Witness

I decided as Harry walked up to my front door that the evening could go one of two ways: really well or really, really poorly. And the outcome was an absolute wait and see.

We would have to wait and see.

I watched him from the window of my kitchen, sipping vigorously at a mixed drink I’d made myself to take the edge off. As he bounded down his driveway and began to cross the street, he waved congenially to a group of people riding past on bicycles. I always thought that Harry had just been well connected in the small community of Holmes Chapel, but it appeared that it was that way everywhere he went.

Because he was famous. Oh yeah, that was right. I had to keep pinching myself to make it all real again. I had to keep pinching myself to make the fact that he was my boyfriend real in the first place. This was appearing to be too much.

He still looked like the same old Harry, dressed in a cranberry crewneck sweater that allowed just the rim of his undershirt to poke through and a pair of dark wash jeans, feet tucked neatly into a pair of those ridiculous boots he insisted on wearing. Hair windswept as always, the curls bounced involuntarily as he jogged up the steps to my front door. He caught me watching from the window and gave a smirk, that classic smirk I always felt was just for me. But I was realizing that was a smirk known around the world.

Holy shit, did that make me feel small.

“Hey,” he greeted, poking his head through the door. In a moment, he’d wrapped me up in his arms and was planting a kiss right on my lips, making me weak in the knees. Yes, he certainly was the same old Harry, turning me into mush at the brush of his fingertips.

“You taste like gin,” he murmured, pulling away and licking at his lips thoughtfully.

“That’s because I’m drinking gin,” I quipped as I lifted the glass I’d been sipping at. Harry raised his eyebrows in response.

“So it’s going to be one of those nights,” he intoned smartly, taking the glass from my hand and taking a sip himself. “I think we’ve yet to have a night of drinking, yeah?”

I shrugged. He was so adorably, sadly oblivious to all of the potentially dangerous thoughts rolling around in my head.

“I don’t think you ever truly know someone until you meet their drunk alter ego,” I improvised, knowing that truly we were only going to the pub so I could get a few drinks in me and confront him about the truth. “And if I’m going to be your girlfriend we need to make that happen.”

But how long would I be his girlfriend for, now that everything was changing again? How long would he want me if I told him who I really was? How would I decide whether to stay in Holmes Chapel and keep going with my lie or to come out with the honest truth and go back to the life I’d been living? Or was there a way to make both of those lives work? I longed to get that drink back from him and guzzle it in one swift gulp to forget it all.

That smirking smile returned again. “Hmm, I suppose you’re right,” he agreed, taking a final sip before handing the drink back to me. “And does your drunk alter ego have a name, might I ask? I think the good one’s always do.”

It was my turn to smile, though much more wryly. “Mara,” I hummed. “Her name is Mara.”

I was buzzed enough at that point to not be immune to Harry’s distractions, following along as he dragged me upstairs to make out on the couch for a while, his fingers ghosting at the waistband of my jeans. Our schedules had hardly allowed us any time to do anything more of quick glimpses at all the way, and I could sense even drunkenly that Harry was growing impatient. But with a quick, playful kiss and a shove and we were back on track, en route to the pub with hands entangled in each other.

Mary watched with careful, knowing eyes as we walked through the door, smiling graciously as Harry ordered us drinks. Thursday night was a pitcher special, so the bar was already crawling with people from the community, faces I’d begun to recognize. Amos Thorpe grinned at me from behind his Stella. Esther Thatcher was already pissed out of her mind in the corner, her husband waving at me sheepishly as he attempted to pull her from the booth to take her home. And Turner Jones, the old sport of the place, was leading a group in a rousing round of Manchester United chants, raising his glass to Harry and me. Harry couldn’t help but join in excitedly.

“U-N-I-T-E-D, United are the team for me!” they cried, handing Harry a pint from their pitcher. “With a knick knack paddy whack, give a dog a bone! Why don’t City fuck off home!”

Harry couldn’t stop smiling at a song of one of his great loves, Manchester’s premier football team. I rolled my eyes as Thatcher caught me up in one of his arms, offering me a sip from his pint.

“Oh, come now Lilia,” he teased, gaining an eye roll from Mary across the bar as well. “Don’t tell us that you’re a City fan! Just when we’d started to like you here!”

“I’m afraid I only have eyes for the game of the free from the home of the brave,” I teased in response, taking a sip from his pint before Mary slid a cider across the counter for me. “The Yankees until I die.”

“The Yankees!” Harry exclaimed excitedly after downing the rest of his pint. “Mine as well! You never told me that.”

“It never came up,” I muttered with a shrug. It didn’t seem to fit to tell someone that I was a fan from the city I was forced to pretend I didn’t know, not that Virginia had a team either.

Harry smiled smugly. “I think I’m starting to like this Mara character. She tells me things.”
My stomach flipped. If only he knew what was to come. That was, if I managed to work up the nerve.

A few more of the regulars rallied around me on my first night off spent at the bar, chatting me up and getting me and Harry drunk on their own tabs. An hour later, I was listening to them serenade me the Bob Marley classic, “Three Little Birds.” Harry, for being an international popstar, couldn’t sing for shit when he was drunk, but affectionately sang to me with the rest. And that’s when I realized.

I wasn’t alone in Holmes Chapel. Well, at any rate it wasn’t just me and Harry and Mary. I had friends who anticipated my presence at the pub, who celebrated my presence; I had more friends than I even knew what to do with. I was starting to build a life for myself in Holmes Chapel, a life I was beginning to enjoy.

I downed another cider to drown the thought from my mind.

The attention diverted when the highlights came on the TV above the bar, detailing the results of the matches earlier in the day. I found myself stumbling back to the bar and to Mary, who looked a little surprise at my current state. I was a little surprised at the fact that her head was appearing twice in front of me.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asked, though her voice sounded distant in my drunkenness.

“Do you ever wish you lived somewhere else, Mary?” I slurred, ignoring her while trying my best to sound as coherent as possible. She gave me a small smile and filled up a glass from the water tap, sliding it across the counter for me to drink. I did, fairly quickly, hoping to feel a little more sober.

She looked contemplative for a moment and then opened her mouth to speak. “Oh no,” she answered cheerily, her ponytail swinging as she filled a pint for another customer. “This place is where I belong. It’s so easy to live here.”

She paused for a moment, giving me a half smile. “I think you’re starting to belong here too, Lilia. Everyone here loves you.”

I glanced behind my shoulder to see Harry and the rest of our drinking crew smiling at me, laughing good naturedly when I stumbled at the bar. What they didn’t understand was that it was in a drunken panic. I was realizing that maybe I wouldn’t go back to New York. And that was terrifying to me.

“Harry!” Mary called, gesturing between us. “Take Lil outside, would you? I think she could use some fresh air.”

I shook my head, the panic growing, but soon Harry’s arm was around me. I protested as he guided me out the door, through the throng of people between our seats and the dark night sky. I fought against him, though drunk and fairly immobilized. With the night sky came confrontation: the minute I got alone with Harry, I would have to confront him about being dishonest with me about his fame. The thought of it made me sick (though in retrospect, it could very well have been the liquor). I’d simply lost my nerve.

Or so I thought, as Harry guided me to the wooded area behind the pub, the long grass untrimmed and licking at my ankles before I decided to simply lay down in it. Harry laughed as I pulled him down with me, his breath smelling of hops. I could tell he was a little drunk as he stumbled into the grass, lacing his fingers with mine at our sides without his usual gracing suave. And I could feel my blood run cold as the word vomit rose to my mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked lowly, my breath materializing in the night air. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re world famous?”

I could feel Harry tense next to me. “What do you mean?”

“You never told me that you were in a band that is literally world famous,” I stated again, this time trying my hardest not to slur. “I was watching the T.V. and saw a gossip segment on you buying flowers that ended up being for me.”

He stayed silent.

“I would just like to say that after all that, you weren’t very honest with me, either.”

“I told you I was in a band!” he exclaimed defensively. “I told you I was in a band called One Direction! I literally could not have been more honest with you!”

“I’m an art student Harry!” I responded, sitting up on my elbows to see him more clearly. His face looked stricken, though his eyes were still lazy with drunken haze. “I literally go to the most pretentious and prestigious art school in the city! Do you honestly think I listen to mainstream music enough to know what that means?”

“You don’t go to art school,” he scoffed, and it was only then that I realized I’d slipped up. He thought I went to University of Virginia. Caught tangled in my lie, again. My head started to buzz like someone struck it with a match.

“You still should have told me what that meant when you realized I didn’t know who you were,” I defended myself. “You should have warned me.”

Harry was silent for a moment, the wind coming through the grass and blowing it around us to create some semblance of a hush among our defenselessness against each other. He sat up too – his drunken eyes sad, lips parted slightly. He tightened his grip around my hand like he was trying to steady himself before opening his mouth again.

“It’s nice to be treated like a normal human being for once,” he breathed. I saw two of him as he spoke. “Do you know what it’s like? Not even my family can treat me like me anymore. And you always did.”

I couldn’t find the words beneath all the cider.

“You saw right past all the fame and the fortune and I couldn’t let that go,” he continued, moving forward to stupidly press his lips on mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal. I figured eventually we would talk about it and everything would be okay.”

I sighed, wanting to protest more but not being able to muster it inside me. I wanted to fight back, to argue more, to not let him off so easy because we could have been killed for our ignorance. He should have told me and I wanted to tell him that, I wanted to tell him everything, but my tongue felt heavy. While Mary thought the fresh air would help me, all that lying down did was make me feel more drunk. The stars were spinning at an ungodly rate, so fast I felt like I couldn’t keep my head up.

“That’s the thing about Holmes Chapel,” I murmured lazily, cursing myself for saying the most stupid things instead of the right things. “It lets you see the stars. But New York makes you one of the stars. I think that’s what I miss the most.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry asked, glancing down at me from his spot still propped on his elbows. I could tell, even under my drunken haze, that he was more sober than me. But that didn’t stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth against my will.

“Harry,” I murmured with a laugh, reaching up and trying to caress his cheek but missed by about an inch, instead landing with my hand on his shoulder. “Harry, Harry, Harry. I have so much to tell you and so little time.”

“Lilia…” he breathed, shaking his head. He didn’t understand.

“Mara,” I corrected languidly, squeezing at his hand.

“We’re not playing around anymore,” he protested, pulling his hand away from mine. “I’m not talking to your drunk alter ego.” I could see the glint in his bright emerald eyes, the fear and the confusion. He had to have seen this coming. The strings of lies, the inconsistencies in my stories, the lack of information he found about me.

I had to tell him. The words were falling from my lips faster than my brain could function, leaving me awkward and incoherent and utterly confusing. But I fancied Harry. I fancied him so much. And we felt like ships passing in the night at times, with all of the things we hadn’t been telling each other. And maybe it was time to turn on the light. Just like I’d thought – it could go well or it could go terribly. And drunkenly, I decided that it was time to find out.

“I’m not playing around,” I insisted with a delirious laugh. “My name is Mara Hitchcock and I’m in witness protection! And you wanted to be my boyfriend when I’m wanted by a killer! Imagine if he’d found pictures of us. I could have gotten us both killed.”

And that’s the last thing I remember. The rest is black.