Unbreakable

"I'm really sorry, but it's not working out. It's not you, I promise. It's me. You're a great girl but I'm just... Not the guy for you. I hope that we can still be friends," Harry Styles finished speaking, looking straight into the eyes of the girl in front of him – his eyes showing exactly how sorry he really was.

Then the girl in front of him snorted, pushing his head away with a disbelieving laugh. "That was shit."

Harry threw his hands up in the air as he groaned, letting his body fall face first onto the bed, right next to the girl who was still shaking her head at the curly-haired lad. "Then what the fuck am I supposed to say?"

She shrugged her shoulders, turning her attention back to her phone. "I dunno, just... Not that. That's literally what every other bloke breaking up with their girl says. And the whole I hope we can still be friends thing? Yeah... No. She would probably delete your number and start defacing your posters the minute she's alone."

Harry huffed, moving his body like a little worm so that he wiggled his way to rest his head on the girl's lap. "Has anyone ever done that to you?" He asked, peering up at her through his long eyelashes.

"What?"

"What I just said."

She nodded, "Yeah."

"Who?" He all but demanded, sitting up and – due to his clumsiness – hitting her chin with the top of his head while he did so. "Fuck," he groaned, rubbing the top of his head as she groaned in pain, rubbing at her chin as she let herself fall so that her back was laying on the bed. "Sorry."

"I hate you," she mumbled, shutting her eyes.

"No you don't," he laughed. "What are you even doing on your phone? I mean, I'm here, so who could you possibly be talking to?"

She opened her eyes, crystal blue eyes piercing right into his emerald green ones that were twinkling with mischief. Then she pulled her lips into a wide grin, blinking at him. "I'm reading all those Larry fan fictions that your fans write. They're very... Creative."

"Oh God."

"No, I mean it. They're really... Good writers. Wonderful descriptions. Top-notch sex scenes."

"Shut up," Harry whined, burying his burning face into a pillow.

"– No but they're, like, really good with descriptions. Like, how they capture every little moment, especially when you're – " She was cut off by Harry chucking a pillow at her, making her burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

"Arabella Sykes, you are the bane of my existence," he deadpanned, though the corner of his lips completely betrayed the words he spoke as they curled up into a smile.

Because in all honesty, Arabella Sykes was anything but. He loved her with all his heart because she was his best friend in the whole entire world, and nothing would ever change that. His mum and her mum were best friends since their school days, so it was only natural that they got together every other weekend, setting up playdates between the two who were ten months apart.

They got along fine when they were kids, then when they hit the pre-pubescent age, they stopped talking and started being really awkward around each other.

Of course, their mothers took this as a sign that they were crushing on each other – when they really weren't – and proceeded to make sure that their families came over for dinner every Sunday evening, "accidentally" leaving only Harry and Arabella to do the dishes, or go out to the supermarket because they forgot something.

Those trips of them together only made them friends again, and they tried to tell their mums exactly that – but they were still convinced that the pair would get married, so they let it be. If it made their mums happy, thinking that their two kids would get married in the future then so be it; even if they were sure that all they were and would ever be was a set of best mates.

She'd been there with him through almost everything significant that he remembered happening. Even when he was on The X Factor in 2010, when most of his friends stopped trying to stay in contact with him because they assumed he was either too busy to pick up a phone call, or was on vocal rest, she was one of the only ones to stay and make an effort to not let their friendship die down.

Arabella called him every night, teasing him and making sure that he wasn't getting to full of himself, and also encouraging him and giving him the constant support throughout the whole competition.

Arabella was the one who was there through his first proper heart break that he'd had once One Direction got big. Arabella was the one who reassured him that he was good enough, when he was sobbing like a baby because of some assholes giving him shit on Twitter. Arabella was the one to make sure that he didn't get too full of himself. Arabella was the one who was always there, the one he could always rely on; because he knew that if the tables were turned, he would completely and whole-heartedly be there for her.

If that wasn't best-friendship, then Harry didn't know what best-friendship was.

The curly-haired lad let out a small and silent breath between his lips as his green eyes wandered over to the girl lying next to him on his bed, already not paying any attention to him as she scrolled through her phone. Going through Tumblr, probably. He let his eyes trail over her side-profile, revelling in how pretty she was, because she was most definitely a good-looking human being but she just couldn't seem to see it.

Her eyelashes were long and seemingly naturally curled – since she was comfortable enough around him to not put on any make up – surrounding her bright, bright blue eyes. The lightest freckles dusted across her cheeks, though it was mostly unseen lest someone really proper looked at her. She had a cute nose, he decided, as she scrunched it up, eyebrows knotting together at something she'd seen on her phone screen. Her lips weren't too thin, neither were they too thick, and they were perfectly pink. And she had a normal, black lip ring in today, so it moved every so often, whenever she fiddled with it, effectively making the older boy smile. Her ginger hair was spread out wildly on the mattress, even though she'd pulled it up into a loose ponytail.

He wasn't done observing – in the simplest of terms – so he let his eyes trail down her figure next. It was a bit weird, checking his best friend out, but he was really just concentrating on the tattoos that she had.

He'd always liked her tattoos.

She'd gotten most of them whilst he was out on tour – just like he had – but he really did like them all. She had roses in black and white on her right forearm, that coiled around to the outside of her arm, too, with their leaves and stuff. Then there was the shark tattoo on her hand – the one that looked like it came from a Jaws poster, which it probably did. She had knuckle tattoos, too, something that Harry wanted but was too scared to do for fear that they'd hurt like a bitch, since that was what she'd said they felt like. Her knuckle tattoos were of the word "love" and it was written in cursive. She had one tattoo on her left hand, though this was just simply "Daddy", and Harry remembered that very well because he had been with her when she'd gotten that. Her first tattoo.

She had a couple others, but they were hidden underneath her clothes. The last one that he could see, though, the one that he liked the most, because it was an incomplete one was on her right inner arm, on her bicep. It was incomplete, and it never would be complete, unless Harry was there – because they'd actually gotten matching tattoos. She got the white part of the yin and yang sign, while he got the black. His was somewhere on his arm, between the cluster of his other tattoos, and he found himself smiling to himself whenever he happened to catch sight of it as he lifted his arms to stretch, or while he was working out – as cheesy as that made him out to be.

They had flipped a coin in the tattoo parlour so as to decide who would get what, so it wasn't like she was the good in their friendship while he was the evil.

A small grin pulled at his lips as he reached across her chest, taking her right arm to trace the tattoo. Arabella didn't even flinch as he did so, not even bothering to question him, instead rolling to her side and using her other thumb to scroll through her phone.

If he had to pick one thing he loved about being home, he'd say that it was spending time with his family. And if he was allowed to pick two things that he loved about being home, Arabella Sykes' name would come up faster than one could finish their sentence of asking him to name what he loved about being home.

While with her, he felt nothing but content. They could jolly well just meet up and not talk, but enjoy the other's company in silence, and he would be content. Silence while with her was never awkward or uncomfortable. It was comforting, beautiful, even – not because he didn't like to hear her voice. It was just... Nice. To have someone you could just sit and think with, separately.

Harry let out another quiet sigh, but this one seemed to catch Arabella's attention as her blue eyes flicked away from her phone to look at him. "What are you sighing about?"

"You not paying attention to me," he replied simply, batting his eyelashes and pulling on a shit-eating grin.

She snorted, "Okay. Sigh some more, then."

"Why are you so mean to me?" Harry whined, pouting his bottom lip.

Arabella set her phone down on the bed, blinking at him. She bit down on her bottom lip, fiddling with her lip ring. She sighed softly, bringing her hands to sit on either side of his face. "It's not you, I promise. It's me."

Harry blinked once, then he let out a groan. "Oh God, that line is terrible."