Wanderlust

Once my intense sobs had died down to the occasional whimper, Harry led me over to the large couch and sat me down, offering me the box of tissues from the coffee table.

Drying myself of tears, I couldn't decipher exactly which emotion was surging through me the strongest; misery or embarrassment.

Harry sat next to me adorning loose basketball shorts and a t-shirt, casual as ever yet now producing a very confused and worried expression. I looked up to meet his bright eyes and found them to be searching my face, a frown tugging on his usually upward lips.

"I'm," I hiccuped, "so sorry. I didn't even mean to come here, I just..." I looked around the apartment, thinking of Paloma. "Didn't have anyone else to go to."

I sobbed hard once more at my revelation, thinking rather dramatically of my isolation in this small country.

Harry's hand reached out to my upper arm and rubbed it comfortingly, his eyes now directed at my own. "I'm glad you came here." He expressed, "what happened? Are you okay?"

I thought about brushing his question off, or even making up some mediocre excuse for my tears, but the need to tell someone my real problem was too strong, too necessary. I needed to get what I was feeling off of my chest and out in the air. And so, through my blurred eyesight and aching throat I told him everything, from Kara to Will and finally, Lila.

He sat awfully close to me for the entire tale, a large hand now placed encouragingly on my leg while I rambled on. His eyes never left mine, though mine were scattering around the apartment in the adrenaline of re-living everything that had gotten under my skin.

"I was going to leave the flat, just walk around, you know?" I explained, nearing the end of my story. "But I passed his door and he was saying how I was an idiot and all that, and then," I heaved a breath, trying to suppress another wave of delusional distraught, "and then I heard her."

Harry seemed surprised for a moment, urging me to continue.

"She was saying that she right about me. That I was using Will and making a bad reputation for myself. She said he deserved better."

Harry's eyebrows were now furrowed in what looked like disbelief. I'm sure my own face matched his, before he straightened himself from hunching toward me and shook his head.

"None of what they said," he stressed, reaching for my hands and holding them tightly together with his own, "is true. You're not a groupie," he said firmly, as though personally insulted by this particular assault, "and you're in that studio more than you are your own house."

I tried to smile at his words, to let him know how much I appreciated them, but believing Will and Lila's accusations wasn't my problem.

"I know. It's not that. It's just... Coming from him... It hurts so much. We never fought like this back home, I don't know what's changed."

"It's this girl." He said, "This Lila bird. She's not good for your brother; probably wanting to cause drama, get her name in the tabloids or something. Some people will walk into your life and not see you as a real person... Just an object that they can play with."

His words stuck to me, played on in my mind. For more than one reason, what Harry had said was very relevant. People had come into my life with nothing but bad intentions, but I thought I was past that. Not only past it, but away from it. London was to be William and I's big escape away from all the drama and the pressure and yet, only a few months in, and we appeared worse off.

"I know... It's horrible, not knowing who to trust." I sighed, absently playing with the hands around mine in comfort. "I wish William would go home already, get out of London for a bit. Maybe I should, too."

I looked up from my lap where Harry and I's hands were in a tangle. His eyes were searching my face again, green orbs scanning over every inch.

"Do you," he paused, shuffling a bit in his seat, "do you think that's best? With the album, and everything?"

I shrugged my shoulders helplessly, "I don't know, maybe. When Will goes back I'll have no one around anymore."

"You'll have me," Harry cut in quickly, his hands feeling heavier on mine, "and the boys." He added.

I raised my eyebrows selectively at him, knowing full well that I hadn't seen 'the boys' in quite some time.

"Okay, so mostly me. The boys like you well enough, though. Practically love you, you know."

I smiled, deciding to remove my hands from his and rub my face lightly with a sigh.

"You're right. I have you guys, even if I look like a 'groupie'." I quoted my brother, watching Harry's face fall.

"No," he stressed, shaking his head, seemingly affected by my words. "Lucy, I don't think..."

The air between had suddenly disappeared and left with us a dense atmosphere. Harry had scooted so that, with his right leg folded up on the couch, we were particularly close and I could very nearly feel the warm breath emitting from his parted lips.

"I don't think I've been treating you very well."

His words had left me quite dumbfounded. Mere seconds ago, I had produced evidence to suggest that Harry had in fact been treating me the most decently, and now here he was confessing to poor etiquette. Before I could argue for him, he continued.

"I shouldn't kiss you, like I have. I shouldn't do that and not say anything, yeah?"

I didn't reply, because I was certain he didn't want me to. All I could do was listen and watch as his hands fumbled together quite similarly to the way ours had been together before.

"But I want to kiss you sometimes." He admitted, his deep voice delivering his words slowly. "A lot of the time, actually. I like you, Lucy, I really, really like you. And I don't like seeing shit in the papers about you, and I don't like knowing you're getting bad mouthed under your own roof, because you deserve better than that, so much better, yeah?"

I didn't know what to say. It was like that chest-wrench feeling all over again, but somehow nicer. Like, instead of being punched, my heart was doing flips and beating erratically.

I couldn't help but to think of all the times I had denied my feelings for Harry. To Paloma, to Danielle and Eleanor. I had been such a girl about it all that I had very nearly convinced myself of the blatant lie. But now, with Harry before me confessing as he was, how could I deny myself any longer?

It must have been the flush against my cheeks which ignited a confidence in the boy before me, as instead of toying with his hands he had decided to now inch even closer to my figure, reaching out and encasing my forearm in his hold and bringing me toward him.

"And I know you like me, too." He stated, eyes gleaming straight into my own as his face came closer, our noses barely touching. The tug at his lips left him staring at me with a rather cheeky smile, one that was very much his own, while he awaited a response from my particularly unresponsive form.

And what could I possibly say in that moment? All the air in my lungs had failed me, leaving me breathless and entirely entrapped in the gaze he had thrown onto me. All I could capably do, I found, was smile.

And that was apparently all he needed because, with my smile, I had confirmed his suggestion, that I did like him.

His returned smile could have made me laugh, with its excessive enthusiasm, had he not interrupted my lips with his own.

With his hands now encasing the curve of my neck, his lips met mine with an urgency that took me by surprise. I felt as one hand slipped to the back of my head while the other went to my jaw, our lips moving in sync while my own hands tightened into his t-shirt.

My chest was beginning to tighten at the restriction of air but I was struggling to decide which I wanted more; oxygen or Harry's lips on mine. I brought him closer, as if this would stop the pain within my lungs, but eventually we had to part, still as close as we were with chests rising and falling in slowing speed.

Harry's mouth was quick to form another smile as he leant forward and placed a very quick kiss to my lips once more, and then another to my cheek, and another to my neck until we were both laughing and I had fallen back onto the couch with him on top of me, showering me with kisses that left me breathless once more, this time with girlish giggles.

Eventually he stopped his attack so that he towered over me with a rather accomplished smile adorning his perfect face, curls hanging down until he swept them aside once more.

"So," he began, his continually deep voice very quiet, "I take it you do like me then, yeah?"

I could hardly hold the large smile from my face as I murmured a breathless "oh, I suppose you're alright." Especially not when he squeezed my side with a laughing "oi!" and began attacking my face and neck once more, emitting laughs from myself that I was sure wouldn't have come from me earlier that morning.