PAPARAZZI - h.s.

8

(harry's pov) 

I flickered through the photos. The screen of my laptop was the only source of light in the scruffy little rented room with the cracks in the ceiling and disgusting dark patches in every corner. I should feel horrifiedly annoyed, but instead I couldn’t help smile into the darkness over how things had evolved. 

It was the photos from that morning where she had been crying and I had gotten my wonder shot; where she had looked just as broken as she truly was. Instead of the look in her eyes that had hid her broken state so well as she had suddenly grabbed my camera, ejected the memory card and while looking directly at me - dropped it in her new gin and tonic without even blinking. 

She had sighed slightly while her smile had rested on her lips, ”your French is just as horrible as your try of easing things out. If you would please leave, I’ll not call security.”

It had come as out of nowhere; suddenly the thin crack I had managed to work into her facade was replaced by sharp cold words, ”besides,” she had even smiled at me and tilted her head slightly, "as far as I recall you were never the one nominated for an academy award for your acting.” 

A bitter chuckle escaped my lips as my head kept spinning after the bottle of liquor I had bought was missing a decent amount of the content. Why was she so bewitching? I watched the screen, watched her face in the picture; the perfect jawline and shadows falling on her neck. 

I was going to get my damn shot. I was going to get my money and make it big eventually, I was going to make it. I wouldn’t be stuck in the category being the targets for loathing and hatred from people like Naomi Fay with her annoyingly beautiful eyes and smart mouth. The room was spinning as my mind was clouded with the alcohol that I tried drowning my failure with. 

”She’s just a girl. She’s just like the rest of them, you fucking idiot,” I mumbled to myself in the cracked bathroom mirror before pulling off my shirt and jeans on my way back to the bedroom, ”just a girl disguised as an angel." I forcefully managed to shut the laptop and almost stumbled over the double mattress on the floor. 

I lay there a few minutes looking up at the lights running over the ceiling from the cars passing outside, how the cracks seemed alive like a constantly changing pattern. My breathing was heavy as my bare chest rose and fell - the blanket only covering my lower body as the nightly summer heat was warm enough as it was. 

She was a girl. Maybe not easily deceived, but not impossibly. 

Before I fell asleep late in the night I concluded this was - now - suddenly a game I was willing to play with only one outcome I could approve of, which was to win. Get that shot. Get it and make it big. No matter what it took. I would make the money I so desperately needed; I would get them the only way I knew. 

(Naomi’s pov)

”What is it with you?” Louis’ voice sounded through the phone.

”Sorry -” my words were mumbled as I removed the last evidence of the make up from the night before. The early sun stood in through the high ceiling windows as I watched my reflection in the mirror of the wooden make up desk. 

”Well it’s not like it matters that you listen anyway, I’ll send you a mail with everything - has anything happened?” I could clearly hear the worry in his tone but I forced myself to brush off the feeling of self pity and despair that apparently could be heard across an ocean. 

”Jet lagged,” I lied adding the ’and hung over’ in my head. My eyes seemed so naked without the usual amount of darkness surrounding them; fake sensual darkness. Now they were, yes dark, but for other reasons - a more natural one being one of tiredness and emotional exhaustion. I was tired of being angry with him, that prick. I couldn’t stop imagining them together - in the bed we had shared. Him smiling at me with the taste of her on his lips. I felt nauseous. Before I knew of it his eyes had changed into a green pair which had watched me with such a strange gaze I couldn’t possibly read…