Introspective Strangers [h.s.]

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

On a normal day, people tend to drive me absolutely insane.

Today, Gemma and Bella were driving me to the brink of nearly wanting to throw myself off of a bridge.

I had definitely agreed to show Gemma around the city before I had even really thought twice about what I was getting myself into.

First of all, I happened to have been raging drunk at the time and my mind tunnelled with the thought of one thing and one thing only: Harry. Secondly, I didn't even know Gemma. Usually, when I went out with someone in any respect, I had a pretty good idea of who they were and how to act around them. Today, I was going in blind. And thirdly, I hadn't exactly known that Bella was going to be tagging along.

It seemed that the minute I had come to terms with the jealously and feelings that I had for Harry; her presence seemed to heighten all of those emotions. But the worst part was that, if it hadn't been her, it would have just as easily been someone else.

It would have been the girl at the breakfast place that we stopped at unable to take her eyes off of him or chat him up whenever she passed our table, the girls that stopped him on the side of the street in a fit of giggles to ask him some stupid question about his outfit or his accent, the girls intentionally bumping into him wherever we went in order to get him to speak to them – basically just any fucking girl on the planet with eyes at this point.

And I let all of it piss me off. I personally wanted to throttle every single one of them.

Who was I?

At least it happened to be something that Bella and I could actually bond over considering none of the aforementioned events seemed to pass by her without an eye roll or a scoff either.

"You know you don't have to stop every time, right?" she asked Harry nearing our fourth hour of the day wandering the streets and playing tourist, obviously fed up with all of the attention that he was getting. Attention that wasn't coming from her.

"What are you going on about now, Bella?" Harry groaned, falling in step beside me. Our hands brushed against one another and I shoved mine into my pocket, causing him to clear his throat and stand up a little straighter.

Despite how upset the other girls might have been making me, it wasn't enough to force me into playing 'couple' on the streets with Harry. I said that we could figure things out between us, but that definitely didn't include holding hands while we spent the day with his sister and his ex.

Plus, he had definitely gotten enough of me this morning already anyway.

"The girls," Bella waved a hand in front of her as she spoke. Her blonde hair was tossed over her shoulder as she turned to look at us. "You don't have to stop for every single one of them that fawns over you."

"She was asking me how to get to Starbucks. I don't see how offering directions is her fawning over me."

"Mm," she hummed in response with another roll of her eyes. "And did she just ask for directions?"

Harry glanced down at me, bristling slightly. "Well... I mean... she did also ask me to walk her there and offered to buy me a coffee – " I looked away from him and down toward the sidewalk. "But – but I said no. Obviously, because–"

"Because why?" Bella asked coyly, with a small smirk on her face. The four of us had stopped in front of the mall and she cocked her head to the side, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Because of May?" She shrugged before continuing, "My bad. I haven't heard you say that you two are official are anything. I mean, what are you to each other–"