—Harry—

I'm sitting on the floor in the library, as per usual. School just let out, and here I am avoiding all the idiots this school is inhabited with. Books are scattered around me as I lean against one of the many book shelves, starting a paper that was just given to us yesterday but isn't due until next month.

I'm taken out of the homework trance I'm in, when the door clicks loudly from across the room, indicating someone just walked in. I'm curious as to who is here, since no one ever comes in here after school. I'm surprised when I see who it is, looking over to the rows of computers when she comes into view. 

Paisley Hayes.

She sits at a computer, where I can see her in between two of them. She keeps her eyes forward at the screen as she types a few things, logging into her account I assume. When she peers through the monitors, her eyes meet mine and I look away quickly, not wanting to get caught looking at her.

This is the girl I have been in love with since the first time I laid my eyes on her in the ninth grade. She is, and always has been, the prettiest girl I've ever seen. I've admired her from afar, but fairly closely, for two years now. I like to think I know exactly who she is. I know that she's not like her friends, but she so desperately tries to keep that a secret, for unknown reasons. She's smarter than she lets on. I've seen her grades and heard her lie to her friends about them, which has never made sense to me, but I've always guessed that's just part of the mystery that she is to me. 

I love the way her nose scrunches up and her eyes squint when she laughs. Her laugh is the best sound. It's like music to my ears. Listening to it, makes me smile, every single time I hear it. 

I've never spoken a word to her before. But I'd know the sound of her voice anywhere. I love listening to her talk. I love listening to her hum along to whatever song she's listening to in her headphones, which she constantly does when she walks the halls. It's in moments like that, when she's not with her friends, that she looks the happiest—the most thoughtful. Like she's in her own element and completely content in her own world.

When I look back over at her again through the monitors, seeing as I can't concentrate on this book sitting in my lap because she's here, she is already looking at me. She raises an eyebrow at me and smirks, before slowly standing up and walks over to me.

What is happening? Oh God.

I try not to show how my insides are panicking as she sits down next to me. She sits so close, our sides are touching and I have no clue if I'm dreaming or not. I look at the girl sitting next to me, her face just inches from mine and she smiles.

"Hi, Harold!"

"Uhh, Paisley, um, hi," I stutter like the loser I am, and I want to kick myself in the face.

She giggles at my inability to form a proper sentence. "What are you working on?" She looks through the books I have spilled around me, picking one up about Hitler. "Ah, I was going to do mine on him too, but after a little research, I went with Bin Laden."

"You already did research?" I ask. It doesn't surprise me, but for some reason I act like it does.

She looks at me curiously, as if she's trying to decide what's okay to say to me. "I wrote half the paper already." She smiles as if she's embarrassed and looks down at the book in her hands again. 

"So, did you want something?" I ask. I'm confused as to why she came over here. And why she's talking to me after never having done this before. "Clearly you're not looking for answers for a test, so I just—"

"I think you should ask me out," she says, looking me in the eyes. Her confidence is intimidating and I feel like I can't breathe.

"What?"

She laughs. Oh God, it's that laugh, and she's sitting next to me. She's so close to me and she's laughing. I must be dreaming, because this surely would never happen if I wasn't. No girl has ever sat this close to me before. I think I'm in shock because all I can do is stare at her with my mouth hanging open.

"I think you should ask me out," she says again. "I would like for you to take me on a date."

"I—you're kidding, right?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't think it's a good idea." I start to gather the books around me into a pile. What is happening? I'm so confused. Why is she doing this to me? I need to get out of here. My head is spinning.

"I'm not asking if  you think it's a good idea or not, I'm asking if you want to go on a date with me."

I look at her to see that she's still looking at me. A serious look on her face. Not showing a single sign that she's joking in the slightest and I can't seem to take my eyes off of hers.

She's even prettier up close. Her skin looks softer, her eyes are bluer, and I can smell her hair. It's like strawberries, and instantly, it's my favorite.

"Are you going to ask me out, or not?" she breaks the silence with a cute smile. My heart is already pounding and I'm hoping to God she can't see that I'm breaking out in a sweat, although I'm sure it's obvious, and I want to kick myself for being who I am right now. If I were anyone else in the entire world, I would gladly ask this beautiful girl to go on a date with me. But, I'm not anyone else. I'm unfortunately me, and while I know I've been so madly infatuated with this girl, and would treat her better than that dumbass she dated last year who cheated on her multiple times, her and I would just never work out. I'm not stupid.

"No, I'm not asking you out. You're crazy." 

"Okay, fine then," she sighs, standing up from her place on the floor next to me. I stand with her, not exactly sure why I do. She looks at the floor before looking me in the eyes again. "Can you just do one thing for me?"

"Anything," I blurt. What was that? I want to kick myself again.

"Trust me," she tells me. She's looking at me so intently as the words she just spoke repeat in my head. Trust her? God, she is so confusing. 

We don't say anything. We just look at each other. The confidence in her eyes never wavering, and I am the complete opposite. My heart wont stop pounding and my breaths come out uneven and I haven't a clue as to what I'm thinking, because I'm trying to figure out what's going on in her crazy mind and coming up with nothing, because I know precisely nothing about girls.  

"I think we'd have fun if we went on a date," she smiles. I watch her hand slide through her hair to get it out of her face, but it falls flawlessly back the same way. "So, since you wont ask me out, Harold, I'm going to ask you to pick me up tomorrow night at seven." She steals the pen out of my hand and bends down to write her phone number and address in my homework book.

"Paisley, I really don't think this is a good idea," I tell her, as she stands back up to look at me again.

She smiles again. "Just trust me, Harold."

*

I'm not going to lie. As nervous as I was to pick her up, this date has been going quite well. She's asked me questions and seemed interested in my answers, like she actually wants to get to know me. It's surprising to say the least, but as the night goes on, my nerves start to whither away and I'm finding myself actually surprised with the information she is giving me about herself.

Just like always, she is smiling. Since the minute I picked her up at her house, the smile has not left her beautiful face. She has laughed at my one too many jokes I've told to make myself feel better about the situation, to the point she's had tears in her eyes, and she was right. I just needed to trust her. Because unlike I thought this would turn out, her confidence and how much she talks, and how she looks me right in the eyes when I say something, makes this night seem to flow easily.

I took her to the pizza place at the pier. It wasn't anything fancy, but she didn't care. At first it was weird, to see this girl sitting across the table from me, thinking I had no idea what I was in for. But after a while, I stopped thinking about how I was just a nerd out with the popular girl. Our statuses didn't mean anything here. She wasn't just a popular girl, nor was I just a nerd. We were just two people, out together, having a laugh. An unexpected good time. The best time. And I knew, halfway through our pizza, that I'd give anything to have this night never end, not knowing if I'd ever have another one like it.

I'm unsure after we eat, if I'm supposed to take her home, but I drive in the direction of her house anyways. When I'm parked in front of her house, she looks at me and smiles.

"Take a walk with me?" she asks. "We could walk on the beach across the street?"

There's no way in hell I'm ever saying no to her. If she wants to spend all night with me, I will gladly do so. And so I just smile at her, as I open the car door to get out.

"Can I ask you something?" I ask. We've been walking along the beach for a while now, carrying our shoes. The full moon lighting up the ocean, giving us enough light to see perfectly in the dark. When she nods, I proceed to ask the question I've wanted to ask since she interrupted my studies in the library yesterday. "Why did you want me to go out with you?"

She stops walking and looks at me. Her eyes flick back and forth between mine a few times before she says anything. She looks absolutely stunning under the lighting of the moon. How am I lucky enough to be with her right now?

"I knew you were going to ask that," she answers. "I don't really have an answer, to be honest. But can I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"I knew I'd have fun with you," she says. "I'm happy I'm out with you right now. I feel like I can actually breathe, ya know. I know that you're not looking at me with some sort of expectation of who I'm supposed to be, and I feel like I've never been more myself, than I have tonight. It's refreshing."

I try to hide how happy hearing those words make me. I don't care that she doesn't have an answer as to why she wanted to go out with me. There doesn't need to be an answer, because all that matters is that she thinks being out with me is refreshing. She says she's happy to be out with me, and I'm not doing anything particularly great, I'm just being me. And surprisingly, being myself with her, is turning out better than I ever could have imagined.

"Harold?"

"Hm?"

"I'll race ya!"  She doesn't hesitate to start running back in the direction we came, and as I run after her, all I can hear, is the sound of her laugh.

*

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about who Paisley used to be. The girl I remember her being in high school. She was confident and held her head high, but in a way you could tell she didn't think she was better than anyone else. She had a way of making me feel confident about myself just by being around her. She made me see that it was okay to expand my horizons, to be myself no matter who was watching and to always do things that were out of my comfort zone and take risks, because that's how you know you're living. I may have taken the taking risks advice a little too far after she left and took the wrong risks, but she's the one who taught me how to live with confidence, and for that, despite how much I hated her for what she did, I was grateful for how much she changed me.

Ever since we got back from Christmas holidays, she's been different. Different in a good way. She's happier, like some kind of weight has been lifted from her and she's on cloud nine and nothing can bring her down. She has been more confident with just about everything—from the way she does a photo shoot, to the way she talks and even when it comes to being with me. 

It's reminded me a lot of the girl I used to admire, even before the very first time she talked to me in the library. And I can't help the happiness I feel inside of me, realizing that she's finally back to her old self again. Why she had been so closed off before and untrusting, is still a mystery to me, but it doesn't matter anymore, because I have her back. The girl I fell in love with in high school is exactly the girl standing next to me. She's the girl I get to snuggle up with every night. The girl I get to kiss any time I want. The girl I'm lucky enough to call mine. Although I always knew she was the same girl since we met on the first day of school, the girl she is now, is more like who she used to be than ever before, making it hard not to fall even harder for her.

My feelings for her have grown so strong over the last month, and it's not because she's finally added the spice to our relationship—the part I almost thought she'd never allow to happen. I know that I'd be completely content with her even if we didn't fool around. I'd go crazy probably, but she means more to me than that, that it's not what I need when it comes to her. But if I'm being honest, this month has been worth every second of crap we went through to get to this. She is a fun girl in the sheets. I can only imagine what it will be like when she's finally ready to have sex with me. I'm not going to push it, even though I know she's not a virgin like she says she is. I'm okay with letting her think I think she is. As much as I want to have all of her, there's really no rush to get there, because there's no doubt in my mind, we'll be together for a long time after.

Going back to the place that was so special to us, when we were back home, I still can't believe she doesn't remember me. I thought for sure, being there with me would somehow make it click in her mind who I am. I was ready for her to find out. I've been ready for it. I wanted her to see it that day, in that specific place, and when she didn't, I was at a loss as to what to do.

I was so close to telling her on our date, that time I took her to the roller rink. I wanted to tell her that night, because I wanted her to remember the first time I took her on a date to the roller rink in Victoria. But Astrid interrupted that plan, and everything went to shit after that.  

And since then, I've been unsure as to how I want to tell her. Simply because I have no idea how she's going to take the news. I don't know how she's going to react, or if it's going to change everything. I'm hoping that in the end, we will just come out stronger and it'll make us closer somehow, but really, I have no clue. It's worrisome, and almost makes me want to keep my mouth shut. Maybe she'll figure it out on her own and I wont have to tell her myself. 

Either way, I know that one day I want her to know. I want her to remember me, and how much I loved her then. I want her to remember us and who we used to be together, because there's no doubt in my mind, that if I had just answered one of her phone calls after that day I found out about the dare, that she would have told me she really did have feelings for me—that nothing about being with me was a lie at all. That even though we came together for all the wrong reasons, like we did this time around, that everything about who we were together, was real, much like it is now. If only I had known then, everything would surely be different right now.

I'm watching the way the wind blows her hair around in that sweet majestic way that it does, as she looks out into the ocean. She almost looks sad, and I want to know what she's thinking about. I always want to know what's going on in that beautiful mind of hers. I love the way she thinks. All of her thoughts have this deep meaning behind everything. She sees the world as art, the same way I do. I love that she has big dreams and her goals are much like mine, and I know that having the same ambition, and that same dream to work towards, only means we have hope for our future together.

I love this girl with everything that I am. She is the only girl I want. The only one I will ever need. She gives me everything I could have ever imagined love to be, turning only being able to dream about it, into a reality I never thought I would ever have.

"Paisley," I say, breaking the silence, and standing up from the driftwood. I pull her up to me, wrapping her in my arms, the place I want her to be forever, and look deeply into her eyes. 

She smiles at me, and giggles as I kiss her on the cheek. 

"I love you."

She looks at me with such seriousness in her eyes. The smile faded from her face, but the way she looks at me, I know my words still make her happy, even though the smile is gone. I know that she doesn't feel the same way. I fell for her faster than I should have. It hasn't even been a month since we've been together. 

She doesn't say it back. She just crashes her lips with mine with such force and passion, that she doesn't need to say anything, because even if she doesn't feel the same way, I know she feels something. That me telling her that I love her, means something to her, and that's all that matters.

She lets out a giggle, as I caress her cheek with my thumb when our lips part. She looks unbelievably happy in this perfect moment. So beautiful with the wind blowing in her hair and her eyes the brightest blue I've ever seen.

"You don't need to say it back," I tell her. "I know you don't feel that way about me yet, and that's okay. I just wanted you to know that I fell for you. I've fallen so hard and I just—I love you so much, Paisley."

"I'm sorry I don't feel that way, Harold," she says, softly. "Words can't express how I do feel about you though. Just know that."

She removes herself from my hold on her, and gets her keys out of her purse. I watch as she starts to carve something into the driftwood, next to the spot we always sit together.

"What are you doing?"

"I want you to know how I feel," she answers. She doesn't look up at me, as I sit on the driftwood to watch. She has a serious look on her face, never once looking away from what she's doing, and I don't interrupt or say anything. A smile forms on my face when I realize what it is she's writing, and when she's done, she stands up and pulls me to my feet, wrapping her arms around me.

"P plus H equals forever," I read it out loud.

She looks at me. "I want you to know that, even though I haven't fallen in love with you yet, that I feel this way about us."

"Which is what exactly?"

"You and me," she says. "I want you and me, forever."

"Forever?"

"Forever."

A/N: A little insight into their past. The beginning and the end. ☺ Hope you enjoyed the little peak as to who they were together then! When I first started writing Karma, I actually started writing them in high school together, so these scenes are very clear in my mind, and I love them. It's weird to actually write about it now, since I deleted that after I started writing this version.

Anyways, quick update for you all!! Thanks for 16.8K reads!! Love you! xo

much love,
amberlove
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