London

29 - "Don't cry."

Alex

"She's not getting fired!" Harry yells and although I like that he's sticking up for me, I wish he'd just rather shut up and hold me. "There's nothing wrong with her!"

Instead of comforting me, he hasn't even looked at me from the moment he stepped inside. Partly because Yano started to bombard him straight away, but he could have ignored him. Now I'm still sitting on the ground and instead of feeling like I'm going to die, I want to die.

"Mate, I'm telling you this one more time. She is fired as of right now! I don't care what you think of her, there's something wrong and this isn't therapy!"

"She doesn't need therapy, she just needs to work. For fuck's sake, you can't fire her over this!"

"Harry," I whisper, hoping he'll hear. "Let's just leave, now."

"No," he says barely making eye contact. "This man here has been treating you like shit while you work hard even when you broke your wrist. You don't deserve to be treated like this over a little hiccup."

"Hiccup? More like a fuck up," Yano deadpans. "Now please leave before you both scare away more customers."

Harry looks a bit lost as I take his hand and let him pull me up and steer him out of the shop. As I look over my shoulder to Yano, he takes the seat behind the counter and buries his head in his hands. He must be tired after a night shift. It's not as if I can't continue work, but he clearly doesn't want me there anymore and Harry well.. he sort of fucked up every chance I had left to keep my job. All I wanted from him was to hold me and help me breathe properly again so that I could return to work. Instead he blew all my chances of that ever happening again.

"I need to get back to work," he tells me after a moment and I find ourselves walking over to Pascal's shop.

"I'm not supposed to go there."

"Alex, just walk," Harry says, clearly tired of it all. Or just me.

"No, Harry, stop."

"What now?" He spits, his patience clearly running thin.

"I'm going back to Yano. I should have never asked him to call you. I thought you would come to help me, but you only made matters worse. I should have called Liam."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he says sounding anything but apologetic. "I just ran from my work to yours. Couldn't you have thought about that before I cancelled my first appointment?"

"No, apparently not. Because when I get like that I still always hope that you can help me, but you can't! Oh lest me forget that you said you try to take your Sundays off."

"Well, I'm sorry for trying," he says angry, "fuck's sake."

I know we're making a scene, but I need to get this of my chest and out in the open. Even if it is on the street while everyone's still either asleep or trying to get somewhere else, and he doesn't want to hear it now or in forever.

"You are also wrong when it comes to me because I don't know where you have been for the past months, no years because there is something wrong with me, Harry. You said so yourself that you are worried about me. Not much has changed since then. Or do you really believe that talking about something for only one time and ignoring it afterwards is going to do the trick? Because it doesn't. I still feel like shit! I still feel like dying every moment I step outside and maybe we both need to come to terms with the fact that neither of us is going to change that."

"You are overreacting," he says stern. "There's nothing wrong with you. If you think that I feel fine all the time- I don't. That's life."

"And I can't deal with that, remember? I can't deal with your history here, I can't deal with anything. I'm afraid Harry," I add, eyeing him for his reaction.