the tears that stained her cheeks, his face flushing white when he saw her clutching her ankle in pain. Promptly, he got down on the floor in front of her, "Did you get hurt?"
"It's fine, I just-" she sniffed in the middle of her sentence, "twisted my ankle."
Harry bravely reached forward to inspect the injury, his fingers brushing against the back of her hand. "Let me see."
Sophie allowed him to guide her foot to rest on his thigh while he took a look, the soft brush of his skin against hers as he gently undid the clasp that held her shoe on her foot a great contrast to the ache she felt in her joint. He slid the heel off, freeing her foot from the tight confines of her shoe to expose blistered toes and a slightly swollen ankle. It looked painful, and Harry did his best to soothe the pain by holding her foot steady. "How bad does it hurt?"
"I'll be okay," she mumbled, wiping a fallen tear from her cheek. "I shouldn't have ran."
He fell silent as he stared down at the injury she had, all thanks to him. The gnawing sense of guilt he felt couldn't be ignored. "I'm sorry."
"Don't say that."
His eyes met her red, puffy ones, "But I am."
"I should've known better," she dismissed as she reached to pull off her other shoe. She did it hastily, practically ripping the straps off her feet and discarding the heel next to the other with a clatter. The noise caused Harry to flinch.
"Sophie," he tried, but she wasn't in the mood to listen to his pleads.
"No, it's fine," she spoke, the bitterness she tried to hold back still managed to leak into her tone. "I get it, I completely understand."
"But your foot..." Harry spoke, but when he made eye contact with her he suddenly realized that wasn't her problem. He softly took in a breath, and glanced down at his hands. "This is about Aubry..."
She chewed on her lip, watching through her bleary eyes how he tried to massage the pain out of her foot. Volume stolen by the tears she held back, she confirmed. "Yeah."
He didn't know what else he should say. "I-I'm sorry, Soph-"
"I don't blame you," she interrupted. "Aubry's cool and fun and pretty and confident and all the things I'm not."
Harry's heart shattered. "No, no, Sophie. Don't say that."
"Say what? The truth?" The strain in her voice when she spoke pierced right through him with every word. "Look at her and look at me. It's pretty obvious who the better choice is."
Harry frantically shook his head, "Absolutely not. Don't think like that, you are every bit as good as she is. No one is better than you."
"Why then?" she cried. "Why did you leave me to be with her?" Harry faltered under her teary eyed stare, though he reached out for her perfectly manicured hand to attempt to bring comfort. "Why would you hide it from me?"
"I-" he stopped short, finding it hard to tell her anything that wouldn't hurt her feelings even more. He sighed, "I don't think we should talk about that."
Her eyes fluttered closed, the tears that brimmed her eyes falling down her cheeks. Her mascara ran down with each tear she shed, ruining all the work she put into looking her best for him. "I'm so stupid for thinking I could compete."
"You're not stupid," Harry argued sternly. "Nothing about you is stupid."
"These stupid heels are pretty stupid," she grumbled, sending them sliding across the floor with a kick.
Harry's thumbs pressed to the arch of her achy foot. The toes were pink from being stuffed inside those shoes all night and it all just looked so painful. Her whole body was pinched and pulled, she had herself laced up in a corset beneath her dress to make her waist appear thinner, the underwire of her bra poked her, and her blistered feet no longer looked the way they had when she stepped out of the nail salon earlier that day. She was uncomfortable, but she'd willingly done it all for him. Everything she'd done to herself that night was for him, and she felt like a fool for it.