Just a Name

Chapter 12

"Ugh." I say out loud after trying to get up. Trying, being the key word here.

"I can leave if my presence bothers you that much." Harry says and I roll my eyes.

"You're so full of yourself." I say looking up at him. "I literally just fell on my butt and you're my making my pain about you?"

Okay, maybe he's a little bit right. I'm a hormonal teenager, maybe one of my pains has his name on it, but he doesn't need to know about that. Or well, more about that. I already cried in front of him last night, is he waiting for a second acknowledgement or what?

Definitely not cool and collected, Blair.

"Sorry." Harry says softly. "You need a hand?" He asks kneeling next to me.

"No." I say proudly, and he raises his eyebrows at me.

"You're just gonna stay there?" Harry asks and I see him trying to stop the smile forming on his lips and I find myself doing the same thing. We then make eye contact and burst laughing together.

A few seconds pass before we fall silent again but this time, we're both comfortably smiling, and I break the silence first.

"It's not that I don't want your help. I just need to stay here... For a while." I say trying to avoid having to explain to Harry freaking Styles how my lack of buttox didn't break the fall.

He doesn't verbally answers me but replies to my statement by taking a seat next to me on the carpeted floor.

"I came to talk to you." Harry says throatily and I nod my head.

Lord knows I don't have the courage or gift for words to go first.

"...about last night." He adds hesitantly, and I realize that maybe he doesn't have the courage either.

"I'm sorry for what I said. I guess I didn't measure the harm in my actions and I'm so-"

"Hold it. No, I want to go first." I interrupt him. "May I go first?" I ask, even though it's obvious I'm not asking for permission. Harry nods his head and I try to put in an orderly manner my thoughts into words.

"First of all, sorry I interrupted you." I say and he smiles. "Well no, actually first of all- Last night."

My gosh, last night.

"I know we've been hanging together for the past couple nights but we're practically strangers." I say and his eyebrows furrow. "Let me finish, please." I smile and the lines on his forehead decrease a little but not completely.

"I get that we're the same age and that we both live odd, extravagant lives or that for some unnatural reason you get along with my dad," I joke and Harry smiles, "but all of that... It's still not enough to get to know me, it's not all  that I am." I take in a breath and I continue.

"What I'm trying to say is, there's a lot of history which explains why I reacted the way I did last night. There's a lot of emotionally charged moments that have made me skeptical or guarded or emotional..." I say with a dry laugh.

"And I'd like for you to get know me, and I just don't mean whatever baggage comes with my last name, I mean- Know me because you understand what has taken me to become myself... Who I am, to-today." I mumble and I blush.

That was very cheesy and the wide eyed look Harry is giving me, confirms it.  A seventeen-year-old that speaks of her short life as a novel and is asking a stranger to  -in my own words-  get to know her for what she's become... Of course, he would think I'm crazy.