Dear Harry

Dear Harry,
If you’re reading this, it means I’ve already gone. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve left but I’m sure you’ll try to contact me whenever you manage to read this letter. I want you to know two things before I continue: First, I love you. I think I always will, but this is what we both need. Second, you did nothing wrong. It’s just the way our lives are.
I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I know it’s not right or fair to you to be writing a letter instead of doing this face-to-face. I figure this is the only way I’ll be able to get everything I need to say out in the open. I think this is what we both need, at least for now. I can’t predict the future – I thought I could, and I thought I saw you at the end of it, but I can’t see that anymore. Maybe when some time passes, or if our paths manage to cross again, maybe then things will work more in our favor.
I should probably start from the beginning.
Of course I knew who you were, despite me saying otherwise at the start. I think that’s what drew you into me initially. You felt like you could be yourself with me, instead of what everyone perceived you to be. I was working at that coffee shop in Kensington when you rushed in. It was after our morning rush so there was no one in the shop but you and I; Elizabeth was in the manager’s office creating the next week’s schedule while Div was in the back cleaning dishes. I was wiping down tables when you came running in, out of breath, asking for the back entrance. When I told you we didn’t have any, you looked like you might bolt out again. Some selfish, teenage part of me desperately needed to you to stay. I think our conversation went something like this:
“Can I help you find something instead?”
Your eyes only looked around wildly, but I could hear the girlish screams nearing. I tried to act calm but I remembered seeing your eyes for the first time in the flesh and thinking to myself, They’re even brighter in person.
You shook your head and began heading to the front door again.
“How about a free banana raisin muffin? Our cook made too many so we’ve been giving out the last few for free.”
“No but thank you.”
“I insist. We have a table around the corner, away from the windows. It’ll be nice and quiet. No one will bother you. I promise.”
I think you probably thought that taking that offer would A.) hide you from whatever hoard of girls was stalking you and B.) if you waited long enough and they couldn’t find any evidence of you, they would just go away and you could go on in peace. The whole muffin bit was a lie, of course. Div didn’t make any more than usual and they were not for free, but Elizabeth took it out of my paycheck. What’s a whole £2 anyways?
I showed you your seat and brought you the muffin and left you alone, just like I said. In my mind, I was screaming at the fact that I had gotten Harry Styles alone in my shop. No one would ever believe me, of course, unless I had photographic proof. But when I looked around the corner and saw you taking the largest bites I had seen anyone take, you looked content – not like you had been moments earlier. I didn’t want to disrupt that, so instead I took a quick snapshot in my mind to remember for the rest of my life.
I saw those girls – the ones you had been running from – racing down the street, their heads looking every which way and down every alley to see where you’d gone. With your twig legs, I had no idea how you’d outrun them to get here in enough time for that whole exchange to go down without anyone seeing you. Maybe it was fate. Or karma.
“What do you do?” you suddenly asked. I almost jumped and screamed at the sound of your voice. It had been so silent that your voice scared me half to death. Maybe more than half.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re an American working in a café in London. You have to be doing something else to be here. Do you have family here?”
I shook my head. “No, no family.” I kept telling myself to stop smiling, before you thought I was some escaped mental patient. “I’m a student, actually.”
“Student?” You looked surprised. “Where at?”
“City University of London, near Northampton Square.”
You nodded. “What are you studying?”
“I’m getting my master’s in creative writing and publishing.”
“Master’s!” you exclaimed. “You must be pretty smart, then.”
I had never felt hotter than at that moment. My face, I knew, was flushed red and I could feel my armpits getting warmer and warmer. I remembered thinking, god I hope I don’t smell.
But I just laughed nervously and replied, “Smart? Absolutely not. Maybe if I was getting it in something like computer science or engineering. Not so much creative writing.”
“Well, they accepted you and that has to mean something.” You wiped your mouth on the napkin I gave you and peered around the corner. The girls were long gone and I knew you were looking to leave. I could feel my heart dropping. Then you nodded and put the hood of your jacket back up, slid the sunglasses over your eyes, and left.
The moment was so short, but I guess it made some sort of impression on you because you came back two days later, at the same time when there was a lull and no customers, and slipped me your number. Stupidly, I just remember thinking, British phone numbers are so weird.
So that was our beginning. One whole year ago. How is it possible that one year feels so astonishingly short yet so dreadfully long? The year we shared together felt like a lifetime smashed into one second. One the one hand, I want to go back in time and live it all again, every second of it. On the other, I want to erase everything from my mind. All the good, all the bad, all the fucked up shit
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to swear, but I wrote in pen and I’ve come too far to rewrite this now.
Everything was so happy in the beginning. My flatmates didn’t believe me until pictures of us on our second date began spreading around on all those sites. To this day, I remember what the headlines would say. Of course I looked at them. I’ve never been in any headline in my life.
“Blonde American Girl Steals H. Styles”
“New Girl In Harry’s Life? And She’s American?”
I really didn’t get the fascination with the fact that I was an American. Living in the UK, I often forgot until I would say something and I realized I didn’t speak like everyone around me. My tongue felt foreign to me sometimes.
I think the weirdest thing then was that all those publications about us had my information – my name, where I had come from, my birthday… I think that was the scariest thing about all this. I’d heard of celebrities talking all the time about their lack of privacy but I always figured, “Well, you signed up for this job and that’s just one of the side effects.” But I didn’t really sign up for all of this. I signed up for you, which carried along all of that.
In the beginning, it really didn’t bother me. But when it started to get more and more personal, like things about my past that I rarely told anyone, that’s when it began to cross a line. I still didn’t doubt my intentions of dating you, but I think that’s when a small bell began ringing in the back of my mind to be careful.
When that story broke out about my dad’s affair, that’s when I began to change things in my life. I took a step back from us, and you recognized that right away and did everything in your power to make things better. I think I knew I loved you then. You put my priorities above yours, even going so far as to cancel a radio interview to stay with me and help me cope. Even though the affair was over a year before the news broke, the whole world didn’t need to know it. Some of my closest friends didn’t even know it, and now it as out there for billions of people to read.
I deleted my social media, I went out less – only to class or work and back to my flat – I even had my flatmates be the ones to grocery shop for me. I couldn’t leave the flat without everyone staring at me, knowing that I was the girl in the papers. I felt like an ant under a microscope, slowly being roasted alive by the sun.
You were so kind in the beginning. You prioritized us over your work. I prioritized us over my own work. My grades began to suffer because I would either be with you and ignoring work or skipping class because I couldn’t handle the whispers and staring. You began getting negative press, which eventually dragged me into the mud, saying I was bewitching you into ignoring your fans and stealing you away from the world to keep you to myself. If only everyone knew that we just wanted some peace and quiet.
But then something changed, and I think I know why. Suddenly, things flipped for you. Instead of spending more time with me, you were slowly drifting away. I couldn’t blame you. Your life was demanding. You had a second album to finish and a tour to produce. But a part of me felt like you were losing interest in me, and that terrified me because I loved you with everything I had inside of me. You didn’t say it yet, so therefore I was too afraid to tell you. What if you thought I was saying it only for the fact that you were you? How could I tell you that none of the money or fame mattered to me without sounding too much like a tool in some sappy romantic movie? This wasn’t a movie. This was my life. A life that we simultaneously destroyed.
When you did say it – those three, little words – I felt like, for the first time in a long time, things might actually be okay. Now I just wonder if you said it just because you felt the need to. Stupidly, I thought this meant you would be spending more time with me. Instead, you would spend days, sometimes weeks, away and nearly as long before returning any of my calls or texts. You would blame something like bad reception or a dead battery but I knew. I knew that your life was getting more and more demanding and you just saw me as something on the side you felt the need to keep around. Did you really love me? Or did you just feel obligated to say it? Actually – don’t tell me the answer. But I do want you to think about the answer for any future girlfriend or wife you will inevitably have.
The first red flag in my mind that told me that maybe you and I weren’t meant to be was when I invited you to my graduation from City. We’d been talking about it for months and you said you’d do anything to be there. You knew how important it was to me for you to be there. At that point, I felt like you were my family. And, since neither of my parents would be able to attend because of the cost, you promised that you would be there.
I don’t know how many times I texted and called you the days leading up to the graduation. You didn’t respond to a single one. So I walked across that stage, accepted my new diploma, and had no one there to congratulate me or take my picture shaking hands. I never felt so alone. When I got back to my flat, I checked online and saw you were photographed eating dinner in Rome. Did you know that I cried for two days after that? No, of course not, because I never told you. I wanted to seem like I was okay with the fact that you had a busy life and that I’d be here waiting for you when you got back from whatever country you were in.
When you did get back, you asked me to move in with you, I’m guessing as some sort of apology. Again, stupidly, I thought this meant that the worst was over. You knew you had done wrong and were trying to make up for it. So I moved in with you, renewed my visa because I was still pulling a few shifts at the coffee shop while searching for a job as an editor’s assistant. I got interviews and when I attended them, I got the feeling they were only hiring me for the sole purpose that I was your girlfriend. Every single one asked about you. Every. Single. One. The few that offered me jobs I had to turn down because it didn’t feel right taking a position I knew I wasn’t qualified for. And nine out of ten times when I would get to your flat – our flat, it was supposed to be – you were never home.
So this is why I think this decision is best for us. You are just beginning on your solo career and I see nothing but the stars for you. You’re the best at what you do, and all those years in One Direction have taught you how to do everything just the way it needs to be done. In a similar way, I need to focus on my career and I can’t do that with your shadow looming over me in everything I do. I need to find and make my own shadow.
I’m going back home. I can only hope that they don’t know as much about me dating you as London did. Or maybe it’s all around the world and it’s hopeless for me to try and look. Maybe instead of being an assistant, I can be a writer and publish a novel. Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll both be on press tours and bump into each other again.
I haven’t seen or heard from you in three days, so I don’t know when you’ll be back. I bet you didn’t even know that today was our anniversary.
Goodbye, Harry. I wish you the best.
xo

Notes