It Takes Patience
Chapter 38: Time Bomb
*Reagan’s POV*
This morning like so many others before, I lied in bed awake before my alarm went off. I set it to give myself a good hour and a half to mentally prepare before I had to meet up with Harry at the café. Today is going to be hard for me. I had just only learned how to act around Harry and now since his confession there awkwardness in the air. I think of everything that could possibly go wrong today while talking to him. What if ask the wrong thing and he gets angry again? What if he makes a scene in the café like the one that he made at Gemma’s graduation party? What if you’re too weak? My focused side adds in the last bit and though I want to dismiss it, it is a valid question. What if I am too weak to deal with him on a strictly professional level? There is something about Harry that breaks me and takes me away from my usual character. I have never been one to beg for a guy to touch me, lie to my friends about who I’m seeing, or question talking to other guys so that I can give my full attention to just one. Before I could make a break through on myself, my alarm shrieked making me jump and making Channel get pissy.
“What in the actual fuck REA-TARD?! Turn it off! Please?!” I laugh at Channel’s expense and turn of the alarm before I get out of bed.
“Where are you going anyway Rea?” I look back at Channel and cringe because I forgot to tell her about my meeting. Anything Harry related is a touchy subject for us right now. The first thing that comes to mind is to lie, but lying to her was worse than telling the truth.
“Just to the café up the street for a few hours, I have to meet up with Harry and tie up loose ends so that I can start writing my analysis paper on him.” I wait for a snide comment or a nasty look from her, but instead I see sympathy in her eyes.
“Sorry you have to face him. Do you want me to come? I can sit away from you guys but close enough for you if you need me in case he pulls any shit.” I look at Channel and smile. Even though it would be comforting for her to be there and it would make me stronger, I’m sure that I wouldn’t get the real truth from H. if he knew that someone else was there with us.
“No, thank you though. When I’m a Psychiatrist I can’t have you there sitting in on my sessions with me. I can handle it.” I think.
“Yeah but this is different Rea. Hopefully you won’t be fucking other patients. Speaking of sex did Laurie tell you about her and Niall?!” I bite my tongue and take Channels joke even though it was a low blow, and turn my head in shock at the mention of Niall and Laurie. I’ve been so caught up in my own mess that I haven’t even been paying attention to the other things that have been going on around me.
I hop in the shower and leave the door open so that I can hear Channel tell me about Niall and Laurie when she asks me a question.
“Do Harry’s friends know that you guys have been making the beast with two backs? If they do, that can possibly pose an issue with the secret you’re trying to keep from Laurie.” When I get out of the shower, I tell her that they don’t know but I’m honestly not sure if they do or if they don’t. It will definitely be a question that I have to ask Harry when I see him.
For the first time in a few days it is raining and a bit chilly again in London so I put my hair in a bun on the top of my head and put on a black V-neck long-sleeved t-shirt, a black hooded zip up vest, dark wash skinny jeans, my glasses and my red Doc Martin’s, before I grabbed my umbrella and headed to the café to wait for H.
I got there at 11:55 and waited for what seemed years but was really only twenty minutes before he finally walked through the door. My heart sped up and made it hard for me to breathe when I saw him. He was wearing skinny jeans, a white t-shirt a blue hoodie, a black beanie, and his black high top converse when I saw him. He could make the simplest things look like something off the cover of a magazine. When H. put his hood down and our eyes met my heart skipped, but he quickly tore his eyes from me when he walked towards my table with his head down. When he sat down in the booth opposite me he lifted his head and gave me a small ‘hello’. I returned his greeting and hated the uncertain air between us.
“You’re twenty minutes late.” I peered at him over my glasses and he simply shook his head in agreement.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Harry wouldn’t make eye contact with me for more than three seconds before he would look away and around the café. If I can’t get his full attention here maybe I should have chosen somewhere more intimate, away from so many people. He could have come back to my place, if I could trust myself to be alone with him.
Before we start talking, a waiter came up to Harry to see if he wanted anything to drink. When the waiter began to show Harry the drink menu he took his hands out of the pockets of his hoodie and placed them on the table. When I looked at them, I saw the cuts and bruises that formed there and remembered when I heard the loud noise in his room from when he had punched a hole in his door and the wall. Without thinking I took my hands from my lap and began to trace over one of the cuts on his finger. As soon as I did, Harry turned from the waiter who had taken his order and quickly put his hands back in his pocket away from my touch. He bit his bottom lip and slightly furrowed his eyebrows, but I notice the light blush that comes to his cheeks before he speaks.
“Sorry I-”
“No, it’s fine I shouldn’t have touched you.” A look flashes in his eyes to quickly for me to read and he takes a deep breath through his nose.
“So are you ready to tell me what happened?” I take out my tape recorder and hit the record button before he starts.
*Harry’s POV*
I woke up at ten when Gemma came into my room and started to bother me. I launched a pillow at her face but she caught it and started to beat me with it.
“Wake up slow coach! You’re supposed to be going to the grocery with me.”
“Gemma I just fell asleep two hours ago! Leave me alone....please?!”
“Why have you not been to bed? I know you were up talking to mum for a while, but I know that you weren’t up that late.” The talk I had with my mum was dreadful. She kept trying to convince me that everything would be okay if she married Robin and nothing would happen. After a while I gave up with the entire conversation and just nodded in agreement with everything she said. How does she know it will? Everything was fine with him, before it went wrong. I had another bad dream after the conversation and I stayed up all night, but when I did I thought about Reagan and the look on her face after I told her what I did and how distant she was when I texted her. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the dream or thinking about her. I looked at Gemma not able to tell her why I was awake and threw the covers off of myself.
“Why have you not moved out yet? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do after university? I know I haven’t been to school in a while, but I know you’re not supposed to be here. You leave the nest Gems...leave.”
“Fine doughnut you don’t have to tell me what kept you up it’s probably something perverted anyway.” I smiled at Gemma and wiggled my eyebrows causing her to roll her eyes in disgust.
“I can’t go with you anyway I have something to do.”
“Like?”
“One of your friends who came on to me at your party!” I ran into the bathroom before Gemma could hit me and took a shower and got dressed to meet Reagan at the café.
I got to the spot on the corner up the street from Reagan’s house at 11:50 and even saw her walk in. She really is pretty and I’m annoyed with myself for thinking so. Gemma thought I was joking when I said that one of her friends made a pass at me at her party, but I wasn’t. I always used to fool around with her when Gemma brought her over to our house. I even fucked her once when she spent the night, but at the party when she put it out there that she wanted to do it again, I told her no because I knew glasses was coming and I just wasn’t interested. I’ve never turned her down before and I was just as shocked as she was when I did.
I sat in the car contemplating if I could go in and have this conversation with Reagan. I only intended to give myself five minutes to prepare to go back to that dark place in my mind and it ended up turning into twenty. Reagan was upset that I was late as I knew she would be being the little time management freak that she is and I couldn’t be more relieved when someone came up to show me the drink menu. If I’m going to talk about this it will be nice to have something here to take the edge off. I can feel her staring at me like I always do, but this time I decided it was best not to call her out on it. I know we’re not at that level of comfort anymore, but I was caught off guard when she touched my hand. That same electricity I felt when she bumped into me at the hospital ran through me again. It shocked me so much that I had to remove my hand from hers.
“Sorry I-”
“No, it’s fine I shouldn’t have touched you. So are you ready to tell me what happened?” She pulled out that damn tape recorder and I knew that she was here strictly for her internship. She will never want anything more from me again.
*Reagan’s POV*
“Where do you want me to start? What do you want to know first?” There was something in Harry’s tone and his eyes that turned colder and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I decided to ignore it and continue on with the interview.
“Your father I guess. What happened to him?” H. took another deep breath before he continued.
“He had cancer. He died when I was five.” My heart sunk at the look on his face when he told me about his father, but I quickly shook it off and snapped back into focused mode.
“I’m sorry to hear that. How was that on you, your mom and Gemma?” The waiter brought Harry his drink and I could smell the alcohol as soon as he put the glass down.
“Harold should you really be drinking? It’s early.”
“I should if you want me to tell you anything Reagan.” Harry spoke quickly and I know that he was annoyed already. I dropped the issue as he took a sip and began to answer my question.
“It was hard. I didn’t understand why he was gone and why he couldn’t come back really until I got a little older. My mum was crushed and Gemma was too, but they were both stronger than me, they are both stronger than me.” Harry refused to look me in the eye as he talked. He began to fiddle with his fingers and continued to drink.
“So I would be assuming right when I say that your mom got remarried?” Harry stopped picking at the scars on his hands and fingers downed his drink and asked for another one before he shook his head ‘yes’.
“When did she get remarried?”
“When I was 9, he was a family friend and had been there for us when my dad died. I never liked him though he was tosser.” Harry’s eyebrows began to furrow and his eyes gradually throughout the conversation went from light green to forest green. I could feel myself get nervous, but I didn’t stop Harry from talking. As soon as the waiter brought out his drink, it was a fourth of the way gone before Harry set it on the table.
“Money was tight for us after my dad died and he had loads. He would always try to buy me and Gemma, but we knew something about him was off. Gemma would take the gifts to be polite, but I never did. I hated him and he hated me. He would just pretend in front of Gemma and my mum.”
“How do you know he didn’t like you?” Harry took another swig of his drink and I start to wonder how he could even think to drink again after he got so sick when we found him in Cheshire.
“Little things that he would say and do and comments here and there, I could tell he knew I didn’t like him either, but we started to fight. I’m a smart ass, I know it and I’m bipolar so I would get angry at him a lot and quickly. One time I embarrassed him at a work meeting he had at our house in front of all of his business friends. He jumped on me that night. My mum and Gemma were at my nans house in the country for the weekend so they didn’t know.” The wind got knocked out of me as I imagined Harry getting beaten by his step-father.
“Did you tell them?”
“No...” I looked at Harry confused as to why he would hold in something like that as a child.
“How old were you then?”
“Ten.”
“Did they know you were bipolar?” Harry finished his drink and started chewing on his bottom lip.
“No, not until I turned 17.”
“That’s when you were admitted, when you turned 17.”
“Yes, Reagan we’ve been over that before. You catch on so quickly.” Harry became sarcastic because he was aggravated and instead of commenting on it like I normally would, I kept my mouth shut.
“So what happened after he jumped on you the first time?”
“He kept on doing it just when my mum and sister weren’t around. He would get the parts that could be hidden. One time he hit me with the handle of a golf club in the stomach and on my legs. He always would get my stomach, my legs and my back. Still have back problems from it...fucker.” I became partially thankful for whatever Harry drank because everything was coming out and I didn’t have to fight for the answers.
“And no one suspected anything?”
“Both my mum and sister did, but I would get into fights after school because I would get so angry and overwhelmed by everything that would go on inside my head. I played football and a bit of rugby as well. I just told them I got bruises from that if I was ever in front of them shirtless.”
“But why didn’t you tell Harry? Why would you let that continue?” I felt a lump in my throat grow as I tried to fight back tears. I swallowed away the lump so that I could continue, but tears still threatened to fall according to the sting i felt in the back of my socket.
“It was an outlet Reagan, I didn’t know what was wrong with me at the time and it took my mind off of all the other emotions I would feel in one day and make me focus on one thing. It was just like when I would fight at school. No one knew I was bipolar until after I had test run on me by Dr. Baker. Bipolar is harder to detect in teens I guess because of all the other normal shit that they go through emotionally at that age. They just thought I was rebellious.” I swallowed again and looked away from Harry as I took a deep breath. His step-father beating him was his way of inflicting self harm. He was sick and his stepfather took advantage of it.
“So how did it happen Harry?” Harry opened his mouth and then closed it again and a pained fearful expression crosses his face crumbling the resolve I tried to maintain in front of him.
“Reagan, I can’t...” His words cracked and I grabbed his hands that he had placed on the table again to give him a reassuring squeeze.
“Tell me Harry.” Harry removed his hands from under mine and pinched his bottom lip before he continued.
This morning like so many others before, I lied in bed awake before my alarm went off. I set it to give myself a good hour and a half to mentally prepare before I had to meet up with Harry at the café. Today is going to be hard for me. I had just only learned how to act around Harry and now since his confession there awkwardness in the air. I think of everything that could possibly go wrong today while talking to him. What if ask the wrong thing and he gets angry again? What if he makes a scene in the café like the one that he made at Gemma’s graduation party? What if you’re too weak? My focused side adds in the last bit and though I want to dismiss it, it is a valid question. What if I am too weak to deal with him on a strictly professional level? There is something about Harry that breaks me and takes me away from my usual character. I have never been one to beg for a guy to touch me, lie to my friends about who I’m seeing, or question talking to other guys so that I can give my full attention to just one. Before I could make a break through on myself, my alarm shrieked making me jump and making Channel get pissy.
“What in the actual fuck REA-TARD?! Turn it off! Please?!” I laugh at Channel’s expense and turn of the alarm before I get out of bed.
“Where are you going anyway Rea?” I look back at Channel and cringe because I forgot to tell her about my meeting. Anything Harry related is a touchy subject for us right now. The first thing that comes to mind is to lie, but lying to her was worse than telling the truth.
“Just to the café up the street for a few hours, I have to meet up with Harry and tie up loose ends so that I can start writing my analysis paper on him.” I wait for a snide comment or a nasty look from her, but instead I see sympathy in her eyes.
“Sorry you have to face him. Do you want me to come? I can sit away from you guys but close enough for you if you need me in case he pulls any shit.” I look at Channel and smile. Even though it would be comforting for her to be there and it would make me stronger, I’m sure that I wouldn’t get the real truth from H. if he knew that someone else was there with us.
“No, thank you though. When I’m a Psychiatrist I can’t have you there sitting in on my sessions with me. I can handle it.” I think.
“Yeah but this is different Rea. Hopefully you won’t be fucking other patients. Speaking of sex did Laurie tell you about her and Niall?!” I bite my tongue and take Channels joke even though it was a low blow, and turn my head in shock at the mention of Niall and Laurie. I’ve been so caught up in my own mess that I haven’t even been paying attention to the other things that have been going on around me.
I hop in the shower and leave the door open so that I can hear Channel tell me about Niall and Laurie when she asks me a question.
“Do Harry’s friends know that you guys have been making the beast with two backs? If they do, that can possibly pose an issue with the secret you’re trying to keep from Laurie.” When I get out of the shower, I tell her that they don’t know but I’m honestly not sure if they do or if they don’t. It will definitely be a question that I have to ask Harry when I see him.
For the first time in a few days it is raining and a bit chilly again in London so I put my hair in a bun on the top of my head and put on a black V-neck long-sleeved t-shirt, a black hooded zip up vest, dark wash skinny jeans, my glasses and my red Doc Martin’s, before I grabbed my umbrella and headed to the café to wait for H.
I got there at 11:55 and waited for what seemed years but was really only twenty minutes before he finally walked through the door. My heart sped up and made it hard for me to breathe when I saw him. He was wearing skinny jeans, a white t-shirt a blue hoodie, a black beanie, and his black high top converse when I saw him. He could make the simplest things look like something off the cover of a magazine. When H. put his hood down and our eyes met my heart skipped, but he quickly tore his eyes from me when he walked towards my table with his head down. When he sat down in the booth opposite me he lifted his head and gave me a small ‘hello’. I returned his greeting and hated the uncertain air between us.
“You’re twenty minutes late.” I peered at him over my glasses and he simply shook his head in agreement.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Harry wouldn’t make eye contact with me for more than three seconds before he would look away and around the café. If I can’t get his full attention here maybe I should have chosen somewhere more intimate, away from so many people. He could have come back to my place, if I could trust myself to be alone with him.
Before we start talking, a waiter came up to Harry to see if he wanted anything to drink. When the waiter began to show Harry the drink menu he took his hands out of the pockets of his hoodie and placed them on the table. When I looked at them, I saw the cuts and bruises that formed there and remembered when I heard the loud noise in his room from when he had punched a hole in his door and the wall. Without thinking I took my hands from my lap and began to trace over one of the cuts on his finger. As soon as I did, Harry turned from the waiter who had taken his order and quickly put his hands back in his pocket away from my touch. He bit his bottom lip and slightly furrowed his eyebrows, but I notice the light blush that comes to his cheeks before he speaks.
“Sorry I-”
“No, it’s fine I shouldn’t have touched you.” A look flashes in his eyes to quickly for me to read and he takes a deep breath through his nose.
“So are you ready to tell me what happened?” I take out my tape recorder and hit the record button before he starts.
*Harry’s POV*
I woke up at ten when Gemma came into my room and started to bother me. I launched a pillow at her face but she caught it and started to beat me with it.
“Wake up slow coach! You’re supposed to be going to the grocery with me.”
“Gemma I just fell asleep two hours ago! Leave me alone....please?!”
“Why have you not been to bed? I know you were up talking to mum for a while, but I know that you weren’t up that late.” The talk I had with my mum was dreadful. She kept trying to convince me that everything would be okay if she married Robin and nothing would happen. After a while I gave up with the entire conversation and just nodded in agreement with everything she said. How does she know it will? Everything was fine with him, before it went wrong. I had another bad dream after the conversation and I stayed up all night, but when I did I thought about Reagan and the look on her face after I told her what I did and how distant she was when I texted her. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the dream or thinking about her. I looked at Gemma not able to tell her why I was awake and threw the covers off of myself.
“Why have you not moved out yet? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do after university? I know I haven’t been to school in a while, but I know you’re not supposed to be here. You leave the nest Gems...leave.”
“Fine doughnut you don’t have to tell me what kept you up it’s probably something perverted anyway.” I smiled at Gemma and wiggled my eyebrows causing her to roll her eyes in disgust.
“I can’t go with you anyway I have something to do.”
“Like?”
“One of your friends who came on to me at your party!” I ran into the bathroom before Gemma could hit me and took a shower and got dressed to meet Reagan at the café.
I got to the spot on the corner up the street from Reagan’s house at 11:50 and even saw her walk in. She really is pretty and I’m annoyed with myself for thinking so. Gemma thought I was joking when I said that one of her friends made a pass at me at her party, but I wasn’t. I always used to fool around with her when Gemma brought her over to our house. I even fucked her once when she spent the night, but at the party when she put it out there that she wanted to do it again, I told her no because I knew glasses was coming and I just wasn’t interested. I’ve never turned her down before and I was just as shocked as she was when I did.
I sat in the car contemplating if I could go in and have this conversation with Reagan. I only intended to give myself five minutes to prepare to go back to that dark place in my mind and it ended up turning into twenty. Reagan was upset that I was late as I knew she would be being the little time management freak that she is and I couldn’t be more relieved when someone came up to show me the drink menu. If I’m going to talk about this it will be nice to have something here to take the edge off. I can feel her staring at me like I always do, but this time I decided it was best not to call her out on it. I know we’re not at that level of comfort anymore, but I was caught off guard when she touched my hand. That same electricity I felt when she bumped into me at the hospital ran through me again. It shocked me so much that I had to remove my hand from hers.
“Sorry I-”
“No, it’s fine I shouldn’t have touched you. So are you ready to tell me what happened?” She pulled out that damn tape recorder and I knew that she was here strictly for her internship. She will never want anything more from me again.
*Reagan’s POV*
“Where do you want me to start? What do you want to know first?” There was something in Harry’s tone and his eyes that turned colder and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I decided to ignore it and continue on with the interview.
“Your father I guess. What happened to him?” H. took another deep breath before he continued.
“He had cancer. He died when I was five.” My heart sunk at the look on his face when he told me about his father, but I quickly shook it off and snapped back into focused mode.
“I’m sorry to hear that. How was that on you, your mom and Gemma?” The waiter brought Harry his drink and I could smell the alcohol as soon as he put the glass down.
“Harold should you really be drinking? It’s early.”
“I should if you want me to tell you anything Reagan.” Harry spoke quickly and I know that he was annoyed already. I dropped the issue as he took a sip and began to answer my question.
“It was hard. I didn’t understand why he was gone and why he couldn’t come back really until I got a little older. My mum was crushed and Gemma was too, but they were both stronger than me, they are both stronger than me.” Harry refused to look me in the eye as he talked. He began to fiddle with his fingers and continued to drink.
“So I would be assuming right when I say that your mom got remarried?” Harry stopped picking at the scars on his hands and fingers downed his drink and asked for another one before he shook his head ‘yes’.
“When did she get remarried?”
“When I was 9, he was a family friend and had been there for us when my dad died. I never liked him though he was tosser.” Harry’s eyebrows began to furrow and his eyes gradually throughout the conversation went from light green to forest green. I could feel myself get nervous, but I didn’t stop Harry from talking. As soon as the waiter brought out his drink, it was a fourth of the way gone before Harry set it on the table.
“Money was tight for us after my dad died and he had loads. He would always try to buy me and Gemma, but we knew something about him was off. Gemma would take the gifts to be polite, but I never did. I hated him and he hated me. He would just pretend in front of Gemma and my mum.”
“How do you know he didn’t like you?” Harry took another swig of his drink and I start to wonder how he could even think to drink again after he got so sick when we found him in Cheshire.
“Little things that he would say and do and comments here and there, I could tell he knew I didn’t like him either, but we started to fight. I’m a smart ass, I know it and I’m bipolar so I would get angry at him a lot and quickly. One time I embarrassed him at a work meeting he had at our house in front of all of his business friends. He jumped on me that night. My mum and Gemma were at my nans house in the country for the weekend so they didn’t know.” The wind got knocked out of me as I imagined Harry getting beaten by his step-father.
“Did you tell them?”
“No...” I looked at Harry confused as to why he would hold in something like that as a child.
“How old were you then?”
“Ten.”
“Did they know you were bipolar?” Harry finished his drink and started chewing on his bottom lip.
“No, not until I turned 17.”
“That’s when you were admitted, when you turned 17.”
“Yes, Reagan we’ve been over that before. You catch on so quickly.” Harry became sarcastic because he was aggravated and instead of commenting on it like I normally would, I kept my mouth shut.
“So what happened after he jumped on you the first time?”
“He kept on doing it just when my mum and sister weren’t around. He would get the parts that could be hidden. One time he hit me with the handle of a golf club in the stomach and on my legs. He always would get my stomach, my legs and my back. Still have back problems from it...fucker.” I became partially thankful for whatever Harry drank because everything was coming out and I didn’t have to fight for the answers.
“And no one suspected anything?”
“Both my mum and sister did, but I would get into fights after school because I would get so angry and overwhelmed by everything that would go on inside my head. I played football and a bit of rugby as well. I just told them I got bruises from that if I was ever in front of them shirtless.”
“But why didn’t you tell Harry? Why would you let that continue?” I felt a lump in my throat grow as I tried to fight back tears. I swallowed away the lump so that I could continue, but tears still threatened to fall according to the sting i felt in the back of my socket.
“It was an outlet Reagan, I didn’t know what was wrong with me at the time and it took my mind off of all the other emotions I would feel in one day and make me focus on one thing. It was just like when I would fight at school. No one knew I was bipolar until after I had test run on me by Dr. Baker. Bipolar is harder to detect in teens I guess because of all the other normal shit that they go through emotionally at that age. They just thought I was rebellious.” I swallowed again and looked away from Harry as I took a deep breath. His step-father beating him was his way of inflicting self harm. He was sick and his stepfather took advantage of it.
“So how did it happen Harry?” Harry opened his mouth and then closed it again and a pained fearful expression crosses his face crumbling the resolve I tried to maintain in front of him.
“Reagan, I can’t...” His words cracked and I grabbed his hands that he had placed on the table again to give him a reassuring squeeze.
“Tell me Harry.” Harry removed his hands from under mine and pinched his bottom lip before he continued.
I have read this story loads of times just wish you had finished it it is absolutely amazing. So so good
8/18/18