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July

On the Sunday morning, it was the dire sound of raindrops pattering down on my tent that had woken me from my slumber. On the Monday morning, it was the beautiful sound and feel of Harry’s lips pattering kisses against my forehead that woke me.

Instinctively, I shimmied closer to him, my hands pressed against his chest as he closed his arms around my frame, still kissing my forehead. I hated the thought of waking up without that, without his tender lips embracing my forehead that way. How would waking up ever be satisfying again after that? I slowly opened my eyes, my eyelashes catching the bottom of his chin and causing a huge grin to spread his tender kisses, before he eventually stopped and pulled so he could see my face. “Mornin’.” He greeted. “Hi.” I breathed out. “You sleep okay?” “Amazing. Did you?” “Really good.” He nodded. “The best I’ve had for weeks.” I knew it was early, because we were supposed to be packed up and out the gates by 10:30am, and there were only a few noises coming from outside that signalled people were awake and packing their things. Harry took my small hand from his chest, and wrapped his own around it, his thumb rubbing smooth lines over my skin, his eyes searching every line of my face, as though trying to find some kind of sign that I was regretful of what had happened with us the evening before. It didn’t exist. Because no matter how complicated, no matter how stupid it was, really, I wouldn’t have changed that evening for the world. “I don’t want to go.” I whispered. “I thought it would be nice to have just a few minutes relaxing, just us two, before Zayn wakes up and starts yelling that we need to clean up after ourselves, cause it’s a small festival and they shouldn’t have to clean our shit.” He mimicked. In the few minutes before I fell asleep the night before, I wondered how things would be in the morning. I half expected to wake up in an empty tent, that me and Harry would barely acknowledge each other as we packed up our things in silence, pretending what had happened, never had. But Harry’s body clock had woken him early, just in the hope of having some more time with me. I had woken in the sweetest way imaginable, still in his arms and reeling in the evening before, and that was down to him. He could have left, and I wouldn’t have blamed him. But he hadn’t. I was kind of lost for words. Suddenly I didn’t know how to hold a conversation with him. I decided the only thing I could do, was nuzzle closer to him, to breathe him in and enjoy being that close with him whilst I could. “You missed Liam?” He asked me from nowhere. “Yeah. Which is weird, because I went so many years without him. But… I dunno. He’s not just my brother, he’s my best mate.” “I wish I had a brother.” He shrugged. I cracked my neck so I could look at him and his face more clearly, and I always loved little moments like this where I realised there were still things about Harry I didn’t know. There was still so much of him I had left to uncover and reveal. “Really?” “Yeah.” He continued. “I always wanted an older brother.” “Well, you can’t have mine!” I smiled, but he didn’t. “Um. Did your mum never... Was it always just you?” “Yeah. Then it was just me, Kev and Ben. I remember when I was thirteen, going through my grotty teenager stage-” “When are you going to leave that stage?” I smirked. ”Shut up, idiot.” He pinched at my side, causing me to squirm and giggle. “When I was thirteen, I went absolutely mad at my dad’s. Like, a proper little brat. I fell out with them for about a week because they never adopted anyone else.” “Seriously?” I could have listened to Harry talk about his life for weeks, months, years on end. I wanted to know all of those tiny little things about his life, all the irrelevant pieces of nonsense that had added up and created this boy I was completely besotted with. “Yeah. I asked them to adopt Niall.” He grinned. “Nice. How did Niall’s parents take that?” “Did I not-? Shit. Niall... Niall lives with his uncle.” “What?” “His parents died in a car accident when he was six. He-he lives with his uncle. Didn’t I tell you that?” “No. Fuck.”

I often forgot that learning about someone meant that you would also learn facts about other people they were tied with, and those facts weren’t always going to be innocent or mundane. I wished I had known that about Niall. I was racking my brain trying to remember every single conversation I’d had with Niall, and I just knew at some point, I had fucked up completely and started talking about families or whining about my parents’ divorce or something else completely ridiculous. I cursed, and buried my face into his neck, groaning and loving that my place to hide was against his warm skin. His arms tightened around me once more. “What?” He chuckled.

“I bet I said something so stupid.” I bawled. “I bet I said something totally inappropriate and condescending. Fuck. I wish I’d known.” “You won’t have said anything stupid.” He tutted. “Of course I’ll have said something stupid. It’s me!” “Listen, Niall won’t have taken anything badly. He’s all sunshine.” He comforted, rubbing his fingers down my spine with one hand, and still gripping my hand with his other. “You could have said something really, really bad, and he wouldn’t have thought anything of it. I promise.” I barely knew Niall, but that was probably true. I still felt like a royal tit though. “I guess so.” I tried. “Well, I know so. So cheer up.” We heard a tent unzip in our proximity, and our automatic reaction was to whip our heads up to see that it wasn’t my tent, both of us slightly panicked. But thankfully, no one had let themselves in my tent, but it did mean someone was awake. We both flopped back down at the same time, breathing a sigh of relief, and then laying apart for the first time in hours, but still looking at each other. “BOYS AND GIRL!” We heard Zayn yelling from outside. “I’m giving you ten minutes before I personally climb into all of your tents and drag you out! LET’S GO! We need to tidy up a bit. It’s a small festival, they shouldn’t have to clean our shit!” Harry clicked his fingers and pointed outside as I started laughing, muffling the noise with my sleeping bag as Harry grinned. “See! I fucking told you!” He chirped. I hid my face beneath the covers as I tried to stop giggling at Harry’s accuracy when it came to Zayn’s words, a little wary we would get caught, Harry still completely nude beneath my sleeping bag, and only a tiny bra covering my frame. Once my laughter died, I knew me and Harry were going to talk, whist we had the chance. I was dreading it before anything had been said. We went back to staring at one another blankly before we said anything. “So...” I sighed. “We’ve got ourselves into a bit of pickle.” He cooed. “We have.” I agreed. A bit of a pickle was putting it lightly, to be honest. I wasn’t entirely sure where Harry stood when it came to his feelings for me, but as far as I was aware, for him, it was just sex. Sex with a friend. That was all I knew from the information that had been given. For me, my feelings were all over the place, and they had been for months. What had caught me off-guard, was that I’d woken that morning and immediately realised the sex didn’t complicate my emotions any further, yet it did seem to put them under a magnifying glass. It intensified them. Then on top of that, we were going to bloody live together, until May at least. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted. But for once, I was actually thinking about the complications rather than just wanting to burst and tell him how I felt. I was 100% sure on my feelings for him, but I wasn’t 100% sure what would become of those feelings now we’d finally had sex. I didn’t know if the sex was all I’d needed from him, and that maybe after that, our spark could fizzle and fade into nothing. It didn’t seem possible, but also, it wasn’t implausible. I was thinking logically. “What should we do?” He quizzed. “I dunno. I... I don’t know.” “Can we make this less complicated?” “No.” I chuckled. “I just... Maybe we need to take a step back.” “Um… Okay? What d’ya mean?” All I could think about clearly, was how much I cherished him. I was thinking about Mike and Grace. The way they were taking steps back from one another, really taking in their feelings. Giving themselves a chance. The break I thought I was going to have from Harry when we finished our first year, was now something I knew I needed. I could clear my head, one final time. I could finally figure out, once and for all, if I had just been feeling a vivacious lust that I’d never truly been able to riddle, or if my feelings were absolutely tangible. I needed a breather. That’s all I could think. To save my sanity and to save us, I really needed some time out.

“Maybe we should, just stay out of touch. Until we’re back at uni.” I breathed. “O-okay...” He lowered his brows. “I dunno. Then we can get back to uni and we can catch up and just... see how we feel. See where we stand.” It felt like those words should have been coming out of Harry’s mouth, not mine. I didn’t want to chew more than I could swallow, to lose myself in him when I only had two months to just breathe and wrap my head around everything before going back to being constantly in his company. The evening before, it was like we had to completely remove ourselves from our real lives just to be together once. We had to create a fictional world, just so we could share in that moment and ignore the complications. There was something still missing. There was something still unclear, and I needed some space to calm down, and contemplate making those two worlds collide. It felt like the smartest thing I had done in months. I knew I would probably find it hard, but it was smart, because the harder I found it, the more it would confirm my feelings. And if September rolled around, and nothing had changed, I knew it would be time to stop biting my tongue and actually tell him how I had been feeling. “So you just wanna... Not talk?” His eyebrows were getting lower and lower. “I.. Umm. Well, I don’t want to not talk. But, I think it’s wise.” “You sure you won’t miss me?” His eyes twinkled. “I’ll have enough of you from September onward. I’ll be bloody bored of you.”

It felt good. I wasn’t fully sure why, or how, but it did. If you had told me that I would be making a decision to keep me and Harry apart, to go just under two months without speaking, I would have said you were totally mad. Completely insane. Why would I decide that? But it was time. It was time I figured myself out, to step away from him. That’s when I made the final promise to myself. If I went back to uni in September, after two months of absolutely no Harry. If my stomach still flipped, if my pupils still dilated whenever my eyes were blessed with seeing him, then I would tell him. I would tell him I did not see him as just a friend, and I would deal with the consequences of such an action. If my feelings hadn’t shifted, I would pluck up the courage and just let him know. It was easy, promising myself that there and then. I had to wonder, that if and when the time came, would I actually find the courage and do it? I didn’t need to think about it then. All I had to do, in that moment, was be with him. “Hm.” He mulled. “But what if I miss you?” Words like that, were what I needed a break from. Harry saying ridiculously sweet things to me and them amounting to nothing but me feeling even more confused. “It would be weird if you didn’t.” I smiled. From outside, we heard Mike and Louis retreat from their tents, greeting the morning with groggy voices. I wished we had longer. “I guess it’s time to put the tent down.” Harry sighed. “Urgh. I hate this part.” I groaned. I moved closer to him again for these last few moments, pressing my nose into his chest and dancing my fingertips over his butterfly. He kissed the top of my head, holding me close and tight. “Ready to go back to the real world?” He asked me. “No.” I uttered bluntly. “No… Me neither.” He moved and stroked at the beds of my eyes as I way of catching my attention, and the very second he had it, he slowly pushed his lips against mine. It was intense, drawn out. It felt like a lifetime before he licked at my bottom lip and I widened my mouth to welcome him. His hand was wrapping tightly in the hair at the back of my head, his breath was deep and drowsy as we melted into one another. The kiss didn’t last too long, but in my heart, it dragged out for an eternity spent in his arms, the feeling of his kiss enchanting the blood that coursed through my body and creating a new life within me that almost guaranteed that I would feel the same way two months down the line. It was unforgettable. I was breathless when he pulled away, and it was almost like my lips swelled just so they could remain a little closer to him than usual once he had distanced. He brushed some hair from my forehead, kissed it tenderly, and then sat up and started dressing himself, so I did the same. We didn’t talk as we got dressed and rolled up our sleeping bags, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, it was almost reflective, like we were packing away this world we had created for ourselves, reality looming just outside my tent. But it was okay. Reality was okay. Just okay. Not long after, we both retreated from my little pink tent, everyone smiling our way, questioning looks on their faces. “Mornin’.” Zayn greeted. “How come you’re in Pippa’s tent?” We both stood upright and stretched in the morning, and I was grateful to hear how innocent Zayn’s question seemed to be. He didn’t sound suspicious at all. “My tent started raining in last night,” Harry shrugged casually. “So I kipped with Pip.”

“That’s weird.” Zayn mulled. “We just checked in your tent and it’s bone dry.” Suddenly Harry was choking over his words and stumbling over himself a little bit just trying to think of a reply. It hit me then, that his tent had never leaked. Harry had used that as an excuse to climb into my tent with me. I couldn’t quite believe it. Had he planned on sleeping with me? Had he just planned an innocent evening of cuddling? He obviously had some kind of intentions, or else he would have just stayed in his own, dry, tent. I couldn’t say anything. Harry couldn’t bloody say anything. Thankfully, someone did. “Well, it stopped raining not long after we got back.” Louis shrugged. “I bet it just dried up.” “Yeah, probably.” Harry coughed. “Better take it down.”

Mike had barely been listening in the first place, and then Zayn just shrugged it off, mainly because he didn’t think there was anything to shrug off. Harry wandered over to his tent and started un-pegging it, and Louis darted his head to me when no one was looking. We both had wide eyes. He knew. “Want some help, Pip?” He asked me, signalling to my tent. “Sure.” I gulped. We both automatically moved round to the back of my tent so that we could hide our faces as we crouched down on the floor and started taking the pegs from the ground, with great difficulty. “Oh my god!” He whispered harshly. “SHHHHH!” “Did you-” “Yes.” “Oh my god.” He whelped. “What the hell? Are you okay? Is everything okay? Does he like you?” “No!” I whelped. “Well, I don’t know! I’ll text you, or something. When I’m home. I can’t talk about this right now.” “Are you okay? Do you regret it?” “No. I’m fine. Everything is fine. Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s good. I promise.” I just hated the thought of Zayn finding out, because he was so happy once me and Harry finally started getting along, it made everyone’s situation better and it meant he could live with the two people he really wanted to, without there being any awkwardness. If he knew that me and Harry had slept together, there was the possibility of him getting angry and worrying that we had ruined that for ourselves. Zayn being blissfully unaware was what we needed. I pressed my finger against my lip in an attempt to shut Louis up, and he just nodded, and helped me take down my tent. Thankfully, it wasn’t quite as testing at putting it up had been. The only thing that was difficult was trying to fit it back into the tiny bag I had gotten it out of, but with the efforts of me, Louis, and Mike, we managed. Harry did his all on his own. Zayn had gone and grabbed us all a bin-bag each during our efforts, and we cleaned up some of our mess, cans and food packets we had carelessly thrown on the floor over the weekend, so that Zayn couldn’t moan at us. But in a way, I didn’t mind. I liked being there so much, dragging out our time was nice. I really didn’t want to leave. But all too soon, it was time. We were swinging our bags over our shoulders, and looking longingly at the dry patches of grass that had been sheltered and squished beneath our tents the whole weekend. It was time to go home. “How’s everyone getting home?” Zayn asked. “I’m driving.” Louis raised his hand. “Does anyone need a lift? I’ll go wherever, I don’t mind.” “Can I have a lift?” Mikes voice was close to gone. “I’m not far from here.” “Sure, man. Harry, you good?” “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve got my car here.” “No shit. You drive?” “Everyone bloody drives, Pip.” Mike tutted. “We need to get our shit together.” “I know.” I sighed. “We ready?” Louis asked. “I guess so.” Harry shrugged. With that, we started walking away from our spot, and with every step I took, I felt sadder. I was already counting down the days until the next year, when hopefully we would return. I then started thinking about what things might be like in a years time, what might have changed, how I might feel. It gave me a headache, so I stopped those thoughts pretty quickly. I need to stop thinking. No more thinking for me. We were all relatively quiet as we walked out of the festival and towards the car park, and the closer we got to the real world, the more hungover I felt. Everything was going majorly downhill. Louis got to his car first, and we bid goodbye to him with hugs and smiles, and I was thankful he didn’t say or whisper anything about me and Harry. He was doing very well at keeping my secret hidden. I was pretty thankful it was him I had opened up to. I spotted Harry’s car from miles off, because I had been looking for it, dreading how this goodbye would go because I genuinely didn’t have a clue. What I would have loved to have done was kiss him one last time, but that definitely wasn’t an option. Once we reached his vehicle, we stood waiting as he threw all his things into his boot. I questioned if Harry’s thought process was similar, if he was hesitant for this goodbye because what the hell were we even supposed to do? I was painfully transparent 90% of the time. What if he hugged me and I just burst into tears? Or what if I couldn’t control myself and just started kissing him like a lunatic. Holy shit. I can’t do this! As my breath started to pick up amidst my frenzy, Harry stepped to me and just started casually hugging me. I barely even noticed. I was so busy worrying about our goodbye, that I was half way through it before I even took note. He gave me a friendly kiss on the head, before he moved onto Zayn, the two of them hugging it out. “See you both in September.” He grinned. “Thanks for bringing us, bro.” “No worries. Drive safe, man.” Zayn replied. Then it was over. As I watched Harry clamber into the front of his car, it was officially over, and a wonderful world I had known for one short night, and one blissful morning, was drifting away in front of my eyes. I wasn’t sure I would see that world again. + + + Rather than traveling home and coming back a month or so later, on our way home from the festival, me and Zayn decided it would be a good idea for him to stay the night then. So there we were, eating crisps, both freshly showered, sitting on my bed and reflecting over the weekend. “Who do you usually go with?” I asked him. “It varies.” He shrugged. “Obviously it started as a family thing. My mum took me, and then when my sister turned two, she started coming as well. It was like that until I was sixteen, that’s when my mum and my sister stopped coming.” “Your sister doesn’t go?” I gawped. “She thinks she’s too cool for it.” He pfft. “Wait til she’s eighteen, and she’ll start going again, I guarantee it. But since then, my mum always gets me and a few friends tickets for my birthday. So, for the past four years I’ve took loads of different people.” “And obviously, you know my next question...” I smirked. “Were you the most fun?” He rolled his eyes. “Well were we?” I chirped. “Don’t tell my mates from home, but yeah. You were.” I tussled the wet hair on top of his head, and shovelled some more crisps into my mouth. Anyone would have thought I’d have had my fill of Zayn after the weekend, but it was impossible to be around Zayn too much. I was sad that the day would come where it would no longer be acceptable for me to live with Zayn. He lay down at the foot of my bed, hands on his chest, facing the ceiling as he mimed along to the Arctic Monkeys song that was playing in the background. I gently kicked his hip. “Oi.” I smiled. “What?” He chuckled. “If neither of us are married by the time we’re forty, shall we just do it?”

“Give me till fifty.” He nodded, closing his eyes. “I believe in late love.”

“Deal.”

I was hoping things wouldn’t get to that stage, but it was always nice to have a backup plan. On top of that, I had Zayn bloody Malik as a backup plan! I felt lucky. “You’ll be fucking married anyway.” He huffed. “How do you know that?” “Because it’s what you want!” He whelped. “And I just... I see you as one of those people who gets what they want.” I couldn’t see myself as that person. Not at all. I decided not to voice my thoughts, but all that was going through my head was how I would be going back to uni in September, to do a course I didn’t even really want to do. Back to a boy who I desperately wanted to be with, but didn’t even have the guts to tell him. I was sickeningly stubborn sometimes, but there were steps that even I couldn’t take, things I didn’t dare to do. I wasn’t even flattered that Zayn saw me as someone who would just go out and get what they wanted, more embarrassed that I seemed that way, but I wasn’t. “I suppose.” I shrugged. Almost like he knew I needed a saviour, there was a little knock on my door, and then Liam poked his head in, with an innocent smile on his face. “Hey.” He greeted. “Mind if I join?” “Course not, man.” Zayn said what I was thinking. I shuffled a little further onto my bed so he had room to sit with us. Nothing was better than spending time with those two. “I’m glad you said yes, cause I’ve ordered us pizza.” He grinned.

“You’re my fucking hero.” Zayn cheered. That was the first time it happened. I wanted to talk to Harry. I just wanted to send him a text, a picture of me Zayn and Liam just hanging out together. I wanted to send a picture to make him jealous, because I really wished he was there with me and I knew he would want to be there with us too. That’s how long I lasted. It had only been a matter of hours since we left the festival, only a matter of hours since I got home, less than an hour since I had finally had a shower. I wasn’t caving, there was no way in hell I was going to text him, but the point was that I really bloody wanted to. I rest my head on Liam’s shoulder as the weekend started catching up with me. My bones ached, my head seemed to be constantly spinning, but I was still in a euphoric state. “I’m coming with you, next year, by the way.” Liam told us. “How you coping?” Zayn asked him. “What d’ya mean?” “Well, we’ve been at a festival for three days, and getting back to reality sucks. I’m struggling.” He breathed. “How long were you traveling?” “Umm... Like... Five years.” He sighed. “Is reality ugly or pretty?” Zayn asked him. I had been wanting to ask him how he was feeling to be back at home myself, but I knew the main reason he was home was to comfort my mother. If my parents’ marriage was still in one piece, I knew for a fact that Liam would have been in another country I had never heard of. There were home comforts here that he would never experience on the road, but there were a million things our home town could never offer him, which traveling had. I just hadn’t asked him, because I felt like reality had slapped him in the face enough. In a way, I didn’t want to rub salt in the wound. “I don’t really know.” Liam ran a hand through his short hair. “It feels good to be here with my mum. It’s nice. But... I dunno. It’s not ugly but... I’m not attracted to it, if that makes sense.” “Yeah, man. I get that.” I suppose it was a better reaction than I was expecting. At least it wasn’t ugly to him. I decided to comfort him in one of the only ways I could. “Well, I’m glad you’re here.” He rest his head on top of mine, and I could feel his cheek plump up as he smiled, wide and real. “See, it’s tiny little moments like this that make it attractive.” He said truthfully. “As long as I can ignore working tomorrow.” Liam was lucky that he had the option of working with our father, but at the same time, I imagine that made work even more unappealing every night. At least he was speaking with him. That’s when Harry crossed my mind again. I knew what I needed to do. “Back in a minute.” I mumbled. I rushed downstairs with my phone in my hand, shaking already. Harry had told me he thought that I should be the one to take the first step when it came to rebuilding my relationship with my father, and I knew he was right, even if at the time it did make me throw up. I thought now was a better time than ever. Still high on the festival, freshly showered, and reeling in the company of two people I loved more than anything. I had to try and get in contact with him. Because ever since Harry mentioned it to me, I couldn’t help but think about how scared my dad must have been; how horrifying even the thought of talking to me must have been. I was still so angry with him, and I was still hurt, but I had to do something or else we would be stuck in limbo. I refused to do that when the situation, and my phone, was in my hands. I had to try. I went out into my backyard, and without giving it too much thought, without giving myself the chance to cop out and change my mind. I found my old house phone number, and pressed dial. The dreaded dial tone dragged on and on, like I knew it would, and with each passing second, I felt sicker. But nothing prepared me for what I heard. “Hello?” It wasn’t his voice. It was hers. Jennifer. The woman he had been cheating on my mother with. Her best friend. The bitch who had gone behind my mother’s back for years, and finally tore our family apart. She had obviously moved in. I hung up. Without any more thought than that, I hung up the phone, and I just cried. I really wanted to pluck up the courage, press dial again and ask the devil woman to pass the phone over to its rightful owner. But instead, I cried. I cried for my mum. I cried for Liam. I cried for myself. And I cried for every family that had ever been through anything remotely similar.

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