Alter ➳ h.s

s e v e n
know me first
ember

I decided to become a smoker. Not because I was pressured to verbally, but mentally. Harry owned a body every girl wanted and every guy needed. His lips, pink and deadly waited for my answer. I only answered, “Sure,” because his eyes and his body movements forced me to. Cigarettes were always disgusting to me, even when the most interesting people smoked them. James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, etc. But no one as interesting as Harry Styles had smoked before in front of me, no one. Yet, the smoke escaping his pill-taking lips and throat never looked more beautiful.

He never looked more beautiful.

Harry Styles was a beautiful corrupted young man with nothing to do other than what he was supposed to. And I realized that while laying on an old desk while he leaned back in a swivel chair I’d brought in a few months ago. He made a dark nasty blue look intriguing. The smoke rose to the ceiling and disappeared there along with my last care about Ben currently. I looked at Harry and he looked at me. We were both confused but refused to express it. He knew that I wasn’t a smoker when I coughed and hacked the first few puffs and I knew his dark secrets. We were to secretly promise each other to tell no one.

I promise, I told him in my mind. And he promised, too. We nodded at each other and continued to think quietly. I looked back up at the ceiling. This place loved me with all its propane and figurative heart, as I loved it. Harry cleared his throat slightly and I looked over at him, “You don’t seem like the unhappy type,” he deadpanned.

“You don’t seem like the crazy type either, but we all have terrible secrets.”

He nodded and slightly chuckled, “Well one of yours must be pretty mean.”

“It’s dark. No one knows about it. Change the subject,” I demanded.

“Nothing can be darker than what I’m going through,” he ignored.

“That’s what seems to be wrong with you, Harry. Y-You’re so labyrinthine!”

“Labyrinthine?”

“Yes! Labyrinthine! You’re so self-absorbed. Do you not know that people have it worse than your million dollar heart? Shocker.” I dramatically gasped.

“You know what—!” he started but stopped himself and took another puff from the cigarette. “You’re right,” he admitted. “You’re right. Now let’s change the subject.” The subject was never changed, we didn’t talk again for a while. During that while, Harry removed himself from the seat and looked around the former photography business. “Even through all that, you don’t seem to judge me.”

“Because,” I sat up and swung my legs off the desk. “We don’t look at nature and say, ‘Wouldn’t that flower be prettier if it was an inch taller? Or orange instead of yellow?’ No, because nature is perfect as is. We are a part of nature. Therefore, we are the closest to perfect our fucked up souls will ever be.” I watched my words unravel in his medicated brain.

He chose another chair to sit in. “You are right again.”

➳ ➳

Harry and I enjoyed each other company longer than either of us expected. I knew I wouldn’t be paid for the week for not allowing the shop to open, but I didn’t care. My parents were fighting and my boyfriend was being an ass before he left. I needed some time with someone who could partially understand. “I don’t understand,” he said. Then he chuckled, “Nah, I’m just messing with you.”

“Why are you so much different when you aren’t around them?”

“Well, for one, I just took like five pills. And two, they already know what’s going on and it freaks me out more. You don’t know the half of it so I’m very… exciting to you.” He smiled. The day was ending and we’d received too many missed calls to continue to ignore the outside world. So we climbed out of the ceiling and jumped over buildings to get to the disgusting dumpster and back to the coffee shop.

Everyone was laying on tables and drinking coffee and eating whatever was cooked by Julia. “Where have you both been? You’ve been gone for three hours!” Zayn yelled at us.

“Sorry,” we said. And that was that. Everyone stopped caring that we’d abandoned them for hours and never cared to call back. Josie and Liam were over in a corner sharing a booth and talking. “He likes her?” Harry asked me, positioning himself on top of a table.

“I don’t know, he’s your friend.” I then remembered why I was upset in the first place. Ben called. Julia came over and told me not to answer it, but I never listen to her. One of my faults. “What?” I answered.

“Look, I’m sorry. My parents want to have one last dinner with you, and I feel terrible.”

I sighed and looked around at everyone. “I’ll be there in an hour,” and hung up. “Julia, drive me home. I need to get dressed.” Harry came over and asked where I was going. “Ben wants to have one last dinner with his parents. I’m gonna go.” Little did I know that that’d result in a small argument with Harry. I knew he had issues but telling me I shouldn’t go see my boyfriend’s family was a whole different thing. “Harry, you can’t make me not go.”

“You shouldn’t go.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t, but I love him. He’s my boyfriend and that’s his family and I’m going.”

“No.”

“Harry. Who are you?!” Everyone looked at me then. My friends and his stared at the both of us. “I don’t know you, Harry. We aren’t friends. You’re famous and you happen to be fucking crazy, but that’s not my life. You can’t control me! You don’t know me,” I grabbed Julia’s car keys and my jacket and looked at her. “Now, you can either drive me home or I’ll drive myself.” She got up, still shocked, and put on her jacket. Harry just stood there while I left.

➳ ➳

“Ember! It is so nice to see you!” Ben’s mother is paper. Literally. She’s skinny and fake. Her voice is the giveaway that she doesn’t like me. It’s because my family makes more money than her husband, the only one that works in the house. That’s one of the reasons Ben is at my house so much. He likes my parents more than he likes his. And she just hates me because she has solid evidence that I’m keeping her son from moving on in life.

“You too, Mrs. Waterson. How’s Emily?” Emily was Ben’s sister. She went off to college. My point exactly.

“She’s at college, where she needs to be. Smart one too, she decided not to take a year off,” she looked at me.

“Right, well. Emily has always been smart. I wonder where she gets it from—.”

Ben interrupted, “Okay, ladies. How ‘bout we get to the living room?” Ben rested his hand on my lower back. His father; an older man that could cough up money if he wanted. Just not as much as my father apparently. Ben’s father took a liking to me and found his wife too uptight. She has one of those uptight and snobby names too, Vivian. Vivian Waterson was an evil woman, but Thomas Waterson somehow loved her.

I compared Ben and I to his parents somehow. Neither of us were evil-spirited or nasty acting but we loved each other even when we both knew we shouldn’t. Thomas greeted me warmly with a soft hug. Thomas was a bit shorter and not very in shape, but it looked good on him. He looked nice for his age and was a man with a voice and spirit of Santa. Thomas was my second father, and I loved every bit of his cookie covered heart. “How are you, Ember?”

“I’m doing wonderful, how are you, Mr. Waterson?”

“Now,” he chuckled and rested a soft meaty hand on my exposed right shoulder, “I told you to call me Tom.” His voice quieted to a whisper, “Only Vivian goes by that formality. She thinks she’s more important than the President,” he let out a deep laugh. “I’m doing okay, Ember. I hope you enjoy dinner tonight.” Again, I loved Tom.

Which is why I sat next to him at the table of six. Ben and Vivian sat on one side and Tom and I on the other. It was peaceful that way, Vivian hadn’t insulted me yet. Although her comment on my dress did come out a little offencive. “Hmph, with all that money your mother and father are making, you’d think they’d at least get you a more… expensive dress.”

“Well,” I retaliated, “with all the money you think you’re making, I would think you’d buy a dress that wasn’t by the same designer that I’m wearing.” I picked up the wine glass Ben and I weren’t supposed to have at our age, “Checkmate.”

After sitting in an awkward silence for ten minutes after that unnecessary discussion, Thomas spoke up. “We are glad that Ben is going up to New York to see about college.” He looked over, “Vivian, don’t say a word.” He knew she’d say something about me being the reason Ben hadn’t gone last year when high school was over.

“Oh, I don’t need to. But if no one thought it wasn’t obvious enough, Benjamin needs to stay away from you, darling.” She looked at me coldly, “Had he listened to his dear mother, he’d already be there.”

Ben just picked up his wine glass and looked the other way. Another thing I hate about him: he doesn’t try to stick up for me when his mother is being a bitch. I understand standing by the woman who raised you, but she didn’t even raise him. The maid, Francine, did and didn’t mind either. Vivian was paying her to do all the work of motherhood. All Vivian had to do was carry the children and birth them, then hand them off to Francine. “Well, I’m sorry that you feel that way but Ben wanted to be here for himself. I never told him to not go to college, he made that choice.”

“He made that choice because he was so ‘in love’ with you.”

“I—”

“No, you listen to me. I will not, and I repeat not, let you hold my baby back any longer. I don’t care if I have to make your family go bankrupt for you to understand that I don’t like you. I never have and never will. I will make sure that Benjamin goes to college whether you two are in a relationship or not.”

I sniffed a little and stared into her icy golden hazel eyes. I looked at Ben. Tom and I both looked at him, expecting him to stand and make a motion. He didn’t. That’s why I left. “E-Excuse me.” I went to the closet and Francine grabbed my coat for me, I didn’t bother to put my shoes back on that I’d taken off at the door and just grabbed them. No one was expecting me home this early but I honestly had no place else to go. I then thought of the day earlier. Today hasn’t been the best day of my life, it hasn’t been the worst either.

I took a twenty minute walk which was supposed to be a ten minute drive to work. I climbed the dumpster and made my way over to the third building over; the photography building. When I fell in, one light was on. In the back, but I didn’t pay attention to it. I only turned on the lights throughout the whole building. I’d checked once if you could see light through the boards that shielded the windows and you couldn’t. I could live here if I wanted. Granted it doesn’t have any running water, but I could get that arranged.

For some reason, after taking off my jacket and throwing my shoes on the ground, I decided to wander to the back to see why the lights were on. A door was cracked, and I opened it. It was a separate room for the pictures to dry once they were developed instead of being in one room. There stood Harry Styles. He had on a black tank top with dark jeans, his back was facing the other way and he was hanging up a picture. It was a picture of this building. I didn’t say anything, but he did. “I told you not to go.”

Notes

Well isn't Vivian Waterson just a little ray of sunshine? At the end of the chapter, I imagined Harry in those clothes but in the Story of My Life music video where he was hanging up the photos and stuff. It just appealed to me. I love it.

I hope you liked this little goodnight chapter, I love your cute faces x

Spread the word <3

comment x
subscribe x
vote x