If You Told Me To

Sarah was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, her arms crossed in front of her middle. Harry was clacking away about ten feet from her head, but she didn’t feel much like drawing. She felt like staring blankly into the distance, not thinking about anything at all, allowing the day to slip through her fingers before she realized what was happening. Maybe it was because of the humid, rainy, miserable weather outside and the fact that her shirt was sticking to her torso in entirely uncomfortable ways, but she just wanted time to skip forward, just a little bit.

Even though it was the end of July. The thought of losing Harry in less than a month made her stomach turn in highly nauseating ways, which is why she tried to focus on it as infrequently as possible. Soon, she was going to go back to being sweet, meek old Sarah, starting high school with a bunch of people she didn’t know and not having any kind of social life to speak of. Although in her most reasonable moments she figured she would have to make at least one friend, she could never stop the nagging anxiety that she wouldn’t or that the friend would never be good enough because he or she wasn’t Harry.

Trying to push the thoughts from her mind, Sarah swallowed and glanced over at the boy in the corner, leaning over his laptop and squinting slightly. His typing had stopped, so Sarah asked, softly so she didn’t startle him, “Are you done with your blog for the day?”

“Not really,” he admitted with a sigh, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t really have much to say. We haven’t done much in the past few days, and today, it’s just raining and miserable.”

“You could talk about Teen Wolf.” Sarah could barely contain her humor behind her voice, the sound wavering up and down in the most tell-tale of ways.

She heard Harry put down his computer and walk across the floor before plopping down next to her and flicking her in the forehead. “Very funny. I told you that in confidence, by the way. Don’t go messaging my friends online and telling them that.”

“I won’t.” Sarah felt a sense of pride welling up in her chest that she knew something even Harry’s New York friends didn’t know, but she didn’t want to seem silly by gushing about it. “Speaking of sensitive information, can I ask you something kind of personal?”

She’d been expecting some kind of tension in Harry, for him to worry even a little about the words that were about to come out of her mouth, but he barely seemed to breathe. “Yeah, okay.”

“In your blog, you said your virginity wasn’t important to you, right?” Sarah may have staged the statement like a question, but it wasn’t a question at all. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, about how desperately Harry wanted to be rid of his status, and it made a large variety of questions pop into her head, though she wasn’t exactly sure how appropriate any of them were.

Harry nodded. “I said it was unwelcome, yeah.”

“Why?” When Harry looked confused, she quickly clarified. “I mean, why is it that your virginity is so unimportant to you?”

There was a short hesitation before Harry sighed. “Honestly, it’s a society thing more than a personal thing. I feel like, being a fifteen-year-old guy and being a virgin, I’m not normal. I should have long-lost it by now, and I haven’t been able to. None of my friends are virgins, and most of them lost it when they were, like, fourteen. One was thirteen. I just feel kind of pathetic about it.”

“You’re not pathetic,” Sarah told him. “And you’re not abnormal. I’m not positive about everyone’s habits that way,” she felt a blush spread across her cheeks, but she continued speaking anyway, “but I think there are plenty of people who are virgins through high school, and even through college. It doesn’t make you weird.”

“I feel like it does, whether it does or doesn’t in real life.”

There was a short pause. “Don’t answer if this isn’t polite, but if it bothers you that much, why didn’t you…um…?” Sarah cleared her throat, hoping he would catch on to what she was trying to say so she wouldn’t have to spell it out for him. Thankfully, after a long thirty seconds, he jumped in.

“Are you asking me why I never had sex with any of the girls I hooked up with back home?” The look in Sarah’s eyes seemed to be answer enough because he continued without much hesitation. “I’m not really sure. Most of the time, the girls didn’t seem interested in going too far. There were a couple of times that I tried,” Sarah’s face turned to fire, and she started to regret starting the conversation, but she figured the more she knew about Harry, the better, “but they shut me down, and I respected it, as I should. There’s only been once where a girl tried to take it to the next step, but I stopped her because she had a lot to drink, and I figured she was going to puke soon because her skin was turning clammy. That was gross.”

Sarah scrunched up her nose, both from the fact that Harry had made out with that many girls and the idea that the experience could be so disgusting.

“I’m sorry. I’m embarrassing you.”

“No, don’t apologize,” Sarah hurried, shaking her head. “I’m the one who asked you. You’re just answering me. I just can’t help getting a little embarrassed.”

Harry’s hand twitched, and Sarah wondered briefly if he was fighting with himself over comforting her with a touch. She wasn’t sure whether to acknowledge it or not, so she moved on from the awkward silence. “I’m feeling really honest today, so I want to ask you another question. Does it ever bother you, thinking about what our lives are going to be like after this?”

He let out a breath and looked over at her sadly. “All the time. Every night. It’s so hard, thinking about going back to New York without being able to talk to you all the time, thinking about new friends you’re going to have, new boyfriends…” He swallowed noisily, probably to distract from his blush. “And you’re going to forget all about me.”

“I don’t think I can forget about my first relationship,” Sarah assured him. “Maybe this will technically end in a month, but you should know that, no matter how old I get, whenever anyone asks me about my first relationship or my first kiss, I’ll always be able to say, ‘Oh, yes, my first boyfriend was a boy named Harry Styles from New York, and he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen.’”

The words slipped out of Sarah’s mouth before she could censor herself, and she just about thought she was going to die from the humiliation. But instead of making it uncomfortable, like calling her out for using such a girly word to describe him, Harry smiled at her and pulled on her hand. “Come here.”

Her entire body felt hot and tingly as she pulled herself into a seated position so Harry could lean over and kiss her hard on the mouth. She wanted desperately to deepen it, a drive that thoroughly surprised her, but he pulled away before she got the chance. “Do you really think I’m beautiful?” he asked in a low, almost rough-sounding voice that sent a shock down her spine.

“Of course I do,” she replied softly. Her eyes raked over his silky brown curls, his perfectly-shaped face, covered in a light spattering of acne, his just-barely-showing dimples, and finally settling on his eyes, which were a darker green than she’d ever seen them before. “How could I not?”

“I don’t think I’m beautiful.”

“That’s because you’re you and you don’t see yourself the right way.”

His grip tightened on the back of her neck, but not painfully, his jaw clenching for just a second. “Has anyone ever told you that you might be a little too honest?”

“I don’t think I am. I think honesty is important.”

“If that’s the case, then I should probably tell you that you’re by far the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And I won’t ever forget you, even if you aren’t the first girl I ever kissed. You’re the first one that’s ever given me butterflies. Or made me blush.”

“I’m honored,” Sarah whispered before leaning in to capture his mouth with hers, finally getting the proper kiss she wanted.