I stared ahead at the wall of Harry's dressing room, trying to rack my brain in order to make sense of what had just happened. I hadn't felt this bad in a while.
It felt like hours, but it could've only been minutes of me staring at that wall before I reached for my phone; I was getting sick of how awful every phone call that took place on this damn thing seemed to be, but I opened Harry's contact, not even soothed by the beautiful picture of him that sat at the top of our text messages.
"Where are you?"
I sent the text to Harry, biting my nails nervously. I could barely sit still. I waited no longer than a few seconds, before his reply had come through.
"Still in catering. You ok? X"
I felt tears pricking at my eyes, then. No - I wasn't okay. Nothing was okay. This was bad - this was so, so bad. Him, and his beautiful way of typing and those little kisses he'd started adding to his messages to me ever since we'd first started dating - they weren't making it go away. I couldn't even bring myself to type a reply - my hands were shaking, and my face felt numb. I didn't have words for what was happening right now.
Maybe a minute had passed before my phone began to ring. I hadn't replied to Harry's text, and so he was calling me, undoubtedly sensing that something was wrong.
I answered the call, but I didn't say anything. I bit my lip, cursing the tears willing themselves to fall.
"Iz, what's wrong?"
I exhaled, shakily, my leg nervously shaking in my seat. "C-Can you - um," I stopped, pressing my lips together. "Can you come here? Please?" I asked, my voice sounding scarily weak as I spoke. I could hear some faint chatter in the background - I supposed from the others around him in catering. I didn't even have it in me to feel guilty for interrupting his time with other people. I needed him so badly.
"Of course, baby, are you in the dressing room?"
"Mhm." I could barely even muster proper responses to him.
"Okay. Wait there, darling. I'm coming." His voice had gotten so gentle and soothing when he'd picked up on my own trembling one. It was like my anxiety didn't phase him at all; he was prepared to talk me down and aid me through it, no matter what it was.
The moment the door opened and Harry walked into the dressing room, his eyebrows furrowed in gentle concern, I was practically throwing myself into his arms. It was like it wasn't even conscious; it was more like muscle memory, as he opened his arms for me to step into them and they wound tightly around me without a second of hesitation. The second I smelled his familiar cologne on his hoodie, burying my face into his chest, I felt like I was going to lose it.
"Hey," he said, his voice soft and immediately comforting as he kept his arms enveloping my body. I felt like crying the moment his arms were around me. I wasn't sure why, but everything felt like it was hitting me at once. In his presence, I was finally feeling it, properly. It was safe to feel it.
"What happened?" His hand rubbed over my back, soft and methodical as I buried my face into his neck, now, blowing out a shaky breath. I could feel myself on the verge of bursting into tears as his hand coaxed over my back and shoulders, my face pressed to the warm skin of his neck as he held me, and I clung on like I was scared of letting go. "What happened, baby?"
I didn't even know how to put it into words. This was awful. Even though he knew, now - he knew the importance of the job, and everything it stood for in my head. He knew how much of a leap this had been for me to take, to come here; and he knew exactly why getting my law degree was so important, but it didn't seem to make it easier to push the words out of my mouth.
He drew back after I didn't speak for another second, my breath just short and shaky against his neck. I wasn't even crying - that still didn't come so easily, yet. It felt like I could've been having some sort of panic attack, instead. My chest felt tight, and my breathing was not even remotely under my own control; my hands were trembling as they clung to the fabric of his hoodie, desperate to find some composure.
He took my face in his hands, bringing our eyes to lock onto one another's. I could see the concern in his slightly furrowed brows, and in his gentle features - but his priority seemed to be bringing me back down to earth, first. His hand stroked over my hair as his other hand kept a kind but firm hold of my jaw, keeping my eyes on him.
He didn't say anything else for a second, so as not to push me. His eyes focused on my own in a silent comfort, stroking my hair as I finally managed to begin to stop being such a wreck in front of him. He wasn't judging me for even a second; he just wanted to know what was wrong, so he could do something about it.
"I got fired."
My voice was barely a whisper, and I watched him frown softly as he took in the words that left my lips. It took a second for them to register as I knew in his mind, my job was here, with him. He looked at me for a second, before he blinked, appearing to take it in.
"Oh, Iz," he murmured then, pulling me straight back against his chest as I finally felt proper tears begin to stream down my cheeks. His hand cradled the back of my head as he held me against him, and I never wanted to let go. This felt catastrophic, and I couldn't face it.
I could tell that he sensed I wasn't able to talk about it just yet. He didn't push at all, only holding me and letting me cry against him, now, for the second time in the past week. It felt like he was the only person who would be able to ground me again, but equally, it felt like nothing was going to make this better. I couldn't rationalise this, or begin to try and play it down, because it wasn't insignificant, no matter how much I wished it was.
I didn't have to tell Harry how much of a blow this was to me and my emotional state, because he already knew it. I didn't have to remind him of how this was going to bring absolutely everything flooding back into my mind that I'd so hopelessly convinced myself I was letting go of - this felt like reopening so many wounds that I'd poorly bandaged up. No matter what they'd told me, and no matter how painful it had been - at least I'd had that damn job. Even if it was killing me, I was doing it, and I was proving my father wrong. Now, I was doing the opposite.
I wasn't sure what it was like to rely on somebody in a moment like this. I always, always handled these types of things by myself - perhaps I'd involve Grace after having some time to make a weak attempt at processing it, but primarily, I did these things alone. My first instinct had been to call him, and to stabilise me like he always seemed to - but I wasn't quite sure how much it was working, now. He was bringing me back down, physically - for sure - my breathing was finally slowing, and my tears were finally ceasing to fall, but I didn't feel any better. It was like every time I attempted to take a deep breath in, I found myself suffocated by the weight of my situation; making my chest collapse inwards and lose the breath again.
"What did they say?" he asked very gently after a moment, his hand stroking my hair some more. I found myself leaning into the caress, closing my eyes for a second as he held my head, his thumb drawing back and forth in that soothing way it always did.
"T-That my contract was terminated. I was so stupid, Harry... I was meant to talk to them last week, a-and I was meant to have a review... a-and get permission for my last two weeks off." My voice sounded shaky and pathetic - each word was a struggle beyond belief to force out, and I couldn't help but feel ridiculous. I was full of self-loathing in that moment, but I didn't have it in me to put on any kind of brave face.
"You're not stupid," he murmured without hesitation as I peered up at him. The hand that wasn't resting on my head held my waist, keeping me close to him as we looked at each other. I didn't know if he could tell just how much I was spiralling right now. I didn't know a time when it had felt this bad - not for a long time.
"I forgot to do it. I forgot to do my review-"
"Don't do that, Iz," he replied with a little more firmness, though he never exceeded his soft, gentle tone. "You can't focus on that, because you can't change it. You don't need to start obsessing and blaming yourself - it isn't going to do any good."
"I just wanted things to be good," I whispered now, and I watched his eyes soften. He shook his head a little, smoothing his thumb over my cheek as he listened to me. "I was so focused on us. On things being so good with us... that I lost sight of what else I needed to be doing."
I watched his face fall a little, but he didn't confront me about it. I feared for a second that I'd worded it wrong - I wasn't trying to tell him that we were less important, but if I'd put it across that way, he chose not to take offence at that moment. He knew I was hurting.
He simply kissed my forehead, bringing me back into his chest with a soft exhale, his hand still gently stroking the back of my head as he held me to him. My mind was racing; it was like it didn't even know how to run away anymore.
There was the instinctual easiness that came with being with him like I was, now - having him hold me and silence that relentless ache I'd felt - but there was something so heavy, again. My chest hurt. It felt heavier than it had in a long time - I'd grown sort of used to the weight of all my problems on my chest that I'd carried for so long. The past week or so had really been the first time I'd felt what it was like to function without so much of that weight - but that just made this all the more crippling. I'd been so happy, and it couldn't last. It felt like it never, ever would.
"It's going to be okay," Harry murmured against my hair. He said that again, and again, throughout the remainder of our evening, but I knew he could tell that I didn't believe him. I wanted to, but it was hard.
The day had to keep moving forward, and so did I. I still had responsibilities to work, today, and I wasn't sure whether to be thankful for the distraction, or if it was even worse that I couldn't spend some more time mulling over everything. I was thankful to have Harry there, either way - not growing frustrated in the slightest when I'd drift off into more stupid contemplation as if it would fix anything.
He sorted my stuff out for me, for the show - organising my equipment in the way he knew I liked it to be for me to bring it out with me. I didn't ask him to do it, but he did, whilst he'd insisted I tried to take a nap. He even handed me the hoodie he'd told me I couldn't have, earlier, and though I loved him for it - all of it - I couldn't snap myself out of this. I'd never been through this sort of thing with somebody by my side like this. Part of me even feared that he'd start to love me less; seeing me like this - if it would put him off me, even if he'd proved time and time again that wasn't going to happen.
We showered together before we didn't have any more time in the dressing room. He was careful - as he always was - washing my hair for me and easing some of the tension in just about any of my muscles that he could reach. I had the tension from our ridiculously long flight, anyway, and then it felt like my shoulders had grown impossibly stiff from everything since then. The hot water didn't even seem to help much, and neither did his familiar hands on me.
Harry's focus was completely on me, even as he got ready to do his show - buttoning up the pair of leather flares he was wearing with his eyes fixed on me as I got dressed. I pulled his hoodie back onto my body, and considered making some kind of self-deprecating joke about how he'd have to let me keep it out of pity, now, but I didn't even have it in me to force the words out. I felt ridiculous.
He prompted me out of the dressing room in time to go and watch his opening act. His hand coaxed instinctually over my hip as he guided me down the hall, and walked us through the backstage area. I could hear the buzz of the crowd as I drew my fingers nervously over my camera, toying with the ridges of it as we approached the side entrance to the stage.
The opening band was playing as we approached, and Harry leaned back against an equipment box, opening his arms for me to step into them. I closed my eyes for a second, and I leaned back against his chest, his arm stretching over my shoulder to wrap around me and pull me to him. He didn't say anything; I was sort of glad that he didn't. I let my head fall back against his shoulder, his lips briefly dropping to press to my temple. I bit my lip back into my mouth, for sudden fear that I could burst into floods of tears all over again.
The music blared throughout the arena; a slow, acoustic melody, and he took us with it - Harry was moving, just a tiny bit, swaying us both in a gentle reassurance. I stared at the band on stage, trying to focus on them as they moved about, playing their instruments.
"It's going to be okay," he murmured, suddenly, against my ear. Those words, again. He let his lips press to the side of my head once more, and then another. I tried to nod, but I knew he wouldn't expect an answer. Instead, I let my hand squeeze over his, unable to do much else. All I could feel was him, holding me, as the music played - and just for a second, I thought, if we just stayed like that forever; things would be okay. It typically felt like anything could be okay if he said it would be - maybe if I stayed right here, then none of today's events would truly be real. We'd just be here - like this, with nothing else even existing around us.
I could feel tears pricking at my eyes again, and I sighed. I'd lost control all over again. I'd had it, maybe for a little while - but I'd lost it again. I'd taken control like I never had before when I'd told Harry the truth about everything, and just like that; it had been taken from me again. I didn't know what I was going to do.
It felt like Harry didn't take his eyes off me for more than a minute at any point during the show that night. It was the furthest he'd ever been from subtle - and it almost made things difficult, in that I couldn't get any other pictures of him looking at anything else. It was like he was worried to let me out of his sight. He didn't seem as fully immersed as he always was, and it made me feel somewhat guilty - like I shouldn't have been doing that to him.
I was distracted, and I knew it - I knew that was largely why he didn't stop looking at me. He wanted to be sure I was okay, with how disassociated I evidently was, but I was doing my best to focus. My mind kept shifting to everything else I had to juggle, now - I was thinking about my parents, as I always seemed to in moments like this. I could practically see them laughing at me as I proved them right, yet again.
I was doing the one thing I didn't want to do - I was wasting time. This was my second last show, and my head wasn't even in it. My boyfriend was on stage, and it was like I couldn't even take it in properly. I could feel it. I could feel, no matter how hard I'd convinced myself, that this was all it had taken for things to go south again. I felt numb, and I felt just like I used to feel.
I'd had maybe a week of freedom from it all. A week where I had this renewed, unprecedented kind of optimism, where I was feeling. I was loving, I was smiling, I was laughing, and I was feeling. Now, I felt numb. I'd passed being just upset in a matter of hours - I'd cried, and it felt like my body didn't know how to go forward from there - I knew it, deep down. I knew that I was reverting right back to the ways I'd always possessed and reversing so much of the progress I'd made.
I could feel my mind wanting to shut down, even to Harry. That was one of the worst parts; that I could feel my own instinct to draw back and hide away, even when I didn't want to. The only part worse than that, was that I couldn't prioritise stopping it from happening. My head was a mess.
Harry didn't linger on stage - instead, he headed straight off as soon as the final beat of his song had played. I stayed for an extra second, having been in the middle of taking a shot of Elin, when I felt the flash of a phone camera behind me. People took photos of the stage all the time - of course - but I was maybe a foot away from the barricade, and it had sort of felt like the phone camera had been directed at me. I glanced over my shoulder to follow the flash, to see a couple of girls beaming at me. I made an attempt at smiling back, before I put my camera back into my bag and shoved my hands into the comfortable pocket of Harry's hoodie, heading backstage and ignoring that persistent uneasiness I had in my gut. Every bad feeling was mixing together, at this point - I couldn't necessarily separate them.
Harry was waiting for me backstage, immediately moving over to me to wind an arm around my waist. I hadn't told the others what had happened, but equally, I wasn't sure how much they'd understand it. Not only that, but I wasn't sure I could really face having to explain it to anybody else, when I could barely comprehend it myself.
Elin met my eyes with a short shift, and I quickly nodded to tell her I was okay. She'd had this sort of empathy for me from the very first day I'd met her at the airport, and the way she looked at me now didn't stray so far from how she had on that first day; like she knew something was wrong, but that she hadn't ought to draw attention to it.
"I'm really tired," I confessed to her, not wanting to delve much deeper than that. That wasn't untrue. She smiled sympathetically as her eyes glanced down at Harry's hand rubbing soothingly against my hip - like she could see the cracks in my demeanour starting to form, and sensed how Harry was just about the only thing keeping them together right now.
"Yeah," she said, as Harry kissed my temple before unravelling from me for a second to speak to a crew member who had called his name. She was trying to read the situation. "I was gonna see if everyone wanted to go for drinks, but-" she paused, glancing at me, and then to Sarah and Pauli who were talking a few feet away, and then to Mitch and Harry who appeared to be figuring out some sort of intricate details with the member of the crew who had summoned them. She continued, "I don't think anyone's up for it."
I felt a little guilty, but I knew I would be absolutely awful company, tonight. I supposed Harry sort of had to put up with it, and I felt guilty enough for that, but the others didn't. I put on as much of a smile as I could.
"What about tomorrow, instead? After the last show?" I suggested, mainly to make her feel a little better - as if by some miracle, everything would be all right by tomorrow. It wouldn't be.
She smiled, a little more lively at my suggestion. "Yeah. Let's do that."
Elin was a good friend. I could tell she wanted to ask me if I was all right, but she didn't want to push. But with the mindset I was in, that was making me feel way worse - is that what I was like? Did I make everyone feel like they couldn't even ask the simplest of questions? I could've bet they felt like they could ask other people that - I was the unapproachable one, who people didn't dare to ask. And maybe for the sake of my own head, I liked it that way - but maybe I resented it, too.
I was at a breaking point.
We got into separate cars - Harry and I in one, and Mitch, Elin, Sarah, and Pauli in another. They were heading to the hotel, meanwhile, Harry and I were heading to his house. I hated that the excitement of going to his house for the first time had started to waver; I hated that it had been overshadowed. I felt miserable.
Harry's hand held onto my leg as the driver pulled off the busier streets, and I watched us eventually draw towards a large number of gates, one after the other. There was a man on duty, there, and he had to check that Harry was in the car before we could even enter. He also checked each of our IDs. I didn't have the energy to be curious about how intense the protocol to even get onto this street was, but Harry glanced over me like he'd expected me to ask, as I likely usually would.
He stroked my hair gently. "It's all so dramatic, huh? At least we didn't have to do all of this in London."
I forced a little smile as the car finally drove through the first and second set of gates. "Might have killed the mood a bit." I managed to remark. His fingers in my hair felt like they were just about the only thing keeping me somewhat sane right now.
We pulled around and the car finally stopped in front of what was possibly the largest house I'd ever seen. It immediately didn't have as much personality as his London place did, but I supposed that was why he didn't like this one as much. I was so tired, physically and emotionally, that I didn't really have the capacity to analyse it like I typically would. I'd been excited to unveil another little part of Harry to love so much, but now I just wanted to crash in bed, away from the rest of the world, before tomorrow.
Harry appeared to sense that. He made a couple more attempts at cheering me up with conversation as we made our way inside, with him dragging almost every bag behind him. When he opened up the front door, his house felt a little cold, despite us still being at the end of Summer. He hadn't been inside in months, after all.
"Christ," he muttered, walking away from me and leaving his bags at the door to start fumbling with the thermostat. After a second, he seemed satisfied with the adjustment he'd made, and turned back to me. "Give it a few minutes."
"It's fine," I returned, bringing the sleeves of his hoodie I was wearing over my hands. I glanced around the foyer we'd entered into, feeling his hand find my waist again.
This was the type of house I'd have imagined a celebrity like him would have. His London flat - though I hadn't really seen much of it - and the place he loved to frequent in Italy, both had so many accents of him throughout the fine details. Sometimes I could just sense him through the pillows or the rugs, or the paintings on the wall - that wasn't so present, here, until we made it into the other rooms.
I could feel my eyes drooping with tiredness as I took in my surroundings. I hadn't felt my body yearn to shut down like this in a while. I felt sick with anxiety, even in the most calming presence that I knew. Harry was standing behind me, his hands pushing from his shoulders to the sides of my neck, gently guiding me to lean back against him.
"You need to eat something," he murmured, gently patting my hip before he walked around me, further into the kitchen. It was a polished, white kitchen, and despite him not being here for a few months, it looked like it had just been cleaned. It wouldn't have surprised me if he'd hired somebody to clean it before we came back.
It was starting to warm up in here, now, as I watched him rifle through his food cupboards. He drew back after a second, holding a bag of pasta in his hand, looking at me with a sheepish grin.
"We can just order food," he suggested.
"All this talk about how you'd have liked to be a university student," I replied, walking over to take the bag of pasta from his hand. I tried to brighten my mood a little. "You'd be living off this for the entire month."
"Well, there's a reason why I wasn't cut out for it," he grinned as I took the bag from him. He kissed my temple as I approached, watching me take the bag, clearly just glad to get some real interaction from me for the first time in hours.
He started to boil some pasta for us, and I went silent as I watched. He rolled his sleeves up as if he was cooking a complex dish requiring focus, whistling quietly as he wandered around the kitchen. I watched him, silently admiring how perfect he was in the most trivial of situations. He'd been on stage maybe an hour or so ago, performing extravagantly to a sold-out crowd, and now he was in his sweatpants, cooking me some pasta because he refused to go to sleep without being sure I'd eaten properly.
It felt so endearing to watch, that I almost forgot about everything else for a second. I was sort of praying that the distraction would work, now, like it always did - that I could lose myself in him, again, and not face everything else that was going on. But it wasn't working like it usually did.
We sat at his kitchen counter to eat our pasta, one of my legs pulled over his, as we ate. He'd found a jar of sauce to heat up and pour over the pasta, and there was nothing wrong with it - I just couldn't get this stupid nausea to budge. It was settled in the pit of my stomach, making every bite feel like torture - but I needed to get some of this down, just to make Harry feel a little better. I knew he wanted to help.
"Come to Australia."
He spoke softly after we'd had a few minutes of silence. I looked up, my eyes landing on his. His facial expression didn't falter, even when my own was definitely not the most receptive to that idea. He wanted me to join them on the next leg of tour. I was shaking my head before I'd even considered it.
"I have to go home," I replied, and I watched him sigh softly. "I do. I need to go back to finish my degree, anyway, but I need to go back and figure out how to get my job back-"
"You have a job." His eyes had narrowed a tiny bit as the words left his lips. I wouldn't have called it frustration, or exasperation, in his tone - those weren't quite fair characterisations.
"Harry," I said, pleadingly, and he met my eyes, softening his gaze from where his eyebrows had raised a little. He blew out a breath.
"I know, darling. I'm sorry," he gently reached for my arm, leaning closer to me. The fact we were sat beside each other meant he could easily press some soft, apologetic kisses to my neck and my jaw. They made my body tingle, but it was thrumming with too much hurt and sadness to truly relish in it.
I knew that he understood, even if he was finding it a little difficult. He wanted to fix it, and he was partially right. I didn't have to abandon having any sort of income, by going home to unemployment and leaving this very good position behind me, but it felt like I didn't really have a choice. He didn't need to list out the reasons behind why he felt it was a good idea that I stayed working for the remainder of his world tour, nor did I have to list the reasons why I felt like it wasn't. University was restarting in the next couple of weeks, anyway - the plan was always to be back for that. But I'd also have to go back and grovel - that was the new plan. I needed to go back and try my absolute hardest to get my job back. I needed to try and fix it again, and I knew that he knew that.
"Just think about it," he added softly, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear. He gave my bowl of pasta a gentle nudge, as if reminding me to keep eating it. I bit my lip. "Please."
"I will," I replied, not entirely sure if I meant it or not. My head was all over the place. I had so much to figure out, and it felt like it had all come crashing down around me. I knew, unequivocally, that my head was set on going back to London and trying to pick up all of these pieces that I should've been smart enough to just avoid shattering. I needed to screw my head back onto my shoulders, and suck it up. I had to go back and finish off this law degree even if it killed me.
I knew he didn't know how to help me, because I wasn't going to let him.
It felt long overdue by the time we finally went to bed. I was exhausted, and there was nothing quite like the feeling of crawling into bed with him at the end of a long day. I'd never had the chance to do it after a day quite as long as this; I knew it wasn't healthy to be trying to calculate and mull over my future - or lack thereof - after negative hours of sleep and a long journey from Italy to California. I was glad to finally sink my head back into a pillow, and I was glad that it was his pillow. His bed.
Harry was on his phone when I walked back over to the bed from the bathroom. The mattress was achingly soft beneath my weary body, and I almost groaned at the feel of it beneath me as I sat down. Harry had his bottom half covered by the sheets, his shirtless torso revealed as he sat up, looking at his phone screen.
"Shit," he mumbled, suddenly.
I frowned. I shuffled closer to him, letting my cheek graze his shoulder and my eyes fall onto his phone screen, to see what he was looking at. In a rare occasion, he was on Twitter - from choice - and he'd landed on a particular tweet that made his declaration rather justified.
Somebody had attached two pictures to the tweet - side by side. One was of Harry - a photo taken earlier today when we'd been swarmed during our arrival at the arena. He had a beautiful smile on his lips, and his hand raised to wave over at the fan taking the picture. He looked perfect. My heart only began to race with dread when my eyes landed upon the second picture - one of me. I was standing in front of the barricade, and it was taken from diagonally behind me, with the flash illuminating the darkness of the arena after Harry had just left the stage.
'Isabella (Harry's photographer) seemed to be wearing his hoodie during the show tonight!'
As soon as I read the caption, my heart sank. Oh.
I forced out a sigh I didn't realise I'd been holding, studying Harry's side profile anxiously. He tilted his head back, his eyes closing in brief frustration.
Somehow, it just kept getting worse.