I. L'instant [H.S]

XXXI

What the hell am I doing?

God, I'm a mess. It's clear seeing Harry will always end up in me having mixed feelings and confusing the hell out of myself further but then I couldn't stay away when I had the chance. I've tried to tell myself it's because of our friendship and what it means to me but the truth is the friendship we used to have it's long gone, replaced with this strange attraction that I can't seem to fight off.

I've always known and seen how incredibly handsome Harry is, how confident he can be and just how charming he can get whenever he wants to but I always saw all of those traits as something I'll simply never get, something that was for me to see but never to actually be at the other end of. Now I can't stop feeling this electricity running through my whole body, begging me to stay as close as I can to him, to be around him, to simply spend time with him, even though if it's just as friends.

He's got a girlfriend, you just broke up with Joe. He's got a girlfriend, you just broke up with Joe.

I repeat the same over and over in my head, convincing myself to get over this and just try to at least be normal and decent, and stop getting ideas in my head that will simply not happen.

"Emilia, slow down!" he calls angrily, again.

The restaurant it's just a couple of feet away, so I stop and wait for him to join me. "I'm sorry." I mutter again.

He looks at me with a frown, he's mad, I can tell but he's trying to behave. "Right."

The maitre d' leads us to a table near the bar, I take a seat quickly and try to entertain myself with the idea that this dinner could go as swiftly as it did the last time we were here. That was a really good night and I had a great time with Harry, he made me laugh and throughout the whole time I never, not once, cared about time or what was going about around us. It was just us two, like before, exchanging cheeky comments and making each other laugh at the rudest or silliest jokes.

"A negroni and whiskey on the rocks." Harry says to the waiter and gives me a quick look.

I nod, feeling like perhaps he's thinking the same as I am. "Thanks."

"What are you doing for your birthday?" he asks out of the blue, surprising me.

I hadn't thought about my birthday, not with everything that had been going on. It's still two weeks from now but the idea of throwing a party seems like a good thing, everything else aside. It could help me feel less shitty and maybe forget a bit about all that's happened in the last week.

"I don't know yet." I lean over the table slightly. "Maybe a party?"

"Where?" he asks almost immediately.

"I don't know." I repeat, chuckling a little. "I haven't thought that much into it."

"You could do it at the XOYO." he suggests with a smirk.

I have to hold myself from not smirking back. "You're not serious."

He leans into the table, getting closer. "Oh, but we had so much fun last time."

The mention of the last night we both attended the infamous club in Soho, on my last birthday before he left, makes my face red with shame. I was so wasted when a guy tried to hit on me to then try to get a handful of my bum when I told him to fuck-off. I remember both Mike and Harry getting into a brawl with the bloke and two other of his friends. When we finally got kicked out, Harry took me to his place where I, in the most fashionable manner, threw up inside of his closet.

He cleaned up after me and put me to bed where I woke up the next morning, tangled up between his sheets with a killer hangover, both moral and physical. But I had the time of my life and danced the whole night with all of my friends.