Dull Ache
-Harry Lewis x reader
-Her
Some mornings still start with him
The kettle boils. The toast seemingly takes forever to pop. And in the quiet, I hear his laugh, that gravelly sound, the one that was always too loud for the room. I sit at the kitchen table, legs tucked beneath me, it’s old mahogany, we bought it at an antique store together. Steam curls up from my mug, like smoke from a slow-burning fire.
It’s been ten months and twenty seven days.
Not that I’ve been keeping count.
I take the long route to work, my original path passes the bookshop. Our bookshop. The one with the twisting stairs, slanted bookshelves, the crooked cat and the owner who always smelled like dust and bergamot. We used to go there on Saturdays, sometimes after a night out when we didn’t want to talk too much. He’d pick out a poetry book at random, flip it open and read the strangest lines he could find in a posh accent until I was doubled over in laughter.
He told me he could fall in love with me in a library. I think he did.
I think I did, too.
-Harry
It’s the small things that cut deep.
This morning, someone in the coffee shop was wearing her perfume. Not just something like it. Hers. That haunting, deep vanilla, caramel, and cigarette sweetness she always carried. A comforting sickly sweetness that clung to her skin. My hand clenched around the mug before I knew what I was doing.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss her, yet these are the kind of lies I swallow down. Push away.
I walk past her old tube stop on the way to work. The tiles still cracked. The adverts still peeling. She used to leave me voice notes while waiting, rambling nonsense, or even quoting poetry, something she’d recently read. I’d smile like a fool listening, no matter where I was, pretending I hated how dramatic she was. I never hated it. I loved it more than she knew. More than I could handle.
And that’s the truth of it: I couldn’t handle her love. Not all of it. Not then. Not when it asked for all of me in return.
-Her
It rained hard yesterday.
The kind of rain that pounds down, makes the world feel lonely, all glassy streets and grey breath. My umbrella flipped inside out as I turned a corner, metal limbs snapping like broken wings.
Just like that, I was back there. Another storm. Another street. Him by my side, the both of us drenched, his umbrella useless, our clothes soaked through.
He found a newspaper, held it over my head, laughing like an idiot. It only worked for a moment.
I laughed then.
Now, I just stood, wet, still, the rain beating down on me as I tried to push him from my mind.
-Harry
I keep my coat zipped up, even as the weather turns warm.
She used to say I never dressed properly for the weather. Always too hot, or too cold. I never listened. Not really. But she’d tug at my sleeves anyway, pulling them down over my wrists, as the wind was biting, tuck her hands into mine as if she were trying to fix something broken.
Sometimes I still wear the jumper she knitted me one Christmas. She made it while it was a hobbie of hers. It falls a little short on the arms, and sits all wonky at my waist. But it holds a lingering scent of caramel, and of her.
I went down near Soho last Sunday. Thought I’d pick up some flowers for the flat, in the hope of making it feel less drab and graveyard-ish. There was this stall with tulips. She used to call them ‘shamelessly sappy’, said they looked like they didn’t care how romantical they were.
In the aftermath of a fight, she once brought a whole bouquet to my place. Said, “if we’re going to fight, let’s be sure to make the aftermath pretty.” I’d laughed at her, I didn’t realise she meant it.
-Her
Every now and then he’d carry around a camera.
A ridiculous, clunky old thing with chipped leather and several dents. He said these newer digital ones were too sterile, “memories should be grainy,” he told me, “like old dreams.”
I found one of his prints the other day while clearing out a drawer. A photo of me from the side, taken while I was getting ready in the morning, standing barefoot on the tile, the light streaming in through the window. My spine curved like a cat stretching, nightdress starting to slip off one shoulder. I stared at it for a long time.
I looked so…calm. So unaware.
There was a time I trusted him with everything. My body. My secrets. My insecurities.
-Harry
I don’t take many pictures anymore.
There’s no one to capture in the lens. No one who understands that I don’t want smiles, I want moments. She used to get that. She hated posed pictures. She’d say, “don’t capture me perfect. Capture me real.”
I still have the ones she took of me. One where I’m mid-yawn, sprawled out along her sofa, a coffee half balanced on my stomach. Another where I’m cooking shirtless, some pasta dish. She told me I looked all scruffy, like a tragic husband in a French indie film.
I haven’t deleted them. Can’t bring myself to.
I told myself I’ve moved on, I’m past it. But truthfully, I’m still stuck somewhere in those photographs. Between frames. Between moments. Between Her.
-Her
I see him during the winter.
It’s always the winter. When the streets turn all silver, crystallised, and the evenings swallow you earlier than expected. We used to walk for miles just to talk. Layers of woollen jumpers, and rain-proof coats, hands shoved in pockets, steam rising from our mouths like confession.
Back then he hated the silence. He’d fill it with silly facts, crude jokes, or awkward questions. Once asked me if I believed in parallel universes. I said no, but I now secretly hope there’s one out there where we got it right.
He made me laugh, even when I didn’t want to. Kissed at the corners of my eyes when I cried. He was the first man I ever let see me fall apart.
I wish he hadn’t watched so closely. I wish he hadn’t known where the cracks were.
-Harry
She used to call me whenever she couldn’t fall asleep.
At 2AM. 3:47AM. Once at 5:14, freaked out after she had a dream where she had drowned and she was convinced it meant something. I’d always answer, even if I’d been dead asleep, I think even now I’d come when she called. It was like she lived in the in-between hours, fragile and echoing.
I liked those moments best. No pretence. No performance. Just the sound of her voice, quiet and slow, sweet, like a breeze slipping through a half-open window.
She told me before that being with me felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. Equal parts awe and fear.
I joked, “at least the view’s good.”
Back then I didn’t understand that what she meant was: she never felt entirely secure in our relationship. Safe.
-Her
I think I knew, deep down at least.
Not at first. But something shifted. He started talking differently. Laughing at things he wouldn’t have before. Pulling away from kisses too early, too quickly.
Love doesn’t just vanish, it rots. Slowly. Seeping. Quietly. One tulip petal at a time.
I remember the night I found out.
Barcelona. He was supposed to be there for work. But I got a message. A girl I wasn’t acquainted with tagged him in a photo ‘by mistake’. It was blurry, but there he was, his arms around her waist, head tilted, lips too close. I felt my stomach drop before I even clicked on it.
I think betrayal is quieter than people expect.
I didn’t scream, I didn’t key his car, or burn his things, or send her messages laced with fury. I didn’t call him, didn’t text him, didn’t wait for him to arrive home to yell at him. I just went back to my apartment.
The next day I took the Rilke book from the shelf, the one he picked out on our first trip to the bookshop, sat in the kitchen cross legged, and waited for the sun to rise.
I didn’t cry until the morning.
The sun peeked over the hillside, he still hadn’t contacted me.
I felt sick.
-Harry
It happened once. Barcelona.
The city bled wine, breathed lust. And I let myself believe that loneliness was a reputable excuse.
I didn’t plan it. It wasn’t a slow slide. It was a crash. A landslide. A mistake with a face I don’t remember and a laugh I’ll never care to hear again.
When I came home my apartment was empty. I drove to her place, and it was like she knew I was coming. I saw her waiting at the door, Rilke book in hand. Her eyes were glassy, but she pushed her shoulders back, breathing steady. She didn’t scream. Just looked at me like I was something she’d once believed in, now exposed for what I really was.
She said nothing. Threw the key to my apartment I had given her to the floor at my feet. Closed the door in my face, gently, without slamming it.
Her silence, the finalisation of it all.
That was worse than any punishment.
-Her
Sometimes I wonder what I’d say if he showed up now. Apologised. Said he’d changed. That it was a stupid mistake.
I think I’d still want to touch his face. Just once. Feel if it still fit between my hands the way it used to. But then I’d remember what he did. That night. The photograph. His silence.
I loved him more than I should have. And maybe part of me still does, like he etched his way into my heart, sunk himself deep. But I can’t just wipe the slate. Love isn’t an excuse, and I can’t excuse this betrayal. It doesn’t resurrect trust, ease the hurt.
And I’m not the girl who cries on the kitchen floor. Not anymore.
He broke something I can’t give back.
-Harry
I walk past our places on purpose now.
Like penance. Like maybe if I hurt enough, I’ll balance the scale.
She deserved better. Deserved someone who didn’t flinch at the weight of her love. Someone who knew what to do with it.
I didn’t.
I wish I knew then what I know now.
I wish I could’ve been what she deserved.