Witness

But I didn’t see Harry ‘tomorrow.’ Or the next day for that matter. Or even the day after that. Harry all but disappeared from Holmes Chapel, the only thing left of him was the empty ‘crisps’ bag he left on my new coffee table.

Who the hell did he think he was, just disappearing like that?

I tried my damnedest not to be furious, not to care, not to care at all. But it was disappointing to wake up at ten thirty and not have him throwing rocks at my window. It was disappointing to sit alone and wait for Mary to go to self-defense class (and damn was she a good fighter, constantly making me look bad). It was disappointing to wait on people at the bar and not see his face, though I kept my eyes glued to the door in careful watch of him.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I was back to starfishing on the floor, staring at the ceiling with some shitty British television program playing in the background to make me feel not so alone. Even getting up to run in the morning was a process, tying my feet into my shoes and walking out the door seeming more difficult without Harry. I’d grown dependent on him and that was absolutely disgusting to me.

I was never dependent on anyone. I’d never really had an opportunity to be dependent on anyone. All my life, it was just me on my own, navigating my way through the messy twists and turns of life. And then Damien Trask shot poor Eric Spengler then tried to shoot me too, got me relocated to Holmes Chapel, and got me hooked on Harry Styles. We’d only known each other for three weeks, and that was the worst part.

Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.

I discovered that I could still see his Facebook profile even if I couldn’t have mine anymore. That was the pathetic state that boredom had driven me to. So embarrassing. But not quite as embarrassing as the feeling I got when I saw that Thomas’s profile picture had been changed to one of him and our mutual friend Nichelle, a change I had not been expecting. His relationship status was sent to ‘it’s complicated.’

A thousand thoughts were running through my head. What if he’d tried to contact me? What if he wanted to get back together but there was no way of getting a hold of me because I’d disappeared into thin air? What if he was thinking about me right at that moment too, staring at the painted-black ceiling of his Tribeca bedroom?

What if I was thinking of Harry, too?

A week passed with no sign of his halo of messy brown curls. And then another week. I bravely crossed the streets a couple time to knock on the door to his family’s house but I received no answer. I asked people at the bar if they knew where he went, but the only answers I received were vague musings about business trips ‘across the pond.’ Mary smiled sympathetically at me as she dusted glassware with a ratty white dishcloth.

By the end of the second week, I was going insane in that house all by myself. No amount of working or hanging out with Mary was going to fix it. I began to jump at every sound in my house, every creak and every thud, paranoid that someone was inside.

So that Wednesday before my shift, I jumped on the train to Manchester. I couldn’t stand the paranoia anymore, the thought of being alone and unprotected driving me completely insane. So I wasn’t going to sit around anymore. Oh no.

I was going to buy a gun.

A solidified lump formed in my throat as I stood in front of Johnson Gun Supplier. Never in a million years did I picture myself so desperate for protection that I would ever consider buying a firearm. And as I walked through the front door, I was nearly sick to my stomach at the sight of the pewter metal and shell casings lining the wall.

“Can I help you?” an old man asked from behind the counter, wearing a uniform of an army green apron over a white button up and a pair of worn blue jeans. I opened my mouth to speak and floundered for a moment, closing it and opening it a couple of times before I managed to speak.

“I need to buy a gun.”

“Okay,” the man replied tentatively, eyeing me with suspicion. “Do you have paperwork with you?”

I stared at him blankly for a moment. “Paperwork? No.”

“Have you ever purchased a gun before?”

I tried to swallow but the lump in my throat prevented me from doing so. “No.”

“You’re not from around here are you?” he asked finally, leaning onto the counter on his forearms. I shook my head slowly, slipping my hands into the pockets of my jeans to conceal the fact that they were shaking.

The man shook his head in response, cocking his mouth at an odd angle of knowing. “I get an American in here every once and a while with their constitutional rights and what not,” he mumbled. “Unfortunately, that’s not how things work here in England. It’s a long process to get a gun in your hand, starting with the paperwork.”

I pressed my lips in between my teeth for a moment, rolling that thought around in my head. Another customer came through the door and I jumped at the sound of the bell, every end of my nerves awake with the fear. I needed that gun. I needed my piece of mind again.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered softly. “But that’s not going to work.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” he countered. “But that’s the law.”

We stood staring at each other in silence, his eyes intently surveying me.

“What’s a pretty young bird like yourself looking for a gun for anyway?” the man questioned, his voice incongruously distant for only being a meter or so away from me.

Why? Because I couldn’t sleep at night. Because I didn’t feel safe to walk down the block to work. Because I spent most of the time being alone and entirely vulnerable.

My eyes welled with tears as I spoke. “Because I’m scared.”

And before the man could speak, his mouth slack-jawed just slightly, I bolted out the door and down the busy street. I crashed against a brick wall at the end the mouth of an alley much like the one I first encountered Damien in, crumpling to the ground and sobbing into my knees.

It was the first time I’d cried since they first told me I’d be moving to Holmes Chapel. I’d told myself I’d be brave after that, that tears weren’t going to get me anywhere that I needed to be. But it was awfully hard to be brave when you felt like everything was falling apart.

“I just want to feel safe,” I blubbered into my hands, no longer caring if anyone was there to see me crack. “I just don’t want to be alone.”

And Harry. Harry made me feel safe, as much as I hated to admit it. It was completely illogical, as I knew for a fact that he would be no more use of protecting me than I would be at protecting myself, but there was something distinctly comforting about his presence.

Probably the fact that I was completely safe in Holmes Chapel, but also completely alone. Completely, totally, and miserably alone. And Harry had fixed that problem. And then he disappeared.

“Damn it, Harry, where are you?” I muttered bitterly, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Where the fuck did you go?”

I sat in the alley for a while, trying to pull myself together. I’d been next to alone for my entire life until I met Thomas and Amelia, never drawing much attention from Susan or much of anyone at school. I could do it. I’d been doing just fine all along. Everyone had his or her low point.

I mean, not everyone’s low point involved trying to buy a gun. But still.

At the end of the day, if I called the O.E.O. and asked for a gun for protection, they would probably give it to me. Hell, if I didn’t feel safe they would probably send an agent if I asked for one. I told myself that as I got lunch in a random café downtown and enjoyed being in a city again, the noise calming my nerves again. And I kept telling myself that as I caught the train back to Holmes Chapel, got ready for work, and met Mary behind the counter.

“You’re running late,” she hummed as she tapped a beer for a customer. The trivia night rush was just beginning to pick up, the tables filling with patrons from around town.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s a long story.”

She took a long glance at me before passing the beer to the man across the counter from us. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged, giving her a small smile. “Rough day.”

She smiled in return. “Everyone has them. Are you feeling better?”

“Enough,” I replied, trying my hair up in a ponytail to match Mary’s. Her grin only grew.

“Good. Now drop your stuff off in back and get up here. You’re killing me with all this slack, George.”

Work was a good distraction, as always. We’d developed a good rhythm, me and Mary. Even the waitresses had stopped gossiping about my accent and gave me a shy smile every once and a while, brazenly teasing me whenever I got in their way in the traffic lane behind the counter. With Harry mysteriously gone, the Old Red Lion was the only place I really felt at home in Holmes Chapel.

Oh, the cruelty of it all.

“What will it be?” I asked a woman as she approached the bar. She was middle aged but hardly looked it, with long pin-straight brown hair and perfectly tanned skin. Her lips curled into a smile at the sound of my voice revealing two rows of white teeth.

There was something oddly familiar about that smile.

“So you’re the new American, Lilia George?” the woman questioned, cocking her eyebrow.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and prepared myself to give my speech to her. Yes, I am Lilia George. No, I am not a hermit. No, I am not a nutter, No, I do not have a disability. No, I did not kill anyone. No, I am not going to get coffee with you.

“Yes – ” I began, only to be interrupted by the woman again.

“So you must be the reason why my Harry hung around so long before heading out of town then.”

Her smile grew. My heart stopped. The woman standing across the bar from me was Harry’s mother, the woman who lived across the street from me. I’d caught glimpses of her in the yard before but never enough to see her face. And suddenly she was just inches away from me. And there were a thousand questions I wanted to ask her.

“You’re Harry’s mom?”

“Anne Cox,” she introduced with a friendly nod. “Pleased to meet you.”

She extended a hand across the bar and I numbly took it, shaking it in disbelief. “Pleased to meet you too…” I agreed. “Uh, is there anything I can get you?”

“A Stella, please,” she requested, withdrawing her wallet from an expensive-looking purse. Harry’s mob mother had finally appeared in front of me. My mind was running wild with all the possibilities of things she could do to make that kind of money. But those thoughts were clouded by one overarching thought entirely.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I began, taking a glass and putting it beneath the tap. “Where did Harry disappear to? I didn’t hear from him before he left. I didn’t even know he was leaving, actually.”

Anne twisted up her pretty face into a look of subtle horror. “Oh, I swear I’ve raised him better than to treat a lady that way,” she grumbled, pressing a hand to her temple. “He’s just doing some publicity for his band in Japan.”

In Japan? I reeled in that bit of knowledge. Harry’s band was big enough to have a publicity stunt in Japan? I thought back to when he’d told me he was a man of many talents. I then realized that I’d underestimated him.

“The tap’s overflowing, love,” Anne pointed out kindly. I hadn’t noticed the sticky spill of beer all over my hand that clutched the cup, only to yelp with realization.

“I’m so sorry, let me just get you another…” I fumbled for a clean cup to replace the sticky one. Harry’s mob-wife mother deserved better than that. I feared she might’ve had me killed if I passed her that pint.

“Oh dear, that’s just fine,” she hummed in a sweet tone. “Just wipe it off a little.”

She slipped her credit card across the counter and patiently waited as I cleaned the outside of the glass. “He’s coming back you know,” she added as I passed it to her and ran her card. “There’s a benefit on Friday at the school and he’s going to be there. You’re more than welcome to come if you want.”

I slid the receipt and a pen across the counter to her. “Oh? Would that really be okay?”

“It would be an honor, Lilia,” Anne teased, much in the way her son did. “I’ll see you there?”

“Sure. Nice meeting you, Anne.”

And with a small smile, she disappeared into the growing crowd. A little fire grew in my heart at the thought of it all. Oh, I would be at that fundraiser. I was going to give Harry a piece of my mind for disappearing like that. I was willing to go out in the community and risk all the gossip for it.

And with a curt nod to myself, I glanced at the receipt. Anne had left an insanely hefty tip. My resolved frown slowly turned into a smile.

Harry’s mom was totally in the Mafia.