Heavy Heart

Daria was a wreck. A constantly meditating, struggling through studying, attached to her phone mess. It has been five days. She left in two. Harry had yet to call.

She couldn’t imagine what could have possibly taken so long. What he could have possibly been thinking about for five days? Allowing her to stew for so long, alone in her little world – where no one else was aware of what was going on? It wasn’t fair; none of it was fair at all. Her room was in her boxes and her life was in shambles – nothing was right with the world and it was leaving her torn to pieces.

Saying those three little words had messed everything up. She should have just kept it to herself, kept her stupid, drunken mouth shut, and she wouldn’t be in that situation. While she maintained the fact that she meant what she said, he didn’t need to know, he didn’t need to be terrified by her words. She should have known better than to put such pressure on the relationship when she was already so close to leaving. The fissure in their relationship was put there against their wills, but she put the pressure on it enough to cause the cracks. There was no one to blame but herself.

“Deep breath,” she murmured from among the suitcases on the floor, her legs folded beneath her and back as straight as a board. Her mind was racing and she needed it clear. She needed clarity to remember how to breathe again.

Just as she felt settled from her thoughts, the door to her room burst open. Expecting Olivia, Daria’s heart sunk to see the curve of Violet’s upturned nose poking through the door. She was carrying a copy of The Sun, a smug smile perched on her thin lips. Daria sighed, relaxing her spine. Violet was exactly the last person she wanted to see.

“It’s been awhile since Hazza’s come ‘round,” she observed without so much of a greeting, leaning back against the heavy wooden door. Daria raised her eyebrows in the diminutive brunette’s direction, amused and bewildered at her forwardness.

“Don’t call him that,” she mumbled, turning her eyes to her lap. Violet had no right to act like she knew Harry well enough to call him by his nickname.

Violet proceeded like she hadn’t heard Daria’s words, flipping open the rag to a page she had haphazardly dog eared on the corner. From where she was sitting, Daria could see the cover, a photo of her and Harry in the corner with words beneath that she couldn’t read.

“It says in here that you two haven’t been seen together since last Saturday at Blaze,” Violet commented nonchalantly, her gaze flicking up to see Daria’s reaction. Though anger bubbled inside her, she wasn’t about to let Violet get a rise out of her. She just needed to sit and bear the heat of Violet’s scathing remarks, and soon enough she would be gone.

“Not to mention it says that he was spotted out in London with Cara Delevingne again,” she drooled, her voice dripping and thick like a syrup. The corner of her mouth tugged upwards as she turned the gossip rag towards Daria to reveal a photo of Cara and Harry heading out of the building they had been in for the Burberry shoot, the same building that housed Dr. Gupta’s office.

Cara was looking beautiful as ever, head turned just slightly towards the paparazzi’s cameras with a smile, Harry’s brows furrowed and a grim line of a smile across his lips. Daria took this as a small comfort – he didn’t seem to be exactly having the time of his life. But for the most part, the sight of him out with another girl while they weren’t on speaking terms was enough to make Daria want to cry. She wanted answers and she wanted them now.

When that failed to get a visible rise out of Daria, Violet’s smile faded, and she folded the publication to examine the cover once more. In that same sticky sweet voice with a bizarre pout on her lips, she cooed, “Seems that our little celebrity princess has finally lost her crown.”

That was enough for Daria. In a moment, she was on her feet, crossing the room to Violet. The instigator looked up from the magazine with a look of bewilderment, caught off guard by Daria’s sudden advances. Daria caught up the magazine in her hand, ripped in half, and threw it in the bin by the door.
“Fuck off Violet.”

And with that, she stormed out the door – leaving Violet with her jaw hanging slacked in the doorway. But she couldn’t be bothered to take a second glance back at the girl who insisted on belittling her at every opportunity. No, this time Daria had some business to attend to. She was going to talk to Harry.



When Daria reached the front gate outside Harry’s house in North London, she nearly lost all her nerve. The sight of his bedroom window from the street and the possibility of him being inside was enough to make her want to run in the other direction. There was no guarantee that he was even at home. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, the mid December cold ripping through her as she coaxed herself into pressing the button on the intercom.

Finally, she pressed her index finger to the call button, swallowing a large gulp of nerves deep in her throat. “Harry? It’s me. Can we talk?”

Wordlessly, the gate opened. Daria glanced around, only to find that not one paparazzo was hanging around waiting for her arrival. On the walk to the front door, her anxiety began to get the best of her – her hands shaking uncontrollably in her pockets. The first few snowflakes of the season began to float down around her as she waited for Harry to open the door and allow her entrance. Flakes clung to her eyelashes as she watched the handle turn and the door open to reveal a certain Harry Styles.

He looked awful, like he hadn’t slept in days. The photo in The Sun hadn’t done him justice. Despite being clean-shaven, as he always seemed to be, his eyes had deep, bruise-like bags beneath them, his skin dull and nearly colorless. He stood in front of her in a t-shirt and sweatpants that looked like he’d hardly changed out of them in the last few days.

“Hey,” she murmured in greeting, making no moves to approach him the way he made no moves to approach her. “Is now a bad time?”

“I mean, you came all the way out here,” he muttered, running his hand through the thick curls of his fringe. “Come in.”

Something was off, terribly and horribly off. There was nothing right about the situation in the slightest, not with the way he led her to the living room without so much as a grazing touch, not a kiss, not even a blink in her direction. She sensed a strange vibe radiating off him into the air between them, making her even more skittish than before. By the time she sat next to him on the couch, an inch or two of space between them that felt as wide and as barren as a desert, she was close to a full-blown anxiety attack.

Before she opened her mouth to speak, she took a few deep, calming breaths to center herself. “So uh… I haven’t heard from you. I was worried.”

Harry wouldn’t look at her – his eyes were all over the near-barren white walls, speckled with a few framed paintings of artists he’d never heard of. His posture was rigid in comparison to his normal, relaxed stance, like he was ready to go into battle.

“I just needed some time to think.”

Her thoughts trailed back to what was said just upstairs a little less than a week ago, the thing that had scared Harry off for her last few days in England. “Look, Harry, if this is about me saying what I said last weekend, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean – ”

“It’s not about that,” he muttered, turning his gaze downward to his slipper-clad feet. “I mean, that was a part of it. But it’s a lot more than that.”

A light of terror ignited in Daria’s chest. She thought it would be as ‘easy’ as going to Harry and talking through her choice in words. But as it were, he had been keeping a lot more from her than she had ever come to realize. The room had started to spin a little, causing her to grip the edge of the couch beneath her.

“Can you tell me what it is then? Because it’s almost been a week and I’m going crazy waiting.”

Harry was silent. The constant hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the faint tones of a soccer match from the television in front of them were the only sounds present, echoing through the room as if to taunt her. A lump in Harry’s jaw formed from clenching it so tightly together, working his teeth together like a mortar and pestle.

“Harry…” she murmured, allowing her voice to trail off when he still refused to look at her. “Hazza. I leave in two days. I’m trying really hard to respect your space but… I can’t get on that plane not knowing what’s going on with you.”

He shook his head in apparent disbelief and frustration, a look Daria couldn’t quite put her finger on to describe.

“Do you not realize what that means?”

“No, of course I realize,” he asserted, his voice a huffy and forceful, striking a plight of surprise in her.

“You don’t think I realize what that means? You don’t think I haven’t been thinking about this from the very first day I kissed you – the fact that this moment was eventually going to happen?”

“Then what are we doing wasting all this time?” she exclaimed, her voice quivering with pent-up emotion. “Why won’t you talk to me when we’ve only had these last few precious days left?”

“Because,” he insisted sigh a heavy sigh. “I needed time to think.”

“To think about what?”

He was quiet again, the pulsing clench of his jaw prominent in his face. It undulated over and over, like he was moving the words he wanted to say around in his mouth, dwelling on the right way to release them. His bright emerald eyes were unusually dark, long lashes cast down toward the ground. Finally, he turned to look at her, to give her the decency of his attention, only for her to realize a thin bed of tears forming at his lash line.

“I’m no good for you, Daria.”

Daria immediately jumped into motion, her hand going to his arm to provide some sort of comfort of touch. “What do you mean?” she breathed, the confusion prominent in her tone. “Of course you’re good for me. You’ve done so much for me.”

“No,” he protested urgently before shaking her off of him. “I’m messed up okay? I’m only messing you up too.”

The confusion and worry was consuming Daria then, terrified at the sight of the man she loved recoiling from her with words describing a situation to which she was unfamiliar. “What are you talking about?” she questioned insistently, that same quiver of fear and anxiety lilting in her speech. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t tell you,” he muttered, turning his gaze away from her once more. “It’s something I need to do on my own, for the good of both of us. I need to do this alone so I don’t pull you under too.”

Her heartbeat began to race, all other senses numb at the reverberation of his words in her ears. The only thing she could feel was the pounding of her pulse in her ribcage – even Harry’s words were dull in comparison to the crazed state of her synapses. What could he be talking about? Why couldn’t he tell her? What did this mean for them?

“Are you…” Daria breathed, her voice weak and distant. “Are you breaking up with me?”

Harry still refused to look at her, instead releasing a telltale sniff and wiping at the peak of his high cheekbones. It felt like everything was melting around her, like her entire world was collapsing around her like the room was on fire and everything had turned to cloudy, polluting ashes.

“I’ m sorry,” he finally muttered.

“Don’t I get any say in this?” she protested, denial sinking in. It wasn’t happening. It was all just a really bad dream. She had been sleeping in Harry’s bed for the last week, and when she woke up he would say I love you back and everything would be alright. Nervously, Daria pinched at her skin, willing herself to wake up. But as the blood began to pool around her fingernails, she realized this was no dream.

Finally, Harry looked at her with sad, skeptical eyes. He glanced between the blood trailing down her forearm like a rattled river and then back to her, like he wanted to help but knew better than to reach out. Anger began to boil inside her, teething angrily at her pitch.

“Isn’t this my relationship too?” she asked in a shaken frenzy. “If I want to make this work, shouldn’t that be enough?”

He shook his head again. “It’s not going to be enough, Daria.”

The anger only grew from there; her words now having a biting tone to them. “I finally scared you off, huh?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with disbelief, her breath short and heaving in between her words. “Crazy Daria Holmes with her dead dad and anxiety disorder, confessing her love to you. That was finally the straw that broke the camels back, wasn’t it?”

“Daria-"

“I leave tomorrow, Harry. Couldn’t you be man enough to talk to me about this one?”

When he made no moves to defend himself, Daria began to see red. The denial and confusion and worry melted into ire, her senses numbed even further. She felt the warm trail of tears trickling from her eyes, but couldn’t place a finger on when she began crying – only the heaving breaths of broken sobs.
“Or were you putting it off so you would have no chance of running into me? To have me completely out of your hair, conveniently tucked away in my little shell of a home in Middletown?”

“Daria…”

She loved him, she really did. And having him torn so abruptly from her, without so much as an explanation, was enough to make her fall apart at the seams. He was so wonderful to her, with his deep jade eyes and full, loving lips, the dedicated heart of her first true love. And yet he was the only one capable of tearing her apart in such a way as to reduce her to a puddle on his floor.

“I gave you the benefit of the doubt, Harry,” she spat finally, unable to control her emotions any longer. “I thought you were different than they said you were. I gave this a chance, I gave us a chance. I let myself love you. But they were right. You’re exactly the prat I thought you were the first day I met you.”

With tears pricking at her eyes, too proud to say anything more, Daria fled the scene. And Harry made no moves to follow her.