Before Dawn - Part 1
Leah was walking down the street, frustrated and, once again, mad at her brother. The little prick took the car, again. He’d known she would need it this afternoon to pick up their grandma, and he could have perfectly walked to work.
“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” she muttered, feeling the urge to kick something rise to unexpected levels.
Then, she felt something hit her shoulder. Her eyes opened wide as she refused to look.
Please, don’t let it be a pigeon’s… she wouldn’t even dare finish that thought. She finally gathered the courage to take a look at her jacket and, to her relief, it was just a big droplet of water. Probably from one the multiple trees that adorned this street. Only then she became aware of the tapping of the raindrops against the pavement.
“Come on!” she complained, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
She pulled her hood over her head and walked faster as she kept her gaze to the floor. The last thing she needed was to trip over something she couldn’t see because her glasses were full of tiny raindrops.
Oh, how she missed the coast of Italy! The weather was warmer over there, and it definitely didn’t rain this much. Why, of course, this was England; the land of humidity and non-stopping rain.
Her mind was elsewhere, roaming her memories of that adorable Italian village, reason why she didn’t see the six feet tall man walking in front of her. At least, not until she collided with his broad back.
“Ouch!” the man groaned.
“Ouch!” she echoed.
“What the hell?”
She lifted her head to get a proper look of him just as he turned around.
“Harry?” she shrieked.
He narrowed his eyes, still upset about the incident, before he actually recognized her.
“Leah?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?” the question left her lips before she could even process the words.
“I could ask the same question,” he chuckled, “Long time no see.”
“Yeah, it feels like ages since we last saw each other,” she smiled sheepishly.
“Seems life’s treating you well,” he jerked his head toward her Italian boots and bag.
“I can’t complain,” she shrugged, “One of my books got published and now I live in a lovely village in the coast of Italy,” she explained, returning the smile he’d just given her, “What about you? I saw you released a new album.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” he tried to hide how proud he was of his new project, but he just couldn’t, “Have you gotten around to listen to it yet?”
“I’m sorry,” she grimaced, “With Luca and Thor, and Christmas around the corner, I haven’t got much time to spare.”
“Oh, you’ve got a boyfriend,” Harry commented, trying to keep it causal despite feeling a stab of… what was that? Jealousy? Why would he be jealous of Luca? He should be happy for his friend. If they could even consider themselves as friends anymore.
“Oh, no, no, no!” Leah quickly denied, “I wish,” she laughed awkwardly, “Luca is my editor,” she clarified.
“Oh,” Harry mouthed, “So who’s Thor?” he frowned, remembering the name she’d just dropped a few seconds ago and now realizing there was nothing Italian about it.
“My puppy,” Leah smiled wider than she’d ever done whilst revealing that piece of information.
“You’ve got yourself a puppy?” Harry asked, genuinely surprised.
“Mm-hmm,” she confirmed, “A friend of mine found out her dog was pregnant. She couldn’t keep all the puppies, so she asked a few friends if we could keep them. I really didn’t plan to actually adopt one. You know me, I love pups but I’ve never had one at home because my mom’s not very into pets and I was afraid I’d mess up. But when he looked at me with those puppy eyes… Well, I couldn’t say no.”
“And how’s he?”
“He’s the most adorable pup ever,” she said, proudly, “Although we have to work on the biting bit, I’m running out of slippers,” she frowned before they both laughed softly at that last comment.
Harry took a second to finally observe her. She was beaming, even beneath the cold rainy English weather. Her brunet hair was tied in a loose braid, and she still had a light tan to her skin, probably from enjoying the warm sun of the Italian coast. Her face was almost make-up free, except for the light mascara she was wearing. Her cheeks were already rosy due to the cold air, just like the tip of her nose.
He noticed how shiny her lips were; he, then, remembered how obsessed she was with lip balm back in the day. Some things never change, he guessed.
Leah wondered what was going through Harry’s mind. He’d been quiet for longer than expected, but he’d always been one to speak really slowly, so she didn’t think twice about it. The beanie he wore covered most of his hair, although a few curls escaped from its grip. She’d always loved Harry’s curls, even more so when his hair was way longer than it was now.
“How old’s your pup?”
The question startled her. She’d become awestruck remembering how soft those curls felt between her fingertips.
“Four months old,” she answered, still lingering to that memory.
“He’s still such a baby,” Harry blinked twice in awe.
“Yeah, that’s why it is so hard to teach him,” she laughed softly again, “He’s so cute it’s difficult to tell him off.”
“Can I meet him?”
Leah was surprised by Harry’s question. He sure had better things to do than meeting her new baby. Even more after so long they’d spent without even sharing a word with each other.
“Yeah, sure,” she found herself answering before actually think it through.
“Did you bring him here with you?”
She nodded before she added:
“I wasn’t going to leave him alone in Italy. Or with Luca, for that matter,” she grimaced again.
“Is it that bad?” he chuckled.
“He’d have probably tried to put him in a tutu.”
“Oh, poor thing.”
“Yeah, I’m not letting Thor anywhere near Lucca. He may be Italian and have good taste in fashion, but no way is he gonna dress my dog.”
They both laughed at that and afterwards a comfortable silence fell upon the two of them.
“It was nice seeing you, Harry.”
“It was really nice to see you too, Leah.”
“Guess I’ll see you around,” she smiled at him.
“Of course, you still need to introduce me to Thor!” he smiled back at her.
And despite not seeing much due to the raindrops sliding down her glasses and the fact that she was running late to pick her grandma up, the urge to kill his brother had magically gone away. Now she only wanted to smack the back of his neck for being so irresponsible.
┅┅━━━━━━━ ۵ ━━━━━━━┅┅
Leah had been fighting the need to write down everything that crossed her mind. The memories mixed all together and threatened her to become emotionally attached to them once again, after how long it took her to get over those moments.
Hence, when she arrived back home and her grandma was finally sitting on the armchair, she sneaked into her room before anyone else saw her, with her pup right behind her.
“Hello gorgeous!” she called him.
The pup leaned his head to the side, observing her. To be fair, she couldn’t blame him if he ever thought she was crazy. She picked him up from the floor and helped him onto her bed. The pup found his way onto her lap, where he rested peacefully, snuggling his head against her tummy for attention from time to time.
“Ya really like to be pampered, don’t ya, little boy?” she whispered to him whilst scratching the fur behind his ears.
Thor merely rested his head against his paws and closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of his human giving him the attention he deserved.
“You’re the prettiest thing to ever exist,” she whispered to him again, still scratching his black fur.
After Harry Styles, the voice in her head was loud and clear. And undoubtedly not welcome. She frowned and stopped the movement of her hand, wondering why her subconscious was playing with her like that. The pup lifted his tiny head and snuggled her hand, asking for attention.
“If you weren’t so adorable you wouldn’t get away with everything you want,” she muttered.
The tiny pup yawned and she thought her heart would melt at any given moment because he was way too endearing to be real.
“We’ll have to work on that,” she pointed her index finger at Thor, but he decided it was a good idea to smell it and lick the tip of her finger, “Stop!” she laughed as the pup licked her again, “You’re tickling me,” she kept laughing.
Thor happily barked as his tail wiggled from side to side. He was happy when his human did those strange noises.
┅┅━━━━━━━ ۵ ━━━━━━━┅┅
It was already late in the night, or early in the morning, Leah couldn’t quite tell. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she poured all of her thoughts and feelings out, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go down that memory lane.
Despite her initial reluctance, she took her laptop and sat back in her bead. Thor was sleeping beside her and the only sound that could be heard was his even breathing. She smiled broadly. God, how she loved this pup.
She took a deep breath and opened her Notepad. That overwhelming feeling took over her again; she had so much to tell, but she didn’t even know where to begin. How do you summarize years and years and express them in words? Well, she should’ve known; it was no less than her job. But there was an added difficulty when the story to tell was hers.
She began typing the first thing that came to her mind and, after a while, her fingers flew through the keyboard with a mind of their own.
Every word carried emotion, and every sentence pulled out a new memory. Before she knew, she was going down that road again.
┅┅━━━━━━━ ۵ ━━━━━━━┅┅
Harry still couldn’t believe he’d actually seen Leah today. Of course, if he’d even tried to keep in touch, he would’ve known she’d be in town. But he’d been too busy, and she hadn’t tried to reach him either. At least, that was what he’d been telling himself all this time to make himself feel better. Truth was, he regretted every single time he would’ve liked to text her and he didn’t.
They’d known each other for so long, and yet he’d let her slip through his fingers. He knew she’d always considered him her best friend, reason why he didn’t even dare to begin to think how lonely she must’ve felt these past few years.
But he wouldn’t apologize to her, because that would be admitting he was sorry… And he hadn’t done anything wrong. Things just… cooled down. Besides, it was probably too late, anyway.
He turned around in his bed for the hundredth time tonight. Who was he trying to fool? He’d played with her, so many years ago. He’d been such a dick, and there was no way she could forgive him for what he did.
Finally giving up on getting to sleep, Harry took his phone from his bedside table and scrolled through his gallery. He should probably delete some of the pictures in there; there were too many of them, but he felt so attached to those pictures because of the memories they brought back to life…
He found several pictures of teenage Leah partying with his teenage self. They sure knew how to have a good time. A sad smile pulled up on his lips when he saw the picture of that night, right before he made the biggest mistake of his life.
Leah had always told him how she wanted to become a writer, and she sure had talent. Even back then, she always had this habit of thanking him whenever he helped her, no matter whether it was a big favour or just listening to her rant about something. And she did so by writing letters. Well, they weren’t actually letters, because she sent them as a text message, but they were long and emotional enough to make him tear up.
Harry smiled as he remembered that one time they were hanging out at a party, and she was hammered and so, so upset. He was upset too for some reason he’d completely forgotten, and she gave him the most emotional, beautiful, realistic speech no one had ever given him. She obviously didn’t remember anything the following day, but he did.
He believed that was the night everything changed.
He’d always walked her home but, from that night on, he’d treasured those moments when they were alone in the early morning, right before dawn; just the two of them, no rush, walking beside one another in a comfortable silence or laughing about something that had happened at some point in the night. And even after hours of dancing, sweating and drinking, she looked beautiful.
He wondered if she’d gone down this memory lane too, after running into him this morning. Would she think of the same memories he did? Would she even want to think about the moments they’d shared at all?
Another memory hit him as he kept scrolling down the pictures of his gallery. The white dress.
That was a night to remember; at least the tiny bits they could put up together. It was summer and she was wearing that flowy white dress, way too short to bring her home to mother, but damn if she didn’t look sexy in it. They were waiting for someone and he decided to sat down on the stairs, tired of standing up and not moving at all. Two other friends did the same, and no space was left to sit down, so she just clinged to his neck and sat on his lap, a smile on her face asking if it bothered him. Harry limited his answer to wrapping his arms around her waist.
He loved how she always tangled her fingers in his hair, massaging his scalp and tugging softly at his curls. All of them were probably being too loud, laughing too much, because while he was almost falling asleep beneath the touch of her fingers on his hair, he felt drops of water wetting them. Apparently, a pissed off neighbour decided it was a good idea to water the teenagers sitting under his balcony.
She squealed and jumped off of his lap, running away from the water. He followed her shortly after and joined her away from the angry neighbour. It was only then they burst into laughter and left that place.
He didn’t know why, that night he couldn’t keep his hands off her body. Maybe he was being selfish, but he’d just broken things up with Hannah, and he longed for this kind of contact. She hadn’t complained at all, though. The only thing Leah did, was smile sheepishly every time Harry brushed her hair away from her face and brought it behind her ear.
Until they went outside the club and back to the street so their friends could smoke. The night breeze was cool for summer, and he could see her shiver. He wrapped his arms around her once more, bringing her closer to his body, trying to warm her up a little bit while their friends finished their cigarette. She hugged him by the waist and rested her head on his chest. When he asked whether she was cold, the drunk, I’m-no-longer-shy version of Leah told him her ass was cold. Fuck. What was he supposed to do? He was drunk too.
Without actually thinking it twice, his hands flew to her ass and he tried to warm it up, rubbing it. It didn’t seem such a bad idea at the moment, after all, she laughed and thanked him.
Later that night, he remembered, he offered to walk her home again, just like he did every single time they hung out together. Funny story? Both of them were so wasted they ended up walking in the opposite direction until they reached a park across town. She’d tried to warn him several times throughout their walk, but she kept saying her orientation sucked so she just trusted him, because his was better. Well, when drunk, apparently not.
They sat down on the floor, laughing at the stupid situation. They would have to unwalk what they did and then keep going until they reached her house. Leah rested her head against Harry’s shoulder, her whole body shaking from laughter, and they fell back on the floor. She was on top of him, sort of, still laughing uncontrollably. He couldn’t stop laughing either and at some point, before they’d fallen down, he’d hugged her to protect her from hitting the floor.
It was in that moment she raised her head to stare into his green eyes, her face so close to his. She’d tried her best to hold her laugh back, but she couldn’t manage to do so as she told him how hungry she was. He cracked up again, joining her laughter, because he was too, hungry. And as he helped her up, he realised, not only of food.
┅┅━━━━━━━ ۵ ━━━━━━━┅┅
Tears were already streaming down Leah’s face as she typed her last words. She hadn’t allowed herself to dive deeper into those memories because she knew that, as much as she’d love to be her teenage self again, that was not going to happen. Just like things were never going to be as they were back then.
She wiped away a tear, the memory of that night they got lost to finally sat down on a park floor across town in the early morning still vivid in her mind.
They finally found a place to eat breakfast on their way back home. He’d walked her to her front door, as he’d always done, and she desperately wanted him to come inside with her. But he just said goodbye to her, with a kiss on her forehead, as he used to do, and left.
The worst memory of them all wasn’t that at all; the one that she couldn’t let go of, no matter how much it hurt every time she went back there.
They were supposed to meet with a friend who was leaving to live abroad. Same old: go to the pub, have a beer, laugh a bit, go back home. Leah had been ready for a long time now, because Alice, their friend, was always running late.
He’d texted Harry, and he’d told her he was with his mom and some other family members at a pub near his place. Next thing she knew, Anne texted her to join them. She’d always been a lovely woman and, despite Harry was still annoyed that they texted each other, he couldn’t hide it amused him.
They didn’t stay long at the pub, though. Alice called she was heading toward their meeting place, so they headed out too; one of Harry’s younger family members coming along with them. She had to admit it was a fun night.
As expected, Harry walked everyone home and, since him and Leah were the ones that lived closer from each other, they did the whole tour until it was only the two of them, as it had always been.
They barely chatted on their way home; they were both exhausted and cold. Leah’s mind, though, worked at a hundredth miles per hour. She’d been feeling this… pull, toward him, for longer than she’d like to admit and she knew she would regret it if she didn’t do something about it.
Harry was quiet too. He was lost in his own thoughts, and lots of them included Leah, but she didn’t know that in that moment; and she never would.
She tried to bring a topic out, whatever, but she needed to talk to him about something or she would go mad. She was beginning to overthink everything and she knew that never ended well for her.
When they reached her house, instead of leaving straight away, they chatted for a few more minutes. It was cold, but neither seem to bother. Before leaving, as he always did, Harry wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her in for a hug. She rested her head against his chest and sighed. They were completely alone in the street, and she knew she could trust him like she could trust no other. Yet, she was scared and confused and didn’t really know what to do with the bundle of emotions that lived inside her for months now.
It was only then that Leah realised she was still being held by Harry. This time, he’d lingered for longer than he used to, as if he refused to let go. She moved slightly away, their arms still around each other’s, and looked up at him, at those green eyes that trapped her every single time, and felt that pull again. Every bone in her body asked her to kiss him. But she wasn’t brave enough.
She didn’t have to, though. To her surprise, Harry lowered his lips to hers. The kiss took her completely by surprise, reason why she blinked twice before closing her eyes and kissing him back.
When he said goodbye that night, he did it with a kiss on her lips, instead of her forehead.
┅┅━━━━━━━ ۵ ━━━━━━━┅┅
Harry had been tossing and turning for hours. He wanted to text her, but at the same time he was afraid to do so. She’d been so much braver than he’d ever be. Not just because of everything she’d been through, but because she really had the courage to do the things that matter.
He looked through their texts, looking for the one he knew by heart, but refused to delete because it was proof that she ever loved him.
He knew Leah had always had a way with words but even now he could tell how nervous and scared she was when she sent him that text message.
“I still don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to hit the send button once I finish typing this, but here it goes anyway. I don’t know the reason why you kissed me today, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I can’t hide this from you anymore, Harry,” he whispered in the darkness of his room, “I really, really like you. I think I’m falling for you and it scares me to death. Above all because you know I consider you my best friend, and I don’t want to lose you. I’m scared that telling you this might affect our friendship if you don’t feel the same way, but you know I trust you like no other and… who was I supposed to tell if it weren’t you? You know that if it wasn’t you the one I like, Harry, I would’ve told you straight away.”
He paused, taking a deep breath before resuming the message.
“I’m so confused, and I’ve been so confused for a while now. You’re one of the most important people I’ve had in my life. You were there for me when you didn’t even know what was going on, because you knew something was wrong so you decided to offer your shoulder to cry on and ask no questions. I still remember that smile you gave me when you told me ‘when you’re ready’. You’ve really been a constant in my life for the past few years, my pillar, along with Alice. You two are the only people who know the shit that’s been going down in my life these past few months. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you, I’ve already told you a billion times. Just, this time, it means a little bit more than all the others; but I don’t want things to change between us whatever your answer is. I can’t afford to lose you.”
Harry just needed to scroll down a little bit more to see his answer, to reread again, the way he’d rejected her. He damn sure was stupid. And he damn sure didn’t deserve her. He tried his best, he tried to have a lot of tact when he said he couldn’t feel the same way. And it was true, or so he thought in that moment. He’d offered her the space she might have needed, because he knew what it was like to fall for someone who couldn’t feel the same way about you; but he also promised her their relationship would not change. And yet, with time, it did.
