Flicker (H.S)

28.

28.

“I love you Everly, I promise. Remember when I came home late and you were sitting on the couch, almost five months pregnant, wearing that old university jumper and talking to little Jess? When La Guerra kept me a bit longer than I’d expected? When you started crying as I came through the door because you thought I was hurt? I don’t think I’ve loved anything more. I held you to me and you just kept saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you” and so I held you closer, putting my palm to your stomach and rubbing so Jess would stop kicking your ribcage. She did that a lot.

I loved her. I love her more now than I did when she was still with us, I think.

I love you too, I promise.

And I always will.”

-Autobiography of Harry Styles [read October 2nd, 2016].

___________________________________________________

SHE slept over at his house that night.

The house was cold and empty so she clung tightly to his trembling body underneath the mound of blankets draped over them, kissing his cheek, and his neck, and his chest. Wind crashes harshly into the side of the house and it creaks and shakes, so Harry lets Everly melt into him, and puts his face right above her head, so it’s resting on her pillow. It smells like her.

Like empty houses and foster homes and his cologne.

She’s starting to smell like abuse.

So he cuddles her closer, wanting to replace the kindness with maybe-love and maybe-fix what they maybe-have.

But she smells like empty houses and foster homes and his cologne and abuse.

And not even maybe-love can fix that.

“She’s safer now.” Everly whispers. Her voice is soft and for once it isn’t clouded with tears. “She’s okay, I’m sure she is.”

He nods and refuses to let his tears spill at the topic of his sister. “Yeah.” He chokes out. “Yeah, she is.”

The house shakes again.

And he shudders because Mel is gone and she was the one who’d let him in when everyone else locked him out. The wind knocked him over, so Mel would pick him up. Everly would, if she was able. But her arms would simply snap under the weight that is Harry’s heart.

Mel smelled like abuse, too. That’s how she did.

And all the Styles kids smelled of abuse at one time or another, so Harry pushes his maybe-lover’s chest flush against his and pushes his face into her tangled hair. “I wish that bastard didn’t kill himself so I could kill him myself.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I mean it.”

“Mel loved him.”

“He killed her.” He spits, pulling away slightly to look at her with a mixture of confusion and anger. “I hardly think that love plays a factor when he beat her every day for the past six months and then kills her. I doubt that fucking love matters when they find her body in a ditch beside the fucking highway.” Harry starts to stand, but Everly grabs his trembling hand.

“Please don’t leave. Not this time.” She pleads.

And maybe it’s the gold in her red-rimmed eyes.

Or the way she reached for her glasses off the bedside table just so she could see the miniscule freckles on his cheeks or the dot on his forehead.

Or how she smiled when he sat on the edge, trying to calm himself down.

“Thank you.” Everly crawls up behind him, so his back is to her and the bed, and sets her chin on his shoulder. “Nicolas misses us. The headteacher called me yesterday and said that he’s been asking where ‘his Harry’ was.”

Somehow, the mention of Harry’s puny pal was enough to let a small, almost unrecognizable smile spread across his face. “Did he really?”

Everly laughs a bit, and they both smile a bit wider because for the first time in months,

Everly

laughed.

“Yeah, he did.” Her skinny arms wrap around his neck and link so they’re resting on his collarbones. “Do you wanna see him tomorrow? Would that make you happy?”

“That would make me happy, yes. Could we do that?”

“Of course.”

There was a pause. Then there was a gasp.

“Harry.”

“Evie.”

“Did you, like, use protection?”

There was a longer pause. Then there was a muttered “shit” and Harry stood, tugging his maybe-lover with him into the bathroom, where he lifts her up with his strong, inked arms onto the counter and stared into her eyes for two full seconds, just enough to notice the darkness that has once-again clouded them, sigh, and exit.

Everly sits in his bathroom, trembling. Half from the cold and half from anxiety. Anxiety from the gang, from him, from the maybe-child growing inside her.

It was only a few minutes before he returns, a box in his hands. “Mel kept these in her cabinets, just in case…. you know.” He trails off before hurriedly opening the box and taking out a little pink stick. “Take this. I’ll be outside, yeah? Just, like…. just don’t freak okay? We’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. I’ll be…. I’ll be outside.”

And he left.

And Everly sighed.

And she took the test.

And she waited.

Harry knocks on the door. “You alright?”

“Can you come in?”

There’s a pause. Then the door opens and Harry comes inside the bathroom, taking a look at the almost-revealing test before crouching before his maybe-lover in front of the toilet she sat on, surprisingly calm.

He is a mess. A true mess. He tries not to show it, but there isn’t much he can do about the redness in his eyes and the fear in every feature of his face.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She replies, smiling a bit.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve always wanted kids.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you want kids?”

Pause.

“I’m sorry.”

Her head drops to look at her feet. His hand grasps one of hers and he kisses the back of it gently before rubbing his thumb across it rhythmically. Everly took deep breaths and looked at him, right in the eye, before kissing his lips.

He tasted like tears and a bit of abuse.

She kissed him harder.

The ticking of the wall clock pulls them apart, and they watch in unison as it strikes two in the morning, ten minutes after Everly took the test. They both stand, and she closes her eyes. Because she already knows, in the back of her mind, what the test will say.

Harry picks up the stick.

And begins to cry.

And it’s all a big mess, really.

short but significant.

much love,

el x