You Found Me

“Thanks for dinner,” I smiled as Will walked me up to the front door of my dorm. Originally, I’d told him to drop me off outside the campus, just so that he could hurry and catch the subway to get to his own dorm, but he’d insisted on walking me to my building to make sure that I was safe.

Will was perfect. He was sweet and gentlemanly, he was beautiful inside and out, and he was an awesome friend. And although I didn’t feel the intense passion for him that I’d felt with Harry almost immediately, I could tell that Will and I could get to that place. It was just a slower process.

“No, thanks for coming. I’m so glad you could pencil me in to your jam-packed schedule.”

I flushed at the repeated joke. “Ah, yeah. I’m a busy woman.”

We stopped, and I turned to face him. “So I’ll call you later?” he asked, blinking slowly, his long, dark eyelashes brushing against his upper cheek.

“Yeah, definitely,” I granted, starting to walk away. I’d been wondering through the night what Will would be like: would he be slow and cautious like Jared, asking before he made any kind of move? Or would he be ready and rearing to go, taking charge of every situation and making it clear what he wanted, like Harry?

“Hold on,” Will implored as he leaned over and grabbed my arm. Then, before I could say anything, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine.

The kiss was short and sweet, and his hand was warm on my cheek, a stark contrast to the chilly air around us.

When he pulled away, I grinned at him, my face filling with a blush. “Call me later,” I repeated his earlier words, walking backwards so I could keep my eyes on him.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Definitely.”

After granting him one last grin, I let myself inside the building and started up toward my dorm room. It wasn’t until I was out of view of everyone that I allowed myself to squeal with excitement, that the butterflies were allowed to flood into my stomach. It felt so incredibly fabulous, to be at the start of a slow-moving, normal relationship. The intense feelings I had for Harry were unhealthy, and I was starting to get over him.

Slowly, but surely. It was a process. But I was willing to work through it.

When I walked into the dorm room, Diana was hunched over her desk, typing furiously on her keyboard. It looked like she was on fire with some kind of assignment, and I definitely didn’t want to interrupt that.

Without saying a word, I disappeared into the bathroom to take off my makeup and get ready for bed. By the time I walked back into the room, Diana had turned her chair around, glaring at me.

“What?” I asked, pulling down the hem of my sleeping tank top self-consciously. “You’re freaking me out.”

“You have been home for ten minutes, and you still haven’t said anything about what happened on your date. Tell me!”

I hopped up into my bed and spun around so my legs dangled over the edge. They waved back and forth as I recounted my story to Diana, who had a small smile on her face the whole time.

“Ooo, he went in for the kiss, and you let him? Why don’t you go back to your home on Whore Island?”

I gave her a confused look, but she immediately burst out laughing. “I’m kidding. Don’t worry. Your date sounds cute. Do you like him?”

“Yeah,” I responded, biting my lip and staring at the tile ground. “He makes me feel…comfortable.”

Diana smiled at me as she turned around to finish her assignment, and I took that as a dismissal from the conversation, so I crawled under my covers and turned my back to her. The alarm clock light shined right in my face, screaming at me that it was a little past eleven.

Although the light was still on, and there was the steady, almost irritating sound of Diana’s typing, I fell into a deep, content sleep in a matter of minutes.

* * *

I woke up to my phone blaring Ed Sheeran, the sound screaming through the room that had been previously silent with sleep. My vision was blurry, and I could just make out the time: 2:49.

“Hello?” I whispered into the phone, glancing over at Diana to make sure I hadn’t woken her.

She turned over and made a little sleeping noise before she went back to her normal, relaxed breathing.

After about thirty seconds, I still hadn’t gotten an answer, so I hopped to the floor. “Dad? Jenny? Who is this? Are you okay?” As I made my way toward the door, I scolded myself for not looking at the Caller ID before I answered.

But the only sound that played back at me was heavy breathing. In my drowsy, still half-asleep state, it took me a few minutes to decipher that there were two sets of breathing. And suddenly, it was punctuated by a loud, drawn-out moan.

“Harry!” an unfamiliar girl’s voice shouted, followed by another feral noise that I didn't realize could come out of a human being. “Oh, Harry.”

My stomach churned as I realized what, exactly, I had been listening to. Harry had called me to listen in on him hooking up with some chick. Two months, and he still held a grudge against me? He still wanted to make me upset?

But how did he know that would even bother me? How did he know how easily something like that would get under my skin?

I had no idea, but it worked. Without being able to control myself, the tears started pouring down my cheeks as the passion built on the other side of the phone, the sound of a zipper coming down audible.

“FUCK YOU,” I screamed into the phone, completely ignoring the fact that Diana was trying to get a good night’s sleep. “YOU PRICK. I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU."

Hanging up, I finally let a sob overcome me, and I knew that I had to get out of the room. There was no way I could show so much vulnerability to a girl I’d only known a couple weeks. She’d get freaked out, I knew it.

My gait was wobbly and uneven as I stepped out into the hallway. I wasn’t sure where to go from there, since I knew residents could hear every noise possible from the outside. Not only were the doors too thin to block out the noise, but the shape and emptiness of the corridor let the sound carry all the way down to the rooms closest to the elevators.

God, there was no privacy in college. Everywhere, people were socializing or could get woken up. I wanted nothing more than to escape to a solitary room, where I could bury my face in a pillow and get out the emotions that I was struggling to hold on to.

Instead, I sat on a little ledge at the end of the hallway, one that sat in front of a window and overlooked the city around us. Curling my knees into my face, I took deep breaths and tried to control myself, pushing away the sadness and hurt, cursing Harry up and down for ever coming to my sister’s wedding.

And it was in that moment that I realized it would be harder than I ever thought possible to get over Harry Styles.