Chapter 25 Harry
Harry
Alaugh echoed from outside the door, and I jumped into a cubicle, not wanting to be caught moping like an idiot in the men’s toilets.
I just needed five minutes to gather myself before I returned. That was all.
It would be an awful thing to break up with Molly at our own engagement party, but would it be any worse than what she had done to me the night she left? I’d forced us into that situation by not speaking up, and it would be even crueler of me.
Everything was ruined, and I clutched my phone in my shaking hand, willing him to call.
I just wanted to hear Dom's voice again. Just once. I’d stopped myself from listening to the last voicemail he left me, but he was still sending me texts.
As I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket, my apprehension flickered to life. It was the same feeling I’d had each time I was alone in bed, waiting for his message that would start the night.
What was I actually doing to myself? Because this entire month had just been filled with lies, and the strongest truth I knew was one that was too painful to face.
I sucked in a deep breath and swiped open my phone, and called my voicemail. I ignored my blood pounding in my ears and forced down the nerves that danced through my body like sparks from a fire.
The robotic female voice echoed through. “You have one new voicemail. To listen to the voicemail, press 1.”
I looked at the keypad as she rattled off the other options.
I pressed 1 before I wavered and held the phone up to my ear.
My heart spasmed the second he spoke.
“Hey, handsome. It’s me.” The sounds of a busy street echoed behind him, as if he’d gone out for a walk and just happened to call me.
“Listen, I know you don't want to hear from me and you don't want anything to do with me right now, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry for all of this,” he sighed on the other end.
“I know ‘sorry’ isn't enough for everything I've done.
Nothing can make what you're going through better, especially not from me...” There was a pause, and I trembled.
“I know you won't believe anything I tell you since I've broken us, or our friendship, or whatever you want to call it. But can you believe I love you?”
A small cry echoed in my throat. I couldn’t stop the sound as my heart ached, tears pricking at my eyes. That was what I wanted to hear. Not mixed in with the chaos of desire, of my need to feel his skin hard against mine. I wanted to hear his feelings, removed from the mess we’d created.
The shake in his voice told me he meant every word of it.
“If there's nothing else I can say or do for you to let me back into your life again, at least remember that I love you.” Dom chuckled, and his voice grew lower.
“I've loved you ever since that first night, really, when you were drunk off your face and sitting in the back of the taxicab stroking me and calling me pretty.”
My phone shook in my hand, my head falling forwards. I pressed my mouth against my palm, elbow on my knee, as I held back my tears. Pain seeped into every inch of my body, radiating from my heart.
“Well, yeah, so I’ve made it fucking obvious how I feel.
” There was another pause. “Like I said before, I'm just sorry I didn't see it sooner. I'm sorry it took me so long…” A car horn blared behind him, and I was listening so intensely that I jumped. “You’re the best person in my life, you know that, right? No one's going to push you from the top spot no matter how much you hate me. I just…” He took a rough breath. “I’ve been such an idiot, Harry. You were completely right when you said there was no excuse. I knew this was coming, but I just couldn’t stop because of the idea of you… because kissing you was the best choice I’d ever made, and everything else that came after…” Another heavy breath.
“Look, even if you never speak to me again, or you never let me see you again, I just want you to remember that I love you. I'm not gonna stop loving you whether it’s been two weeks, two months, or twenty years. It's always going to be you, Harry,” he groaned on the other end of the line. “Maybe you’ll forgive me one day, maybe you’ll give me the chance to show you how fucking amazing you are.
But if this is really it, and meant it when you said you don’t want to see me anymore, then I’ll take your word for it.
But I'll always be here whenever you need me, okay?
I'm only a phone call away. Right, yeah, that's all I have to say.
I just… yeah… I love you, alright? And I'll see you around. Bye, Harry… bye.”
By the time he had finished, those tears I had been holding back were free. My body was shivering as my sobs remained silent.
It was so fucked up, and it was all on me now. Dom had made his case, Molly had her assumptions, and I needed to choose a path that was going to lead me to something better than crying in a pub bathroom.
A burst of regret flooded through me, and I bit my tongue, forcing it back. Because the answer was so clear. I didn’t need to think.
“To replay the message, press 1. To save the message, press 2. To delete the message, press 3.”
Like an idiot, I pressed 1, squeezing my eyes shut as his voice rolled over me again.
My need for him was so intense that I forgot everything else around me.
Where I was, why I was here, what I was supposed to be doing.
I just let his low tone surround me and work its way through my body, hearing those words over and over again: I love you.
“To return the call, press 4”
I wish I could blame it on the alcohol, but I’d had nothing but water that night.
I wiped my tears on the back of my sleeve and pressed 4.