hi, in the spirit of getting married (congratulations btw!!! so excited for you!!) thinking about Margot and Harry’s wedding! was it low key and super fun??? or did they do it like you and just go to the courthouse?! they seem like family and fun type of people but idk
OKAY I have always pictured them having a SUPER CUTE and tiny elopement in a foreign country with just their siblings?
Like they’d fly out somewhere (Amalfi coast?) under the guise of going on vacation with their siblings and then they’d surprise them by eloping??? I actually think they’d have it during the pandemic too? Like 2020 late summer or early fall?
I stared across the room at him as Niall’s voice seemed to drown out my thoughts. I stifled a yawn and wondered when I’d get to march down the hall to my own hotel room, lock the door, take a bath, and get to sleep.
It was their last album release week--maybe ever--and my job was to tag along to events. Look good. Smile wide. Say that I was excited.
I was feeling anything but.
The vacation that Harry and I had planned for after the album was quickly approaching--but the mere thought of it sent a wave of nausea through my stomach that I couldn’t quite ignore.
Now, he was staring at his phone. His eyes fixated on whatever it was that he typed. A joke to his sister. A message to a friend. I didn’t really care. These days, it felt like his eyes were anywhere but on me.
“So, everyone will be up at in the hallway for 7am tomorrow?” Their manager looked around the room, waiting for nods of confirmation from all of us--including me.
Liam was next to me, his arm on the back of the couch as he let out a monotonous ‘yes,’ but then he looked over to me and raised his eyebrows. “A week right?”
“One week,” Harry replied for me, his tone much less enthusiastic than Liam’s. He brought his eyes to mine, offering what seemed to be a hopeful--yet timid--smile.
But I didn’t know if I’d make it.
I didn’t know how many more times I could wake up and wonder how to convince him that I was still here--I was still in it. I’d spent years acting on TV and now I didn’t have an ounce of pretending left in me.
Which is why, later that night, I called Sinead and I called Cara and I told them that I couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to--it’s that I couldn’t.
Neither of them knew what to say. They wanted me to be happy, but they both felt that my happiness meant a life with Harry by my side. At this point, I disagreed.
NOW - Day 1834
I sat across from Nick Grimshaw with a microphone in front of my face. It’d been a while. I only had one condition--which Grimmy was happy to hear: don’t ask about the guy from Tennessee.
Claire and Nick had worked hard to make it blow over. A few photos of me out to dinner with famous friends created a decent buzz that seemed to lessen the blow of my biggest scandal to date. I mean, that’s if you don’t count me disappearing for a year and a half and breaking up with Harry.
But Grimmy was okay with it--such an off-limits question meant that he was free to ask what he wanted about Harry. But he also knew that it meant I was free to answer however I’d like.
He asked about the album, my decision to drop it with minimal promotion, my time off, my writing process. But it didn’t take him long to get the to key points.
“So, I mean, let’s face it. You’ve been spotted back with Harry Styles and now you’ve got this new album--with a lot to say on it,” he prompted.
“Yeah,” I nodded--Sinead watched from her seat from behind a glass window. Nick was standing beside her and Hilary was in the back.
Harry was a thirty minute drive away, still at home, likely in his pajamas and maybe drinking a cup of tea. I wondered if he was listening.
He’d begged to tag along but I wasn’t up for dealing with the optics, as Hilary would say. I didn’t have the energy to deal with the questions and the photos and the rumors. There were enough already,
“So is it safe to assume that you and Harry are back together?”
Nick knew the answer--but his listeners didn’t.
“You know--sometimes people need time apart,” I laughed. “And I think there are songs on this album that really explain where I’ve been and where I am now. So I’m happy to be spending time with Harry and to have had time to reflect on my job and my life.”
“A nice, vague answer from Miss Margot Jones, a classic Friday morning special we’ve got here, folks!”
Everyone in the room laughed, and when I rolled my eyes at Nick, he only egged me on more. “But seriously, we’re all excited that you two are back together--the fans are wild about you both. But this album must have been hard for him to hear.”
I didn’t quite know what to say. Yes. It was. He was mad at points and we talked a lot about it and there were moments when I feared that it wouldn't work out this time, either.
I opted for something more concise, a need to defend myself bubbling in my chest as my thoughts became words. “Well, you know, I wanted this album to be honest, if anything. I wanted to explain my side of things and, I mean, he got to tell his side, which wasn’t easy to hear either.”
“What’s that life like? Hearing your significant other’s album and then writing one in response?”
“Exhausting,” I laughed, setting us up for a commercial break. Nick took us out and smiled when he removed his headphones.
“Can’t hide it for long, love.”
THEN - Day 1155
Harry wasn’t really one to get mad. He never raised his voice or called me names. Instead, he shut down.
His assistant, Emma, stood by the door, her voice calm and steady as she read over his schedule. She knew that neither of us were listening. I’d asked a question about whether or not I really had to go to one of their events. Harry said yes, I said no. Emma stayed silent.
Now, as her eyes scanned down her phone and Harry’s seemed to glaze over as he looked out the window, I wondered if now was my moment.
Emma would leave the room, I could tell Harry that this wasn’t working. I could use this as an example. A simple question, a small disagreement, and we were staring in opposite directions as if our lives depended on it.
I didn’t know how he expected us to have a whole week together, uninterrupted. Nothing but the beach and the sun to ease the tension.
After a few more minutes of talking, Emma excused herself and told us she’d be back in 15. I wondered if that was her way of giving us a time limit to whatever was about to explode.
“What’s wrong with you?” I finally asked--likely the most direct I’d been in months.
“What’s wrong with me?” He turned around suddenly, his eyes wide with confusion--his phone limp in his hand when he abandoned whatever he’d been staring at. “I should ask you the same thing. You’re the one who’s been--I dunno--weird for months now.”
“I’m not being weird,” my voice was quieter now. I wasn’t any good at responding to remarks about my mood. I didn’t need him to remind me that something was seriously wrong. I had the aching in my chest to remind me every night.
“Margot--what is going on between us?” He stood from his spot on the couch and made his way towards me, his pace slowing considerably when he got closer. He looked me up and down, almost as if he didn’t quite recognize me.
“Nothing, I don’t know,” I lied. He knew it was a lie.
He was quiet for a moment.
His eyes were distant and he looked tired. Tired of traveling, of performing, of smiling, of singing, of me. He’d admit all of that. He was weeks away from the end of an era. His band was done. He didn’t know it yet, but we were, too.
He kept his eyes on the ground, his hands clasped together as if he were about to suggest a company merger.
“Margot, I love you, and I want to make things okay, but I can’t if you don’t let me.”
I thought on his words for a second. Where did I start? How did I tell him the secrets I’d been keeping for a year?
I’m tired. I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m bored. I’m scared. I’m anxious. I’m depressed. I wonder what it’d be like to quit and move to upstate New York and buy a small house with a field. I can’t handle the attention, I can’t handle the pretending. I can’t handle your fans who love me and hate me and want nothing to do with me but want to know every single piece of our lives. I hate your job. I hate my job. I don’t know what else I’d do. I don’t know if you’d love me if I wasn’t the girl in the poster. What if I’m broken? What if I’ll never be the 17-year-old in the driveway that you fell in love with? What if I’m washed-up? What happens when people stop buying my albums? What happens when you leave the band? What happens when I’m 30, 40, 50? How do you know that you’ll love me forever?
He let a gust of air escape his lips when I didn’t reply. He got up from the couch, headed for the door, and closed it behind him. That’s when I knew he needed space.
THEN - Day 1155
Margot had a temper. That was never news to me. She was loud and energetic and she had no problem letting me know when I fucked up.
Maybe that’s why things felt so out of whack.
She wasn’t saying anything. She didn’t seem to have anything to say.
Emma slipped out of the room and I counted the seconds it took one of us to say something. She spoke first.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I turned my head at record speed, my eyes wide as they met hers. She had deep circles under her eyes--her skin was pale and she made minimal effort to smile these days.
“What’s wrong with me?” I stared at the girl I once knew--the girl who had turned into a shell of herself before my own eyes. “I should ask you the same thing. You’re the one who’s been--I dunno--weird for months now.”
I didn’t know how to be more direct. I’d asked what was wrong. I asked how she felt. I asked if she was sick. I asked if she needed help. I asked if she wanted to hurt herself.
I tried and tried and tried to figure out how to help the girl with a big smile and make her feel okay. I knew she knew how. I’d seen it.
My question startled her. She did the thing where she tried to retreat into herself--if she were a turtle, she’d be gone inside her shell until she knew it was safe to reappear.
“I’m not being weird,” her voice was quieter now, the usual tone of defense replaced with one of fear or uncertainty.
“Margot--what is going on between us?” I stood from my spot on the couch and made my way towards her. She flinched a little at this, sinking deeper into the cushions in the hotel room that she refused to sleep in.
There was once a time where we got one room. One bed. One bathroom. Just us. Now she seemed to bruise under my touch and watch me with eyes that were constantly teary.
“Nothing, I don’t know,” she shrugged her shoulders, reaching for her phone as if the conversation was that simple--as if a quick redaction of her words would undo the last few months.
The new year brought me a new Margot. One that was sad and cold and distant. It’d been eleven months with the new version of her, but I still couldn’t pick her out of a crowd.
I didn’t know how much longer I could take it. I could ask as many questions as I wanted. I could try to have a conversation and offer support. If she didn’t want it, she wouldn’t take it. It was that simple.
So I’d get mad. I’d get mad and drop it and pretend--just like she was--that everything was fine. Maybe that wasn’t the right choice. Maybe I didn’t care. Maybe I just didn’t know what to do or who to be or what to say or how to love her.
She stared at me with cold eyes now--more angry that she’d been a few moments earlier.
I wanted to tell her I knew. I wanted to tell her that I knew how she felt even if she didn’t have the words.
This is hard and scary and miserable, at times. We’re up early and up late and we’re tired and sick of doing this but what else do we do? Who am I without the band--who are you without your music or the show? Who are we without each other? What comes next? What comes in 10 years? Where do we go from here?
I didn’t know how to say all of that to her, and I wasn’t about to lie.
So I decided to go with the truth. “Margot, I love you, and I want to make things okay, but I can’t if you don’t let me.”
She dropped my gaze when I spoke. I gave her a minute. Sixty seconds of silence to see if she’d say something.
She didn’t.
So I left.
NOW - Day 1840
Margot shifted on the cushion beside me, turning her head slightly to signify that she wanted me to answer the therapist’s question: when did you know the honeymoon was over?
I cleared my throat and shrugged my shoulders a bit. When did I know? Had it ever begun? I didn’t really know the answer, and even if I did, I’d be worried about saying it in front of Margot.
But my skull must have been transparent, because Margot let out a laugh and shifted again beside me. “Just answer, Harry, it’s okay.”
I blushed at this--embarrassed that I was so predictable and embarrassed that she’d called me on it. “I mean--I know they don’t typically last two years, but, I guess in 2014. We had a great summer, but we were both on tour.”
She nodded and the therapist did, too. “That was your second summer together?”
“Yeah,” we both said at the same time.
“Mine was seventy-something different cities from May to October. Yours was…” she trailed off when she looked towards me for my answer.
“Sixty-something spread out from April to October.”
“It was fine at first,” Margot said, she stared out the window in Hilary’s office and a small smile came over her face. “Busy and a lot of travel but I think we were both excited to be on the road and visiting each other and whatever. It was kind of a high point in both our careers, I think.”
“So what changed?” Hilary asked, her question was directed towards me since I was the one who’d pinpointed that summer. Margot brought her eyes to mine again and waited.
“I mean, it just wasn’t as easy. The summer of 2013 we were both still so excited, I think. I was just in love with her and nothing could really bring me down.”
Margot’s eyes stayed on my face even though I didn’t look at her. Hilary nodded for me to continue. “But by the end of 2014 I think,” I paused, unsure how to label the look of defeat in Margot’s eyes that winter. “She was tired. Emotionally, physically, all of it.”
“And you didn’t know what to do,” Hilary spoke for me, her eyes curious as I tore mine away.
Instead of looking at either of them, I stared at my hands. I twisted the metal on my fingers and shrugged my left shoulder. “Not a clue. And when 2015 came it just got worse I asked and I tried to understand but,” my voice was higher pitched now, a desperation present that I hadn’t quite expected.
It caught Margot off guard as well, she’d turned her whole body towards me on the couch and waited for me to continue. I could feel the water blur my vision, but I wiped quickly at my eyes to dispose of the evidence.
You’d think I’d be okay crying in therapy. Margot said she’d done plenty.
“She wouldn’t tell me, she didn’t want my help and she didn’t seem to care that seeing her crumble was breaking me, too.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d said it so pointedly before. The air in the room didn’t seem to shift like I’d expected. Instead, I heard Margot draw in a deep breath and then exhale. Hilary, who sat in her brown armchair across from us, turned her attention to Margot.
“What does that bring up in you, Margot, hearing that?”
She mirrored the gesture I’d made ten times already--a shrug of her shoulders and another deep breath. “Bad, shitty. I didn’t mean to be so--difficult. I didn’t know what to do either. I was losing my mind and had no clue if anyone around me could handle that.”
Her voice became more emotional as she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “I thought if I told him that I was depressed and anxious and having a mental break down that he’d just leave.”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” I said--the words had been said a thousand times before, but this time she nodded and looked up at me.
The last time I said those words to her she got upset. After a glass of wine at her house I’d brought him up--the kid at the facility who touched her skin and knew how she tasted. I hated the thought of it, but then the guilt washed over me when I remembered that I’d taken things a step farther in Jamaica.
She defended her secrecy regarding the incident and told me that she was afraid it’d do this: make me upset and create more space between us when we were just learning how to build a bridge. I told her over and over that I needed the truth from her, no matter how tough it would be.
If we were going to do this, we needed to be honest. This time, she seemed to understand that more.
“I thought I was going to bring you down with me,” she said quietly. “I got it in my head that the only way to save you was to break up with you and spare you from my tragedy. But I just--I didn’t know how to communicate all of that.”
Margot didn’t know what to say or how to tell me she was miserable. I didn’t know how to tell her that I saw through her lies and that she needed help. We’d spent hours in studios writing lyrics, yet both of us had lost the ability to use our words when we really needed them.
I didn’t have to say this, though, because Hilary said it for me.
She adjusted in her chair and offered a sympathetic smile. “Sounds like you both didn’t know what to do. And that you both wanted to help the other but wires got crossed.”
THEN - Day 2
I walked onto set the next morning and didn’t know what to expect. A part of me felt like I needed to apologize for how obnoxious my family had been.
Sorry that Pete makes dad jokes. Sorry that Maya is so excitable.
Maybe I needed to apologize for even thinking they’d want to eat dinner with my family and be entertained by pick-up games of driveway basketball. They were in a band. They had all the girls they wanted. They probably would have preferred a club downtown and hot models.
So when Harry showed up in my dressing room as I on the couch with the script in my lap, I offered him an apologetic glance.
“Came to say thanks for last night,” he smiled a bit, an air of nervousness seemed to come from his figure in the doorway.
I closed the book and squeezed my eyes shut in embarrassment. “Sorry it was so lame--I hope you didn’t feel pressured, I know Maya was super excited--it was probably sort of be like hanging out with a fan.”
“It wasn’t lame,” his eyebrows dropped as if he were confused. “I really do love a good burger and I got to watch Niall act like an idiot.”
I laughed at that, wondering about the space between us. There were probably ten steps between where he stood and where I was on the couch. I heard voices from the hallway as production assistants passed. There was enough buzz by the coffee table when I’d arrived that I’d headed straight for the safe reprieve of my dressing room.
“So when does the sightseeing begin?” He asked casually, taking three steps forward and standing directly in the center of the room. The makeup counter behind him was a mess. I had books on the coffee table and an array of sweatshirts sat atop a chair in the other corner. My laptop was on the cushion beside me, haunting me with the leftover homework from my on-set tutoring. It felt, for a second, like he was in my bedroom. My work bedroom.
I had an idea of where he was going with it, but I didn’t want to seem too eager. “What do you mean?”
“Your hidden gems. You’ve talked them up quite a bit.”
I tried to hide the smile on my face--he seemed intrigued and interested but casual and confident. Dating at my age was hard enough. Add my job and life on top of it and it felt next to impossible.
I would look at someone on the street and then there’d be an article about our raging romance. A previous break up in the spring had left me reeling, and I decided that I wasn’t about to date another person of notoriety. Something about Harry felt different.
He seemed normal. Nice and human and suddenly thrust into the world that I was trying to stay afloat in. I felt like he would get it.
NOW - Day 1908
Making an appearance in public with Harry wasn’t a new thing. There’d been plenty of red carpets and award shows where we’d walk arm in arm.
There were more pictures of us on the internet than I could count--and whether they were actual shots of us at events, paparazzi grabs, or leaked selfies, it didn’t seem to matter. The world wanted more of us and so did we.
Except for now.
The car was being pumped full of cool air--the winter day in LA was hotter than either of us expected, and the heightened heartbeat in my chest didn’t help.
“You’re actually shaking,” he laughed a little, his voice loud enough that Sinead lifted her eyes to check on me.
“I’m fine,” I told him, my knee bouncing up and down beneath the red fabric of my dress.
I was fine. I was nervous, of course, to be making our first appearance at an event together since 2015. Being seen going in and out of a coffee shop is way different than posing on a carpet and walking by old friends and new friends and seeing all of the people with cameras elbowing each other beyond the metal barricade.
The Jingle Ball was being hosted at The Forum. I was only glad that it was a familiar location.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” Sinead said quietly, her eyes still on her phone as the car slowed in line behind other black SUVs. We were in the drop off line--only a few cars in front of us until we’d climb out and smile, a motion that still seemed so robotic.
But I was excited. I was just nervous, too.
“S’gonna be fine, really. It’s not like people don’t know we’re together.”
“I know,” I said quietly, my eyes flickering out the window as I saw event managers pass by our car. “Just hope people don’t ask shitty questions or make things more awkward than they need to be.”
“So we divert and give them a vague answer,” Harry shrugged, his hand coming to rest on my thigh, his fingers gave me a quick squeeze before Sinead spoke.
“Or you tell them to fuck off,” she laughed.
“That too,” Harry looked down at me, fighting a toothy grin. He ran a hand through his short hair and seemed to break eye contact for a second before looking down at me again. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I told him.
“I’m proud of you.”
“For what?”
Sinead buried her head in her phone, pretending to give us privacy.
“For doing all of this. For coming back even though it was hard. For going to counseling, for working things out.”
I didn’t have snarky or sarcastic reply. I didn’t have a negative thing to say or a worry in my brain that he didn’t mean it.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, leaning into him when he pressed his lips to my forehead. Our car had slowed to a stop now, a woman with a headset stood by Harry’s door as Sinead climbed out. When the door was shut behind her, a moment of comfortable silence passed between us.
“Niall will be inside,” Harry nodded his head in the direction of the venue. “Probably has a snack waiting for you.”
“Didn’t we eat those ridiculously good corndogs here a few years ago?”
“Yeah--they’re out of this world,” he nodded seriously. The woman with the headset knocked three times on the door, giving us a signal that she’d soon open it.
“Hey,” I said, pulling on his arm to make him look back at me for a second. “I’m happy we’re doing this.”
“This?” He motioned out to the crowd again, but then motioned a hand between us. “Or this?”
“Both.”
NOW - Day 1963
January was mild in Malibu and the sun rose like pink flower petals across the sky. Harry’s tour was on pause for a bit--a deserved break from the madness that had consumed our fall. We’d decided, right after Christmas (with the help of Hilary), that it would be the perfect time for him to bring his things to my house in boxes, a certain sign that we were on the right track.
Sinead stood in the foyer with a clipboard like she had the day I moved in. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was dressed casually: leggings, a t-shirt, Nikes. “Where are you putting that one?” She asked some of the movers who left dirty footprints on the marble floor.
I wasn’t completely involved. Harry was in the driveway as the first check point. He asked what each box was labeled as, then told whoever was carrying it which room to put it in.
Sinead was serving as back-up, which I think gave her more anxiety than anyone else.
So I was in the kitchen, sat at the counter on my laptop going over possible wardrobe designs for an upcoming endeavor: a fifteen-date tour.
It wasn’t really my idea. I mean, it was, and it wasn’t. Nick was patient and kind and told me that I didn’t have to do one at all for this album if I didn’t want to. And at first, I didn’t know if I would. I needed time to see how people would react. I needed to see if they’d be as patient and kind as everyone close to me was.
The fall was busy and the holidays came and went with home-cooked meals and mulled wine at Anne’s house. We took a trip with Gemma and her boyfriend and even let Ben and Sara tag along. Maya was super jealous but claimed she’d get us back one day by going on a trip of her own without all of us.
I think it was good for us to spend some time away from Malibu and Los Angeles altogether. Even though I’d been relatively inactive, I was still accessible just by being here. Even when I was quiet, my name was making headlines for just that: No news is bad news from Margot Jones?
So being in the UK was a nice break and spending time with our families felt safe and secure.
“Okay, we have one problem,” Harry appeared in the kitchen, his arms folded over his chest as he leaned against the doorway.
I looked up, raising my eyebrows as a non-verbal cue to go on.
“I brought three acoustic guitars--you’ve got four up there as well as that electric that Nathan got you one year.”
I laughed, closing the colorful designs on my laptop and shutting the computer altogether. I let my elbows rest on the counter.
Those weren’t even all of our instruments. The baby grand that slept in the music room took up most of the space--scattered guitar stands were likely the least of our concerns. “I can keep some at the studio, s’fine.”
I walked over to him and let him drape his arms around me, my head fitting against his chest with ease. He smelled like cardboard and laundry detergent--a fitting Saturday around the house mix.
“Or, one day, we just buy a house big enough to keep all of our shit.”
My lips twitched up at that. He’d been using more future-focused language--a term that made us giggle every time Hilary used it. “Yeah, that’s a good plan.”
My house wasn’t big enough for us forever. It was fine for now, especially seeing as the next few months it’d still be just me. Harry would be on the road and then I’d head off on my own tour, flying home for low-key weekends and take-out on the couch.
It made more sense though, for us to label the same spot as home, seeing as he’d already been sleeping here more than anywhere else in LA.
So he went back to unpacking and I went back to wardrobe questions via email. I headed to my mom’s that afternoon for a while when I got sick of all the people in my house. Harry and Sinead could handle it, and I think the fact that I was willing to let them handle it was a sign of growth. I listened to Maya talk about her upcoming Spring semester and I laughed at obnoxious pictures from our trip that Sara had finally uploaded to her computer.
When I came home that night and keyed into my front door, I was greeted with music floating in from the kitchen. Beside that was the smell of something delicious--lemon chicken? Maybe even veal? I could hear Harry humming along to the song, and when I dropped my keys on the counter and rounded the corner, he wiggled his hips next to the stove as he used a spatula to move things around inside the pan that he watched closely.
The house was quiet--the dust settled after a busy day with a lot of commotion. In the corner of the living room, his favorite guitar sat on a stand near the window and the two books he most recently read were on the coffee table between the two couches.
I didn’t know it yet, but his toothbrush was beside mine in the master bath upstairs and a framed picture of his family was on the nightstand by the bed. Our bed. And something about all of that felt right.
NOW - Day 2049
New York was beautiful in the spring, the green leaves a sign of triumph. The scene of our wintry break up had blossomed into a colorful portrait of ings. Trying. Talking. Hoping. Working. Doing.
Harry and I couldn’t promise each other the moon or the stars or the sky. We couldn’t avoid fights or disagreements like we couldn’t avoid the puddles on the sidewalks on a rainy day.
But we could promise the ings. Talking. Trying. Making it work even when it felt like things were broken. After all, that had been the entirety of 2017.
So 2018 felt different. He was on tour and I was on tour and both of us knew that our living room on the cliffs in Malibu was a sanctuary we’d always return to--no matter how dark the night seemed.
But this weekend, one that we both had off, was the perfect time for a trip back to the city we’d ended things in. The sidewalks were still stained and sirens still blared. Cars clogged the intersections and the skyline stretched up to the sun. Nothing had changed in New York, but everything in us was different.
He didn’t tell me where we were having dinner. Instead, he told me to meet him after I got off my flight, the wings of the small plane dipping as we circled the busy island below. An address flashed on my screen when my phone reconnected to service--somewhere in the Village.
So I sat in the backseat of a car excited to see him. I watched the scenery change from the suburbs of the airport to the crowded streets, and when I got to the address he’d sent, I recognized it.
A small boutique hotel I’d mentioned three months earlier. Owned by a family that we knew. The elevator in the lobby brought me and the security detail trailing behind up to a rooftop garden.
“I’m fine,” I told man in a dark grey suit, allowing him to hang back when I noticed the rest of the roof was empty. Just Harry, peonies, and a bartender behind mahogany counter. A table near the edge of the roof, his back was turned to me as he looked out over the city.
“Very chic,” I said, slowing my pace a bit when he turned around. His lips faltered for a second, a smile overtaking the hesitation when he let his eyes meet mine.
“You look beautiful,” he said, his hand finding the small of my back when he closed the distance between us, meeting me in the middle of the empty rooftop.
“S’quiet up here,” I said, looking around at all of the colors. The blue and pink sunset, the different reds and oranges of flowers. Green leaves and shades of grey below. “Just us?”
“Just us,” he nodded.
A waiter brought us champagne--two flutes with bubbles clinging to the sides. There was dinner and conversation and he told me about the past week. He told me about the ways he missed me and when we finished dessert, I pointed north and asked if he saw it.
“See what?”
I pointed a finger and closed one eye, the shine from the windows in the distance blurring into an orb of light now that the sun had sunk below the horizon. “That’s The Langham.”
He leaned his head over to rest on mine, I wondered if he was thinking about the interior of the room. The words I said, the way he looked so distant, the sound in my voice when I told him to leave.
If he was thinking about that he didn’t say it. Instead: “We’ve come a long way.”
I nodded, thankful for the separation from the city below. Twenty-two floors stood between us and the rest of the world--like the rooftop was a private space where we were untouchable. At least I could pretend that we were momentarily.
“Marg,” he said suddenly, pulling away from me slightly. He shoved a hand in his pocket and fished out a black velvet box.
“I, uh,” he lifted the box and set it down twice, a thumping in my stomach had me hanging on his words. “I have this.”
I looked down at it, his left hand reached up to open it, a small light inside reflected off of the stone, my eyes flew up to his for an explanation.
He sunk to one knee, the way you do when you tie a shoe or pick something up from the ground. He told me he loved me, his voice soft enough for only me to hear, and he asked me to do this forever, as messy or as hard as it might be.
I muttered out some type of yes of course oh my god are you serious I had no idea I’m so excited I love you so much yes.
He hugged me and brought his forehead to mine and we swayed like that in the dark--I wondered where the rest of the people were, inevitably watching but pretending they weren’t. Two more bubbly flutes, phone calls to important people, then more staring at the skyline that blinked and buzzed--but this time, in a hopeful way.
It wasn’t about the ring. It wasn’t about the people on sidewalks below who’d soon know. It wasn’t about the champagne or the rooftop or our tours or the hotel that was fifteen blocks away where I’d watched him walk away.
In fact, it wasn’t about the past at all.
It was about now. Forward motion like the changing tide in Malibu that rocked me to sleep when I was alone. Like the sunrise I’d watch on the deck while I wondered where he was.
The best part of now was that I didn’t have to wonder: he was right beside me.
AN: this story took a year to write and will always be one of my favorites. sorry it took so long for this last chapter, but I’m glad to finally have it finished. Margot and Harry will always have a place in my heart :’)
I was used to it, for the most part. I wasn’t fazed by the cameras or the flashing lights that seemed to follow me wherever I went. Sometimes, when I fell asleep, I could hear the clicking of cameras or see the bursts of light, probably burned into my retinas.
But this was different. The yelling and screaming and shoving was too much. Sinead seemed to be just as alarmed beside me, her shoulder knocking into mine as the security personnel around us seemed to bark orders at the photographers to back up.
My mom and Pete were nearby, too, but their voices were muffled by the questions that seemed to be thrown in every direction.
Did you break up with Harry? Why were you in rehab? What happened? Are you addicted to drugs? Did you try to kill yourself, Margot? Where’s Harry? When is the next album coming out? How was your flight? Where are you going?
I tried to breathe through it. That seemed to be the only option most days. I could feel Sinead’s grip tighten around my arm as we got closer to the car. I churned over the questions in my head.
Yes, because, a lot, no, no, I don’t know, I don’t know, fine, home.
I didn’t say any of that, though. I kept my sunglasses on and my hat pulled down, hoping to slip into the silence of the waiting car so I could let out the tears that were at the edge of my eyes the whole flight home.
What did this mean? What did I do now? Home to California and home to my mom’s and home to the life that I had before all of this. But it wasn’t mine now. At least, it didn’t feel that way.
I turned my phone on after a month of it being off. I’d made Sinead delete all the social media apps before I handed it over to her a month ago, and even when I got to a high enough privilege level based on my hard work in therapy, I didn’t want my phone back.
Most of the other women seemed to claw for it like it was their lifeline. But I welcomed the reprieve of sitting in the day room with little to no connection with life beyond the trees that lined the property. Me and the horses in the fields and the noise machines that lined the hallways. That was plenty.
I hadn’t even been photographed in a month. I’d managed (somehow) to make my way to Tennessee in the middle of the night with no photographic evidence. Maybe it was better that way.
“Maya and Ben will be happy to see you,” my mom spoke now, her voice quiet as the driver put the car into gear, leaving the yelling and flashing behind as he pulled out onto the road the lined the LAX terminals.
“Are they mad?” I asked quietly, bringing my eyes over to her. She seemed to tilt her head in confusion.
“Why would they be mad?”
I shrugged my shoulders, almost feeling like I didn’t know where to start. “Because I suck and I spent a month in rehab and that probably didn’t make their lives easy.”
The guilt of being famous was bad enough. When my siblings were younger they milked my celebrity as much as they could. Maya was more than happy to brag to her elementary school friends when I had a popular sitcom and Ben was always asking to bring his middle school girlfriends backstage at my shows.
But as we grew up it became more of a hassle for them. Maya resented the fact that I was away on tour and couldn’t always talk to her about boys. Ben hated the fact that his friends would ask for a selfie with me when they came over the house.
So I get it. Me going to rehab likely led to a lot of questions. Questions that they couldn’t answer and questions that invaded their privacy too.
“They don’t hate you,” my mom reassured, her eyes searching my face. I wiped at my eyes beneath my sunglasses, still not removing them in the dark interior in the car--still too embarrassed and ashamed and filled with emotion. “Are you nervous to see them?”
Sinead busied herself with her phone--pretending that she wasn’t listening to the conversation between a washed up popstar and her mother.
“I’m nervous for everything,” I sighed. Which was true. I mean, how did I go back to a public life and expect people to just be okay with the fact that I disappeared and took time off and had no clue what was coming next? My life had been a predictable cycle of write, record, release, tour.
Now I had no clue what tomorrow would bring and what was for dinner.
“You’ve done such good work, honey,” my mom said, offering me a sympathetic smile. “You deserve a break. You need one.”
I knew that now. I knew that as soon as I walked into the room that was mine in Tennessee and I cried in bed for the first 12 hours. I knew it when I couldn’t even speak in group therapy out of fear that people would leak what I said to the press.
But I guess it was really cemented now: the girl who had gone from tight lipped and emotionless was now a blubbering mess half of the time. Crying in therapy, crying on the phone to my mom. Crying in the backseat of a car as a Toyota Camry with two photographers inside seemed to weave through traffic to catch up to us.
Because what on earth was I supposed to do about the fact that I made the worst mistake and didn’t have a clue as to how to make any of it better? What was I supposed to do? Call Harry up and apologize for ruining his summer and ruining his fall and now for ruining his winter?
Sinead shifted beside me, the landscape outside the windows became more familiar as we made our way up the 405.
My mom reached up a hand to smooth out my hair. “Let’s just take it day by day, okay?”
NOW -- Day 1743
I almost made it 24 hours. But after I’d tossed and turned in bed and woke up with a headache that was arguably as bad as the one after we broke up, I decided that I needed to be honest. I mean, that was the point of all of this, yeah?
She answered after two rings. It was earlier there--only 11am--and she her hair was up behind her head as she settled onto the couch in her living room. The quiet of my living room was a retreat from the hot London day.
“Hi,” she greeted with a smile--one that immediately faded when she realized something was wrong. The FaceTime image was somewhat grainy on my phone--likely due to the oceans between us.
“Someone asked me about a guy in Tennessee.”
She blinked a few times, her eyes flickered to something off screen, lips parted as she seemed to stare blankly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that someone asked me about your Tennessee Iover,” my tone was harsh, so much so that I had to look away from her to even finish the sentence.
Her eyes were on mine and she blinked a few times, still seeming to hesitate. “I should probably call Claire.”
Her desire to smooth over her image before smoothing over our relationship felt too similar to before all of this happened. I let out a noise of displeasure and shook my head.
“No, you should tell your boyfriend what the fuck happened and why there are articles from some asshole about your love affair in a fancy rehabilitation facility west of Nashville.”
“Harry don’t be a dick,” she said the words quickly, her emotion was surprising--seeing as only a few seconds ago she spoke in a monotone and didn’t seem to be having much of a reaction. “We weren’t together,” she was defensive, her eyes narrowed as I seemed to widen mine.
“So I’ll take his word as true?”
“I don’t know why you’re so upset--I kissed some guy. What does it matter? You had sex with someone, Harry.”
“That’s a completely separate conversation--”
“Is it?” She asked. “How so? You’re allowed to fuck some stranger but I so much as kiss a random guy and you’re all up in arms?”
“He wasn’t random Margot--he worked at the facility you were at.”
“I can’t talk to you about this if you’re going to judge me.”
“M’not judging you! M’trying to find out what the fuck happened because I had to hear about it from a woman on the red carpet last night. So there’s that. Enjoy the video of me trying to play it cool when I heard that.”
“Great,” she rolled her eyes.
But what did she want from me? How was I supposed to play it cool when apparently my girlfriend was lying to me and we were trying to keep a low profile while we figured everything out?
“I have to go,” she said suddenly.
“Margot don’t shut down,” I pleaded, trying to keep my voice calm.
“I haven’t seen anything about it, Harry. I don’t know if Claire knows.”
“She knows.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There are hundreds of articles. I searched for them last night--they’re all over. Have you spoken to him since you left?”
“What?” She brought her hand up to her forehead, apparently irritated by my question. “No, Harry. We made out a few times. He wasn’t even working the day I was discharged. I don’t even know who he is.”
“What was his name?”
“Andrew.”
I rolled my eyes. She didn’t like that.
“Stop, Harry. Okay? I’m not doing this right now. I have to go fucking deal with the fact that the first big story about me in a year is that I made out with an employee at my rehab place, okay?”
“Fine,” I let out a breath of air, wondering what it meant and where we’d go from here.
“I’ll call you later, okay?”
I nodded, watching as she wiped her eyes. I couldn’t see any tears, but I didn’t doubt that they were coming. She let out a sigh and ended the call.
My finger hit another name on the list of people I regularly called--again, it was only a few rings before his face became much more clear on the screen.
“Hey,”
“Hi, have you seen everything about Margot?”
“What?” Niall tilted his head to the side, his eyebrows knitting together as he rubbed at his nose. “No. What happened? She okay?”
“She’s fine. I mean, her image might not be, but--”
“What happened?” He asked again, his voice more impatient now. I should have known that a conversation related to her would likely be awkward between us. I mean, he’d been fine when we’d had lunch with him and he was clearly more excited than either of us about us being back together.
“I guess she had some kind of relationship with a person who worked at the place she went to.”
His eyes widened and he seemed to not know what to say. He looked past the phone, breaking eye contact with me in a telling way.
“You knew?” I asked, my voice deeper and more upset than it’d been before.
“I didn’t know, really. She mentioned somethin’ in passing--but, what did she tell you?”
“What did she tell you?!” I shot the question back in his direction and hoped for a good answer.
He let out a groan and shifted on the couch he was sat on. “I dunno, Harry. Just that she kissed him. That’s all she said happened.”
I let out a sigh at that, thankful (at least) that her story lined up.
“You weren’t together, Harry, you can’t really be mad.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, offended by his quick attempt to invalid my feelings. “Yes I can--especially because she didn’t tell me even after we had a whole conversation about when I--” I paused, not wanting to say more.
“When ya what?”
I groaned. “I slept with some girl in Jamaica, okay? It was stupid and Margot knows and I was just trying to get over her.”
“So maybe she was trying to do the same,” Niall defended, his eyes somewhat angry as he waited for me to speak.
“Niall I’m not here to fight with you,” I dropped my head and pinched at the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t looking for his complete and total sympathy. More just a healthy dose of reassurance that some stranger in Tennessee wasn’t going to win my girlfriend over after I was just starting to get her back.
“Me neither.”
I brought my eyes back up to him, and when he saw the look of distress on my face, he let out a knowing laugh. “Harry--the worst thing you could do right now would be to pick a fight with her. You’re starting to get back to normal. Things happened in the span of a year and a half.”
I nodded--knowing he was right didn’t make it easier to hear. I also hated when he gave good advice. Something about it just felt so out of place.
“Alright,” I said. “But if she calls you later make sure to tell her that that guy’s a prick and I’m the best thing that ever happened to her, yeah?”
Niall made a face at this immediately, pulling his head back. “I mean, I’ll tell her that she’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you, but okay.”
THEN - Day 1303
Being in a seedy bar in Ochos Rios felt fitting. My shirt stuck to my back in the heat and the ice in my drink that Mitch had handed me only a few minutes ago was already close to melted. I’d only had to take two pictures--which felt somewhat out of the norm seeing as I’d been secluded away for the last few weeks.
It had started as curiosity--we just wanted to see the resorts and beaches on this part of the island. We had a nice dinner in a restaurant that seemed much more equipped to feed the 12 of us than the ones near the house. This beachside bar wasn’t air conditioned like the restaurant, but the drinks were strong and the music was loud and it was nice to be around more people than the group I’d grown accustomed to.
So I ordered another drink when I finished the first, and I got a third after that one. Soon I felt more able to mingle with the people who crowded near us--maybe they knew who I was, maybe they just didn’t have anywhere else to go if they wanted to escape the setting sun.
“Sorry,” I said, my shoulder knocking into someone as Jeffrey seemed to squeeze past me. I turned to assess the damage--hopefully this person’s drink wasn’t all over their shirt.
I was met with a smile and eyes that weren’t quite as enchanting as hers--but they were enough to make me falter. “Hi, sorry, I hope it didn’t get on you.” I looked down at her drink as she reached for a napkin, cleaning off her hand but then placing it back on the bar.
“All set--you’re good, I’m Katie,” she extended her free hand to meet mine and I shook it. Wondering if she recognized me or if she simply was playing it cool.
“Harry,” I nodded in response. She was quiet for a moment, maybe hoping for me to say more. “Are you staying here?” I pointed up at the resort nearby and leaned in closer as she spoke--the laughter around us made it hard to hear.
“Yeah--my sister’s bachelorette. S’our last night.”
“Has it been a successful trip so far?”
“I would say so,” she laughed. “Only two people have thrown up and no one has gotten abducted.”
“Sounds extremely successful,” I laughed, watching as she ran a hand through her hair. It wasn’t quite as long as I’d seen Margot’s--her eyes were darker and seemed to lack the caramel streaks that always seemed to glimmer at sunset. I wondered if Katie knew I was thinking about her. But she answered my question when I let my eyes scan the room and then fall back to her.
“Been a year for you, huh?”
I opened my mouth to speak--but nothing came out. I laughed, sipping at my drink in hopes that it contained the answer to her question. “Yeah, s’been interesting.”
NOW - Day 1745
It felt, as I stared at the keys in front of me, like I was watching the possibility of us burn down.
Claire had handled things well. She wasn’t mad, Nick was probably annoyed but didn’t show it. Sinead had known but acted surprised to not throw me under the bus.
Claire’s approach was simple. Deny. Deny his claims and keep smiling--there was no proof and if he continued to speak about my time in rehab we could sue him for a breach of confidentiality. My lawyer had confirmed that he’d already been fired from the facility, but I didn’t find it worth it to tell Harry any of this.
I’d texted him a few times but his answers were short--clearly not interested in talking to me about much of anything.
Which led me to the question: why was he mad? I mean, sure, I could have told him and I could have avoided the situation altogether. But he conveniently neglected that he was the one to actually be with someone else.
We’d been building a life together over the last few weeks that felt like it was actually destined for somewhere other than failure. I felt, now, like I was left alone in the vision of our future, wondering how on earth things had caught flame and how I was supposed to make it out of this burning house alive.
I let my fingers find a chord--the noise echoed through the room quietly, the skies outside were dark and I wondered where this left us.
Tell me you love her, and I’ll be gone, I sang into the room, my voice sounded like shit--too much caffeine and crying over the last two days.
Tell me you love her, that my heart was simply wrong.
Just say the words and I’ll turn a round, I’ll be gone without a sound.
THEN - Day 915
I was sitting in catering when Harry burst through the doors. He was angry--I could tell by the red on his face and the darkness in his eyes that something was wrong. He huffed his way over to the table, and Cara seemed to trail off as she took a bite of the food in front of her.
It was always fun to have her visit on the road--and seeing as my tour was yet to start and Harry’s was well underway, having Cara tag along on a visit was sure to be fun. She’d never been to Asia, I was likely be bored a bit when the guys had to do press and promo, so sharing a hotel room with her once in a while was a welcomed escape from the loneliness of tagging along by myself.
“What’s the matter?” I looked up at him as he neared the table, my eyes searching his face for an answer to my question. I immediately feared the worst--I knew his step dad was sick and that losing him would break Harry.
“I need to talk to you,” he said, his voice somewhat quiet and steady, probably due to the fact that he’d made enough of a scene storming in that everyone’s eyes were now on us. I mean, it wasn’t like we weren’t used to it, it was mainly just that we didn’t love it.
“Okay,” I stood from the table, my eyes flicking to Cara, who nodded in understanding as Harry turned to head back for the door. I followed him out into the hallway--the concrete walls looked the same, even though we were thousands of miles away from home.
He was more collected now, a deep breath left his lips as he waited for someone to pass by us in the hallway. “Uhm, Zayn is leaving.”
My face twisted in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he quit.”
“He what?” I left my mouth hang open, Harry’s eyes scanned the hallway again to ensure that no one could hear.
“He practically lost his shit last night on Louis and Niall I guess and this morning he talked with Paul and then Paul told us and he was already on a flight back to London.”
“Wh--what are you guys gonna do? He’s just done?”
Harry shrugged his shoulders defeatedly and licked his lips. “Gonna say he’s taking a break, I guess. See if he changes his mind. If he doesn’t, we move on without him.”
It didn’t sound that simple. I don’t think it felt that simple to Harry.
I sighed and tried to gather my thoughts, a heavy weight in my stomach as I realized I was jealous. He could just leave? Up and walk away because he was tired and overwhelmed like the rest of us?
“Are you okay, lovie?” I reached forward to wrap my arms around him--which likely caught him somewhat off guard. I’d been less affectionate lately, largely due to my own exhaustion and anxiety pertaining to the never-ending feeling of stress.
“M’fuckin’ pissed,” his accent was thicker than usual, typical for when he was angry. “I feel like he just fuckin’ walked away as if this hasn’t been hard on all of us. Like he’s had it the worst or something and--s’fuckin’ ridiculous.”
I peered around the hallway--unsure if others knew about the new development and wondering if Harry should be shit talking Zayn in the hallway so freely.
“Come in here,” I said, pulling him towards an open room--some sort of makeshift storage room for their racks of clothing.
As soon as he was inside and the door was shut behind us, tears wet his cheeks and he seemed to wipe quickly at them to dispose of the evidence.
There’d be distance between all of us. Me and Harry, Harry and Niall, Zayn and everyone. We were all exhausted and up until now, I’d been under the assumption that we were all on the same page. I mistakenly thought that the desire to quit and go into hiding was normal. I spent my nights thinking about how young is too young to retire. I guess Zayn just beat me to it.
I was under the assumption that they wanted out as much as I did.
But maybe that was my mistake.
NOW - Day 1750
Margot sat on the hotel bed beside me, absentmindedly tugging at her hair as her laptop tried to connect to Hilary. We’d had this visit planned before the new had broken--she insisted on coming and I was relieved she wanted to.
I was less mad now than I’d been at first. As a few days passed and I was able to cool off, I realized that moving forward with Margot required forgiveness on both ends. If she’d been able to move forward knowing I’d slept with someone, I figured I could do my best to ignore the burning urge in my stomach to find this kid and strangle him with my bare hands.
Something told me that wouldn’t do us any good.
“Hello,” Hilary greeted with a smile as she came into view on the screen. Margot shifted on the bed and said hello.
“It looks so sunny there,” she commented, causing Hilary to turn to look out the window behind her. It was nighttime here--somewhere south of Amsterdam, and I could see my tired reflection in the hotel window that gave us a view of the city lights.
“It was rainy earlier this week, actually,” she remarked, turning to look at both of us again--but this time with a more inquisitive stare. “How are both of you?”
“Fine enough,” Margot answered, looking to me as she waited for my reply.
“Tired,” I laughed.
Margot had sent Hilary an email explaining the whole thing--one that I’d read over before she pressed send and that was signed from the both of us. Doing all of this couples counseling over Skype seemed to make it more difficult to communicate. Especially when we only got an hour every ten days. So much happened in between our sessions, it felt like it was hard to keep her in the loop.
“How have things been with the story breaking and the media--I read the email.”
Margot looked to me--her silent nudge to answer the question. “S’been okay--I was pretty upset about it all at first.”
“Sure,” Hilary nodded.
“It’s nice to be able to talk about it in the same place and not over the phone.”
Another nod. “What have you been able to talk about?”
I looked over to Margot--passing it back to her. “I guess just the hurt feelings we both have about the things we did when we weren’t together.”
“Right,” she nodded--she knew all of our secrets. “And I’m glad that you can identify it as ‘hurt,’ I think it’s easy to focus on the angry feelings, but those are often a defense for the hurt and sadness underneath.”
“Yeah, I mean--I feel like that’s where I’ve always been. I was a little angry about Harry sleeping with someone--but it was always more hurt than anger.”
I nodded in response to Margot’s words--they felt true. She was angry that night and definitely emotional on the deck at her house above the cliffs. But since then--and ever since then--she’d done her best to drop it. I’d asked her to.
“There are a lot of things that we would redo, I think, if we had the chance,” I laughed.
“Sure,” Hilary nodded--her face told me she understood where I was coming from. “And I think at both of those points--when both of these things happened--neither of you knew you’d be here.”
I let out a laugh. “Certainly didn’t think we’d be here.”
Margot laughed too--she offered me a smirk as Hilary asked us something else, something about traveling and visiting and how it all was going. Margot said it was going well, which was a relief to hear. And when we hung up the call and she told me she loved me, I said it back, over and over, until the sun rose.
THEN - Day 915
My feet took me down the hallway faster than I expected. My heart was in my ears and my face felt hot. Suddenly, something I thought I knew and something that seemed to be a constant was an abyss of unknown. Margot was sitting beside Cara in catering--laughing at something she said when I pushed the door open with force.
Her eyes landed on me, her face immediately going white as I closed the distance between us and stood over her table.
“What’s the matter?” she looked up at me, her eyes searching my face for an answer to her question.
I didn’t know where to start. I had a thousand things to say and a million emotions that were threatening to spill over. The last thing I needed to do was to spill it all in front of our crew.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. There were more eyes on me now--which wasn’t surprising after the way I’d rushed into the room.
“Okay,” she stood from the table, looking to Cara before back to me. I turned and headed for a different door, this time leading her to a hallway that was reminiscent of every other venue we’d played.
I tried to breathe and find the right words. Someone passed by and Margot shifted awkwardly on her feet until I spoke. “Uhm, Zayn is leaving.”
Her face twisted in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he quit.”
“He what?” Her mouth hung open, my eyes scanned the hallway again to ensure that no one could hear.
“He practically lost his shit last night on Louis and Niall I guess and this morning he talked with Paul and then Paul told us and he was already on a flight back to London.”
“Wh--what are you guys gonna do? He’s just done?”
I shrugged my shoulders defeatedly and licked my lips. I spit out the words that Paul had said only thirty minutes earlier. “Gonna say he’s taking a break, I guess. See if he changes his mind. If he doesn’t, we move on without him.”
She sighed and shook her head slowly--words clearly escaping her.
“Are you okay, lovie?” She reached forward to wrap her arms around me--catching me somewhat off guard. She’d been more distant lately. Her mood was low and the only thing that seemed to help was Cara’s recent visit. I knew she wasn’t looking forward to her own tour, I knew the looming start date felt suffocating to her.
“M’fuckin’ pissed,” I said, shaking my head as I felt the tears come to my eyes. “I feel like he just fuckin’ walked away as if this hasn’t been hard on all of us. Like he’s had it the worst or somethig and--s’fuckin’ ridiculous.”
She peered around the hallway. “Come in here,” she spoke quietly, pulling me towards an open room with lots of wardrobe cases.
As soon as we were inside and the door was shut behind us, tears wet my cheeks and I wiped quickly at them to dispose of the evidence. Margot had seen me cry plenty--but I hated the vulnerability of crying when I was angry.
It’s not like we hadn’t seen any shift. I mean--Zayn had long been expiring, almost. With each show and interview he seemed more fed up with us, with the music, with the fans. It was hard to ignore it, truthfully. But we tried. We wanted to hope that it was temporary and that things would soon get back to the way they once were.
And staring at Margot--who looked guilty and afraid and completely unsure of what to say or do only made me fear for the future.
Without the band, without her, who was I? I’d been defined by my relationships for so long that it seemed to be the only way I identified. And that scared me more than anything.
NOW - Day 1768
It was nice to stay at Margot’s house in Malibu rather than an unfamiliar hotel or rental house that smelled too clean. Waking up in bed with her and keeping clothes in her big closet felt reassuring.
My toothbrush in her bathroom was a good sign. When I landed in Burbank and she asked if I was stopping anywhere before coming ‘home’ nearly sent me over the moon.
But it was nearly sunset now. We were sat alone on her deck--she was clad in a sweatshirt of mine from 2014, her hair in a bun as she fiddled with the speaker between us.
I poured the last of the wine into our glasses--pretending that I wasn’t nervous to hear the song they’d decided would be the lead single off of her new album--one that hadn’t even been announced yet.
She pressed play, an upbeat tempo and piano filled my ears as she looked nervously at me. I reached for my wine and hoped for the best.
The rain starts falling when you’re calling me, why can’t you see?
I’m diving under water just to breathe.
I’m feeling lonely, I’m feeling blue, won’t you please give me something?
I don’t believe in your sweet nothing.
I kept my eyes on the ground--my glass clutched tightly in my hand as I listened carefully to the words she sang. She was talking about me. I wasn’t shocked, I wasn’t surprised, but I was anxious.
She could tell that I didn’t love it--she kept her eyes on my face as the song made its way into the second chorus--her second recounting of the failure between us.
I feel your arms around me, you say you feel the love, but oh, I feel alone.
You think you understand me but I don’t even understand me at all, I feel alone.
It ended just as fast-paced as it started--the track cut out and we were left with the sounds of waves crashing below.
I let out an awkward laugh when she asked what I thought. “S’brutal, Marg. But--it’s a good fucking song.”
I didn’t know when interviewers would stop asking me about Margot, but today wasn’t that day.
I’d done three interviews for the movie--and each one seemed to focus generally on the whole idea that now, apparently, I was an actor. They also managed to slip in a question about whether or not I’d spoken to Margot. After the third one, Jeffrey had made an executive decision to demand that each media outlet cut those parts.
Things had died down, really. There weren’t new headlines every day, new rumors, new speculations about where Margot was and what I was doing about it.
In fact, I didn’t know where she was, I didn’t really want to know, and I frankly just wanted to move on with my life.
It’d been fourteen months since we’d broken up. The first year was miserable and I made it all the way to the one year mark still feeling like it was yesterday. Reliving all of it at the anniversary seemed to be healing in a way--or at least, it helped me process what had happened and hope for a better 2017.
So now, when people asked me if I’d spoken to her, if I’d heard from her, I couldn’t help but just be angry and annoyed and bothered.
I hadn’t heard from her, I hadn’t spoken to her, and it was my understanding that no one else had either. She hadn’t released music, made a statement, done much of anything, really.
The only thing to have even come from her mouth (or Nick’s, more realistically) was a statement in 2015 when she went to treatment that she was putting her health first and would take all of the time she needed. Nothing since.
“Anything new in terms of your love-life? You were in a very public relationship with Margot Jones--everyone is dying to know more about why it didn’t work out.”
I licked my lips quickly, thankful that the interview we were filming wasn’t live and thankful that Jeff was just off camera. I could see the way his eyebrows dipped at the sound of her name, looking up from his phone to see how I’d handle it.
“Nothing new,” I shook my head, offering the woman a small smile as I looked over to Jeff--part of me hoping he’d interrupt and redirect. “Just uh, focusing on the movie, some new music. Definitely just taking a pause for myself.”
Okay, so maybe I did wonder where she was and what she was doing. With the album coming out and with my time being spent increasingly in L.A., I couldn’t help but wonder what her life was now.
“How did the break up affect the rest of the boys from One Direction? I mean--clearly it was a heartbreaking thing I’m sure for you and Margot, but, any word how they’ve dealt with it?”
I shook my head slightly, hoping that this woman would pick up the hint that she wasn’t going to get much out of me. “You know, I think they’ve been so excited to focus on their new ventures as well, they’re all going to do some great things, so I’m wishing them the best in terms of time off and new adventures.”
None of that felt true in the moment--but I’d also been coached for years now on how to avoid uncomfortable questions.
But I wasn’t going to tell Macie--this woman in a yellow dress--that Niall refused to speak to me for the weeks after it happened because he claimed I let her walk out. I wasn’t going to tell her that Liam and Louis both avoided me for a while in fear that I’d be too emotional to handle the work related things we had to do at the end of the year.
I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that I hadn’t spoken to Zayn in months and had no idea if he even knew what had happened.
I knew Margot was talking to them--I mean, I figured she had kept in touch with Niall at first. But then I got a text from Liam asking if I knew that she was home (I didn’t, no one had told me).
And now, when Niall sent me a stupid meme or a text about sports and mutual friends, I’d fight the urge to ask how she was. I’d type it out and erase it and hope that one day he’d just decide to tell me everything he knew about what she was doing and how she was feeling and why on earth she decided that I wasn’t good enough for her anymore.
I’d heard from Niall that she wasn’t really writing. He’d seen her for lunch the last time he was in town, but he didn’t give me more than that. I wonder if she’d asked him not to.
It wouldn’t surprise me if his loyalty now laid with her--I mean, they’d always been close and for some reason, Margot found Niall to be much more entertaining than he really was. If he was at a point now where he chose her over me, I could live with it.
I’d already lived with Margot choosing everything else over me.
THEN - Day 724
I stood up on the loge level, stage left, watching as Margot finished the last song. The stadium was huge--it felt bigger in the audience than it did when we’d played it only a month prior. Bodies filled the seats that allowed them all to watch my girlfriend do her thing--a much less flashy version than she’d previously put on.
Margot had always had a love hate relationship with her fame--she loved it in the sense that she didn’t know anything else now. She loved her fans and her music and being creative. She loved the life that it allowed her to live.
But at the same time, she hated the way it dampened her spirit and her freedom and her world. She’d tried, over the last two years, to make music that was more her and less radio. She did different set designs, different wardrobe ventures, and worked tirelessly to be involved in every decision that was made about her life. I think that’s why she seemed so exhausted all of the time.
Sinead was beside me, swaying along to the song she’d heard probably 700 times by now. She offered a smile in my direction when she noticed my eyes on her, and I took the opportunity to lean over and speak into her ear.
“Are you as sick of this song as I am?”
She laughed, rolling her eyes as she shrugged. “Let’s just say we’re lucky she’s a good writer.”
I nodded and pushed my lips out in thought--knowing very well that Margot was likely just as sick of this song as I was. It didn’t stop her from dancing to it on stage like she was having the time of her life.
I wondered, as I watched the girl I loved, what thoughts went through her head at night. She was far more in demand than we were--whether or not 2014 had brought One Direction bigger stadiums and more press and more things on our to-do list.
I’d always wondered--especially when Margot and I started dating--if there’d come a time when she took a backseat. Not because I felt she needed to--more so because I think she wanted to.
“How’s she been lately?” I leaned over to ask Sinead, Margot spoke to the crown in gratitude of their presence and good energy. I knew she was getting close to the end of the show.
Sinead moved her head from side to side--admitting that Margot had most likely been difficult lately. She’d always get to a point at the end of the tour where she was ready for it to be over. She’d get cranky and homesick and just more irritable. She’d been having the time of her life on this tour--but I knew, with only two weeks left, she was ready to return to LA and begin filming the final season of her television show.
“She’s been okay--she’s tired. She’s super glad you’re here.”
Her words made a smile fight onto my face. The distance was hard--especially in the summer. Other times of year we could take weekends or weeks and align our schedules. We could try to be in the same city at the same time for different reasons.
But touring in the summer often had us on opposite sides of the planet for weeks at a time. Which is why--despite being rather sick of hearing Margot’s most recent number one single--I was happy to be spending my days off with her. We were right in the middle of our U.S. leg of the Where We Are tour, so being stateside gave me more access to Margot. We did our best, as always, to align any legs of our tours if we could--often playing the same venues only weeks apart.
So even if there were weeks when she was in Japan and I was in Spain, laying beside her at night in a hotel or on her bus made all of the red-eye flights worth it.
“Did you book her charter for when she comes to see us?”
Sinead nodded--reaching for her phone to send a text to Margot’s head of security. “Yep--she’s back in LA for a few days and then she’ll meet up with you guys for a long weekend in mid-September. Back for filming at the end of the month and then with you for the last three shows in October.”
Sinead’s mind often amazed me. Not only was it her job to keep Margot’s schedule straight--meaning fittings and shows and press and radio and filming and recording and rehearsing and writing--but she also had to have a fair enough understanding as to where in the world I was.
Sinead’s job--sometimes--seemed like she was trying to mix oil and water.
But she loved it--her and Margot had become close and she got on well with everyone on my side of the equation, too. I just wondered sometimes if she had the aching for a quiet life. Did she wish she could take time off in the summer instead of trailing behind Margot through different concert venues?
Margot’s words in the microphone caught my attention as the crowd erupted in cheers. “There’d be no better way--naturally--to end a show, so for our last song, can everyone sing as loud as they can?”
Sinead clapped and smiled down at Margot--who looked like a small figurine from our spots overhead. “I’m more sick of this one, to be honest,” she grinned up at me and started humming along as the band began to play.
NOW - Day 1718
Margot brought her eyes up to mine--I could see the thoughts swirling in her head as she seemed to scan my face. The desperation in my voice was probably obvious. “Don’t put up another wall,” I said, “we’ve got enough to take down.”
She licked at her lips and tried to exhale deeply--but she was stuck. She shook her head eventually and let out a laugh. “It’s not that easy, Harry. It’s like--here we are, just like the old summers, and I’m still afraid that there are all these people out here who would ruin our relationship if they could.”
I nodded--trying my best to validate the fear she held in her eyes. “I know, baby, I know. But s’not going to happen. It didn’t happen before.”
She looked away at that--apparently our interpretations were different. “Harry we were always fighting about the way you interacted with fans.”
“S’part of the job, Margot. I can’t just not be nice.”
She rolled her eyes--still standing a few feet away from me in the center of her deck. It was comical, almost--we reestablished our roles without even speaking of it--falling into place like we’d worn out footsteps on the floor.
“I’m not saying you can’t be nice. I’ve never said that, okay?”
I took a deep breath, not wanting to fight on the last night we had together--but also thankful for the fact that we were speaking. A few weeks ago, we couldn’t say the same.
“You are the person I care most about on this planet,” I said, reaching forward to bring her towards me. She looked at my hands hesitantly, wondering if she should take the risk and step towards me. I offered her a small smile when she met my eyes--walking towards me finally and extending her hands to meet mine.
I looked up at her, heart in my throat and emotion ready to pour out of me. “I want to do this, Margot. I want to try again. But if we do--I need you to know that I’m not backing out like last time. I’m not giving up like I did.”
She blinked a few times--processing my words. I didn’t know if she knew what I mean--I didn’t know if she took the words as seriously as I did.
I wanted her--all of her. I didn’t want to do this half-arsed or tentatively or with any reservations. There wasn’t a doubt it my mind that Margot was the person for me. With all of the eye-rolls and sarcasm included.
“I’m in if you are,” I told her, letting my thumbs rub circles on top of her skin.
She let out a quiet laugh, not as closed-off as she’d been a few minutes early. “I’m in, Harry--clearly I’m in,” she shrugged, another laugh escaping her lips as she looked around us--silently making reference to the fact that we were behaving like a couple.
But that was the thing about Margot--I don’t know if there was any other way I knew how to be with her. Either completely with her, 100% all in, or doing everything in my soul to forget her name and forget the way she laughed when I made a stupid joke.
THEN - Day 1189
Liam was mad at me and I knew it.
But that didn’t stop me from biting into the last banana in the fruit bowl in the green room before our performance at The X-Factor live finals.
He had his feet up on the coffee table--already dressed and done with hair and makeup. He scrolled on his phone, the tension building between us as I seemed to stand in the middle of the room awkwardly.
I’d told them to just drop it. I’d told them--probably a thousand times by now--that walking on eggshells wasn’t going to help anyone. They didn’t need to be nice to me or give me space or ask how I was feeling.
I told them to just act as if nothing had happened. The more we could just forget about it and move on, the easier it would be for me to not want to blow my brains out during these last few weeks of promo.
I’d told management that every single media outlet we worked with had to be contractually obliged to not mention her or our relationship or the break up. I made it extremely clear the morning after it happened in New York that I’d get up, walk out, or tell whoever was interviewing to go ahead and fuck right off. It might do well for ratings, but it wouldn’t do well for our overall image.
But still, I was sulking around most of the time, drinking too much and sleeping too much and ignoring too many text messages from important people.
Niall would call to make sure I was up and on my way to events, but I’d just let them go to voicemail. My mum would text and her message would go unread for a day or two before I had the courage to face the outside world that seemed to move on from the cold day in New York--the place in which my brain was stuck.
I wanted so badly to move on--I wanted to forget about her and the feelings and the way that now my head seemed foggy and unable to focus on anything but the words she’d said over the last six months.
“Can you not just stand there? At least sit or something,” Liam said, not bothering to look up at me.
“Why do you care where I am?” I shot back, ignoring the fact that Lou worked on Niall’s hair only a few feet away. I was sick of pretending like I was okay--yet I still hoped people would just treat me like I was.
“Because you’re just standing there like you’re waiting for something, mate. Just sit down and relax.”
“Don’t tell me to relax,” I said, my voice firm and angry as Louis entered the room with a smile on his face.
“How’s everyone doin’? An exciting night, yeah?”
“Bad time, Louis,” Niall said, the noise of Lou’s blow dryer muffled his voice from across the room.
Louis’ eyes seemed to scan the room--falling on me with a bit of disappointment. That’s how I’d sum it up, really--the way they’d been treating me. Disappointed. Disappointed that I hadn’t fixed everything between me and Margot, disappointed that I was depressed and in a shit mood. Disappointed that I wasn’t thoroughly enjoying the end of our band as if I wasn’t scared shitless of what was next.
“Y’alright, Harry?” Louis asked, flopping down onto the couch as he put his legs up beside Liam, crossing him arms over his chest as he waited for my answer.
“No--clearly I’m not fucking alright. Is that what you all need to hear? Do you want me to just admit that I’m fucking miserable and an idiot and I fucked up?”
Liam finally brought his eyes up now to look at me--Niall watched me through the mirror that hung in front of him.
“I know you’re all pissed at me--okay? I know you’re mad that I didn’t figure out how to fix things with her but I didn’t fucking know that was coming. I didn’t know her solution to the problem was to throw everything away. Did any of you? Yeah? Did any of you know that she was falling apart? You were all her friends, too. But none of you hold any guilt in any of this?”
Lou switched off the blow dryer--setting in on the table as she busied herself with her phone, clearly uncomfortable with being stuck in the middle of such a weighted conversation.
“Harry, no one’s trying to blame you,” Niall stood from the chair and moved towards us--his eyes narrowed as he watched me. “We wish you guys stayed together, f’course--but we’re not mad.”
“No? Not mad?” I let out a sarcastic laugh and let my hands slap against my thighs. “Then why the fuck have all of you reached out to her to see how she is but you can’t even bear to be in the same room as me?”
I didn’t have physical proof that they’d reached out--but I wasn’t stupid. I knew that as soon as Niall found out, he likely called and texted her a thousand times to get more details than he got from me. I knew Liam was upset to hear she’d entered treatment--Louis was freaked out that he didn’t get to see her before she left.
Radio silence in the room as Liam set his phone down on the coffee table and rested his elbows on his knees.
“We get it--okay? We get that this is hard and new and that all of us are dealing with a lot of change.”
I rolled my eyes at him. Sure--change. The word had lived in my head for a long time now. Ever since the spring when Zayn left in the middle of a fucking tour and Margot started asking about my plans for life after the band.
Things were changing for all of them, too, but not in the way it had for me. We’d all lost a bandmate. We’d all lost a friend. We were all going into uncharted territory and hoping for the best.
But they still had the people beside them to make it less terrifying. Liam had his girlfriend, Louis had his. Niall had us and his brother and his friends from back home.
I had them. I had my family. I had the support of people who cared about me--but none of it would make up for the fact that I didn’t have her.
In the span of 30 days, I was losing the two of the most important things in my life. I looked at the three of them--shocked that they thought they understood how I was feeling when none of them had been in this set up.
“No,” I shook my head, anger bringing heat to my face as I let my tongue glide along the back of my teeth as I headed for the door. “You don’t get it.”
NOW - Day 1719
Being friends with James Corden was a blessing and a curse. There were plenty of ways that being his friend had perks. I’d met a lot of people through him--I always could count on him to be game for some take away and video games, and most importantly, he was supportive and loving and all of that good friend stuff.
But now, as I sat in his the passenger seat of a Range Rover in a parking lot in LA, getting ready to film a carpool karaoke segment, I was less than impressed with my friend as he laughed to himself. “M’not gonna go too hard, Harry--but people are figuring it out. I mean, you haven’t exactly been subtle about it, have you?”
I rolled my eyes, rubbing at the bridge of my nose as a woman brushed more powder onto my nose, completely unable to stop the smile from reaching my cheeks as I responded. “People don’t know everything--and you always want me to tell you everything.”
“I do not,” he defended, reaching for the microphone that clipped to the inside of his collar.
I adjusted the sunglasses on my head and watched as traffic whizzed by us outside. “It’s not a big deal, we’re just taking it slow.”
“Please do not ask him a shit ton about it,” Jeff said, coming up behind the woman who did my makeup-- a cup of coffee in his hands.
“Oh I’m going to ask him about it,” James nodded confidently. “And he’ll give me some shit-eating grin answer and I’ll try not to laugh at how ridiculous he sounds.”
Jeff let out a laugh and headed back for the hallway--clearly not too worried about whatever was about to happen. And that was another blessing--being friends with James meant he’d give me shit and push me a bit, but he also had nothing but respect for me and my privacy.
I shook my head as I took a sip of the coffee Jeff had delivered--thankful for the people around me. Emma, my assistant, seemed to be buried in her phone as she hid beneath the overhang of the CBS studio only a few yards away. Doing the first bit of promo with my album out was sure to be nerve-wracking, but I felt good about the fact that things between Margot and I were stable. At least--stable enough.
We were talking and texting like things were back to the way they were--before she was sad and distant.
James’ studio manager gave us cue to get started--James turned the key in the ignition and I pulled my door shut, I pointed two fingers at James to imply I’m watching you.
A voice came over the walkie-talkie that James had in the cupholder--giving us permission to pull out and turn right onto the busy road in front of us. It wasn’t my first time doing one of these with James--but it was my first without other people sat beside me in the car.
He did as we were told, and once we were on the road, mixed in with the lunch-time traffic, the voice inside the walkie-talkie let us know that cameras were now on and filming, we could start whenever we pleased.
James cleared this throat and adjusted in his seat, I gave him the thumbs up to let him know I was game. A few seconds of silence.
“Oh man, thank you so much for helping me get to work--I really, really appreciate it,” James had both hands on the wheel now, looking over to offer me a small smile.
“Thanks for the ride, s’my pleasure,” I nodded at him, wondering how long he’d take to get to it. I knew he planned on asking about the band--my new album, the movie, all of that. But I also knew that he’d tastefully weave in some questions about Margot. Whether or not he named it as such, I was yet to find out.
“The last time you were here, you were not alone in the car--and now you are, now you’re up front.”
“I was back middle,” I nodded, remembering the last time we did this--a stop for McDonald’s half way through as Liam got hungry.
“Yeah,” James said. “That’s right, you were right there, and now you’re right here, how d’ya feel?” He motioned to both spots in the car that I’d occupied, I took a second to look around in the front, appreciating the space I had now without Liam and Louis on either side of me.
“I feel like--uh--like I have more control over the buttons.”
“Over the air and stuff?”
“The buttons, yeah,” I laughed, gaining a laugh from James as he brought his eyes back to the road.
“I don’t know if you’re speaking on a different level--if the buttons, if you’re saying you’ve got more control over the buttons but the buttons are something deeper than just the buttons in the car.”
I laughed, nodding slightly as I picked up on his analogy. “Could be.”
I couldn’t help but notice that I felt more at ease than I’d felt in interviews for a long time--especially now that things seemed to be more concrete with Margot. The hardest part of interviews after we broke up was the uncertainty. What did I say? How did I manage to be pleasant when I was in a shit mood?
Releasing the album, having it out and streaming now felt a bit strange. The stories I told through lyrics and music were no longer just for me. And now, singing along to them in the car with James opened me up for a whole slew of questions I’d been rehearsing my answers to for a week.
He asked me what I’d been up to since I’d seen him last and he complimented the album, which felt exciting and nauseating at the same time. I wondered, for a second, if this is how Margot felt when she heard it for the first time.
He played a few songs and we chatted about what it’d been like to be making this album alone--without the safety net of a band of friends standing behind you. But I could tell, when he looked over at me, that he was about to go in for the kill.
“So people have heard the album now--have friends and family texted you to let you know they’ve listened and which song they like best?”
“Uh, yeah, I’ve gotten a few messages from people.”
“Right--and have you gotten word, I mean--let’s be real, people know there’s one person that this album really focuses on, yeah?”
I fought the smile on my face--letting my gaze float out the window as I plucked at my lower lip. “M’not sure what you mean.”
“Oh yeah, Harry, sure,” James laughed, causing me to readjust in the seat as I let out a laugh.
“Margot Jones, yeah? There’s been a lot of talk about your relationship with her and your break up and everything in between.”
“Mmm, mhm,” I nodded--hoping that some honesty would gain me credit or respect or something that would make James tone it down a notch or two. “Yeah--I think people will hear this album and wonder--y’know--if there are pieces about certain events or days or people. But the best part about making an album is really letting the music tell the story so you don’t have to.”
James’ eyebrows were raised, his eyes on me as we took a left turn. “Casual answer, Harry, really,” his laugh filled up the car, contagious enough that even I started giggling a bit--at least enough to relax.
“No but really--you’ve been seen out with Margot lately, which I think is quite the turn of events for folks who followed your relationship.”
I stared at him, somewhat surprised at the straightforwardness of his question, but also a bit impressed by his ability to play the clueless card. I always found that interesting when I did interviews with people I actually knew--people who were my friends.
When I came and saw James or did radio things with Nick, it was funny to hear them ask me questions in front of the camera that they already knew the answer to.
“Yeah--I mean, Margot’s a wonderful person, and it’s nice to spend time with someone who knows you so well.”
I didn’t know if that would cut it--I didn’t know if that was vague enough for Jeff’s liking or subtle enough for Margot’s.
“Fans really love to speculate about songs and lyrics and what’s about who. I think you could probably find twelve page essays online that detail,” he let out a laugh, I waited for him to spit it out, knowing full well where he was going. “That detail why each lyric is about her or about your relationship.”
“S’dedication, really,” I joked, picking up my water bottle to take a sip. Margot said that that was my tell. I’d reach for water or for something to do during an interview when I got a bit nervous. I pushed the thought out of my head.
“Y’should have pulled a Maroon 5--called it Songs About Margot,” He suggested, a cheeky grin on his face, which nearly caused me to spit the water out in my mouth .
“Yeah we threw the idea around actually,” I joked, running a hand through my hair as James pressed a button, another song coming out of the speakers.
We drove around like that for about an hour--singing and laughing and even switching shirts in an empty parking garage. We made our way back towards the studio, and once we arrived, I climbed out of the car and greeted Jeff with sunglasses over my eyes.
“Vague enough, yeah?”
Jeff shrugged, a smile on his face as he handed me my phone. I think he was just happy that I wasn’t so fucking miserable anymore.
“Hey,” James called from behind me, a woman tugged at his shirt to get his microphone loose. “Still on for dinner next week in London?”
“Absolutely,” I nodded. “You’re cooking for me, right?”
He rolled his eyes, appreciating my jokes as he handed the car keys to a production assistant. “Yeah right--naked beneath an apron and all.”
THEN - Day 1528
Being in Los Angeles wasn’t weird. Being here without Margot was.
I mean--I guess I couldn’t even say that. I’d been here plenty without her. Hell--the first few times we jetted all the way to the West Coast, I didn’t even know if she knew I existed.
But this was her turf--no matter where I was or who I was with, Los Angeles would always make me think of her. The exit on the freeway to get to the driveway where we met, the right turn down Sunset Boulevard to get to the studio where she’d filmed her show.
So now--sitting in an office on Selma Avenue felt like I was intruding on her territory.
I’d always wondered if I’d see her. Would I bump into her on a red carpet? Would she ever do events again? Would I see her at Niall’s wedding (if that ever happened)? I had no clue where she was at--both physically and emotionally, so I was left to wonder what on earth she did with her time in the city that seemed to belong to her.
Our meeting was over--I stood from the chair and hoped to god I could get some food into me before I had to go to whatever meeting I had next. Finishing the album brought forth a lot of conversations about money and planning and terms of agreement.
“Grab a burger?” Emma suggested, watching as I followed behind her towards the door. I reached into my pocket, fishing my phone out and checking the messages I’d received in the span of an hour and a half. One was from Mitch, the other from a friend, and two from my mom.
“Sounds delightful,” I said with a smile, listening as my publicist began to list good places nearby.
Jeff held his hand out to motion towards the door--ushering me back to the car that would be waiting outside. “There’s that place in the Roosevelt Hotel,” he reminded.
“That place has great fries,” Mark--the head of the artist relations spoke, following us into the hallway. “Good to see you, Harry, we’ll meet again in a few weeks once we get this finalized on our end.”
I shook his hand, offering a smile. “Thanks, of course, good to see you as well.”
I turned to follow them towards the main entrance, still distracted by the messages on my phone. I followed silently behind them, laughing at the picture my mum had sent of her cat in the garden, until suddenly, I lifted my eyes and saw her watching me with wide eyes.
My feet kept moving--mostly because Jeff’s were doing the same behind me. Emma was staring straight ahead--both of them likely just as surprised as I was.
Sinead seemed to knock into her from behind, lifting her eyes to connect with mine. Margot--whose hair looked darker and whose eyes seemed less sunken in--fell back into step quickly, almost as if she hadn’t faltered at all.
Jeff was in the middle of a sentence--something about what Mark had said and the car outside and suddenly his words were floating around in the hallway like they’d fade after a few minutes if I didn’t respond.
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said--unsure if my response was even appropriate or logical. I followed Emma out to the parking lot, and once the door was shut behind us, I turned to face Jeff.
Emma, who’d turned to face me, seemed to scan over my face to make sure I was okay.
“Is no one going to address that?” I asked, holding my palms up to encourage some kind of response from either of them. They both stared at me blankly. “Am I supposed to go back in there? Am I supposed to go address the fact that she’s here and we just saw each other and--”
“And say what?” Jeff asked, lifting his pointer finger to flick his sunglasses down over his eyes. “It’s been over a year.”
“I’m aware, Jeffrey,” I bit out, narrowing my eyes at him.
He’d long been a supporter of the Move On From Margot campaign--something that seemed to be a common theme among my friends and family and team.
“I’m not trying to be hard on her, okay? I just don’t want you to--” he cut himself off, letting his shoulders rise and fall as a car pulled up to deliver us to our next location. He opened the door and let Emma climb in first.
I faltered for a second--my eyes flickering back to the doorway. Was I supposed to do something? Was I supposed to talk to her?
“Don’t want me to what?” I prompted, the hum of the engine quieted when the car shifted into park.
“I don’t want you to move backwards. You’ve done so well since the New Year.” I let out a sigh, looking down at the ground before back up at him. “Let’s get lunch.”
I gave in then--I climbed into the car and watched as the building faded out of sight. I wondered why she was there and what she thought and did she notice that I cut my hair?
I pulled opened the message thread between us--the one that I’d saved and had yet to erase.
Her last message stared up at me.
I’m room 1432. Come by when you can.
I should have known then. I should have known when she got her own hotel room and asked me to come by. I should have known it was coming.
I let my thumbs hover over the keys, as if I had something to say or words to speak and emotion to show. After a few seconds of staring at those words--the last she’d sent me, I deleted the thread entirely.
THEN - Day 753
“Don’t even touch it, Liam,” Louis voice was louder than necessary, but my laughter seemed to drown out Harry’s groan as Niall pushed play on the laptop in my lap.
“I’ll touch whatever I want, thank you very much,” Liam replied calmly, watching as the screen turned from black to white, big text filling the screen that read Where We Are 2014.
Niall had decided he was going to document their tour--small clips from his phone, pictures we’d all taken, different footage of the five of them goofing around started to play as Zayn shoved Louis so he could get a better look.
The tour was almost over--mine had ended two weeks prior--so we were officially set up to be on the same continent for a little over two months. And it was moments like these, really, that made the traveling and the distance worth it.
A photo of Liam and I with giant sombreros flashed across the screen, followed by a clip of the night that Harry caught 29 goldfish in his mouth when he demanded I throw them and we try to set a world record.
Harry--who’d been more emotional than usual--was reluctant to even watch. He knew that the end of tour always made him a bit nostalgic, and while that was more than okay with me, he didn’t necessarily love the teasing that came from the rest of the boys.
I sat next to him on the floor of the green room, my back up against the couch as we all stared at the laptop that Niall had lugged around all summer. Lou and Paul were watching on as well, and Harry’s hand on my thigh felt like a good reminder that even when I had bad days, I had the people beside me to bring me back down to earth.
I wondered, when I was on the road with them, if it would have been easier to do all of this with a band. Would there be less stress if the fame had been spread amongst three or four other girls? Would I have more fun if I had friends with me on stage, people to walk red carpets with?
Sure, I’d somehow become a package deal with his band, often attending events together and even walking red carpets as if I was just part of the group--but did I stand a better chance as a part of a whole?
The truth was that I’d never know, and while there were certainly perks to being in a group, there were also drawbacks. I saw the way the boys would fight. I saw the angry text messages and the cold stares after a disagreement the night before.
I saw what it was like to be stuck around the same five people--literally in the same ten foot vicinity with the same five people--for months on end. I saw the way that they were sad to leave tour, but also thankful for their own bed that wasn’t just a meter below someone else’s.
“Oh, Liam--the cutest little grin,” Zayn laughed, his accent thick as he reached up to pinch Liam’s cheeks.
I think these were the moments when we all questioned what life would be like had it turned out any other way. How would things be for them if they weren’t a group? What would happen if there were three or four instead of five? Changes within our little world felt like they’d rock the boat to a sea where we couldn’t sail.
“You look fucking wasted there, Harry,” Louis laughed, his finger pointing to the screen--a picture of Harry and Liam with their arms around each other in a parking lot told me (based on the grin on Harry’s face both in the photo and in the present moment) that he likely was.
There were pictures of them in various airports--embarrassing photos of me asleep on a couch in Milwaukee, and even photographic evidence that I’d beaten Niall in a game of ping pong once in Madrid.
I watched as they all stared at the screen--and I couldn’t help but wonder if they ever had the same thoughts as me. Did they feel as suffocated? Did they wonder what it’d be like to quit or move or just not wake up?
Maybe they did--maybe they had their days where they wondered if this was all meant to be. But the hardest part was the fact that I knew I couldn’t ask. If I did--I might feel even more alone.
NOW - Day 1720
Nathan was sat at the board as my voice filled the headphones. I watched his face--wondering if he thought the vocal was good enough to keep.
He tapped his foot to the beat, the watch on his wrist (a gift from his wife in 2014 when we’d finished my last album) caught the light from the window as he shifted in his seat and sighed.
Making music felt good. It felt natural and normal and in a way, it felt healing. It felt comforting to reflect on the feelings that had once sat so heavy on my chest--even if they weren’t completely gone. Amanda said it was therapeutic--almost like retelling my story and reprocessing the memories, except this time, I knew the ending.
I knew that Harry was back and that I was okay and that now--even with the anxious feeling that was never too far away--I knew I could handle it.
My voice faded from the headphones in my ears--we’d only recorded a verse and the first chorus.
“I think that’s good,” he said, looking up at me. “Let’s do the second verse and see how we feel later tonight.”
I stood from my seat beside him, ready to head back into the booth.
“Did you tell Harry you’re here today?”
I turned around once I was inside, the glass window separating us as I reached for the new set of headphones to play my feedback. “Yeah--but, I don’t know what he thinks I’m recording.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t think he knows that I’m recording stuff from back then.”
All of the songs we’d worked on so far--the titles written on post it’s that were now stuck to the wall--were my side of things. Maybe not as blatant, maybe not as literal and direct--but they were my version of the same story that Harry had already told.
And when I thought about it like that, I got angry. With Harry on the other side of the world for his promo and press tour and me in a studio in Calabasas, I felt like it wasn’t fair that he got to do it first.
Especially because his side of things didn’t exactly feel true.
I’d spoken with Amanda about how it all felt: the fact that I was the bad guy in his story and he was the one who was helpless and hopeless and had nowhere to turn.
Whether or not things felt okay between me and Harry--whether or not he was starting to call me lovie again and whether or not we were sleeping together, I couldn’t help but wonder if a part of him was angry and hurt and wanted me to pay for what I did.
“Are you gonna tell him?”
I sighed at that--I hadn’t moved beyond the thoughts of how do I communicate with someone I’m sleeping with but who doesn’t have the same label he used to have but is currently on the other side of the planet?
“I’ll tell him eventually. I mean--he’ll hear it eventually.”
Nathan let out a laugh, his lips pursing together as he nodded. “I mean--don’t dish it if you can’t take it, right?”
NOW - Day 1727
I guess it was Harry’s way of showing he was dedicated.
Hillary had an opening on a day that he wasn’t in town--in fact, he was in Barcelona in a hotel room sitting on a king-sized bed. But his face was on the screen of my laptop, situated next to me on the couch in Hillary’s office as she let out a laugh.
“Can you hear us? If you miss anything we say, just raise your hand.”
“Got it,” he smiled, the corners of his lips twitched upward as he looked from Hillary and then to me.
It’d be fine so far. Fine enough in the sense that I was keeping busy with Nathan and dodging the media, and Harry was busy doing everything in front of the media to promote the album. Amanda had suggested I tell him a bit more--tell him that there was a part of me that was angry about the album. A part of me that was tormented over the thought that he’d slept with someone else.
And most importantly, she said, that I tell him about my plans to release the songs I was working on with Nathan in the same studio where I’d recorded my album that won a Grammy for Album of the Year.
It’s not that the songs were harsh: they weren’t necessarily accusatory or spiteful or anything like that. Instead, they were honest. They told my version of 2015 and 2016 and Harry might not like it.
But did he have the right? Did he have the right to be upset about my side of the story if I had to grin and bear it about his? I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t tell him when I got DMs from people attacking me for breaking his heart. I didn’t let him know that I had bookmarked a few articles from the NYT and the Post about how his album seems to really put the nail in the coffin of our relationship.
Because after all, how could we salvage anything after he told the entire world how everything was my fault?
I knew I needed to tell him--I knew the good of our relationship rested on the assumption that we would be nothing but honest. Which, realistically, probably meant that I had a few things to come clean about. The songs. My feelings about his album. The stomachache I got when I opened my social media accounts--still with nothing new posted since 2015--to see messages and comments calling me an attention whore and a bitch and just about everything in between.
“So--how has the distance been so far?” Hillary asked, her eyes flicking between the both of us as she waited to see who would answer. Harry seemed quiet, his eyes insinuating (even through a computer screen) that he wanted me to talk first.
“Good, I guess. We’ve talked a fair amount.”
Hillary nodded, her eyes moving to the computer screen quickly.
“Yeah--” Harry shrugged. “Despite the time difference we’ve talked on the phone every day.”
“How are you both feeling about being apart?”
Again, Harry’s eyes were on me. I wondered--for a second--if there was a part of him that just wanted to hear all of my thoughts and feelings out of fear that he wouldn’t get access to them if we weren’t in this room.
“Uh--I kind of feel, like, stressed, I guess.” The words felt rocky--it felt new and strange to be speaking honestly in front of him.
“What feels stressful?” Hillary prompted me to say more--I shifted in the seat and looked over to Harry. I knew the drill--she was asking me to speak more directly to him and use ‘I’ statements.
“I feel like I got left behind while you’re out having fun doing all sorts of album stuff. I don’t know if that makes sense,” I said quickly, looking to Hillary for some reassurance.
His eyebrows dipped together in the center of his forehead, but he nodded--apparently urging me to continue.
I took a deep breath and bit at my lip before saying more. “I guess I’m a little angry that I got painted like the bad guy. I know I already said that and you’re just telling your side of it, but there’s been a lot of backlash.”
“Backlash?”
“Yes, Harry, backlash.”
He tugged at his lip and looked off screen for a second. “How so?”
“On social media and online and stuff,” I shrugged, a little annoyed that he was clueless. “People are just really going at it--a lot of your fans are angry at me for the way things went down.”
“Well--they don’t know the whole story.”
“But they think they do. They think your album is the whole story.”
He was quiet at this. Hillary leaned back in her chair and adjusted her ponytail. Apparently she was pleased with our communication, whether or not it was emotional.
“What are they saying?”
“That I’m a bitch and that I didn’t care about you. I mean--none of that is new, I knew they felt that way when we broke up. But I didn’t see it all. I wasn’t looking online.”
“So--should you not look?” He asked the question innocently enough, but it irked me as I brushed a strang of hair behind my ear.
“It’s not that simple, Harry.”
“Margot--I don’t know what to tell you. This is why I warned you--I wanted you to know it was coming and I wanted you to be prepared.”
“I know,” I said, suddenly feeling guilty for my emotions. I knew he did it to be nice--I knew that his good nature is the reason we were even here--in couples counseling like some kind of lifetime movie.
“You have to understand though that it’s hard to be silent right now when you’re out there in the spotlight telling a story that doesn’t feel true.”
“Margot,” Hillary interrupted, her eyes narrowed a bit. “I’m wondering if you could tell me how it feels to be stuck here--especially if you’re not getting to tell your side of things right now.”
I took a deep breath--Harry let out a sigh and I searched for the words in Hillary’s cozy office.
“I feel abandoned, sort of. I feel left behind and forgotten and I guess angry. And I feel like I’m in trouble for doing something wrong when I didn’t do anything.”
Harry’s face scrunched at that. Apparently he disagreed.
“Harry?” Hillary turned to the computer. “What’s it feel like to hear Margot say all of that.”
“S’confusing,” he shrugged. “I feel accused now, I guess. I didn’t abandon her or forget her. I’m just working. She--of all people--should know what that’s like.”
I rolled my eyes--annoyed at his passive aggressive tone.
Hillary tried again. “But do you feel any other way other than accused?”
He licked his lips and thought for a second. The hotel room was dark behind him--I wondered what time it was and what time he had to be awake. A feeling of appreciating washed over me. He wasn’t perfect. He certainly wasn’t flawless and completely free of blame--but at least he was trying.
And that gave me hope. Hope for the future of us and for the future of whatever it was between us. In this awkward stage post break-up, we moved like figurines, cracked and fragile and worried about the damage that could ensue with just a few words.
I couldn’t help but resent that, though. Because here, sitting in Hillary’s office, with Harry transported in through pixels and WiFi, he was ignoring the fact that he’d written an entire album about our the time we shared and the time we then tried to forget. He was sitting here as if he hadn’t put me on blast and opened up our story to the criticism of the whole world. Something about it felt unfair.
So sure--maybe I was angry. Maybe I was angry that I was stuck in California wondering what he did in Barcelona today--similarly to the last 18 months. Maybe I was angry because all of the polarized feelings felt rushed and fleeting and I didn’t really know what to do or say next in the neverending psychodrama of my relationship with Harry.
But I knew one thing for sure: if he got to tell his side of the story, I got to tell mine.
Maybe the lyrics and the melodies would leave her feeling just as confused as I did in New York when she disappeared in the middle of the night.
Maybe the pictures I drew in the songs would leave her feeling as empty as I was that winter. I could only hope.
7.5k wc
read parts 1 - 12 here
AN: Thanks so much for reading!!!! So interested to hear your thoughts on what is going to transpire with Harry and Margot. If you like my work, please REBLOG because where I come from, sharing is caring.
THEN - Day 1534
I knew I needed to get out of my parent’s house. If it weren’t for the fact that I was 21 and my social life was minimal, I might not feel so strongly about it.
But seeing as Ben and Sara were home from college and meeting up with friends from high school--it got me thinking that maybe I didn’t have enough of a social circle.
Coming home from Tennessee made me realize that my social circle mostly existed of people who worked for me in one way or another--throw my boyfriend, his band, and the people who worked for them into the mix and I felt pretty fulfilled.
But suddenly, I was back in California for 12 months of minimal interaction with people outside of my immediate family and Sinead. I was lonely. I was bored. And I didn’t really know what to do about it.
Which is why, a whole year after I left Harry in New York, I somehow talked Maya into playing basketball with me in the driveway.
“Your free throw sucks,” she said--holding the basketball in the air before throwing it in my direction. Maya’s senior season was about to end--so she was open to embarrassing me for only our mom and Pete to see.
I shot the ball again and watched as it missed the hoop entirely--Maya didn’t even make an attempt to get my rebound. “Yeah, well--not all of us are high school basketball stars.”
She rolled her eyes--giving me a hard time in jest. “Not all of us left high school to go on tour.”
“Touché,” I said, dodging the ball that she passed back to me--this time with more force and speed. I reached a hand out to stop it, keeping my body a safe distance in case it developed a mind of its own.
“How do you feel today?”
Her words seemed nonchalant, but I knew her question was loaded. What she really meant was are you a mess inside on the one year anniversary of your life ceasing to exist? She walked towards the hoop in our driveway, reaching for her water bottle as I smoothed out the messy hair that came loose from my ponytail.
I shrugged my shoulders, wishing that the sunset didn’t remind me of him.
“Fine,” I said.
“Okay and now for your truthful answer,” Maya prompted, gaining a laugh from me as I walked to meet her by the grass.
I thought of Maya on the basketball court--her high school’s female version of Troy Bolton. I’d been dragged along to plenty of her basketball games and Ben’s soccer games--my mom seemed just as excited to watch Maya rule the court as she did to see me fill up the Rose Bowl.
“I just wonder what he’s doing.”
She took another swig of water and then handed it to me. “Would you ever reach out?”
I let out a sarcastic laugh after I sipped. “And say what? I miss you--I shouldn’t have left you--I suck?”
Maya kept her eyes on me--her silence was her answer: yes. I could say that if I wanted to.
I groaned and walked back to my place on the court, watching as she bounced the ball twice before passing it to me. “I’m sure he wonders what you’re doing, too. You pretty much fell off the face of the earth.”
I tried to shoot again, the sound of the ball on the rim echoed off of the trees that separated our house from the Toluca Lake neighborhood. “I didn’t fall off the face of the earth.”
“You literally finished tour, went to rehab, came home, and haven’t posted anything on social media. No music, no interviews. People at school used to ask if me you were dead.”
I rolled my eyes, watching as she shot the ball from the box, a gust of wind blew through our private yard.
When I didn’t respond, she laughed. “I’m just saying. He--of all people--is probably the most curious about what you’re up to.”
“I’m sure he thinks about it--,” I paused, “in between his fantasies of murdering me.”
“You’re dramatic,” she waved me off. “He probably wants to call you. I bet he’s a mess today.”
“You don’t know that. He was a shell of himself during your decline.”
My decline. I rolled my eyes.
That was the thing about Maya--she was thoughtful and introspective and observant, and most importantly, ridiculously mature for a 17 year-old. She knew Harry well--even if she met him for the first time when she was just thirteen.
She shot the ball and then did it again--a three pointer. She tossed it to me and I didn’t even catch it--reaching for it so hard that I nearly lost my footing. “What was your impression of that time?” I brought my hand up to shield my eyes from the setting sun--I’d never really asked her what it was like for her.
“Of your decline?”
“Yes,” I made a face. “My decline.”
She put a hand on her hip and let out a sigh. “You were a mess. It was obvious to everyone--Harry was, like, I don’t know--a chicken with his head cut off.”
I laughed at the last part a little--the image playing through my head as I went to retrieve the ball that had bounced past me.
“I don’t know why he didn’t just address it more directly,” she commented, her words almost more to herself than to me.
I felt the need to defend him for some reason. “I mean--he did address it,” I said. “I just lied to him a lot.”
“He gave up too easily, though. He knew you weren’t okay and he should have pressed you harder.”
“I didn’t see you pressing me harder.”
“I’m your little sister. I could tell you the house was on fire and you wouldn’t listen to me.”
Partially true. She held out her hands as if to summon the ball from me. I tossed it to her and watched as she dribbled it a few times and then shot it, the soft sound of the nylon net against the ball as she turned to look at me again. “I’m right.”
“He did give up too easily--I agree with that. But I think he did the best he could.”
It felt strange to say it--it felt weird to talk about him as if I weren’t mad and as if I wasn’t upset that he didn’t call. It’d been a whole year--and tonight, despite the fact that it was November, felt eerily similar to the driveway scene I’d replayed in my head a thousand times.
We’d sat on the grass only a few feet away, our hands brushing against each other when we stood to have dinner. He seemed to watch me with a smirk and something about him made me feel like I didn’t have to try so hard.
I didn’t have to be Margot Jones 24/7. I could just be.
So maybe that’s why I defended him. Maybe it was because out of all the things that had happened between us--all the things we can’t ignore--making me fall in love was my favorite.
NOW - Day 1729
Sinead sat at the counter while I pushed around scrambled eggs in a frying pan that my mom bought for me when I moved in.
It was late morning--nearly 11am when Sinead showed up--but she said she had good news when I opened the door with narrowed eyes. She’d been showing up unannounced more and more often, and now that I wasn’t as miserable and grouchy as I’d once been, I think she enjoyed my company a little more.
“So--it just says they’d love to meet. They don’t even mention the old contract or anything like that. Just that they would talk about it.”
I let my shoulders slump as steam floated up above my head. “I dunno--that makes it all real.”
“You’re already recording it,” Sinead said simply, her tone more serious than I would have liked.
I turned around to face her, letting my hands rest on the granite behind me. “Sinead--it’s pretty laissez faire right now. We’ve done, like, three songs. I’d hardly call it an album. Who even knows if they’ll go together.”
“The songs?”
“Yeah,” I turned back around, unable to ignore the thoughts of Harry in my head. “They’re all old, so far. Half old, at least. I haven’t written a lot of new stuff. They’re all just things I was sitting on. And they’re really different from anything I’ve put out before. Less pop and more--indie, I guess.”
She looked up from her phone for the first time and seemed to soften her expression. “I just think that you’re most you when you’re creating. You’ve been bored lately.”
“I was locked up and went to therapy a shit ton,” I defended my empty schedule. “I needed a second.”
“I’m not saying it’s bad,” she stood from her stool and walked towards the Keurig. “I’m just saying that I think you’re ready. Even if you’re afraid.”
She didn’t press me any further. In fact, she was quiet until I sat beside her on the deck and forked a bite of food into my mouth.
“Does Harry know you’re recording?”
I nodded, my eyes hidden behind my sunglasses as I watched a few surfers try to catch a wave. “We haven’t spoken in more detail than that, though.”
“Well, should I tell John you’re down to meet or no? If it’s too soon it’s too soon, but I don’t think he’ll pressure you. He knows what happened.”
What happened. I rolled my eyes a bit--thankful she couldn’t see them beneath the shaded glass. What happened is I was burnt out. I was working more hours a week at 17 than most people do in mid-life. Being me was a constant job and I had a boyfriend who was regularly on the other side of the planet singing love songs to stadiums of girls who wished I didn’t exist.
I’d release an album and piss people off for being too honest. Tone it back and I was called too mysterious. I couldn’t please everyone, so I stopped trying. Forgive me for losing my shit.
“I’ll go,” I said with a lift of my shoulders to show my lack of emotional attachment--however fake it was. “But we can’t tell Harry.”
Sinead thought on that for a second--licked her lips--and then smiled. “Okay.”
THEN - Day 1308
There were nights when the thought of Margot didn’t seem to swirl in my head. Nights when the alcohol was plenty and the music was loud and laughter seemed to fill the air. Those nights were what I lived for--or, they were what I needed to live.
I wasn’t thrilled with the way everyone seemed to settle in on the couch when we returned from a restaurant downtown. Mitch’s eyes were looking more sleepy with every second and Jeffrey seemed glued to his phone.
“C’mon guys,” I said, clapping my hands together as I made a move towards the kitchen. “Who needs a drink?”
I scanned the room--none of them seemed to flinch at that. Out of the eight people in front of me, Mitch was the only one who even looked up at the sound of my voice.
“Mitchell? Fancy some rum?”
“Nah, man,” he shook his head, standing from the couch with an apologetic look on his face. “I’m tired. I’m just gonna head upstairs.”
I frowned at that--now letting my eyes sweep back to the rest of them. “What’s the deal? The night is young! Why are we all acting like old ladies?”
Jeffrey looked up at this, clearing his throat as he adjusted on the couch. “Harry, man, we’re tired. We’ve partied the last three nights after working all day. Let’s just have a quiet night in.”
My stomach seemed to sink at his words. A twinge of anger passed through my chest and I felt my eyebrows meet in the middle of my forehead. “We don’t need a quiet night, I don’t need a quiet night.”
Mitch seemed to slip up the staircase--a few of the others following behind without any words.
“I thought we came here to have fun,” I called after them, hearing my voice echoing off the walls of the stairs and the foyer, following them up the steps to the second floor. “Work hard, play hard, right?”
“Harry,” Jeffrey was now at the counter, standing in front of me with his mouth set in a thin line. “Are you alright, man? D’ya wanna talk?”
I let out an angry noise before dropping his eye contact, my hands coming to rest on the cool granite of the counter. “Talk about what, Jeffrey? Talk about the fact that I got fucking dumped and it’s been a few months and I’m not over it? Or about the fact that every fucking song we’ve written so far is about her and her emotional fucking baggage?”
He seemed to wince at my swearing--or maybe it was the fact that my eyes were now filled with tears.
“You want to talk about that?” I pressured, watching as he let out a sigh and shook his head.
“You’re writing songs about her because you’re feeling, man. You’re feeling a lot right now and you’re processing it. I promise it won’t feel this way forever.”
I appreciated his attempt at soothing me, but it felt like the only thing that would work was a shot glass filled with the rum that sat beside my hands on the counter. “Feels that way.”
He nodded. “I know. But--just rest and chill for a while. We can’t drink every night. We can’t party every single night. Go upstairs and sleep and channel this energy into making a good fucking album to show her what she’s missing.”
I laughed a bit at that--I wanted it to be true. I’d hoped from the second I signed the contract with the label to come down here and make it that she’d hear it one day and wonder what had happened. Maybe the lyrics and the melodies would leave her feeling just as confused as I did in New York when she disappeared in the middle of the night.
Maybe the pictures I drew in the songs would leave her feeling as empty as I was that winter.
I could only hope.
NOW - Day 1732
Margot didn’t know I was coming home to L.A., and I wanted to keep it that way. Out of my own selfish fear that she’d tell me not to or she’d worry about what people would think, I wanted the 5 hour plane ride from the East Coast to be relaxing. After all, promo tours were almost as tiresome as getting back together with your ex.
When I landed at the small regional airport in Burbank, I called her and listened to the voice message that had been updated since 2015. She sounded older, more mature, somewhat vague, and like she probably wouldn’t call you back as soon as she could.
I called Sinead next, hoping to find a location to head towards, seeing as I was already in a car heading West into town. Again, no answer. It was Nick who finally did.
“Hey--yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s with Nathan.”
“In the studio?” I clarified, tugging at my lower lip as I watched the California landscape take shape outside my window. A noise of confirmation from Nick. “For herself?”
“Uh,” he seemed to stall, likely wondering if he should backtrack or carefully considering how to proceed. “I don’t know--have you called her?”
“Yeah--no answer.”
Had I called her? It felt like a bit of an insult--almost as if he were implying that I should know more than I did, and the fact that I didn’t held significant meaning.
I was doing my best--which is something it felt like everyone ignored. I was trying with every bone in my body to glue the pieces back together to resemble what her and I had once had, minus the cracks and the flaws and the lack of communication about emotions.
With Nick off the phone and a better idea of where she was, I gave the address of Nathan’s studio to the driver, watching as the Hollywood streets turned to the hills of Sherman Oaks.
The small house on a residential street was just as quiet as I remembered--except only now the shutters were blue instead of black. I wondered if the inside would be the same--the same couch where I’d watched Margot record the first song we’d written together. The kitchen off the side that Nathan kept filled with her favorite snacks.
When I knocked on the door, there was silence for a moment, birds chirped in the yard--the soundproofed walls didn’t give me a taste of what was happening inside.
Nathan, with a bit of surprise but a smile nonetheless (thank God), opened the door and called Margot’s name. “Someone’s here to see you.”
He stepped aside to let me in, pausing awkwardly in the small back room until Margot appeared with furrowed brows.
“What are you doing here?” She asked, moving towards me to let her arms wrap around my middle. I pressed a kiss to her forehead, thankful for the fact that, while she did seem confused, she wasn’t angry or upset.
“Few days off. Figured I’d rather spend them here than New York.”
She smiled up at me (apparently that was the right answer), but took her arms away from my sides, crossing them over her chest as she eyed me up and down. “And you just knew I was here?”
“I talked to Nick--I think he didn’t want to tell me.”
She let out a laugh and shrugged a bit at that. Nick hadn’t ever hated me--I think my relationship with him was more affected by his fear of what would happen if things didn’t work. When we were young, he’d tell Margot that relationships are great but work was important. I think it stressed him out for her career to be so intertwined with mine--any slight movement on either side of the boat and the whole thing could capsize. He wasn’t wrong.
Margot moved aside to let me hug Nathan--I’d spent plenty of late nights with them in this house, bringing food from In n’ Out or coffee from Starbucks.
“Good to see you, man,” he said, clapping a hand on my back before pulling away.
“You too--how’re things? How’s Stacy?”
“She’s good, Lily’s almost three--it’s wild.” He pulled out a phone to show me a picture, both Margot and I smiled at the screen, though I figured she’d already seen it.
When they led me back towards the board I wanted to ask but I didn’t. I didn’t let the words trail out of my mouth to inquire about what was happening--was she recording? Was it hers? Would it be released?
Instead, she texted Sinead to make sure she’d bring my bags into the house and let her know that we’d both be home for dinner.
Eventually, she looked up at me from her seat on the couch. Nathan had disappeared on a phone call, giving us a few seconds alone.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
“About what?” I feigned confusion, eliciting a giggle from her as she lifted her feet to rest on my lap. “This?” I motioned around the room--searching for clarification. “Your professional endeavors are none of my business.”
She rolled her eyes at my wording. “They are if you’re sleeping in my house.”
“Yeah about that,” I faked a frown. “Can I sleep over tonight? M’really not feeling the drive to Agoura Hills.”
She whacked me in the stomach playfully, another side eye as she leaned back to rest her head on a throw pillow behind her. She closed her eyes. “I’m recording my own stuff.”
There it was. I shifted a bit, letting the words settle in the air between us before clearing my throat. I nodded. I was supportive. I wanted her to do what she wanted. God knows everyone would be more than eager to listen to it--they were dying to hear from her and understand what had happened.
“New or old?”
“Both.”
Another nod. Apparently words were escaping me.
She opened one eye to peer over at me. “Do you care?”
“Care?” I asked, confused about her wording. “I want you to do what you think is best.” The words fell out of my mouth like hot lava. It was a phrase I’d said so many times.
Should I extend the tour and spend more time away from you? Whatever you think is best. Should I do more promo for the album and lose more sleep? Whatever you think is best.
Should I do this interview? Do this magazine cover? Where should we go on vacation?
She knew it just as well as I did--which, I’d assume, is why she rolled her eyes before sitting up and staring at me straight on. “That’s not much of an answer.”
It used to be plenty.
“I don’t know what you’re asking me,” I said honestly. “Do I care as in am I interested and supportive and all of that? Yes. Do I care as in am I worried that you’re going to--” I cut myself off.
I hadn’t thought through the words enough yet. I knew she was thinking about it. I knew she was with Nathan that time I’d called her after she spoke to Ryan Seacrest. I wasn’t completely in the dark--but I didn’t know enough to save me from the ruminating over worst case scenarios.
“Am I going to what?” She pushed. “Do the same thing you did to me?”
Ouch. I sighed, letting my head fall against the back of the couch in exasperation. “Yeah. That.”
She srunched her lips in thought, her eyes trailing over the room. Past the sound board, past Nathan’s chair, past the coffee table where I knew she did a lot of writing. And then they fell on me.
“You can’t blame me for wondering.”
“I don’t,” her shoulders moved with her words. “But you can’t expect me to not be honest.”
“I was honest too.”
“No--you made it sound like I left without a word and like you had no idea what was going on.”
“I didn’t!” I defended suddenly--the emotion just as raw inside of me as if it were November of 2015. “I felt like I had no answers and then suddenly you weren’t there. I never planned on not being with you. I always factored you into my life.”
The words looked like they stung, and I hadn’t meant for them to. Margot seemed to retract her feet and become smaller as she shook her head. “I didn’t plan on fucking you up, Harry. I made a decision based on what I thought was best.”
She threw my words back at me like poison. I broke eye contact. For a minute I wondered if we’d ever be able to move past it--the night in New York when she cut the cord.
She shook her head a little, staring at the hardwood floors beneath us. “I have to tell my story and say how I feel. If I don’t do that--I’m just doing the same thing as before.”
She could tell I didn’t understand when I narrowed my eyes.
“I have to be honest and write what I feel and tell my side because if I don’t I’ll resent it and I’m not going into this with any type of agreement to keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to be silenced by fear or anxiety or anything.”
I nodded--almost taken back by her honesty, a breath of air escaping my lips. “I want you to do what’s right for you. I just don’t want to look like an asshole.”
I smirked a little--knowing full well that I probably would. Maybe not in every song. But in some.
A door shut down the hall, letting us know that Nathan was off the phone. Margot laughed and rolled her eyes playfully at me. “That makes two of us.”
THEN - Day 652
“Get your feet off the table,” my mom’s voice sounded from behind me as I . scrolled mindlessly on my phone. She let a hand trail down my hair as she passed behind the leather couch in my green room.
I rolled my eyes and let out a scoff at her. “Mom--I can put my feet on my table if I want.”
“It’s called basic manners, honey, okay?” She sat in an armchair beside me--looking over her cell phone quickly before clicking it shut. She brought her eyes up to mine, then sighed. “I just met with Nick. They want to add another date in San Diego.”
“Okay,” I nodded, dropping my own phone to my side before crossing my arms, trying to pull the San Diego date into my head. August. Sometime in August. But I didn’t know when.
“Margot, you don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything.”
“It’s my tour,” I reminded her, knowing full well that the decision ultimately came down to me. I hadn’t even spoken to Nick yet--and as I’d gotten older, my mom took on less and less of a managerial role. It felt better to have more separation between work and family, especially once I no longer needed her permission to lawfully engage in work.
“Margot Leanne,” my mother shook her head at me. “What has gotten into you?”
I rolled my eyes again and pulled my legs up in front of my chest. The last thing I needed with two hours before doors was my mom acting as if I needed to run everything by her.
In some ways, 2014 felt like the height of my career. I was on my 3rd headlining tour--my second sold out arena tour--I’d won four Grammys in February, and my time off was spent jetting between countries to visit my boyfriend on his sold out arena tour. I didn’t need my mother telling me to get my feet off of the coffee table.
“Nothing has gotten into me,” I said quietly, hoping she’d drop the issue and give me some space. She didn’t seem to understand how much I needed lately.
Days on tour were hot and busy and the nights were even more hectic. I spent most days doing radio interviews in cities we visited, meeting with VIPs--mainly the family or daughters of the arena executives who had been connected to a small meet and greet. Then there’d be wardrobe fittings, going over tricky dance moves, soundcheck, meet and greet with fans, and then I was lucky to get an hour or two of quiet before I had to start hair and make up.
Pair that with being on stage in front of 50,000+ people for two and a half hours and by the time I got into bed on the bus, my ears were ringing, my head was spinning, and my heart was asking me how long this would all last.
Would I make it another 10 years? Could I do another four arena tours--like my contract demanded? How many albums would the label want out of me? Was I writing this next one fast enough? Soon I’d have to start recording late at night on the bus once Nathan flew out. Write, sing, record, perform. Smile, be grateful, be cheery. Repeat.
It was hard to quiet my thoughts at night, but the hum of the highway beneath the wheels would usually lull me to sleep. And when it didn’t, I called Harry.
THEN - Day 1629
When Sinead showed up at my house a few days ago to tell me that Harry was releasing a single, I knew someone who’d be more shocked than I was.
“I can’t believe that asshole has the balls to write some song and release it,” Cara rolled her eyes and sipped at the iced coffee in front of her. I sat in the kitchen of her West Hollywood apartment, hoping the maintenance man would be over soon to fix her air conditioner.
The spring air was warm in Southern California, and Cara had nothing but shorts and a sports bra on when I showed up.
Cara and I met when we were 14--early in my music and acting career and early in her high school career. She lived down the street from me when we first moved to California, and for some reason, she was one of the only people I felt I could trust.
She wasn’t too shaken by the whole fame thing--in fact, she was more concerned with whether or not I could help her meet Channing Tatum than she was about the fact that I was signing record deals and had a popular sitcom.
“He’s not an asshole,” I said, wiping the condensation on my plastic Starbucks cup before a drip found the top of her counter. “He’s just--I don’t know. I have no clue if it’s about anything. Could be about a fucking staircase, for all I know.”
“Yeah, I just,” she shook her head, running a hand through her long hair. “I hope he doesn’t stir shit up.”
“Uh, it’s going to stir shit up. I’ve kept such a low profile no one even knows I’m here,” I motioned around her apartment--implying that there had once been a time where Cara had to come to me. I got sick of sneaking up the back stairs of her apartment complex and through the hoard of paparazzi that would follow behind my car.
“I could call him--you know, reach out and ask if it’s about you.” There was a knock on the door--hopefully the maintenance man.
“No,” I shook my head, watching as she rounded the counter to greet whoever was on the other side. “No one is reaching out to him.”
“We’ll call Niall! I’m sure Niall knows.”
“He doesn’t--I texted him the other night.”
Cara pulled the door open, revealing a man in a blue collared shirt. He looked more like a pool boy than a maintenance man--and he introduced himself as Pete.
Cara showed Pete where her central air ducts were--and soon he was headed out to the back of the building, hoping to find the problem. Cara relocated to her couch and I followed behind, bringing my iced coffee with me.
“Or Niall’s just not telling you,” she shrugged.
“He would tell me if he knew--or warn me, I guess.”
She gathered her blonde hair to one side and used the hair-tie around her wrist to hold it in place. “Y’think Harry’s pissed that Niall and you are still so close?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I lied, letting my tongue find the green straw before sucking. “I lost compassion for him when I went to rehab and he didn’t call.”
Cara laughed, rolling her eyes and shaking her cup to make sure she’d gotten all of the coffee out--it was just ice now. “He wanted you to get help--so you do, and then he doesn’t call. Typical man.”
I was quiet at that. I didn’t know if I’d call Harry typical. So many things about him and about us felt anything but--but I knew what Cara meant. And she had a point. He wanted me to get help, to go somewhere and get better, but when I did, he disappeared.
So was that what he really wanted after all?
But I couldn’t let myself think that way--I couldn’t let the what ifs occupy my mind and I couldn’t sit around wondering how things would be different if I hadn’t left, hadn’t gone to Tennessee, if he had called.
I went. He didn’t call. I learned ways to handle the waves of panic that settled in my bones when I was left with the quiet of my bedroom and the uncertainty of a Sunday afternoon.
I wasn’t paralyzed anymore by the fear of the unknown.
“You okay?”
I let out a sigh but nodded--thankful to have someone like Cara who’d stuck around through it all. I couldn’t say the same for a lot of my friends. “I just can’t believe he’s not in my life, you know?”
She nodded, a thoughtful look on her face as she waited for me to say more. I think Cara was used to me being pretty tight lipped about things, so when she got something out of me, she wanted as much as she’d get,
Lucky for her, I was under-caffeinated, hot, and had nothing to do on a Friday morning.
“I didn’t think--I dunno,” I stopped myself.
“What?”
I looked around the room, feeling the emotion build in my chest as I spoke. “I really thought he would have called by now.”
NOW -- Day 1734
Margot peered over the counter--a wrinkle in her forehead as she read over the board one more time. It was early afternoon, so it’s not like there was a line behind us or anything, but her indecision felt eerily similar to how things had been.
“Just a chocolate milkshake,” she spoke finally, her eyes flickering up to smile at the girl who’d fill our order.
We’d dipped into a small ice cream shop on the Pacific Coast Highway--and after a few pictures with the two girls behind the counter, Margot took on the task of deciding what she wanted. Now, after ordering, she smiled up at me.
“We came here when were, like, 19--do you remember that?”
“S’why I suggested it,” I said, slipping my fingers between hers as I pulled her towards the register.
Things felt calm--or, more importantly, Margot felt calm. She didn’t seem to check over her shoulder every second for a camera or obsessively fix the sunglasses on her face to shield her eyes from whoever was watching.
She leaned against me as we waited for our order--my arms wrapped around her shoulders in an display of affection. I was surprised she was okay with it--she used to be more standoffish about that type of thing.
Once I finally got my sundae and she finally got her shake--which she beamed at with wide eyes--she sat across from me at a small table in the corner of the room.
“How are you feeling?” She asked me suddenly--her eyes on her hands as she fiddled with the straw wrapper in her fingers.
“How am I feeling?” I repeated her question, checking that I hadn’t misheard her. She nodded. “‘Bout what, lovie?”
“About all of this,” she shrugged a bit, taking a sip of her treat before bringing her eyes back up to mine.
I let out a breath of air through my nose--hoping to string together the right words so as to not alarm her. But then, when she shifted in her chair, I realized I was doing it.
I was dancing around her, fearful of saying the wrong thing, but even more fearful of her reaction. I cleared my throat--she stared at me with eyes that told me she knew I was thinking.
“I feel like I’m taking it day by day,” I said honestly, watching her closely for any sign of emotion. She nodded, a smile pulling at her lips. “What?”
She tilted her head to the side as if to shrink away from the question. I reached a hand forward to poke her arm--eliciting a giggle from her as she sipped at her shake again.
She sighed, rolling her eyes a little. “I think that’s the only way we can do this. One day at a time.”
I nodded--a sense of relief washing over me upon hearing we were on the same page. The relief, though, seemed to give me the necessary clearance to be more honest with her.
“S’hard, obviously, to be away and be working right now. But m’really happy that we’re giving this a shot.”
“Me too,” she nodded slightly, her eyes scanned over the empty room. At 1pm on Tuesday, we figured we were safe to dip inside here and make it out relatively unscathed. There was laughter from the two girls behind the counter--who seemed to sheepishly watch us enjoy the ice cream--but she didn’t seem to mind too much.
“How do you feel?” I turned the question around--always hoping for a better view of Margot’s mind. How did the wheels turn inside? How did she manage to handle all of the emotions I knew she felt without always giving it away that she was feeling them?
“I feel--” she hummed a little, thinking of the right word before picking up the straw wrapper again. “Nervous, I guess.”
“Nervous?”
She dropped the paper on the table and nodded--another sip before bringing her eyes back to me.
“About what?”
“I dunno,” she shrugged awkwardly--and I think we both knew she was lying. “I mean, people know, and they’re starting to really know,” she motioned with her chin to the girls behind the counter--who’d undoubtedly already posted their pictures to the internet. “And people haven’t always liked it.”
I hummed in agreement--there was no use in denying that people were talking and we were spending time together and there was now a mountain of evidence that we were, in fact, back together. Whether or not either of us had confirmed it publicly--what did it matter? Pictures of me leaving her house--pictures of us out to dinner, in the car, my arm around her shoulders walking into an office building in Encino where we saw Hillary--seemed to solidify the thought in everyone’s head.
The look on her face made me concerned, though. “Do you not want them to know?”
“No--I don’t care--it’s the truth, I just--” she paused again, scrunching her lips as she seemed to let her mouth catch up with her brain. “I’m trying really hard to talk more. And tell you how I feel and be honest and all of that. But it’s hard and scary--especially when you’re traveling so much for work and when the actual tour starts in the fall. S’bad timing.”
I laughed a little at that--nothing about our relationship seemed to have good timing. She kept her eyes on her hands--the wheels must have been turning, she started speaking again and the words seemed to come out a quicker pace. “And I’m afraid that everyone in your life--your friends and family and the fans--they’re probably not too happy with me.”
“It’s no one’s business,” I said simply. “My friends and family are fine--my life is my life and we all know that my mum and sister want nothing more than for us to just have a baby already.”
She laughed, somewhat reassured as she sipped at her milkshake. “And Niall practically cried tears of joy when we FaceTimed him together that night.”
I laughed, taking another bite of ice cream in front of me. She was quiet for a moment--the air around us settling before she spoke.
“I think it’s going to be an album.”
An album? I felt my eyebrows lift in surprise--the ice cream in front of me was sure to melt now. “The songs?”
She nodded. After our conversation at Nathan’s a few days ago, we hadn’t spoken of it much. I didn’t want to pry and she likely didn’t want to give away too much in the early stages.
“Oh.”
Another nod.
“How’s it going?” I asked slowly, the words came out of my mouth sounding manufactured and awkward.
“Good,” she said simply. “S’nice to be back in the studio and being creative and whatnot. I really like the way the songs are shaping out.”
“Do I get to hear them ever? Or I’ve got to wait like the rest of the world?”
She laughed at this, her lips pulling up into a smile that made my stomach warm with butterflies. “Who knows. I don’t even know if we’ll do a traditional release.”
“What do you mean?”
Her shoulders rose and fell, she picked up the milkshake and tilted it to sip the last of the ice cream inside. “We might not announce it until, like, it’s just released.”
“No promo?” My forehead wrinkled in confusion. It didn’t sound like something Nick would go for--or the label for that matter. But then again, when you’re Margot Jones, they let you make your own rules.
“Might just release it on apple music, spotify, other streaming platforms. This--to me--is less about money and awards and making waves.”
I nodded, urging her to continue. I spooned some ice cream into my mouth.
“It’s more about just putting it out there. I’ve been gone. You were gone from my life. A lot happened. Here’s how I felt.”
Her words, though they made sense, sent a bit of a chill down my spine. I guess I couldn’t blame her for wanting to tell her side of things. I mean--how could I? How could I be upset that Margot Jones--of all people--had a captive audience that was begging to hear her take on things?
I guess I couldn’t--even if I was nervous for what her side entailed. So instead of protesting, I swallowed my pride and reached across the table to hold her hand. “M’proud of you, lovie. I want you to tell your side.”
NOW -- Day 1735
Harry heading to the East Coast for more promo left a quiet wake in the living room of my house. Sinead, who had my laptop set up on the coffee table between us, leaned forward to press play once I settled into my spot on the cushion.
I’d known about the documentary--Harry had mentioned it in passing at Geoffrey’s the first time I saw him. For some reason, though, I pushed it out of my mind until he mentioned it again in front of Sinead. As soon as he left the room, she insisted--with wide eyes--that we watch it one night with a bottle of wine.
I wasn’t afraid, exactly. It’s not like I thought he was going to bad mouth me on camera or do anything purposeful to make me look bad--the songs did enough of that on their own. I think he knew that.
So when the music started to play and he appeared on the screen, Sinead looked over to me and offered a smile. I think she knew how sad I was.
It was strange to be watching something that offered a glimpse into his time without me. I mean--that’s what it was, right? Here’s a documentary of what I did to get over her.
It felt, even more now, like he was offering people a piece of our story and showing them how bad things were. He cut his hair, he stayed in a house on a hill where no one knew his name. I was left with a strange flavor of guilt in my mouth that only slightly disappeared with each sip of chianti.
He drank--like he’d mentioned--to forget about the reality of the world off of the island. And when that didn’t work, he drank more.
I tried to think of the time frame--where was I when he was there? What was I doing? The truth is that I was likely in my bedroom at my mom’s house--or Amanda’s office--hoping to avoid those exact circulating questions about where I was and what I was doing. I couldn’t even run from myself.
“I can’t believe he even wrote this song,” Sinead said quietly, her eyes drifting to mine as the sun set outside. “About sleeping with someone else in an attempt to move on.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I shrugged--and I meant it. I could tell he wasn’t himself. I could tell he was sad and lonely and confused, slowing coming out of his funk as time wore on and the number days between now and New York climbed. But I still wished that instead of finding someone else to spend the night with, he just picked up the phone.
I don’t think I’d ever not wish for that.
NOW -- Day 1742
I don’t think Margot cared that she wasn’t here. She said she wasn’t ready to be more public and she said she’d rather support me from the sidelines--or, really, from a safe distance in L.A. I’d been briefed by my team on ways to respond. How to answer questions that felt manageable-- or how to avoid the ones that didn’t.
I knew the game and I knew how to keep a steady smile throughout all of it. I was hoping, maybe unrealistically, that no one would put me on the spot. I hoped that there were better things to talk about than whether or not my car in her driveway meant something. I was hoping, truthfully, for an easy night of work and drinks and watching the movie and just getting on with it.
But life was never that easy.
The first question wasn’t too loaded. “How’s Margot--you’ve been spending time with her?”
She’s good. She’s great. We’re enjoying each other’s company.
Fine enough. I could answer that. She knew I’d get asked and she knew I wasn’t going to go out of my way to deny anything. But I also promised I wouldn’t give too much away.
My real concern, I guess, was saying the right thing. After a few years in the business, I felt like I could talk my way out of just about anything, but having Margot involved felt different. I didn’t want to say anything she wouldn’t like--I didn’t want to say anything that made it sound like we weren’t together.
I guess, realistically, a part of me wanted to be honest. And not in the sense that I would tell an interviewer everything there was to know about our relationship, but more so that if someone called her my girlfriend, I didn’t have to backtrack and try to minimize our relationship.
I knew that Margot didn’t like the way the media portrayed me--I mean, I couldn’t say that I always loved it either. But it felt safer to just admit we were together and give Margot some sort of stability and reassurance that I wasn’t going anywhere.
She’d yet to bring up the girl from Jamaica again but I knew it was only a matter of time. I could see it in her eyes when she stared at me in bed--my head on the pillow beside hers only minutes before she’d turn the light out.
I knew she was holding it in and I knew that--finally--she was creating music to let some of that out. I only hoped that it did the trick to release some of the tension and pressure between us.
A woman with a big smile in a blue dress seemed to catch my gaze as I made my way down the line of media. She asked about the movie and moving on from the band, and just when I thought she was finished, she spoke again. “Margot Jones--are things back on? It’s pretty clear through your album that you had a lot to say to her, or about her, really,” her voice was inquisitive but pointed, almost as if she knew exactly how I’d answer.
“Uh, y’know, Margot is a great girl and she’s always been an important part of my life, so s’nice to get to hang out with her again. Thanks for coming,” I said to the woman, ready to move my feet to walk away, but she spoke so quickly I couldn’t help but hear her follow up.
“Did you hear that she had a lover in Tennessee? Is his story true?”
I tried to not let the confusion watch over my face in public--that was one of the first things I’d learned. Our publicist had told us early on that the worst thing you could do was let them know you were shocked. Something about fuel on the fire, making more news, the like.
I tried to blink a few times as the security guard behind me pushed me forward, clearly giving me an excuse to not answer and move on through the line of people who were dying to ask me stupid questions.
A lover in Tennessee? Is his story true?
I had to push it out of my mind to get through the rest of the small talk--the questions, the fans, the people who’d been invited to the premiere. A swirling in my head in the London heat made it hard to focus, but once I was able to dip inside the air conditioned loo in the theatre, I pulled out my phone.
A quick google search would likely put my heart to ease. Margot Jones Tennessee lover.
What a strange thing to type--I waited for the webpage to load.
I blinked twice again, trying to make sense of the pictures at the top of the page--pictures of Margot from various events or magazines--and beneath them, small black words seemed to elicit a thundering heartbeat that suddenly brought a pounding to my ears.
Tennessee rehab employee breaks silence: I dated Margot Jones!
I could feel the warmth of his body in my sheets, and it took my brain a second to realize where I was, who he was, and what had happened. He was turned completely around--his back was to me as if there was still some sort of block between us.
This wasn’t one of those movie moments--you have sex, you wake up the next morning and everything is so romantic. Instead of that, I heard the buzzing of my phone and the sound of his breathing beside me.
Which terrified me and soothed me at the same time.
It’d been a while since I’d woken up next to him, and in a way, the warm sheets and his sounds of sleep felt comforting. But at the same time, in a brain that’s wired anxious and over thinks even the smallest things, the buzzing on the nightstand of Sinead’s phone call and realization that my ex-boyfriend was in bed beside me set off a few alarms. The call went to voicemail, I looked over my shoulder to see if Harry was awake.
He wasn’t.
I reached for the phone and pulled open a text to Sinead. Before I could even start typing, she sent a message.
Just came by and Harry’s car is in the driveway. Let me know if I should come back later.
Great. Good. Okay. So Sinead knew. There was that.
“Morning,” his voice sounded behind me--slow and deep and barely even awake. I dropped the phone on the sheets and shifted to get a good look at him.
“Hi, hey, what’s up?”
His lips pulled into a smirk--the scene in front of me felt similar to so many of my past mornings, only this time Harry’s hair wasn’t as long as mine. “Y’okay?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. His eyes scanned my face and he raised his eyebrows a bit, somehow insinuating that he knew I was lying and that he didn’t want to fall back into that pattern. I cleared my throat. “Sinead called. She saw your car. I don’t know if anyone else did.”
He thought on this for a second, his eyebrows furrowing into one another as he plucked at his lower lip. He was propped up on an elbow, he let out a long breath that didn’t seem nervous or angry or anything. He was just thinking. “Do you not want people to know that we’re spending time together?”
I rolled my eyes a little bit. “Spending time together and having sex with your ex-boyfriend are two very different things.”
“We don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep this a secret. If anything, really, it was that I didn’t have the words to quite explain the last two weeks. In a matter of days, Harry had come full force back into my life and I was forced to take a hard look at the end of our relationship. He was finally back and things felt okay and I wanted to protect our relationship. We’d always had third parties sneaking a peek inside. All of that felt pretty overwhelming.
“Margot,” he said, pulling my attention back to him. “Can you think out loud?” He smiled up at me, causing my lips to pull upwards as I let out a laugh.
“I don’t even know where to start if anyone asks about us. And I don’t want a thousand other people in our business.”
He nodded, appreciating my words as he let his head fall back to the pillow. My bedroom--this room that we were in--had been free of Harry. When I bought this house last summer, I realized that it was likely to be the only place in my life that hadn’t been touched by him. The sheets, the couch downstairs, the front door.
None of that held true anymore. I didn’t really mind. It just felt strange.
“We don’t owe anyone an explanation. I mean, so people will find out. People have already seen a few photos.”
He was right--there’d been pictures of us at Geoffrey’s and at the release party and there was even one of us in his car the night we got In N’ Out. People had speculated, people had come up with their theories, but neither of us had said a word.
He’d long become the King of Promo--any question about me was answered with a swift and thoughtful diversion. He’d been asked a thousand times what happened to our relationship and I got to hide away in the woods of Tennessee and in the rocky hillside of Malibu. Now he was getting questions about it again--the break up, the time apart, had I heard the album?
“I guess I don’t know what to say because I don’t know what this means,” I motioned between us, to the non verbal agreement that apparently, this was a thing. When I kissed him on the couch through tears, when I finished my wine before bringing him upstairs, I somehow, some way, made a decision that this was certainly a thing.
“We’ve had sex before, Marg, it’s fine.”
“I know, I know,” I said, bringing a hand up to hide my eyes. “I guess, what I mean, is that I want to take it slow.”
Harry let out a laugh and smiled up at me under his eyelashes. “You? Take things slow? I would have never guessed.”
**
Sinead seemed to walk around like a deer in headlights when I opened the front door. Harry, who was in the kitchen fixing some pancakes, shot her an obnoxious grin over his shoulder.
She turned to me quickly, her eyes still wide and her face still pale. “Did you--did you have sex with him?”
I closed my eyes quickly, feeling more than uncomfortable at all the sex-talk I’d endured so far. Sinead was no stranger to the intimate details of my life--after all, she was the one who filled and picked up my birth control prescriptions and she regularly scheduled my gynecologist appointments.
“I don’t see why that matters,” I challenged her playfully, turning to lead her towards the kitchen. She followed behind, dropping her bag on the island as Harry poured batter into a pan. I would have been fine with cereal, but I guess getting laid made him feel generous.
“This is weird,” Sinead nodded confidently, causing Harry to look over his shoulder again with a pout. Her words were true, but her tone was playful.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He pulled his head back, pretending to be offended by her words--falling right back into their typical banter.
Sinead let out a dramatic sigh. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that this,” she motioned between the two of us, “hasn’t been a thing since 2015.”
“Alright, okay,” I held a hand up in protest, the sinking feeling in my chest getting the best of me. “Let’s not make a big deal out of it because that feels really stressful,” I said.
Sinead seemed to look from me and then to Harry--apparently me voicing my feelings was something they both weren’t too accustomed to.
“Yeah,” Harry said with a nod, the spatula in his hand. “Not a big deal,” he said. “Taking it slow.”
THEN - Day 1185
I hadn’t really noticed him at first--he was just a face in a group of people who seemed to watch my every move. I don’t know if they thought I was going to kill myself or try or maybe they were just wondering what on earth Margot Jones was doing in a rehab center in Tennessee--but he seemed to pay attention.
And I think that’s why this all started.
I think the way he seemed to watch me move through the dining hall and the way he seemed to offer me a smile whenever he crossed my path--it felt different than the others and it certainly felt different than Harry.
It’d been three weeks since I’d seen him. Three weeks since I’d heard from him, three weeks since he didn’t have any words for me.
With each day that passed I felt more alone, more annoyed, and more desperate.
Most of the other women on my floor seemed to ignore me--I think the weight of my name made them uncomfortable and unsure of how to interact with me. Almost as if my name made me less human.
I wasn’t all that surprised. I spent most of my time in groups or in therapy with Rita, and the time I wasn’t in either of those was normally spent in the group room by the window. Instead of spending time with the other patients, I felt more comfortable letting the silence sink in around me. After all, it’d been a few years since I’d really been alone.
He’d approached me from behind and at first I felt unsure. He worked here as a floor manager. He wasn’t a therapist, instead, he spent his time babysitting the group of us women who were deemed too broken for reality--was he allowed to talk to me one-on-one?
“Whatchya lookin’ at?”
I turned to face him--his eyes were blue and his hair was light, almost blond--more so now in the sun than I’d noticed before. The thought crossed my mind--what did he think of me? What did he think of my music? My reputation? I pushed it out of my head.
I let out a laugh when I realized that I didn’t have a good answer. “Nothing, I guess. Just looking.”
He nodded. He crossed his arms over his clipboard, his eyes out the window like mine had just been. He was in scrub pants and a t-shirt, I could see my name on his clipboard, next to the others who seemed to be avoiding me like I had something contagious.
Andrew--that’s what his name tag said, definitely no older than 25. He was quiet for a second, his eyes still on the trees at the edge of the field that seemed to surround the entire complex. “Is it weird to be here?”
I didn’t know what to make of his question at first. For a moment it felt like he was prying, maybe he’d get a payout for anything he could tell them about my life on the inside. When his eyes met mine, it didn’t feel that way.
Instead of looking like he had a reason to ask, he just looked curious. He watched me with soft eyes, and for the first time in a while, with someone other than my therapist, I felt like he actually wanted to hear what I had to say. Not because I was Margot Jones, because I was human.
“It’d be less weird if people didn’t look at me like an alien,” I shrugged a little, letting a laugh escape my lips.
He nodded--I don’t think it was a secret to anyone that the rest of the women seemed to keep away. Maybe they wondered if I was too broken for them.
“They probably just didn’t expect to meet a celebrity here,” he laughed quietly, his voice low enough so others couldn’t hear us.
“I bet you didn’t expect it either,” I corrected him, a smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth.
“That’s fair,” he smiled. He walked to sit in the chair opposite me. “Any idea when you’re done?”
I ran a hand through my hair. Rita and I had been talking about next week, before the holidays--hopefully when the rest of the world would be too busy with Christmas shopping to notice that I’d returned from my time away.
“Before Christmas,” I told him. “Escape back to L.A. and hope no one noticed I was gone.”
He offered a sympathetic smile, but it didn’t sit right with me.
“What’s that look for?” I asked, watching as he shifted in his seat. He still held his clipboard in his hands, but he moved to sit next to me for a minute--careful of the distance between us.
“I dunno,” he shrugged. “I just--I think people know.”
I sat with that for a second. People probably did know where I was. I mean, it was 2015. People had cameras and cellphones and twitter and facebook and my every move was pretty much tracked down by the second.
But the reality is that I was locked away, safe inside the walls of these buildings in which I now spent my time. I didn’t have access to a cell phone or the news or the internet. I could watch rerun episodes of COPS and I could maybe watch Ellen.
My seat in the day room was a lot different than the seat opposite Ellen in her studio.
“They probably do,” I nodded. “Fuck it, though.”
He laughed at this, a small smile pulling at his lips as he watched me--seemingly interested by my words and my thoughts and my mannerisms. I still couldn’t tell if it was because of my name or because of me, but his blue eyes made me hope it was the latter.
“Fuck what they think and fuck what they know and fuck H--” I cut myself off, I figured it was better to not name drop and accidentally let this kid--Andrew--know something about my previous relationship. Maybe his payout would double if he had any insider gossip about Harry as well.
“Sometimes it’s nice to just say fuck it,” he laughed, his eyes still on my face.
It was uncomfortable for a second--it felt like Nick and Sinead and Harry all watching me. It felt like he watched on to see what I’d say, what I’d do, if I’d break again.
But when I realized that everyone else had left the room, and when I realized that there wasn’t much more I could do to fuck things up, I decided that I might as well kiss him.
Maybe we both got something out of it. Maybe we both got something out of sneaking around for the last week I was there--locking lips and feeling our skin touch in dark closets or in empty rooms.
But I think--in all honesty--he filled a void that I knew was there from the start. He filled a void that was left by the person who’d tried his best to fill it before.
The thing that sucked was that neither of them really worked.
THEN - Day 1202
I sat on the floor of the living room where he first kissed me. In fact, Maya sat in the spot on the couch where it happened. Ben was beside me--still clad in his festive pajama pants that matched mine and Maya’s, a Christmas tradition since Maya could walk.
“Open that one next,” my mom handed a gift to Ben, her handwriting made it clear that it wasn’t from Santa, though she still wrote it on the tag of each box.
Ben shook it slightly, ripped at the paper, and smiled as he pulled out a pair of adidas sweatpants. Simple, yet exactly what he asked for.
Christmas hadn’t changed much--sure, the money I made helped us buy each other some nicer gifts--but it was still a day of family and food and presents.
This Christmas, though, was different. I still had the nail polish on my fingers that I’d painted in the group room the night before I left. I still had Rita’s face in my mind as she hugged me goodbye and promised to email.
I could still hear the yelling of the paparazzi that greeted me at LAX with their big lenses and cold hearts.
“Margot? Honey? You okay?” My mom’s voice was soft, and it took me a second to realize that they all had their eyes on me.
“Yeah,” I nodded quickly. “I’m good.”
It wasn’t necessarily a lie--I wasn’t about to break down, if that’s what she meant. I was holding it together, holding together the reality that the entirety of my career was over.
Nick and Sinead and my mom had all agreed that I couldn’t work for a while. Apparently a stint in rehab suddenly turns you back into a child who’s capable of getting grounded. I didn’t know what would happen if I called Nick up, demanded he get me into a studio, on a talk show, anything. I was an adult, after all, I could decide to work if I wanted to. But in all honesty, I was too tired to put up a fight. And at least a small part of me felt like I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to answer their questions and fake another smile and give them things they didn’t deserve.
Maya looked at me with sympathy--she’d laid in bed with me the night I got home, helping me take down the photos of Harry that filled the frames on the surfaces in my bedroom.
“Let’s take a break,” my mom said. “I’ll check on the ham.”
I let out a sigh, watching as Maya reached for her phone and Ben stood to give Sara a call. I knew this game well--they were all walking on eggshells as if I was fragile enough to break at the slightest gust of wind. For a while I was, but it felt somewhat different now.
“We don’t need to do this,” I said, watching as Pete fiddled with the Apple TV that I’d gotten him. He looked up, his eyebrows raised as he waited for someone else to respond to me.
“What do you mean?” my mom asked, turning on her heel to face me once more.
I groaned--annoyed that I had to explain it, verbalize it, acknowledge that we were all doing the same exact thing as before.
“Today sucks, okay? My life sucks right now. But you don’t need to tiptoe around me.”
They all paused, somewhat frozen--and likely concerned that I’d truly lost it--until Maya spoke. “Have you heard from him?”
“No,” I said. “And you don’t need to ask anymore. It’s not going to happen.”
THEN - Day 1274
Sinead was behind me, both literally and figuratively. It was her idea, really, to move out. She stood with a clipboard in her hands--which was extremely characteristic of her--and watched as two men lugged a bed frame through the front door.
The house kind of fell into my lap. Sinead came by for lunch one day at my mom’s, everyone was out. Ben was back at college, Maya was at school. Pete was at work and my mom had gone out to see a friend. Sinead pushed a real estate booklet in front of me in the kitchen.
I’d always wanted to live in Malibu. I wanted a house with private beach access and a view of the ocean from the kitchen. Open floor concept. Dining room. Hardwood floors, granite countertops. Marble bathrooms.
Sinead had already seen it in person when she handed me the booklet.
“Y’okay?” She asked, holding her hand over her eyes to shield the sun. I watched, somewhat skeptically, as the men maneuvered large structures through the door and up the stairs.
This was a good idea.
I needed my own space. I needed room from Maya. I needed distance from my mom. I could swim and write and find new hobbies here.
Best of all, it had no traces of Harry.
The hardest part about being home were the pieces of himself he’d left at my mom’s. A sweatshirt in the bottom drawer, the toothbrush he’d kept in my bathroom. I’d lived in that house since I was 13--it was the first thing we bought when we moved from Raleigh. Yet somehow--though the span of the house had long outlasted Harry--he still inhabited every room in it.
His seat at the dining room table. The spot where he hung his car keys when he was in town. The soccer ball in the garage that he’d kick around with Ben in the summer. The side of my bed that he’d claimed as his own.
I nodded back at Sinead, forcing a smile. I was fine. I saved the crying for therapy and the anger for nighttime. I wasn’t writing much--I’d strum a chord and nothing would come out. Or worse, too much would come out. I’d cry and cry and soon my vision was too blurry to fret the strings and I’d give up.
I stared up at the white house--it was empty. It was big (four bedrooms, one would become a home studio) and had no memories and, I guess, that made it a clean slate. The idea of a clean slate almost felt disappointing. Having one meant I needed it.
NOW - Day 1712
Harry was the type of person who did everything with his whole heart--so when he started spending more time at my house, he really outdid himself. His car keys sat beside mine in the dish in the entryway, his jacket hung in the front closet. He even seemed to buy a few things to keep in the fridge when I wasn’t looking.
He was adamant about making the most of our time together before his departure--his untimely and somewhat cruel departure.
Of course, because there’d be no other way to rekindle an old flame, Harry was set to leave for tour an exact week after we slept together. I suddenly felt like we had a ticking clock hanging over our heads that threatened to undo all the work we’d done in the last two weeks.
So, naturally, I asked him to come to therapy with me.
“Like, couples counseling?” his brows were furrowed together as he sat at the island in my kitchen having a bowl of cereal. We’d decided that we’d shut ourselves in tonight--draw the curtains and pretend that the internet wasn't swirling with rumors whether or not we were back together.
The answer--according to the tabloids--was yes. The answer--according to us--was maybe.
Neither of us had addressed it or really told anyone much of anything, but the paparazzi were relentless and fans seemed to create their own theories of who the two smoothies Harry picked up this morning were for.
“Yeah--Amanda said it can’t be her, though. We’d have to find someone else.”
He thought on this for a second--he blinked a few times while taking a sip of the milk at the bottom of the bowl.
I didn’t know how he’d respond. Harry--as far as I knew--had never been to therapy. I didn’t even know if he knew what really happened inside. The night he came over for dinner--the night we slept together--I told him about Amanda’s office.
A room with green walls and a tan couch. Throw pillows and artwork on the wall that seemed to match her personality. It felt like a safe place to talk about everything that had happened.
Harry cleared his throat and looked over at me. “Yeah, I mean, if you think we should, let’s do it.”
I let out a breath, relieved that he was so agreeable. I leaned against the counter opposite him--we’d watched a movie and Nick had stopped by just to say hi. Now we were likely headed to bed--it was an unspoken agreement that Harry would stay the night until he left.
“Where do you find a therapist?” He scrunched his nose and seemed to look up at the ceiling.
I let out a laugh, which he returned as he stood and brought his bowl to the sink. “Amanda can probably recommend someone. I’ll email her.”
He turned around from the sink and walked up to me, the look on his face slightly apologetic. “I wish I didn’t have to leave.”
I nodded slowly, unsure of what to say in response. It felt eerily similar--the forced goodbyes and the slipping feeling because neither of us knew what the future really held.
The last time we were in this spot, there wasn’t a future. I think we both knew that.
THEN - Day 1402
Maya was dying to be a senior in high school. I couldn’t blame her. She had a mother and a step-dad who were overbearing, an older brother who’d rub it in her face of how cool it was to live away from home, and a washed-up, older sister who used to be a popstar.
She was in a shitty mood most of the time. And maybe I was depressed.
Maybe I’d never be the person I was before Tennessee. Maybe this was my new normal--sitting on Maya’s bed as she tried to determine what clothes she wanted to keep and what she wanted to get rid of.
It was the dead of summer, and spending all of my time with a 17-year-old didn’t really do me much good. But Maya’s honesty and sarcasm were a welcome change from the previous world I lived in of people who walked on eggshells.
That was the good thing about Maya--I could always count on her to keep me grounded. When she was 13 years old, she told me to get my head out of my ass when the rumor that I’d gotten a nose job had me crying on the floor of my bathroom.
I had a garbage bag beside me as Maya dumped things inside. Contents of her drawers, clothes from her closet, pictures and mementos from her dresser. This was a big summer for her, she’d told me. Being a senior in high school meant you weren’t a kid anymore, and apparently, that meant she needed to deep clean her room.
Maybe I was depressed, and maybe I was bored, but I wasn’t really sad--and I certainly wasn’t really angry. I was more just existing. That’s how my days seemed to be now.
I’d heard their last album. The month I was in Tennessee I got to avoid it--pretend that there wasn’t an album out there in the world that seemed to hold pieces of our story. I had heard a few songs in passing over the summer a year ago, bits and pieces here and there as they recorded it and shaped it into what they wanted.
At Christmas, Maya told me that she liked it. I didn’t have the courage to listen.
So finally, last week, I decided that I’d listen to it in my car as Maya drove us around the hills of Malibu. I skipped the ones I knew, listened to the few that I didn’t. It almost felt like it wasn’t real--like I was on autopilot, not really taking in the words and the messages.
Instead, the music floated around me and when it was over, I unplugged Maya’s phone and offered to buy us lunch. Then we pretended it never happened.
It was all written before we broke up. It was written over the spring and summer, recorded throughout and crafted carefully as my life fell apart. I hoped I’d never hear it again.
That’s why, now, as Maya cleaned her own room, I decided to throw out most of my belongings that seemed tangled up in him. My clothes, my jewelry, my books, my pictures from tour, my One Direction merch.
I didn’t know who I was, really. And in some ways, that felt okay.
Maya was kneeling in front of her closet, sorting things into piles of what she’d donate and what she’d simply let go of. Another hot day in Los Angeles made us stay inside in the air conditioning, and apparently, cleaning out our closets was the most entertaining thing we could find.
I noticed that she had a stack of picture frames in front of her when I put my phone down, she picked up the first and then turned to me.
“These are yours,” she said simply. She turned it around, showing me a picture of Harry and I from 2014. We were on his bus, it was after a show one night in Texas. His arms were draped over my shoulders from behind and we both offered huge grins to the person behind the camera--likely Niall. It had originally been sent as a snapchat, I think. He mailed me 24 printed pictures of us from for our two year anniversary.
I leaned forward to reach for it, she handed it over to me and then stood up with the others in her arms, bringing them over to set them on the bed in front of me. She watched as I looked over them.
There was one of me and Niall and Maya, one of our family and Harry on Thanksgiving in 2013--another of me and Harry all dressed up in the front yard for the Billboard Music Awards in 2015. The absence of normal prom photos like most teenagers meant that my mom tried to take nice photos of us whenever she could.
“Why do you have these?” I asked, still confused as to why they’d been on the floor of her closet.
“You made me ‘get rid of them’ when you came home from Tennessee. I guess I never threw them out.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of them--they seemed to serve as a sad reminder that it’d been a whole eight months since we’d spoken. A whole eight months since he walked out of my hotel room, and a whole eight months since he told me he loved me.
Maybe Maya had saved them in hopes that we’d get back together. Maybe she felt guilty throwing them out. Whatever reason she kept them didn’t matter, I picked them up in my arms and carried them back to her garbage bag.
“No point in reliving it, right?”
She offered me a small smile and shrugged. “As if you haven’t been reliving it every day.”
NOW - Day 1714
Harry sat on the couch to my right, close enough that our knees touched as Hillary--the woman Amanda had recommended--smiled politely at the two of us.
I wondered if she’d ever done any celebrity couples counseling before. It sounded like it could be the name of a bad reality show.
“So,” she spoke suddenly, her smile was sweet. “I think a good place to start is for both of you to tell me, in your own words, what brought you in.”
Harry nodded eagerly, his eyes flashing to mine in an attempt to encourage me to speak. I figured--if only because I was the one to initiate this--that I should at least set the stage.
“Uh, sure, yeah,” I shrugged. “We met in 2012, and we started dating right away, really. And we dated for three years, and then we broke up.” I looked to Harry, almost to ensure he didn’t have anything to add. When he nodded, I continued.
“I wasn’t doing too well, like, the year leading up to our break up, and when we did, I went to treatment in Tennessee, and so we didn’t speak for a year and a half, and now we’re--” I cut myself off, wondering how to label the relationship between us.
The boy next to me on the couch was someone who had been my best friend, my confidant, and someone who I thought was the love of my life. As far as I was concerned, he still had the ability to be all of those things, but I wondered if labeling him as anything right now was appropriate.
“We’re trying to work things out,” he said.
Hillary nodded, her hair was tied up in a pony-tail and she seemed to focus intently on both of us as we spoke. She nodded slightly, “and was it a mutual decision to end the relationship?”
Harry shook his head slowly. “No, I ended it,” I said quietly.
“Did you want the relationship to end?” She brought her eyes to Harry, who was now tracing a circle on the black denim of his pants.
He shifted uncomfortably and let out a small laugh. “No--I, uh, I would have stayed together, absolutely. But things weren’t really going well.”
“What do you mean they weren’t going well?”
Harry pursed his lips in thought and I checked the clock. Fifty-six minutes left.
“We were very distant, I think, and I knew that something was really...wrong with Margot--but I didn’t know what to do about it.”
Hillary nodded thoughtfully and turned her attention towards me. “Does that feel accurate to you, Margot? That you were distant?”
I nodded. “I think I felt distant from everyone and everything.”
“Did you tell Harry that?”
“No.”
Another nod from Hillary and another uncomfortable shift from Harry.
“So what are some goals in terms of being here, together? Have you talked at all about that amongst yourselves? Have you ever been to therapy before, Harry?”
He nodded and tugged at his lower lip, which caught me off guard.
“You have?” I asked him suddenly, the surprise evident in my voice.
“Yeah--I went a few times in December of that year. With you and Zayn and the band and everything, it felt like a good time.”
It wasn’t that I was totally shocked--I mean, Harry had always been one to reflect and want to talk about things. If anything, it was more the thought that I had fucked him up enough that he felt like he needed therapy.
“You look like you didn’t know that, Margot,” Hillary prodded, a small smile tugging at her mouth.
I shook my head. “I didn’t.”
“We didn’t exactly talk for a while,” Harry shrugged simply, his words not meant to hurt, but they strung a bit as he ran a hand through his short hair. Translation: you don’t know things about my life because you left.
“You asked about goals,” I changed the subject, bringing my eyes back to Hillary. “I think for me it’s learning how to communicate better. I don’t think we ever did too well with that.”
Hillary nodded, moving her eyes to Harry to see if he had any input.
“I would agree with that. And I’m leaving soon--for tour--which feels like incredibly bad timing.”
“Most things are,” Hillary smiled sympathetically, her eyes darting between us.
Harry reached a hand out and placed it on my knee. “But I hope that we can handle it.”
THEN - Day 1449
“This place is huge,” Niall looked around the foyer, taking his sunglasses off of his face to admire the tall ceilings.
I shrugged nonchalantly--definitely proud of my house, but more excited to have one of my best friends in the same state for a minute. Niall and I would FaceTime, meet for lunch, text back and forth--all the while pretending that my relationship with his bandmate, his best friend, hadn’t gone south as the colder air came into New York that year.
“It’s beautiful, Marg. When did you move in?”
“I did it kind of slowly over the spring. Officially been here since March, really.”
He dropped his keys on the console table and then put his hands on his hips. “Does it feel better?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean--you know, new start, space from him?”
Fuck. If there was anyone who’d be able to see through me, it was Niall. Sure, Sinead and my mom and Maya and some other close enough people in my circle knew that buying a new house was a good way to find that space. It was a good way to start fresh, move away from the memories and towards a future that was--decidedly--Harry free.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Still haven’t heard from him?”
“No, Niall.” I walked towards the kitchen and he followed me in. He took a seat at the island, watching as I took out some tea for him. “You don’t have to keep asking.”
“I’m just askin’ ‘cause he asks about you every time I talk to him. Asks what you’re up to and what you’re doin’. He’s just as much of a mess as he was at the end of the year.”
I was thankful to have my back to him--that way he didn’t see the fact that I had to pause and collect myself before responding. What was I supposed to say to that? Was I supposed to admit to Niall that I fucked up and that I missed him? Surely that wouldn’t change the last nine months.
“Sorry--m’not tryin’ t’be annoying. Just--” he trailed off, and when I turned around, he offered an apologetic smile.
“Just what?”
He shrugged, running a hand through his hair. He’d been dying it for years, but it was less blonde now than it was in the band. “I just think you two can get through this.”
I braced myself on the counter, leaning forward to let him know I was serious. “He hasn’t called me, Niall. He can ask you as many questions as he wants--but if he really was curious, he’d ask me himself.”
I think he disagreed with me--the quick eye roll as he stood from the stool told me that he did. I turned back around to make the tea, hoping that one of us would find a new topic for our friendship.
Niall knew me just as well as Harry in some ways. And in others, he knew me better. He didn’t have the added stress of being my boyfriend, but he still got to see me at my worst and now he saw me in the current stage of rebuild. He stood by throughout all of it, which was more than I could say for Harry.
“Look at this, by the way,” he turned his phone to show me a picture of a blonde-haired baby. “Freddie’s almost 8 months.”
I smiled at the photo--I hadn’t met the baby, but I knew Niall had. “How’s Louis doing with it?”
He shrugged his shoulders and clicked his phone shut. “Dunno--alright I guess. Busy and whatnot. Have you spoken to him?”
I let out a quick laugh. NIall was the only one to actually keep in touch. Sure, Liam had reached out to wish me a Merry Christmas and a happy birthday after his initial text when I was in rehab, but Louis had only sent a “hope all is well x” text when I got back from Tennessee.
And I couldn’t be mad, really. They were his friends. I was lucky that Niall and I were still as close throughout all of it. He’d made it clear that he took my side--not because he hated Harry or anything like that--really it was because he knew I needed the help and he cared enough to make sure I got it.
He was the one to FaceTime me when I got home before Christmas and he was the one who talked to me late at night on the phone when I felt like my lungs were caving in without someone beside me in bed.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone but you, doofus. They all hate me.”
He smiled at this--likely somewhat smug about the fact that he’d always been my favorite. I wondered, though, if he felt at all bad for me. A lot of people decided a stint in rehab was too much to handle.
“They don’t hate you,” he shook his head, waving off my statement as if it were completely false. “Liam’s been with his mum and dad a lot, Louis has the baby, and I mean, Zayn hates all of us so--don’t wait around for him to call you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Zayn kind of did hate all of us. He’d been so quick to leave and so quick to take a strong stance against the band that I don’t think I ever expected to speak to him again--especially if I didn’t have Harry as a reason to do so.
Niall’s phone buzzed on the counter in between us, I looked down quickly to see an obnoxious picture of Harry light up the screen. His name scrolled across and seemed to stare up at me. Niall looked up at me quickly and seemed to hesitate.
“No, you--you can take it, if you want. It’s fine.”
“Nah, all good. He’s fine. Dunno what it’s about.”
“Niall, it’s fine. I’ll go outside.”
“It’s your house,” he reminded me.
“Then you go outside.”
“No, Margot, it’s fine. M’not gettin’ it.” He clicked the phone to silent and I watched as the screen went black.
It struck me as strange, really, that buttons on a phone stood between us. I could undo the days apart with one phone call or one text. A quick dial of the familiar number that I’d memorized so long ago--and his voice could be in my ear. The distance between us--the months of pretending like I didn’t miss him--would be gone. Undone as if there’d been a bow tied around our past lives. But then again, I couldn’t undo it at all.
NOW - Day 1718
It was his last night before he left to go back on tour. His last night of living in this private fantasy world with me--hidden away in Malibu as if we didn’t have the public to answer to. He’d wanted to go to a nice dinner, but instead, I suggested we bring a nice dinner to us.
He’d ordered a chef, let me pick out the menu, and so we sat on the deck of my house drinking pinot noir and a salad as we waited for the main dish.
He was excited for tour and I was excited for him--but we both seemed to dance around the topic that he was leaving and I was staying. A reversed version of the past. He got to run away this time--and I think both of us knew that if he wanted to, he could do just that.
I was hopeful that he wouldn’t, that he’d listen to the words that Hillary had said. That he’d take it seriously and come back in two weeks and we could meet with her again. I think it was important.
But my mind seemed stuck on words he’d said earlier as I slid the half eaten tomato on my plate towards the edge, watching as Harry pushed his sunglasses up on his nose.
Of course, due to the fact that we hadn’t been intimate in a year and a half, we both felt like we’d had catching up to do. Harry had sat on the couch as we watched TV and told me, you’re the only person who’s made me feel so at home.
I knew I wasn’t the only person Harry had slept with. I knew about the girl he dated in high school before the band, I knew about the two women he’d told me about during his first year in the public eye. And if that was all that had happened, that made me number four.
But now, with eighteen months between us, I didn’t know if there had been a five or a six or even a seven and eight.
The reality of my relationship with Harry was that there were always people throwing themselves at him. One of our first--and biggest--fights was about different meet and greet photos I’d seen of him kissing girls on the cheek. Call it stupid, but at 19, it made me feel terribly insecure to realize that there were tons of girls out there that didn’t really respect our relationship.
And maybe that was selfish of me--maybe it was asking too much of his fans to not want to touch him and hug him and press their lips to his skin. Maybe I was taking it personally and maybe I was overreacting. But one thing I’d learned in therapy was that if I felt it--it was there. There wasn’t really much use running from it.
Harry was only the second person I’d slept with. And it didn’t matter to me that our numbers didn’t match--what mattered was that we got to a point where I was the last person he slept with and vice versa.
He cleared his throat across the table. He could tell that I was thinking--and so far, we’d done a good job of trying to communicate more when I felt the need to pull back. That made sense, right? If the problem the last time around was that I was too in my head, maybe being more verbal would do the trick.
“Y’alright, love?” he picked up his wine glass and took a sip, smiling as the chef came to deliver our entrees.
I thanked him quickly, switching my salad plate for one that looked more satiating, but then brought my eyes back to Harry. “Uh--I just,” I blew a breath of air out of my lips, giving myself a silent pep talk to verbalize my emotions and fears--if only for the good of our relationship. “You made that comment earlier when we talked about,” I shrugged slightly, feeling awkward discussing our sex life with a chef and a few other catering staff within earshot.
“Having sex?” He asked, his voice somewhat hushed so as to not draw attention, but a playful smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, only making me more anxious and uncomfortable holding in the thought.
“Have you had sex with anyone since we broke up?”
He sat across from me, his face hesitant and his eyes were locked on mine as if the world had stopped turning. For a second, the only sound was a bird overhead and the water beneath us.
“Margot, I--” he let out a sigh, setting his fork down on the table. I couldn’t tell if he was mad--he didn’t look it. He looked tired and confused and unsure. “I was going to tell you. I thought maybe you...assumed because of the lyric.”
“The lyric?” I asked him, my voice barely coming out above a whisper--the reality settling into my bones that the answer was clearly yes.
He let out another sigh, breaking eye contact for a minute as he recited the words that he--apparently--knew so well. “Woke up the girl who looked just like you,” he didn’t finish the last line, but he didn’t need to.
I nodded, trying to process the flood of thoughts and feelings that seemed to clog my brain. Could I be mad at him for sleeping with someone when I’d been the one to leave? Could I be mad at him for trying to move on and forget about me?
I stood from the table, our uneaten plates and the half-drank wine glasses clinked when I slid my chair in with force. “I need a minute.”
“Margot,” he said my name again, this time with more anger. He stood from the chair and when I turned to face him again, he stalled. He looked like he wanted to move, to speak, but like he couldn’t find the words.
“I’m allowed be to upset by that.” I said the words confidently. I didn’t say if I deserved it, I didn’t say that he shouldn’t have done it--I said that I was allowed to be upset.
“At that point I thought you’d never come back,” he nodded, his voice more calm. “I thought that that--meaningless sex--would be the rest of my life. I didn’t know that this could be a thing and I didn’t know that you were even thinking about me.”
I shook my head, still unsure of what to say--so I said the truth. “I was thinking about you every day.”
He closed his eyes for a second, as if it would give him the retreat he needed. “I know that now.”
“Who was she?”
He broke eye contact at this, he reached a hand up to rub his neck and he pushed his lips out in thought. Was it someone I knew?
He shrugged and shook his head, bringing his eyes back up to mean mine again. “I think her name was Katie,” he said.
“You think?” My voice was more angry now, my heart beating faster as I thought about his legs intertwined with someone else’s. Did he kiss her forehead like he did with me? Did he give her the lazy smirk that always seemed to follow a mutual finish?
“She was someone in Jamaica, Margot, okay? I don’t know who she is and I only saw her once and I was incredibly drunk.” His arms lifted and then fall against his side in a show of emotion. “She was staying at a resort with friends and I never spoke to her again.” His voice was raw, and when he finished his sentence, he swallowed and licked his lips. “Did you sleep with anyone?”
“No,” I said quickly, my mind instantly retracing the steps from my room in Tennessee to the group room where I kissed Andrew. We didn’t have sex--in fact, we never moved beyond making out in a supply closet--but I didn’t feel the need to explain all of it to Harry in this moment.
He nodded, not pushing me any further. How was I supposed to have a romantic night with him now? How was I supposed to send him off on tour and feel like this was a good idea? How was I supposed to trust that each and every girl in the audience wasn’t an opportunity for him to put more distance between us.
And here I was--the girl who’d spent the last year and a half thinking she’d been the one to ruin everything. I was blaming myself for the downfall of our relationship and everything that seemed connected. Yet he’d been the one to put the nail in the coffin.
“Margot,” he took a step forward, causing me to look up at him hesitantly. “I’m sorry. I was hurt and confused and I was willing to do anything that would make me forget you.”
Maybe it was a stupid question to ask, but I couldn’t help myself. “Did it? Did you forget about me?”
He let out a sad laugh, his eyes on the deck beneath our feet. “No--that’s why it was so stupid. When I woke up in the morning and she was still there I went and cried in the bathroom. Then I got my shit together and told her to leave.”
A strange feeling of comfort washed over me with that--the thought and image of him feeling so empty and broken--just like I had been. But it didn’t fix it. It didn’t change the story and it certainly didn’t change the aching in my chest.
“I don’t want you to stay here tonight.”
“Margot,” he said my name in a sigh, his eyes searching my face desperately--begging me to take it back and not send him away and lock him out again. “What are you feeling? Please just tell me what you’re feeling.”
“I’m fucking angry!” I yelled now--unperturbed by the chef and the two servers who were loitering just inside my house. “That was always my fear, Harry. I was always worried that eventually you’d realize you had all these people willing to fuck you whenever you wanted that dealing with me and my brokenness would just get old. But it sounds like it did!”
“No, Margot, don’t turn it into that,” he said, his voice more angry and stern as he looked up at the sky. “You’re the one who walked out. You’re the one who gave up and left and you’re the one who backed out of this.”
I shook my head--I wasn’t willing to have the same conversation about how everything fell apart. We’d both lived it--we both knew what happened. But, when I brought my eyes back up to him, I suddenly felt like there was more to say. Like I had the words to explain how I’d been feeling in the summer of 2015 when everything around me seemed to be spiraling out of control.
“Because I was fucking terrified, Harry, okay? The band was splitting up and I was supposed to release another album and do another tour and there were still all these people in our business and all these girls who hated me for no reason and I was terrified that if I didn’t back out first, you would.”
He seemed to pull back, the anger on his face was gone and his expression softened, apparently this was news to him. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
I let out a sigh, feeling guilty for all the things I’d done wrong. The list only seemed to grow.
“Because I didn’t tell anyone anything.”
Harry hung his head and walked to sit back down at the table. He pushed his plate away from him, before reaching for the glass of wine and taking a sip. He swallowed, reached up to wipe at his lips, and then spoke.
“I would take it back, if I could. If I could go back in time I’d change a lot of things,” he laughed sarcastically. “But I would certainly change the fact that I had sex with someone in an attempt to get over you. But I was feeling pretty desperate.”
I took a deep breath, unsure of where to go from here. How was he supposed to get on a plane tomorrow and spend two weeks away from me? How were we supposed to keep in touch and decipher the past when his life was moving full steam ahead?
He looked up at me from his seat at the table. “I know you want to walk away right now. I know you’re angry and upset--but please, come and sit down.”
I stared at him--slightly bothered by the fact that he knew me well enough to know my exact thoughts.
“Don’t put up another wall,” he said, “we’ve got enough to take down.”
We were both drunk--I held her up around my waist and kept her back against the wall. We were completely clothed, both of our mouths moving impatiently against the other’s.
It’d been a while, really. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks and the last time I saw her we were so busy we didn’t even have sex. This struck me as one of the biggest misconceptions about celebrity life--there was some kind of idea that if you were attractive and rich and famous, you were undoubtedly getting laid all the time.
So far this summer hadn’t been shaping out like that at all.
I moved my hands to grip around her thighs a bit better, almost dropping her in the process. She let out a laugh against my face and I paused to catch my breath.
She hadn’t sounded this happy in a long time.
She let out a sigh, both of us taking a second to let our heart beats steady. I let her slide back down to the floor, the heels she had on hitting the floor with a click.
Whatever hotel room we were in was nice--the separate bedroom was a real sign of class. Sometimes we ended up in cities where even the nicest rooms felt cramped.
“I’m tired,” she said, leaning against the wall as she reached out a hand to pull at my shirt.
“Me too,” I said, my words somewhat slurred from the drinks we’d had at an afterparty for her drummer’s birthday.
“Sometimes I think,” she paused, blinking a few times and swallowing. She was smiling, but she brought a hand up to her face to wipe at the mascara that had smudged beneath her eyes. “Sometimes I think I want to quit.”
“Quit?” I asked--my brain had trouble processing her words. I had no clue what she meant--my mind was definitely on the fact that there were still at least four layers of clothing between us.
“Just stop making music and take a fucking break,” she laughed a little, shrugging her shoulders.
I licked at my lips and took in the sight of her. She was smaller than she was before--she claimed that the weight she’d lost had been due to the running around on stage she did on her tour. She had circles under her eyes, even with the make up, and she blinked a few times before she cut me off.
“I think something’s wrong with me,” she said quietly, her words seemingly strung together by the alcohol in her system.
“Are you going to get sick?” I asked, reaching for her hand to lead her to the toilet if need be.
“No,” she shook her head, suddenly upset that I didn’t seem to understand. I told myself to focus, now wasn’t the time to become markedly more drunk than I’d been three seconds ago. “I mean I think I’m--broken.”
“You’re not broken, lovie,” I laughed a little, stepping closer to her. I pressed a kiss to her hair and wrapped my arms around her. We swayed for a second, the emotion and the alcohol making things take longer to process.
“I just don’t feel right anymore,” she said.
“You are right,” I told her. “You’re okay.”
I believed it. I said it because I wanted her to be okay. I wanted her to be happy and love me and love our life and be excited for whatever vacation we’d take in the fall. I wanted us to be okay.
It was rare now for her to be as giggly as she’d been tonight. Normally she wasn’t up for company and didn’t really like doing much when we had time together. Instead we’d watch movies or cook dinner and just hang out. Tonight she was happy and bubbly and drunk, and the three were probably all tied together.
She nodded--I didn’t know if I had said the right thing or not. But instead of asking more questions, instead of remembering it in the morning when we woke up, I simply kissed her and hoped that sex would make her forget whatever was making her so sad.
I don’t think that worked.
NOW - 1701
“I didn’t enjoy hurting you, just so you know. I didn’t like breaking your heart.”
“I didn’t say you did,” I looked at her closely. “But I still don’t really understand why you left.”
She let a sigh escape her lips and she moved her eyes across the room, almost as if she were contemplating her next move in our verbal game of chess.
“You really want to get into this, now?”
I wanted anything she’d say, really. I wanted to hear her words, her thoughts. Anything was more than she gave me that night and more she gave me in the last year of our relationship, so really, I’d take anything from her.
“We haven’t ever gotten into it. I can’t read your mind. I wish I could.”
“You don’t,” she said quickly. The look on her face was angry and sad at the same time. I figured I should rephrase the statement--It seemed to work last time.
I let out a slow breath. “I wish I knew what happened to us.”
She thought on this for a second, her eyes out the window, as if she were watching the waves crash a mile up the shore. “I wish I knew what happened to me.”
Her words hit me with more force than expected. What had happened to her? It felt comforting--in a way--that she didn’t quite know either, but the silence in the kitchen as the kettle whistled felt awkward and sad and broken.
She poured water into two mugs, dipped the tea bags in, and then slid one towards me on the counter. I waited to speak until she handed me the milk and honey--she remembered exactly how I took it.
“I could have helped you.”
She stirred a spoon in her mug and kept her eyes trained on the water inside. “People can’t save each other, Harry. That’s not how it works.”
“I said ‘help,’” I corrected.
“I know what you said.”
I held my breath for a second, wrapping my hands around the mug of tea. “I loved you, I just wanted to help.”
She took a deep breath for a second, it reminded me to breathe on my own. In, out, in, out.
She brought her eyes to mine after a few seconds and spoke. “I know. But you couldn’t have. I left because it was something I needed to do alone,” she shrugged and let out a small laugh. “I ruined your summer--I ruined our relationship. I didn’t want you to get taken down with the ship.”
I didn’t know that was how she felt--I didn’t know that the girl who needed saving thought she was saving me by, well, jumping ship.
“You weren’t going to take me down,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. It took everything I had to keep my eyes on her and to not let tears form. Emotion might freak her out. I needed more information.
She shook her head, “I already had, Harry. Everything in your life that summer became about me and making sure I was okay. Everyone’s life revolved around me. That wasn’t fair.”
I didn’t know what to say. In a way, she was right. Everything did revolve around her. My life, Sinead’s life, Nick’s life. Her family, our friends. The sun seemed to rise and set with her and whether or not she wanted it, that’s the way it was. I only wished I could have known how she was feeling in the moment.
If I had known that there was a thing, a name for the way she felt, I would have done something. If I had known that people had diagnosable anxiety disorders, I would have done anything to keep her above water.
“I’m sorry you felt so alone,” I stared at her, but her eyes were back on the mug in her hands, now. “I didn’t know what you needed and I didn’t know how to ask.”
She laughed a little at this, offering a small smile when she finally brought her eyes to meet mine. “I also lied and said I didn’t need any.”
I shrugged, a smirk coming onto my lips. “There’s that too.”
We were both quiet for a second--I sat at the island and drank my tea, she stared out the window at the waves that crashed on the sand. For a moment, it didn’t feel like we were strangers.
“Do you think your fans will hate me?”
I looked up at her, my mug raised to my lips when she spoke. I swallowed, set it down, and then tugged at my lower lip, pondering her question. “Dunno--they’ll not be pleased, I’m sure.”
She stared down at the counter, almost as if she was waiting for me to say more. I wondered if she actually cared what they thought--she seemed to be in a much different place than she was before she left.
She seemed somewhat worried as she bit at her lip.
“I don’t want them to, just so you know,” I laughed a little, watching and waiting for her to make eye contact. “That’s not the point of my album.”
She raised her eyebrows as if to acknowledge the mention of my album. “I know, but, they will. I was a dick.”
That was one way to put it. She was hurt and sad and sick, really. She was also mean and insensitive and irresponsible. Hearing her admit it didn’t seem as satisfying as I had always imagined. I’d sit in Jamaica by the pool at night, listening to all of the noises from the jungle. I’d listen and wonder where she was, who she was with, what she was thinking.
I wondered how she’d ever address it if I were to see her again. Here, in her kitchen in Malibu, the words didn’t quite calm the sadness I’d felt for so long. Instead, they almost made it worse.
“I’m sorry I didn’t explain why I broke up with you,” she said.
I nodded, another pause of silence passed between us as I fished for words to say in response. She was sorry--at least, that’s what she said. The words coming out of her mouth felt like they were eighteen months too late. Because they sort of were. “I appreciate that.”
She kept her eyes on me and I watched, slowly, as a smirk crept onto her face. “You’re supposed to say ‘I’m sorry I wrote a whole album about you being a dick.’”
Margot. That was her. In a split second with a mug of tea in her hands and a light blue sweater that matched her eyes--she was the girl I knew and loved. “Right,” I laughed. “I meant that.”
THEN - Day 673
I laid on the comforter of the bed that seemed too hard to sleep on. I could hear Niall’s voice in the room beside mine as my phone rang, her name scrolled across my screen. Eventually, she answered. I had no idea what time it was for her.
“Hi!” I said, the smile on my face proving my excitement. We’d texted a bit over the last few days but we’d yet to connect on facetime. She was in Australia--or maybe New Zealand. Somewhere far away.
“I miss you,” she smiled into the phone, skipping any sort of greeting. “But I have huge news.”
“What is it?” I asked, my brows furrowing together. I couldn’t help but feel my stomach sink. Margot wasn’t one for surprises or big news.
“Maya has a boyfriend!”
“Maya has a boyfriend?” I repeated the words to make sure I’d heard her correctly. God only knew how many miles were between us, threatening to mess with the signal.
She nodded--she was stood on a balcony of her hotel, the sky was blue behind her and every once in a while when she moved, I could see the edge of a palm tree. It was much different than the terrain here in Germany. “His name is Jake.”
“How American,” I let out a groan. It wasn’t that this Jake kid wasn’t nice--I’m sure he was. But I couldn’t help it--Maya was only 14. She was definitely too nice to boys and I didn’t know if Ben would be on the lookout to actually scope this kid out.
“Don’t be a dick about it,” she shook her head at me and smirked, displeased with my reaction.
“I’m sorry I love you so much that I care about your sister,” I said into the phone, giving her just as much attitude in response. “We have Maya to thank for even knowing each other. I owe her one.”
“You owe my fourteen-year-old sister nothing. You owe me an update on your life,” she said. “Go.”
“Nothing, really.” I adjusted on the bed and tried to trace over the last few days. “Show yesterday was good. We perform here tomorrow.”
“Where’s here again?”
“Frankfurt.”
“Right.”
She didn’t know. I didn’t mind. I knew she was somewhere in the South Pacific.
“How are you?” I asked, knowing the response I’d get. She seemed to sway back and forth on the balcony--every once in a while the sun made her squint.
“I’m fine,” she said quickly, offering a smile.
“How are you really?”
She let out a sigh, rolling her eyes at me but letting out a laugh after. “I’m okay. I’m tired and I miss you but I’ll see you in 8 days.”
“That feels like forever away,” I said, rolling onto my back. I took the phone with me, holding it above my head.
“It’ll be here before we know it. Then we have three days together.”
“That’s nothing,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to be negative--we were lucky we got anything. This time of year--summer--was always the hardest. Touring, recording, meet and greets, radio promo. We were both extremely busy and she barely had a minute to talk to me on the phone.
There was silence for a minute, her face faltered, but then she smiled again. “I wish you were here,” she said.
A verbal postcard. When she said that, it felt possible.
NOW - Day 1705
It was a sunny California day when I woke to the sound of my phone ringing. It was Jeff--no doubt--but I didn’t feel quite ready to listen to whatever he had to say. It’d be good news, for sure. The album’s number something on the charts, so and so’s review went live, so many downloads.
It wasn’t that I was sure my album would be a success. In fact, it almost felt like the opposite. I was sure, in a way, that it wouldn’t live up to what people expected. I almost knew it wouldn’t.
Most people expected One Direction. They expected 14 songs, pop anthems. That’s why we chose the single we did.
But instead of my head necessarily being on those topics, it was somewhere else. I sat up and let my feet hit the floor, reaching for my now silent phone. I grabbed it, unlocked it, and peered through the 17 texts I had. Each from various people congratulating me for the release. The one person missing, though, was Margot.
I decided, against better judgment, to plug my own name into the search bar in the safari app. As suspected, pictures of me and Margot seemed to clog the feed. Different headlines, different pictures of the girl I once knew so well.
Harry’s relationship tell-all is sure to reach Margot Jones.
Vulnerable and raw, Harry’s new album is not what we thought it’d be.
Margot Jones, singer, songwriter, heartbreaker?
I knew it’d happen, I warned her that it would. I pictured her doing something similar, waking up, reading messages from people, seeing the headlines. And that thought, really, made me worry that all the progress we’d made in the last week would be undone.
Naturally, rationally, obviously, I drove to her house.
I knocked on the door twice after ringing the doorbell--it only took four deep breaths until she opened it. The look on her face was one of surprise, but not in a bad way.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably in response to the fact that she was wearing only a t-shirt. She definitely wasn’t expecting me.
“Morning to you, too,” I smirked, sunglasses covering my eyes. I wasn’t dressed more appropriately than she was, per se, I was clad in athletic shorts and a t-shirt. I guess the main difference is that I was wearing pants and she wasn’t. She was lucky that her front door was so far from the street.
She crossed her arms over her chest as if to hide her lack of clothing even more, causing me to let out a bit of a laugh. “Margot,” I raised my sunglasses and let them rest on top of my head. “I’ve seen it all before.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled a bit. “Still wondering why you’re here.”
“Right,” I said quickly, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I’m going to be on Jimmy Kimmel tonight, d’ya want to come?”
“To Jimmy Kimmel?”
I nodded and waited for her response. She probably thought I was crazy--maybe I was. All I knew was that things felt okay, things felt good. And I didn’t want the fact that I wrote a relationship tell-all to ruin it. Maybe that was selfish. She always called me that.
“Uh,” she scrunched her nose in confusion and rubbed at her eyes, “I don’t think that’s smart.”
I ran a hand through my hair, expelling the breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Can I come in?”
She seemed caught off guard by this, but something about her standing in her underwear at the front door seemed less appropriate than me entering her home. “Sure.”
She seemed to hesitate once the door was shut--I couldn’t blame her for the feelings of uncertainty. We were two people who knew each other’s deepest secrets and worst fears, yet now, in the foyer of her house on the day my album about her was released, we might as well have been strangers.
“Do you want tea? Or breakfast? I haven’t eaten.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, bringing my wandering eyes back to her. I’d taken a minute to look, really look, at the rest of her house. The living room had art on the walls, books on the coffee table. A guitar on the couch. “Yeah, sure, I could eat.”
I followed her towards the kitchen and reached over her head when she opened the cabinet to find pancake mix.
“I’ll make it. Just sit,” I said, nodding to the stool at the island. She seemed to back away slowly, looking over the sight in her kitchen as if it might not be real. It almost felt like it wasn’t.
“Nice day out,” I said once she sat, pouring the milk into a measuring cup I’d grabbed from the drawer.
She didn’t respond. Instead, I felt her eyes watch as I moved to the fridge to retrieve an egg. I cracked it over the bowl, reaching quickly for the sticky spill that landed on the counter. I looked over my shoulder--that was one of the things that would garner an eye roll, I was sure of it. She just watched, and I let out a laugh at the look on her face--she knew what I was thinking. She knew I thought she’d be annoyed by that.
I reached for a whisk and almost said something. I almost said I was sorry, I almost said I was lonely, I almost told her I missed her. The words seemed to climb up the back of my throat and onto my tongue, a mere second from slipping out, but then she spoke.
“Aren’t you busy today?”
I shook my head but didn’t look at her---I stirred the batter and scraped some of it off of the edge of the bowl. “Just this afternoon and tonight. There’s a party after the taping--I’d love if you came to that, too.”
More silence. It took everything in me to not turn around and tell her everything that had been swirling in my head for the last year and a half.
“Okay--I mean, I’ll come,” she said suddenly. The words--the agreement--made me pause. I quickly resumed stirring and felt the need to change the subject--simply out of fear of the truth that would spill out of me if I didn’t.
“What pan should I use?” I asked, my back to her as I stepped away from the counter to take inventory of the cabinets around me. I stared down at the open cabinet by my knees, scanning over each individual pot and pan to somehow gain time.
When I had made my selection and brought it to rest on the stove, her voice cracked.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked quickly, anger bubbling in her voice.
I wiped my hands on my shorts, letting out a breath. In some sick way, it was nice to see emotion on her face. I didn’t mean to upset her--I wasn’t trying to confuse her. If anything, I was desperate to keep us in a somewhat steady spot.
For the first time in eighteen months, I could think about her and not want to either punch someone or cry. For the first time in eighteen months, I could talk to her and look at her and acknowledge her right in front of me--I didn’t want her to disappear again. But I wasn’t going to say all of that.
A sympathetic smirk pulled at the corner of my mouth. “You said you liked my pancakes.”
She laughed a little, almost as if she was as unsure as I was. “I said that three years ago.”
I didn’t say anything. I stood, with the whisk in my hand, staring at her.
“I’m not the same person I was three years ago.”
I nodded. I knew she wasn’t. That was obvious. I don’t think I was, either. I took a breath and hoped for the best. “I’d like to know who you are now.”
THEN - Day 953
She stared at me in disbelief, almost as if her wide eyes would suddenly make the puzzle pieces click in my mind and spring me into action. “I can’t believe you’re being so selfish.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at this--it was her favorite insult. She threw the word around relentlessly and seemed to use it more and more lately.
“Margot, I told you about this three weeks ago. I told you that I couldn’t get out of it.”
I was seated at the island in my kitchen. Somewhere outside the windows of my house, London bustled like the Thursday morning it was. Only we had overslept, I had a video shoot to get to, and Margot was meant to be at talk show rehearsals in 30 minutes. There was no way that was happening.
Margot had gotten quieter and more distant and it was making me more angry. It’d been gradual, really. She was pulling away and at first I thought it was because we were both going on tour again and because we’d be apart. When I brought it up or asked her why she seemed off, she’d get annoyed and more quiet and I’d feel more hopeless. It was a vicious cycle.
She seemed rather unaffected by the fact that One Direction was soon to be no more. At the end of the summer we’d release a final album and call it quits. None of really knew if it was for good, but it definitely felt like it was.
I think she knew it scared the shit out of me, but I didn’t really tell her that. Instead, we spent our days in this awkward and fruitless dance of not talking about anything.
The truth of the matter was that my life was spiraling down to a halt, a roadblock and an end of something that seemed to have been the only thing I’d known. Sometimes it felt like my life would end with the band--only in the sense that it had completely consumed me for the last five years. Who was I without it?
“Well if you told me when I was at rehearsal that doesn’t count.” She had her hands on her hips in the middle of my kitchen--still clad in my t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
I dropped the spoon from my hand and heard it clink against the bowl that held my breakfast. I had a thousand things to say. What had happened to us? What did I do after the band? Would she still love me without all of the noise? Instead of asking those questions, I raised my voice in a futile attempt to let her know how freaked out I was.
“I fucking told you when we were going to the airport. Sinead was there--didn’t she write it down for you?”
“Sinead doesn’t write down everything that comes out of your mouth, you know. Believe it or not some people in the world aren’t obsessed with you.”
I scoffed at this--now we were just hurling insults and fighting to make the lowest blow. I stood from my seat and picked up my bowl, walking over to the sink to place it down. I didn’t have time for this--I didn’t have time to be talking with her about all of these things that didn’t really matter.
Her birthday mattered. Her feelings mattered. But I couldn’t change my schedule that depended on three other people. We could celebrate her birthday another day. Instead of talking about this, we should have been talking about the fact that we were growing apart and things had changed and neither of us knew why.
I turned around to face her. “You’re being so difficult. Could you not just be difficult for once?”
“How is wanting you to take my birthday off difficult? Isn’t that what boyfriends are supposed to do? Why is it always all my fault?”
“It’s not always your fault,” I told her--but the words didn’t seem completely true. I was trying--I was trying to understand what was going on between us and she was the reason I couldn’t figure it out. She wouldn’t tell me.
“You sure act like it,” she crossed her arms, her eyes challenging me to reply.
I let out a sigh, more exhausted than angry now. “Margot, I don’t make the rules. We’re booked. I’m sorry. We’ll do something for your birthday, I promise.”
“Don’t bother,” she waved me off, my words not good enough.
I let out a groan and raised my hands towards the ceiling in exasperation. I started to walk towards the stairs, unsure if we’d get anywhere right now.
“Just do that thing you always do when you fuck up--send me roses with some note written in someone else’s handwriting because you’re just so busy,” her voice rose with each word, the anger and sadness and emotion clear in her voice.
Part of me wanted to turn around, to apologize, to hold her. Part of me wanted to beg her to actually talk to me. Part of me wanted to walk out and tell her to fuck off. I’d tried. I’d done what I could. Maybe I couldn’t save us.
And because I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t respond. She was yelling at me as I climbed the stairs, she followed behind, her voice softer and not as loud when I didn’t reply.
“Fine, Harry. I’m difficult. I’m difficult and you’re selfish because you can’t say no to people and you’re too concerned with what everyone else thinks than you are with what I think. And as far as I’m concerned that’s selfish.”
I turned around quickly when I reached the stop step--my sudden movement caused her to jerk back, balancing herself with a hand on the railing.
“Alright, Margot, fine. I’m selfish. I’m selfish and a jerk and you’re perfect. You’re Margot Jones and you never do anything wrong.”
“Oh fuck you, Harry.”
“Yeah,” I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Fuck me.”
NOW - Day 1705
I think inviting Margot to the taping of Jimmy Kimmel was a bold move. I think inviting her to the afterparty was even bolder. For reasons that remain unknown, she declined the first and accepted the second. I noticed her first when I walked into the room. She was wearing a navy dress with gold shoes.
She stood in the corner with Sinead and Nick by her side--they served as protection, no doubt.
She seemed to be okay, and I did my best to act as if she wasn’t there. After all, I had people to schmooze and things to tend to. I wondered if New Margot hated this as much as Old Margot would have.
She couldn’t have completely hated it, though, because she stayed until the end. The crowd had thinned out, tables had empty champagne glasses that were still waiting to be gathered by the waiters.
“I’m surprised you stayed so long,” I said as I approached her. Nick and Sinead both excused themselves without words as I kept my hands in my pockets to steady them--I knew, likely just as well as she did, that tonight was a big deal. Her showing up somewhere for me was a big deal. Her showing up in general was a big fucking deal.
She smirked a little and raised her eyebrows almost in defeat. “Leaving early would probably just reinforce the whole ‘villain’ thing--I haven’t decided yet if that’s the comeback I want.”
I smiled at her joke, appreciative of the fact that she was here. She showed up. I don’t know why I wanted her around today, and maybe that was something I should have figured out before actually inviting her. But still--her presence simultaneously calmed me and made me on edge.
She was still Margot. Whether or not we spent time apart, whether or not she went to the moon and back, she was still the girl with a loud laugh and a stubborn attitude.
“If anyone can make a comeback--it’s you,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes at this--likely dismissing the possibility that she would, in fact, make a comeback. I had no idea what she was up to musically. I didn’t know if she’d written, I didn’t know if she’d recorded. All I knew was that I was about to get a taste of my own medicine if and when she released anything.
She leaned against the wall beside her. “I think this kind of forces me into one--being here, I mean. Pictures will be everywhere by morning.”
I shrugged--ready to tell her that I didn’t mind before I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was an executive from our old label. He shook my hand and congratulated me on a successful day and a solid album.
I wondered, for a second, if I should introduce him to Margot. He knew who she was, I was sure, but I realized that I didn’t have to. I didn’t know how. How do you introduce someone who you don’t even feel like you know?
That was the feeling that seemed to sweep its way over me when I was alone in the car or on the treadmill in the morning. This feeling of being a stranger with her didn’t seem to disappear.
We were left alone again, and instead of saying something with meaning or emotion, I waited for her to say something. It only felt fair.
“Do you want to get some dinner?”
I smiled. “Sure, yeah. Let’s go.”
THEN - Day 23
I wondered how many times I’d have to see Margot Jones before I stopped getting nervous. I tried to count, quickly, as the car pulled into her driveway, but I figured it was safe to say that I hadn’t hit it yet.
We’d been hanging out, texting, even talking on the phone, and I was still nervous about the fact that she was so famous and I was so inexperienced compared to her. Not in a sexual way, at least not that I knew of--just in the whole Hollywood thing.
Margot had been famous since she was 13. She was famous enough that my sister--in her teenage, 17-year-old glory, admitted that her TV show was popular and funny. That had to mean something.
So it was weird--as much as I tried to pretend that she wasn’t the girl who boys in year 9 drooled over back then, she was. She was extremely famous and extremely out of my league. But for some reason, she wasn’t acting like it.
I’d come over here with the intent of asking her what we were doing. How were we supposed to keep doing what we were doing if I was in London and she was in L.A. and if she had no clue what she was doing now that her show was in it’s last season. Maybe she’d let me down gently and tell me that hey, it was fun while it lasted.
She was seated on the front steps of her parents’ house when the car rounded the corner of her long driveway. She was standing on the grass of her front lawn before I could even take my sunglasses off.
She smiled a little, but I could read the look on her face. She was having the same thoughts as I was. In only two weeks I’d be back in the U.K., with no immediate plans to be in L.A. anytime soon.
“Hi,” I stood in front of her, raising my arms to wrap around her in a hug. She stuck her hands up to my chest, pushing me slightly to keep me from getting any closer. “What’s up?” I felt my eyebrows knit together, I let my hands rest on her shoulders as if to offer some sense of stability.
She looked over my shoulder and offered a wave to the driver who’d dropped me off. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
The sun was setting, just like it was the night we met when I realized that Margot Jones had a laugh loud enough to compete with Niall’s. I stared at her, unsure of her words and now, suddenly, much more confident that we could make this work. “What?”
“This,” she motioned between us. “You’re going on tour and I’ll be going on tour in May and I’ve got the show and you’re from London.”
I brought my lips together and nodded--processing what she was saying and letting it sink in. Maybe the fear in her voice was enough to make me realize how much I cared about her--how I couldn’t imagine not calling her before I went to bed and not texting her throughout the day just because I was thinking of her. I removed my hands from her shoulders and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m from London,” I nodded--hoping to just get the facts out there. “And you’re from here, and I’ll be on tour and you’ll be on tour, and I still think we should do this.”
She seemed to let out a deep breath at that, her eyes almost looked sad, as if that wasn’t what she expected to hear.
“You want to do this?”
I nodded, unsure of why she was confused.
“Even though people don’t leave me alone and want to know all of my business?”
I nodded again.
She kept her eyes on mine. “I didn’t think you would.”
I smiled a little at that--her insecurity was endearing. “Well, I do.”
“Okay,” she nodded slowly, licking at her lips. “Me too.”
NOW - Day 1705
I bit into the burger in my hands--thankful for the quiet of a fast food parking lot somewhere in La Brea. Margot, who listened to me talk about my mother and my sister and her new boyfriend, seemed to smile at me when I let my head fall against the headrest in pleasure.
“I had no idea how hungry I was,” I said through a full mouth, letting my tongue dart out to get the ketchup I could feel on my lips.
She’d suggested In N’ Out--something about the fact that this was one of the few places where we wouldn’t get mobbed by people. She seemed quiet, hesitant, almost, as if she had something to say.
“Me too,” she said, eyeing the food in front of her before taking another bite.
It was comfortable silence. Comfortable in the sense that she was the person who held my hand when my mother got married and who answered my 3am phone calls in another time zone when I was livid about Zayn leaving the band.
Something about the silence, though, felt like a ticking clock in my ears. I had a chance to get more out of her--I needed to strike while I could.
“Can I ask you a question?” I turned to look at her, my eyes searching her face for permission. She reached for her soda in the cupholder, bringing it to her lips and taking a swig as she nodded. “Do you feel like therapy has helped?”
She pulled the straw away from her mouth, clearing her throat as she set the cup back where it belonged. She stared at the display clock for a second, biting at her cheek in thought. She looked back up at me, her eyes glued to mine as if she didn’t quite know how to answer my question.
Finally, she nodded. “I like it a lot. It’s nice.”
I felt the corners of my lips pull up into a smirk--I couldn’t help but notice the brevity of her answer. That was so Margot, being short about something she felt uncomfortable talking about.
I didn’t have to say that, though, because she seemed to roll her eyes playfully before she said more--as if she could read my mind. “It was hard at first. It got worse before it got better--the anxiety, I mean. It’s like they sent me there to feel everything all at once--then it started to get easier.”
I plucked at my lower lip with my free hand, still holding my burger in the other. I wondered, for a moment, what would have happened if I had called. What would have happened if I refused to leave the hotel room that night and actually made her talk to me? The questions swirled in my gut and left me with a terrible taste in my mouth.
Margot left. Margot walked out on me and on us and she didn’t give me any warning.
But I didn’t go after her.
“I should have called.”
She lifted her head quickly and stared at me, her lips slightly parted. “What?”
“I should have called,” I said again, my eyes still on the neon sign by the parking lot entrance. I let my fingers pull at my lip--too afraid to look at her. If I did--if I looked--there was no way I was keeping all of the emotion in.
If I looked at her and told her that I fucked up, too, I was more of a jerk than I already was. I was a jerk for leaving her that night even though she told me to. I was a jerk for not calling and I was certainly a jerk for going a whole 18 months before reaching out.
I heard the crinkle of the paper bag as she set her burger down. She reached for the soda once more and took two long sips. I brought my eyes to her now, and I stared at her, I realized just how broken she was. She may have been the girl who walked away and who didn’t look back, but she was also the girl who was falling apart before my eyes--the girl that I didn’t know how to help.
Her voice pulled me out of my own head.
“I know I was the one who left,” she said slowly, just like she did before she cried. I knew this voice--I knew it well. “But I needed you. And I know it’s my fault because I didn’t let you help, but I’m mad that you didn’t try harder.”
Her words made my heart sink--her words confirmed the thoughts I had and the feeling I was getting, and I didn’t know how to communicate that I was mad, too.
I shook my head, letting out a sigh. “I just wanted you to tell me what was wrong.”
“I didn’t know what was wrong,” she said quickly, her voice barely above a whisper. “I had no clue what was happening--all I knew was that I was miserable and everyone else wasn’t and I felt like if I told anyone everything would implode.”
I averted my eyes--the tears welling in them stung and made my head hurt. “You could have told me--I would have done anything to help you.”
She wiped at her own eyes, smearing the water across her cheeks as she sat, angled towards me in a car she bought for my birthday. “I wasn’t at a place to do that. I wish I had been.”
I was quiet now, my eyes back on the clock once more as the colon between the numbers flashed with every second. I couldn’t help but think back to the things I’d noticed--the things I didn’t address.
The circles under her eyes, the anxious look on her face. The way she jumped when I touched her and the way she stopped saying I love you.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you.”
I brought my eyes up to her now, waiting for her to say more.
She let out a shaky breath and let her chin rest in her hand. “I’m sorry I kept you out and didn’t ask for help--I should have let you. I’m sorry I backed out because I was afraid.”
I nodded--the words that left her mouth were the words I’d hoped to hear. They were the words that kept me up at night and the ones that swirled in the bottom of my shower drain when I stood under hot water and wondered where she was. I brought my hands up to my eyes, pressing against them firmly as if it would stop the tears from forming--but then, I laughed.
“It’s so stupid--” I said, removing my hands from my face and staring out at the parking lot again. Here we sat, with months and years and words and stories between us. This was the most honest we’d ever been--yet there were still eighteen months of life that were untouched. Clean, pristine, Margot free. I didn’t want them to be that way.
She shifted nervously. “What is?”
“The fact that I’m still so in love with you after all of this time.”
A car drove into the parking lot and pulled up the drive through window. My album was out. Everyone--after my eighteen Margot free months--knew our story. It wasn’t just ours anymore. It wasn’t the words she said and the things she did--it was open to interpretation. It was in the hands of other people. Our hearts were in their hands.
“I’ve been so angry and so sad and still so in love with you.” I brought my eyes to hers now, my face straight and expressionless--she looked confused, but she nodded.
“I thought it’d go away, y’know? I thought if I just didn’t talk to you and didn’t see you it would just stop and I’d move on,” I let out another laugh--deciding it wasn’t the right time to tell her about the girl--the Margot look alike, as Jeffrey had deemed her--from Jamaica.
That would come out eventually--I pushed the thought to the back of my head. Maybe she’d been with someone else, too. The thought made me silent.
“Why did you tell me about the single--why did you reach out?” Her eyes were on mine and they looked hopeful.
I blew air between my lips and shrugged, resting my head in my hand on the side of the door. “I figured I should--I mean, I knew it was going to get a reaction out of people and I knew you’d get questions.”
She didn’t say anything. I figured I’d tell her the whole truth.
“I also thought maybe you’d respond and I’d get to find out how you were doing.”
She smiled at this--she wore a raincoat over her dress. Her hair, which had previously been curled and down past her shoulders, was now pulled back in a ponytail. The make up around her eyes was now smudged and smeared.
“When I moved to Malibu, I would drive by Geoffrey’s when you were in town just to see if you’d be there. I’d see something online about you being in L.A. and I’d just drive by--just kind of hoping that maybe we’d run into each other.”
I smirked at her--thankful for the feeling that we could joke. “I don’t think it’s running into each other when you’re stalking me.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a Margot Jones snort. “That’s endearing, you asshole.”
I laughed again, bringing a finger to my lips and holding it there. She kept her eyes on me, and I wanted to ask if she’d listened to the last song. I thought about the Jamaican trees with the leaves that turned inside out when it rained--I thought about my nights by the pool when everyone else was asleep.
I thought about the morning after she broke up with me and the seconds up until now--each one less painful, despite the fact that my love for her never faltered. I thought about the fact that we were sitting in my car, the engine still running, with cold burgers now sitting on top of grease-stained paper bags.
“You should have called,” she said quietly, “but I also shouldn’t have left to begin with.”
