If You Told Me To

Crash of Reality

There was only a week before Harry left. The truth settled on the two of them heavily, making it hard to breathe at certain points. In celebration of the event, Harry left his laptop at Antonia’s house, announcing as he walked into the barn that he wanted to spend as much time with Sarah as possible before he went back, and wasting his time writing blogs for friends he would reconnect with soon would be a waste of time.

Sarah smiled in spite of herself as she put her sketchbook down next to her. “Okay. So what did you want to do?”

Harry looked out at the blistering sunlight and sighed. “Stay in here and talk,” he decided. “It’s too hot to go outside, even to go to the lake.”

Sarah nodded, watching as he sat down right in front of her, smirking as he stared into her eyes. “So how are you today?”

“I’m doing fine, thanks,” she responded. He’d been like that since she’d finally allowed the wall between the two of them to come crashing down, all coy and sensual, like he was waiting for a moment to try again, maybe going a little further. Sometimes, when he looked at her like he was just then, she wanted to crawl on top of him and kiss him until they were both breathless, but she restrained. The feelings she had were so new to her, and she didn’t want to do anything in the heat of the moment that she would grow to regret later. “How are you?”

“I’m alright. I’m kind of sad, if I’m going to be honest. Which I think I should be.”

“I’m sad, too,” she admitted. “I keep trying to remember what everything was like before you were here, and I’m kind of coming up blank. Like, what did I even do?”

He laughed and reached forward to put his hands on her knees. “You were bored out of your mind, I’m sure. Spending every day in here, drawing and staring at the walls, not even listening to any music. You were wasting your life away. So you’re welcome.”

She wished she could correct him, but she sort of did feel like her life really began, really took off, when he showed up. So instead, she just flushed and gave him a tiny smile. “You’re so full of yourself, Harry.”

“I can deal with that,” he told her in a soft voice. “Is it bad that, when I try to think about things I miss back home, I kind of come up blank? Other than my mom, I guess, and my very best friends, Niall and Louis. But I don’t miss any restaurants, shopping places, being near everything, school, baseball, anything.”

He belongs here, Sarah thought to herself, remembering the exact words he’d used before. “Maybe,” she started, ignoring the alarm going off in her head to stop talking immediately, “you could move here instead. We have a pretty good high school and everything. They have, um, a baseball team. And they won a game last year.”

The second the words finished leaving her mouth, she figured Harry was going to scoff at the idea and call her ridiculous. Maybe mention how much better the North was at baseball than the South. But instead, he just looked at her sadly and shook his head. “I can’t. My mom would miss me too much. Plus, I already have a whole life set up in New York. I can’t just leave it. That would be way harder than leaving here.”

Sarah knew consciously that Harry hadn’t meant to be offensive, but Sarah couldn’t help but feel a little insulted. Obviously, leaving a life he had for years would be easier than leaving a girl he’d known for just over two months. That was a no-brainer. But the more sensitive part of her felt like it meant she wasn’t all that important to him, despite her better judgment. The only thing she could come up with was, “Right.”

Harry let out a sad breath and leaned forward, pressing a kiss against her forehead, rubbing his thumb against the inside her knee in an attempt to comfort her. “Sarah, don’t look like that. Leaving here won’t be easy, either. I’m going to miss you like crazy. I’ll probably cry the whole way back to New York.”

“And I’ll cry here,” she assured him, forcing a small laugh.

“This might sound weird, but thanks for being so nice to me all the time, even when I was rude to you. If you hadn’t been so kind and friendly, then I never would have gotten to know you, and this summer would never have been as awesome as it was.”

“You’re welcome. Call it my southern charm.” Sarah took his hand in hers and traced swirly lines on his palm. “It dies hard.”

“Thank God for that.” With a small grin, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers, slipping his hand out of her grasp so he could cup her face properly, pushing her hair behind her ear.

She melted at his touch, trying to shove all the negative thoughts out of her mind, like the fact that she was never going to be able to kiss him ever again after he went back to New York, that she was going to feel like she’d lost a limb after how attached she’d gotten to him, that she was going to be friendless once again, that he was going to go back to New York a free man, ready to lose his virginity to the first girl who asked.

She was fine until the last thought went through her head. She hated thinking it, that he wasn’t truly hers. He never had been. They had a contract, and the second it ended, he was a free agent, open to getting scouted by any team with the right credentials. But, unlike baseball, she couldn’t even make an offer to make him stay. It wasn’t like she could throw money at him or anything, since that wasn’t how people worked in the real world. She would just lose him to some other girl.

And that was when she started to cry. So she separated their bodies and curled away from him, hiding her face in her arm as she sobbed. She knew she probably looked insane, especially since Harry didn’t know what was going on in her mind, but he didn’t say anything about it.

Instead of being afraid, he shhhed her softly, moving next to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, rubbing soothingly. “Oh, Sarah,” he whispered, kissing the side of her head. “Please don’t cry. You’re going to make me cry.”

She tried to breathe deeply, to steady her emotions and regain her self-control, but it was too far gone. Instead, she turned and pressed her face, as wet as it was, against his neck, which made him stiffen for a second with shock. She just wanted to smell him as long as she could, whatever it was that made up his smell, be against him as long as she could, before he disappeared from her forever.

And, true to his word, minutes later, she felt his chest falling up and down with sobs, though she could tell he was trying to hide it. Tightening her grip around him, she pressed a kiss against his neck. “I’m sorry,” she breathed against his skin. “I’m sorry that I’m ruining everything.”

“You’re not,” he assured her, using his free shoulder to wipe his cheek. Sarah followed suit by using her thumb to catch the fresh ones coming out of the eye closest to her. “I’m just really empathic sometimes. I can’t help but get emotional if someone else is emotional. And it doesn’t help that I’m just as sad as you are.”

Sarah wanted to say that he couldn’t be sure about that. After all, he was going back to a life, while she was being left with the emptiness of a life she had before. But she wasn’t the type of person to denounce someone else’s feelings based on her own, so she just gave him a small smile and sniffled once more, stifling the rest of the sobs trying to burst their ways out of her chest.
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Awww. Poor kiddos. Life can be rough sometimes. :(

Next chapter will be Wednesday!