Know: A Harry Styles Fan Fiction

It's late when I finally fall asleep, the kind of late that is so late, you don't even have the heart to check the time. My only saving grace is the fact that it's Saturday. No interning, no plans, just sleeping in. Or at least, the hopes of sleeping in.

I can't stay asleep for long and it's disturbingly early as I lay wide awake, desperately trying to return to my dreams. After an hour of tossing my blankets and sheets into a catastrophic mess, I shove out of bed in defeat. In the kitchen, I fill up a kettle for some tea and wait for it to boil while I search for bread to make french toast.

"Mornin', Jules," Effy chirps as she emerges from the hall. She's in a freshly ironed outfit consisting of black slacks, a striped button up and a matching blazer. Her Kool-Aid pink hair (no more brunette) is pulled into a low ponytail and her eyes are radiant with the nude eyeshadow I bought for her last birthday.

"Good morning," I reply. "Where's Ansel?"

"He had to leave early last night. There was some work emergency he had to take care of."

"What about his leg?"

"I know, isn't he a trooper?" she says, her eyes glittering with adoration.

As she pokes her toes into a pair of structured navy pumps, I ask, "So where are you going this early in the day?"

"The admissions guy rescheduled my interview."

Effy has recently applied to a beauty school. She just has to meet with an admissions counselor for an interview and she then she's on her way to a degree in cosmetology. I'm incredibly thrilled for her. She always used to talk about how much she wanted to style hair for a living.

"This early?" I ask.

She shrugs. "They've got a lot of people to go through, and I wanted to be the first. Plus they have complimentary breakfast!"

"Good luck."

"Thanks, darling," she calls as she heads to the front door. "I'm going to the market right after, do we need anything?"

"We're fresh out of bread," I call back, after my fruitless search through the cabinets.

After listening to Effy's clicking footsteps and the hinges of the door swing open, I hear a third, unanticipated sound: a thud followed by a sharp grunt.

"Erm, Jules... you have a package," Effy says.

"That's strange," I think aloud as I approach the entrance. "I haven't ordered anything online for a month."

But it's not the kind package I thought Effy meant. After I round the corner of our kitchen, I look toward the ground to discover Harry, propped on the threshold of my apartment with his hand. He's wearing the same white tee and torn, charcoal jeans I saw him in last night.

Effy and I exchange a few rapid fire glances. Mine says, It's fine, I'll handle it. Hers says, Are you sure?

I watch as Harry rubs the back of his head, disturbing the rolled bandana tied around his hair.

Silently, I tell Effy, Yeah, I'm sure.

After some brief reluctance, she announces, "Okay, I'll just get going now." She gingerly steps over Harry and the clacks of her heels fade down the hall.

"What time is it?" Harry mumbles, squinting up at me.

"Did you sleep on my doorstep?"

"Oh..." He blinks the drowsiness out of his eyes. They dart around my apartment, outside, and back inside again. "I did, didn't I?"

Without another word, I help him up and guide him to the couch in the living room. The kettle whistles on the stove and I pour us two mugs of tea. His hands are chilly when I hand him one. He wraps his fingers around it and holds it close to his pale face. I spread a blanket over him and he flashes me a grateful smile.

I take a seat on the adjacent couch and peer at him. He grips the blanket tightly around himself, keeping his eyes either straight ahead or at the steaming mug. Everytime I'm about to say something, I stop myself because he appears as if he's going to say something too. And I'm fairly certain he's doing the same thing, because for a long, uncomfortable while, the air overfills with our unsaid thoughts.

"Your hair's longer," he says, finally piercing the silence.

I glance down at my wavy black strands and rake a hand through them. The longest section fell far enough down my back that I could almost sit on it. Almost. Once it reaches that point, I'll know I need a haircut.

"It's grown, like... a lot... since I last saw you," he slowly elaborates.

"Well, yeah," I chuckle lightly. "Hair tends to, you know... grow."

He gives me a stiff, half-hearted laugh. "Right, then. Now that we've established that I'm rubbish at breaking the ice, can I just come straight out and tell you I'm sorry? I made such a fool of myself last night and I'm really sorry if I embarrassed you. I'm sorry about last year, too. You know, about... everything."

It's so much easier to take him seriously when he can cohesively pronounce his words.

"What I did was wrong, and I'm very, truly, more than you will ever know, sorry."

I know. I know how sorry he is. I've been haunted by his painful sorry's everyday for the past nine months. I give him an amiable smile, hopefully to convey the message that I'm done discussing this subject matter.

He casts his eyes downward in what seems to be comprehension.

"How's your head?" I ask.

"Concussion, I think," he dispassionately answers. "Hopefully bad enough to kill me."

"Jesus Christ, Harry."

"I'm sorry. That was a bit melodramatic, wasn't it?"

"Why did you stay out there all night?"

He shrugs. "I couldn't leave. I wanted to, but, I don't know. I just couldn't."

"I can't imagine doors are very comfortable."

"It was pretty awful," he says with chagrin, rubbing his head again, "but I've slept in worse places. Still, my back sort of hurts and I don't think I fell asleep until around five in the morning."

I don't have to check the time or do any mental math to know that adds up to hardly any sleep at all.

"Do you want to take a nap?" I offer.

"No, it's alright. You don't have to do that. I should get out of your way before your boyfriend comes back."

He's strangely calm when he says this, almost in a modest and noble manner. If he's resentful in any way, he's doing a flawless job at hiding it.

"Boyfriend?" I respond, the image of Stanford's enraged blue eyes appearing in my mind.

"You don't have to explain it any further," he firmly states. "I've told you you deserve someone better and I meant it, but I won't sit here and lie to you and say I'm happy for you or any of that load of shit. I'm done lying to you."

"But---"

"I understand, Jules." He gives me a weak, although very sincere smile.

"Thank you, I appreciate it," I say, "but he was just a date."

He studies me with brighter, more awake eyes. "So you're not..."

"No, I'm not seeing anyone."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," I answer, tilting my mug to taste the warm liquid and to block his view of my guilty eyes.

In the corner of my vision, he watches carefully, his eyes running all over me. I can practically feel him decoding my thoughts and I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

"Why haven't you been seeing anyone?" I ask, hoping to avert his attention.

He pulls his lips inward for a moment before saying, "I'm quite positive you know the answer to that."

My stomach churns. A small part of me knew he was going to say that, so why did I ask him anyway?

"Come on," I say, rising from the couch. "I'll make a bed for you."

When we're inside my room, he immediately notices it, the square package covered in white and red giftwrap protruding from behind my dresser. It used to have a green bow too, but it got lost somewhere along the way.

It's the gift he left at my door in Connecticut last Christmas. My initial reaction was to throw it away. I had deleted every other trace of him from my life: his number, his texts, our photos, subway stubs, seashells, reindeer antlers and flowers, but I could never bring myself to throw away that damn gift. It was all I had left of him.

Harry picks it up from the floor while I sit on the edge of my bed.

"You still have this..." he says, analyzing the package and joining beside me.

I fiddle with the drawstrings on my sweats, not saying a word.

"How come you never opened it?"

I reply with a slight shrug of my shoulders. I've wondered that myself. I haven't touched it since I first put it there nine months ago and all it's been doing is catching a gray sheen of dust. Nobody knows about it, not even Effy. It was my little secret. And now it's mine and Harry's.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

"What is it?"

"Do you believe me?" The question is vague, but I know right away what he's referring to.

I consider it for a minute, trying to find an alternative approach to answering him. "Alright," I say, sitting up straighter. "Let's say, hypothetically---"

"I do."

"---hypothetically, that you love me. Why?"

"Why do I love you?" he repeats, although I'm sure he heard me the first time.

"Yeah."

He looks past me, at the wall, then at my disarrayed bed sheets, his mouth hung open but with no words escaping.

"See? You can't even tell me why."

"I most certainly can tell you why," he quickly counters. "I just don't know where to begin."

I roll my eyes. "Good excuse."

"Jules." His eyebrows stiffen into a scowl. "Stop doing that. Why can't you ever accept that someone can love you and think you're special and just about the most amazing person in the world?"

I return it with a frown of my own. "Because it's not true."

He falls back on my bed while heaving a sigh. "Okay, fine. You want to know why I love you? I could say I love you because you're pretty and smart and blah, blah, blah, all the generic, boring stuff guys say to girls. But I could say that about any girl, and you're not just any girl, Jules. Like, for one thing, you didn't know who Harry Styles was and you didn't care. You liked Harry.

"Loads of people like Harry," I say, looking down at him.

"No, loads of people like Harry Styles, boyband singer, badass, heartbreaker, womanizer, Harry Styles. You didn't. You liked Harry. And you like vinyl records, and your nail polish is always chipped, and you laugh too hard, and your socks never match, and you don't care. And I love that. You're different, Jules. You're more unique than anyone I've ever met, because you're real and you saw the real me and you liked it. And you just..." he pauses, his eyes circle the air for a moment, and he sighs. "You just make me happy."

He smiles at me sweetly and slowly, I feel my walls of doubt tumbling down, until another thought crosses my mind.

"I'm sure there are other girls out there that can make you happy. In fact, there's probably a million girls who would do anything for you, girls who are way prettier and smarter and whatnot."

He averts his eyes from me and blinks at the ceiling, as if trying to read it. For a full silent minute, I think I've finally stumped him. And then he sits up, gazing intently into my eyes like he always used to. "I don't care. They're not you."

I stare at my lap, where my hands lay, and study the remaining jet-black polish speckled on my fingernails. I never thought they'd be loved, let alone noticed by anyone.

He twists around and picks up the wrapped package from behind him. "Here, I want you to open this."

I look at him with uncertainty, noticing that we're sitting much closer now. I can almost see my reflection in his earnest green eyes when he nods for to proceed. So I pick at the package's seams, tearing off the outer paper skin that had been watching me from the corner of my room for almost a year.

Notes