Perfect Teeth

Please talk to me

We need to talk I just want to talk to you

Are you home? I could drop by?

I won’t if you’re not ready but I just think we need to talk. I don’t want things like this. I can’t do anything unless I talk to you and I just need to see you

Please
…
…
…

I can’t

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so fucking sorry

Let me just talk to you and we can figure this out.

i
…
i don’t think
i’m not
i don’t know how to figure this out

Please don’t do this.

i don’t know anything anymore harry
what the fuck happened to us

Don’t say that. Nothing happened to us. It’s going to be okay, we can figure it all out. We just need to talk.

…

ok yeah
tomorrow?

What about now?

it’s late

I’m up.

Please

I can be there in less than ten minutes

ok



Harry knocked. Three consecutive, frantic taps on the front door that went perfectly in time with the scattered beating in my chest. I could feel my heartbeat in my palms, my arms, my throat. I’d put on sleep trousers and a sweatshirt, trying to add as many layers between his skin and mine in hopes that the electricity wouldn’t be tangible, that the clothing could stifle the current.

He looked about as fucked as I did, hair tousled and dirty sweater hanging off of his shoulders underneath an unbuttoned coat. His torso hunched over, hands digging deep into the pockets of his jeans, clenched fists pressed against taut fabric.

He smelled like Harry, but like Harry who’d been sitting somewhere, stale. He smelled like cigarette smoke and the leather interior of his car and mint. And it was a smell I knew well, a smell that permeated my entire apartment and the inside of my brain, and it was a smell that I already knew wasn’t going to wash out.

I stepped back from the door and he stumbled inside, gangly limbs moving awkwardly through the doorframe.

He didn’t look like he fit here anymore.

“Hi,” he breathed out, voice catching, before clearing it quickly.

“Hi.” I wanted my voice to sound stronger than it did, but it was late and I was tired and the entire day had been a disaster, from beginning to end. I thought I’d cried it all out on the phone with my mom, and then in the car coming home, and then coming home and curling up in my bed, the pillow Harry usually used thrown across the room, but already I could feel the tightening of tears.

“Can we talk about this?” He asked nervously. “Can we just talk?”

It sounded so easy when he put it like that - ‘just talk’, like one simple conversation was going to fix it all. I’d been putting off ‘just talking’ to him for weeks and look where that got us, so I didn’t have an excuse to run anymore.

“Yeah.” The word was a hiccup as I nodded, stepping away from the doorframe and heading towards my couch, neutral ground in the little tiny flat. Harry shut the door gingerly behind him, crossing the living area in two steps before sitting down next to me. I was conscious of the space between us, the inches between our legs, mine tucked underneath my body as I angled myself towards him, and his, bouncing nervously next to the coffee table.

Harry was nervous. And I was nervous. And somehow in the past day and a half, every ounce of familiarity and comfort between us had been wiped away.

And I was pretty sure it was mostly my fault.

“I’m sorry,” Harry blurted out. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

They were words that I expected to hit me in the chest, to start filling the cracks that’d been developing for weeks now, but instead of dipping inside of me and healing, they just kind of hung there. I didn’t know what to do with his apology, because of part of me wanted it to fix everything, and then a part of me didn’t feel like I deserved it. Like maybe everything he’d accused me of yesterday was valid and my anger and indignance was wrong.

“I talked to Nick,” he said next. “And I didn’t know - about any of it, with Hadley or with him and Alexa. I thought maybe something was going on, because you guys haven’t mentioned each other at all, but I didn’t know what happened.”

I shifted next to him on the couch, my eyes going from his face to his hands, right hand twisting the rings on his left.

“You didn’t tell me.” Harry said, and his voice was accusing, but mostly sad, and I could feel his hesitancy as he pushed out the next words. “I didn’t know, because you didn’t tell me.”

I swallowed. “I know,” I replied. I was painfully aware of everything I hadn’t told him over the past few weeks, every little incident and accident and emotion I’d kept to myself, in hopes of protecting this thing between us. Obviously, that had backfired.

“Fuck, Ez.” Harry expelled, and the nickname made me flinch. “I know that I fucked up. I know that I said something awful and I didn’t mean it and I’ll be trying to figure out how to make that up to you for the next ten years, but I didn’t know. Because you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t know how to.” I admitted, and the excuse was weak and feeble at best, but it was the only one I had.

“Just talk to me.” Harry ran his hands through his fringe, agitated, and then he angled his entire body towards me as well, leaning in. “I feel like there’s all of this stuff - have you been honest with me at all? What aren’t you telling me? And I know the YouTube stuff is a big deal, but I don’t - I feel like I don’t know all of it. Why won’t you just talk to me?”

“And say what?” I asked, incredulous laughter building at how easy he made it all sound. Like we’d just talk and hug it out and suddenly everything would be okay. I felt so sick and sad over the entire situation, from the meeting with management to fans to the magazine, and I’d never told Harry any of that because I was afraid to ruin it all. Like he’d go running because I couldn’t take it. But now it didn’t even matter, and the truth bubbled up at the base of my throat as it always did, but this time I let it out. “How do I tell you that it hurts? How do I tell you that sometimes it all gets so overwhelming and I feel like I’m going to suffocate? I’ve tried to ignore it all but I can’t. It gets to me - the media and the public. I’m not made of steel and it gets to me.”

Harry exhaled deeply, and his hands, his constantly fidgety hands, reached out for a moment, like he was going to place one on my knee, but then he thought better of it and brought it up to his face. Running shaky fingers along his bottom lip, pinching it. “I know it sucks.” He acknowledged. “And the media stuff, it blows. But there are ways to make it calm down, ways to make it better. It just takes time.”

He wasn’t getting it. And I’d made my decision before he got here, already figured out what I was going to do, but his hope was making this all so much harder.

“Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, all I do is lie there and think about all of the awful things people are saying about me on the internet.” I admitted quietly. “And even if I rationally know that they shouldn’t matter, that I shouldn’t let them get to me, they still do. And it’s just getting worse.”

Harry remained silent, fingers picking at the skin of his lip and wide eyes trained on my face. The guilt hit his eyes and then spread, slumping his shoulders even further down into the seat.

“It’s not like they weren’t saying mean things about me before.” I continued quietly, words almost tripping out as I floundered for what to say and how to say it. How to make him understand my head and where it was. “It’s always there. But before, it was just little, meaningless stuff - about my teeth or my face or my sense of humor. And they weren’t super common and I could deal with it. But now they’re everywhere and it’s about me as a person. How I’m using you for fame and don’t deserve any of this. And maybe that’s got some semblance of truth or whatever, but I can’t escape it. Someone sent a Facebook message to my mom the other day, telling her how awful I was, Harry. My mom.” My voice cracked on the last word, the composure that I was so thinly holding on to breaking just enough to let the first round of tears sting at my eyes.

He inhaled sharply, closing his eyes and hanging his head in his hands, shaking it.

“We can address it.” He came up with a solution quickly, head snapping up to peer at me with wide, hopeful eyes. “We can talk to them. It might not work, but it does sometimes. They listen. And there are things we can do, precautions we can take--I can just talk to them--”

He was coming up with solutions and the hopefulness in his voice made me itch, and my lungs burn, and I wanted to jump out of my own skin. Because I’d made my mind up hours ago, right after the magazine came out. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t handle it. And it wasn’t anger at what Harry had said, or about how he’d apparently been having conversations about us going public with management for weeks, that fueled my decision. I stopped being mad at him hours ago, the thick hurt settled in my stomach dissolving to guilt and sadness.

I was so overwhelmed it hurt to think. And I knew this feeling and I hated it.

Sometimes Harry made me feel like I was drowning. Like I kept trying to tread water, keep afloat next to him while he perfected his backstroke and his butterfly, graceful through every wave and current, but I could never keep up. And I was slipping, down and down and down, until I was completely submerged underneath, screaming and kicking for his attention so he could bring me back to surface. He swam in the water that was pulling me under, navigated his lifestyle in the toxic culture that was keeping me up at night, and part of me, I think, was trying to catch his attention so he could pull me back up.

I wanted Harry to be my life vest, a buoy to keep my floating, but it didn’t always work like that.

I needed to get myself back above water and to shore.

And I needed to cut off the anchors that were pulling me back down, even if it hurt like hell. Because this kind of pain was still better than drowning.

“I don’t--” I took a deep breath, gathering the courage to say it, cutting Harry off in the middle of his thought and unable to look him in the face. “I don’t think either of us are ready for this.”

Harry stopped, entire face falling, and then he looked panicked. “Ezra--”

I talked over him, refusing to stop, because the momentum was there and if I let Harry convince me, I was never going to do this for myself. I was going to agree to whatever he said and maybe it would work out, but probably it wouldn’t, and then I’d be even more lost than I was now. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. “And I’m so sorry. I tried. I tried so hard, but I’m losing myself here. I don’t know how to be me anymore, without worrying how the rest of the world is going to react to it. And I hate this, because I know it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault at all, but you’re the one who gets hurt.”

Harry’s hands finally fell away from his lip, reaching for my fingers and tangling them together, clutching our entwined hands by his knee. I shouldn’t have leaned into him, but I did, even as he spoke desperately. “I want to do this. I want to fix this.”

“It’s not that easy,” I argued with him, and I was trying so, so hard to hold myself together, even when every inhale and exhale hurt. “It’s not like - like we can just suddenly just fix it all by telling people. It’s mostly me. I don’t - I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am or what I’m getting myself into.”

“You’re Ezra.” Harry supplied, but his voice was strained. “And I’m Harry. And we can do this.”

“I can’t, Harry--I--” The words broke just as I did, bottom lip trembling as I huddled closer to him. Because feeling him next to me was a thing that I knew wasn’t going to happen forever, was a thing that I knew I was giving up. And it was going to suck. It was going to suck so fucking bad, but I had to do this. “I can’t.”

“Stop.” He demanded, but his voice just cracked just as mine did, and when I finally gathered the courage to look up at him, I saw the same fear and defeat reflected in his eyes that I knew was in mine. “Don’t. Yell at me. Be angry at me. I fucked up and I did this and we can scream and we can yell but we can get through this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about management and the fans and the pictures and how this is all affecting you, but we can figure it all out.”

I wanted Harry and I wanted Ezra and I wanted this thing between us, Hezra or whatever, this section of us that worked so well, but I didn’t want all of the other shit that came with it. The package of being a celebrity’s girlfriend: monitored Twitter accounts and non-disclosure agreements and lessons with public relations about deflecting questions. And the constant feeling that this was all I was, all I’d be reduced to: Harry Styles’ girlfriend, no more or no less. I’d been a complete wreck when the thought that I was using Harry actually hit me, but to think that I could continue that - that if we kept on doing this, pretending that things were okay and carrying on as we were, everything I’d been working towards would just be as a result of him. And even if I wasn’t sure if I was going to be working towards anything but school anymore, I still didn’t want the guilt that I was using Harry to constantly hang around me.

“Harry,” I said his name softly and it was a resignation. He sensed this, because he gulped and his face slowly started to mirror my distress.

“Ezra.” He said my name back to me, but he was pleading. He said my name and it is was, stop. It is was, don’t do this to me. Maybe it is was also, I love you, don’t leave me, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about that one too long. He’d said it in the text message and I’d lost it all over again, but I was hoping he would keep the words to himself, for my own sanity’s sake.

“I can’t be romantically involved with you right now.” My breath was shaky and I told myself I wasn’t going to cry. I told myself I was going to get through this, this situation of awful, and then I could cry all I wanted, but not now. I lied to myself, because I said the words and I was crying, and maybe it was a trick of the light or the blur of my own vision, but it looked like Harry was too. “This, this thing – it’s wonderful and amazing and –“ brilliant but I couldn’t say that one “—I want to be your friend. I want to be your friend so fucking bad and I always will be. I will always watch movies with you a-and make stupid dick jokes, but I can’t do more than that right now, Harry. I just – I’m not made for that. For this. When I said I wanted an out, I meant it.”

“It’ll get better.” He repeated the world like a promise, this thing that he said to try and make me feel better, but of everything he could possibly say, it wasn’t right. There wasn’t a right thing. I was losing parts of myself and it was over a boy and I couldn’t allow that. “Let me try and make it better.”

“Please let me be your friend.” It is all that I can ask of him, coming out hushed, rushed, desperate, pleading. I was all of those things and more, because I was breaking up with the boy I was in love with and my best friend. And it was going to ruin everything, but I wasn’t going to let it ruin me.

Because right then, he wasn’t my best friend. He was the boy I was romantically entangled with, losing myself in, and it needed to stop, because our lines were intersecting and I needed to make them parallel. So we were going at the same pace but no longer touching, no longer had parts of us overlapping where I couldn’t figure out which were me and which were him.

“I fucking hate this.” Harry breathed, and his face pulled in as he pulled me on top of him, cradling me into his lap as my legs moved around his thighs and I pressed my face into his chest. The physical proximity wasn’t going to make any part of this easier, but I couldn’t deny the comfort that leaning into Harry gave me. His voice was choked and strained and he struggled with the words as I cried into his chest, squeezing my eyes tightly together to stop the incessant stream of tears that hit his jumper. “I hate it so much. Because it’s like, no matter what, they’re going to win and I’m going to lose. I’ve been given this, but I’m still going to lose. And I hate that because it shouldn’t feel like it, but I just - I want you. I want this.”

I tried to stop myself from sobbing into his chest as I rushed to apologize. “I’m sorry if I made this worse. I’m sorry if I used you for something. I never wanted to, I never thought to. It wasn’t my - I never - I just -”

“Ezra, breathe.” Harry’s hands soothed along my back as he clutched me to him, large fingers covering the expanse of skin and sweater as he rubbed his nose along the top of my head and tried to get me to calm down. “I know. You would never --. Just calm down for me, okay, baby? Just breathe.”

“I don’t know - what I’m doing - and I’m so - sorry.” The sobs were in full force, making the words broken and unsure.

“Ez.” Harry’s voice sounded just as broken as mine, and he was pulling me away from him so his hands could cup around my face as he leaned down to stare at me. “You never used me. Ever. You are so pure. I know that. I pushed you into making videos when you didn’t want me around. I did that. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I echoed the words right back to him. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop.” The word was harsh gravel and he clutched me that much tighter to him, sinking us both down into the couch until he was lying us down, twisted on our backs as we pressed into the back of the couch. And we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t, but I didn’t stop myself from pushing my hands under the hem of his sweater and keeping my cheek pressed against his skin. And I didn’t stop Harry as he awkwardly maneuvered out of his coat, dropping it on the floor of the couch so there was less space between us.

“I’m sorry this got so fucked up.” I whispered into his neck, and I could feel Harry shaking just as badly as I was underneath me, his unsteady hands dipping under the band of my sweater to rest against the small of my back.

“It’s not your fault.” He pressed a kiss against the top of my head and shuffled me closer to him.

“It is though.” I argued. “Because I can’t - I can’t and I should but I--”

Harry shushed me, shaking his head as one of his hands moved to cup my neck, and I lifted up enough on my forearms to look him in the face. His eyes were as cloudy and teary as mine, the guilt and the remorse deep set in them, and I hated it all. We were only five days into the new year and I’d already wanted to rewind most of them. Even if life didn’t work like that and that was too easy, I wanted to take it all back.

I wanted Harry, but I didn’t want the circumstances that came with him, and I wanted YouTube, but I didn’t want the rest of the world hating me. I wanted one thing without the other, but life wasn’t like that, so I was giving it all up.

I should’ve said something else, should’ve wrapped this all up nicely and prompted him out of the door with a goodbye and a promise to chat as friends in a few days, but I was too weak to even think about unwinding myself from around him.

So I cried against his chest, and I felt the ache and realization that this probably never going to happen again hit me as my uneven breathing matched up with his, and I let Harry pull the blanket off the back of the couch and throw it over us.

“Can I just…” Harry started to say many moments later, hesitating as his warm hands only slipped farther up my back, until they hovered around where my heart beat unsteadily in my ribcage. “Can I tell you that I’m in love with you? Please?”

And my breath hitched and I clutched onto him tighter, hiding my pained expression in the fabric of his sweater as I bit my lip to stop the sob from escaping. Because he said it and he wasn’t supposed to say it but now he couldn’t take it back and I knew those words were going to live inside of me, forever. I could already feel them sprouting roots inside of my rib cage and shifting around the organs in my chest, taking up so much space it was uncomfortable to breathe.

“Because I am.” He whispered. “I’m in love with you. Completely and totally. And I know that I’ve fucked this up and you can’t do this and I respect that. But I need to tell you because I feel like not saying it is gonna eat me alive. I’m in love with you. I love you. You are one of the best people I’ve ever met. Please know that.”

And I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop any of it, so I let the first sob break free against his chest, and Harry stilled, and then he was pressing kiss after kiss to my head and whispering the words against my temple.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

And I lost it all over again.

And it hurt, as I burrowed myself in Harry’s chest and cried, sobbing and struggling to breath as I let the tears run into his shirt. Nothing was attractive about my grieving, because nothing was attractive about the hurt. It was like I was being crushed from the inside out, all of the pain bursting and shattering my nerves one by one, and clutching onto Harry was the only way to make it bearable, in some backwards, reverse way. He let me cry into him, let me grieve for the loss of everything that I’d fallen so deeply in love with between us and then subsequently lost, and he tucked my hair behind my ears and pressed kisses to my forehead and ran his hands over the skin of my back, and every touch and caress and kiss felt an apology. And that was how I fell asleep, as he peppered my face with I’m sorrys and spelled out I love you’s into my skin.

I woke up warm but alone, still on the couch but wrapped in the duvet from my bed, with the spare key to my flat sitting on the coffee table.



There’s this theory that when tragedy or conflict happens, people have two responses: fight or flight.

You either run from the problem or you face it head on. And for my entire life, I’d been a flyer. I could handle conflict when it was directly in front of me, but I chose to avoid it all cost, running and hiding and ducking out of situations early.

And I knew that if I wanted to, if I chose to, I could continue with that route. I could run away from every single problem popping up in my life, and hide under the comfort of my duvet, burritoing myself in it until the real world slipped away. Except that that wouldn’t solve anything and if I’d learned anything in the past four months, it was that running from your problems didn’t mean that they disappeared. Usually it made them multiply.

So I got out of bed on Monday morning and I forced myself to get dressed and face my problems.

I had to make a conscious effort to steady my breathing and keep myself calm on the Tube. The train car I was in was only-semi full for half past eight on a Monday morning, but it was still more people than I ever wanted to see me cry. I was two stops away from where I needed to get off and I was willing myself to hold it together.

The entire morning was an exercise on willing myself to hold it together. I’d slept, but not well, and I was mostly surviving on adrenaline and caffeine.

I woke up, and Harry had left, and his key was there, and I cried again. And then I called my parents and let my father soothe some sense into me, only partially listening as he monologued about inner strength and turmoil and handling situations like an adult, but I appreciated his advice anyway, because it showed that he cared and I needed that.

I got off the phone with my parents I plugged my wireless router back in. I only let myself scroll through the comments on everything for a few minutes, before taking a deep breath, holding it for too long in my lungs, and deleting.

And then I decided to deal with everything else.

I had the route to Tongue and Cheek memorized. It was one of the routes, along with the way to my flat and the way to school, that my body knew mindlessly, without much direction at all from my head. But this time it was different, because I was breathing heavily the entire two block walk from the Tube station to the office building, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to do this. Because I’d figured out the plan in my head - or figured out most of the plan in my head, at least, but I hadn’t planned what to say. I didn’t know what to say, really, besides cry or “fuck you” or a number of other expletives.

I was sad and devastated and gutted over Harry, because seeing his stupid clothing and his stupid shoes and his stupid nonfiction anthologies lying around in my flat made my heart feel like it was dropping out of my chest and like my bones were starting to erode to dust, but I tried to replace that sadness with the anger I felt towards everything that happened with Tongue and Cheek.

So I stood up straight, and I wiped off the bit of dirty snowy mush from my boot on the entry rug to the office, and I kept my head up, and I walked into the studios hoping that my posture and the look in my eye was enough to let them know that I was here to muck some shit up. It was Monday morning and there was nothing on the filming schedule, but it was production meeting and editing time before things went live on Monday night. I didn’t know if they’d all be in yet, but when I opened the door and walked into the filming set, a production team of five, including Damien and the two editing crew, looked back up at me.

And only four of them looked scared shitless. I watched as the recognition flared on their faces, and then Damien, my producer, my boss, opened his mouth to greet me, but I cut him off.

“I want out.” I said, and my voice was stronger than really anyone could be anticipating after the weekend I’d had. “From my contract. Right now.”

He blinked. “What?”

“My contract with Tongue and Cheek.” My voice was steel and even I was a little bit impressed. “I want out of it right now, or I’m going to sue you for violating my privacy and leaking pictures to the media and breaching an NDA that I signed with Modest Management.”

He looked stunned. “Ezra - come, sit down.” He stood from his own chair and motioned to the seat at the desk in front of him. “We can discuss this.”

I shook my head and stood my ground firmly, even going as far as using hand gestures as I went off on my spiel. Which involved a lot of fierce words and lying out of my ass about legal things I knew absolutely nothing about, but I was hoping Damien didn’t either. “You did a shit thing. A really, really shit thing. You violated my privacy and my trust and you did it all for views or publicity or whatever, and I want no part of it. So terminate my contract or I’m going to sue you and cause hell.”

Damien, at least, had the audacity to question me. “Can you even do that?”

I kept my face blank and blinked at him, in what I hoped was a threatening way. “Do you want to ask the lawyer at Modest Management? I can give you her card. You can call her if you’d like. It’s early and she’s pregnant, so she’s probably pretty cranky, but go ahead.”

Damien shook his head, protesting. “I don’t want to call your lawyer - I just don’t want you to leave. We can talk about this. I know that it seems like an invasion of privacy right now --”

“It’s going to seem like an invasion of privacy after we talk about things too. Because it is an invasion of privacy. So just stop, okay? You hired me. You practically convinced me to come to London. And then you went and betrayed me and used my trust and I no longer feel comfortable in this work environment. So let me out of my contract before I cause hell. I don’t want to get shit started with Tongue and Cheek because I respect the other people who work here, but so help me God, if you don’t terminate my contract, I will not leave quietly.” I was out of breath at the end of my speech, and I kept my shaking hands tucked away by my sides and out of sight, and I watched as Damien stepped back (maybe even in slight fear) and nodded.

“Okay, okay.” He conceded, after a quick searching glance with everyone else at the table, who shifted awkwardly and avoiding my glance. “Contract terminated.”

“You can email me legal proof. And here.” I untangled everything business related from Tongue and Cheek out of my bag - press badges, the keycard to the studio, even the little pen with the logo labeled on the side.

I dumped it all on the table, not looking as smooth or composed as I would’ve liked, but there was still something to feel proud and accomplished about, because I’d spoken without crying and lied through my teeth about legal stuff I didn’t have the faintest clue about, but it worked. I was out of my contract with Tongue and Cheek and it was easier than I was expecting it to be, which either meant that it wasn’t anywhere near over, or the world was finally willing to give me a break.

I was marching through the lobby of the main office building when Alfie waltzed in from the snow, the scowl on his face replaced by a surprised expression and a raised eyebrow.

And prior to the past 48 hours, I would’ve been polite in passing Alfie, a nod and a strained smile as he didn’t bother to do the same back, but now I felt like I owed him much more than that.

“Hey,” I breathed out, stopping a few feet in front of him in the empty foyer of the building. His boots, wet with snow, squeaked against the linoleum.

“Hi.” He replied and then his eyes flickered from me to the elevator. “Have you just got done?”

“I quit.” I said, and the words felt weird coming out of my mouth, but good. I hadn’t quit many things in my life, and this weekend I was just throwing the towel into everything. But quitting Tongue and Cheek, at least, felt like the right thing to do. “I mean, I just got done quitting. So. Um. Yeah.”

His face colored with more surprise, looking almost a little impressed. “You just went in there and quit?”

“How else are you supposed to do it?”

“An email? Voicemail? Never showing up to work again?” All options, in hindsight, that might’ve been less nerve wracking, and they sounded good as he listed them, but they hadn’t even been on my radar this morning.

“Oh.” I nodded, swallowing my self conscious laugh. “I think I just pulled a drama queen and threw a fit and demanded out of my contract.”

“That’s so American of you.” He remarked dryly, and then we both shifted awkwardly where we stood. It was potentially the most civil conversation we’d ever had.

I shrugged half-heartedly. “It worked.” Another uncomfortable moment passed before I asked, “Did you quit too?”

Alfie’s features pinched in, but he nodded. “Yes.”

“Well,” I fumbled with what to say, before mumbling out, “Thank you, I guess. For taking a stand or causing a fuss or whatever.”

“I didn’t do it for you, Ezra,” Alfie shook his head, and though his voice was a little prickly, it wasn’t as acerbic as I was used to. “I don’t work for shady companies.”

“That is a good life rule.” I nodded my head awkwardly, before shoving my hands in the pocket of my coat. “But thanks again.”

Alfie just shrugged, and then his face softened, though only marginally, and he nodded in recognition. “Good luck,” he finally said, before he turned and walked towards the elevator.

I made a strange face at his retreating back before stepping back out into the cold.



I gave myself until the day before school started to hide away in my apartment, watching my favorite movies on DVD and keeping my Internet firmly shut off, phone tucked away across the room, before I ventured out. I got my shit together enough to take a shower, get dressed, and cheer myself up in the best way I knew: new school supplies. Most of my courses really only required a camera or a laptop or a pen, but there was something about the illusion of productivity that school supplies shopping gave that cheered me up. I needed to enforce some type of order in my life. And now there was absolutely nothing to keep me from focusing on school.

I’d put the brakes on YouTube. I stopped Tongue and Cheek and I only had a few more commitments with Daily Mix before I was out. I deleted my Twitter and my Tumblr was blank except for one post. And I no longer had Harry, at least not in the way that I wanted him, because it’d been two days and there wasn’t a word passed between us, virtual or otherwise.

In the matter of a few days, school became the only thing I had left in London.

The school supplies shopping was actually very calming and soothing for the most part. I was picking out the perfect pens and plopping index cards into my basket, debating the pros and cons of felt tip pens vs regular ink, and things were good, things were solid, if even only for a moment, and then I turned in the aisle, and stared directly at the One Direction merchandise. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.

And there were three designs, one of which was from the same photo shoot they used for absolutely everything, but the other two were newer. And in one of them, Harry was wearing a green jumper. And that same green jumper was currently bunched up in a pile on the floor of my flat.

I cried in public the second time that week standing in WHSmith, over a pencil pouch and an assortment of erasers.

I wasn’t very discreet about it. The stinging started behind my eyes, tears clouding my vision, and I bit down harshly on my cheek to try and keep it all back, to distract myself and hold it together, but it didn’t work. Because sometimes I overestimated by abilities, judging my strength by what I wanted it to be, and I wanted to keep it together in public, with my Harry-shaped wound still fresh, but I couldn’t do it.

“Miss?” My head jerked to the left as the WHSmith employee approached me warily, concern spread across his face. “Are you alright?”

My inhale was sharp. “Ye-ah.” I stumbled out, voice cracked and scratchy, before shaking my head and shoving my basket towards him. “I just hate this fucking boy band.”

And then I fled. And hid under my duvet until the 8th of January, when school started.



He didn’t call for three days and on the third day, he didn’t even call, he sent a text.

Management took care of it. H x

And that was it.



I was going to make a YouTube video, but to be honest with you, I can’t. I tried, but it hurt, so I stopped.

So I’m going to make a Tumblr post, because I feel like I know first hand how quickly information gets spread on this website. And maybe I think it’s better to have straight facts here than have them interpreted by everyone else later, but it probably isn’t going to matter.

I am taking a break. My YouTube channel is gone, I have deleted my Twitter, and the rest of the content of my blog.

The Internet used to be a really fun place. And I know it’s not without all of it’s faults and that there’s problematic stuff left, right, and center, but I used to really enjoy YouTube and the Internet as a whole. And if any of you have been watching from the beginning, you know that I was stoked to take this really fun hobby and make it into a job.

Unfortunately, it’s all turned pretty toxic. And I’m a firm believer of taking myself out of toxic environments, because I can’t do this to myself anymore. Most people think that people on the Internet - YouTubers, Tumblr users, anyone, really - don’t shed much light into the stuff that’s written and spread about them online, but just because we don’t always acknowledge it, doesn't mean we don’t see it.

Trust me, we see it. We see all of it. You can put an asterisk in a letter of my name and talk all the shit you want, thinking that you’re not really doing much harm, but you are. I am not a robot. The consistent negativity gets overwhelming and I’m not gonna do it anymore.

So I’m going to take myself out of the equation before it gets too much. I have no idea what happens after this. I’m probably just as confused as you are. But I can’t keep doing this to myself and pretending that it doesn’t bother me. I can’t do anything anymore without an overwhelming number of negative comments and scrutiny - I spent five minutes debating on how to write this post, because I knew that it would piss someone off if I capitalized words and it would piss someone else off if I didn’t. That’s not a healthy environment. This has no longer become a safe space for me.

I’m hoping that this break is temporary and that things will get better, but I don’t know about that. I don’t know about much anymore.

So sorry, I guess. I know it sucks. I feel that way too.

Ezra