meraki.

Valetine's Day

Harry's process of figuring things out hadn't gone quite as he had expected it to go. 

Well, actually, there wasn't much to figure out. He knew that, his head knew that, his heart knew that, his body knew that. 

The irrational jealousy he felt whenever Anna was friendly or close to someone else; the butterflies whenever the two touched or held hands; the way he felt whenever he made her jealous on purpose; the guilt he felt immediately, right after succeeding in his purpose; the way he felt when they weren't on speaking terms; the way he felt whenever he was able to make her smile; the way he felt when he saw her smile in general, but especially when the smile was directed to him and only him. 

Harry had got himself a little crush on his tutor, that coincidentially was also his roommate and friend. 

A friend he hadn't spoke to a lot in the past two weeks, since after his birthday party. 

Right, his birthday party. Where he had truly crossed a line. He didn't even know what had possessed him to act like he had done that night, using both Anna and Mariam to satisfy that sick need of his to make Anna feel just like he had felt seeing her joke around with Christopher. He had no justification for his behaviour from that night. And he felt absolutely awful about that. 

Not to mention, it had backfired on him, because Anna had completely cut him off from her life. She hadn't talked to him since that night, except when she was forced to during their classes. And he couldn't exactly blame her for acting that way. He would've been the same, had it happened to him. 

How fun it was that, right when he had finally took the decision to sit down and have a conversation with himself about what the hell had been happening with the chemicals in his brain that were on charge of his emotions and how he felt about people - a person in particular, to be exact - that person had also decided (rightfully so) to never speak to him ever again. Or so it looked. 

No matter what Harry did to make things better, nothing seemed to be good enough: the apologies hadn't been good enough; the puppy dog eyes hadn't been enough; the frustrated huffs hadn't been enough; the long ass notes app apologies he had prepared for himself hadn't been enough; the little treats he had left for Anna here and there during the past fourteen days hadn't been enough. 

And, to be completely honest, Harry knew that she was right to treat him like that. For as much as it made him feel stupid, and frustrated and mostly useless and rejected, he was in the wrong. He had to make his peace with that. 

One thing that he had decided, even though Anna would've most likely never talked to him again - and she was right for that - was that he couldn't keep seeing Mariam, nor keep leading her on. He had, at best, liked her one small bit at the very beginning of their constant hanging outs, but even then he had knew that it was nothing more than a fragile little flame that would've burned out in no time. 

Plus, he had noticed that for some reason she wasn't a fan of Anna, and the thing pissed him off from the very beginning. The sentiment had only increased when he had finally admitted to himself he had developed a crush. 

He couldn't stand to be in the same room as Mariam anymore after his birthday party night, so he had came up with an excuse as to why he wouldn't have been hanging out with her anymore, and luckily for him, she had bought it, without asking any questions. 

But now it had been two weeks, and he needed to get himself out of that deadlock before Mariam would've got tired of him avoiding her. 

He figured it would've been better to do it quickly, like he was ripping off a bandage, but he was also sure of two things: the first one was that he couldn't do it over the phone, because it was absolutely vile and cruel to break the poor girl's heart via a simple and dry text, with an H. attached at the end as his signature; the second one was that he couldn't do it on that particular day.