"Corazon, are you listening? You are so distracted today." Milo was being kind. I've been distracted since I got in the door. Since before I left for Shanghai.

I think maybe I've been distracted for the whole year we've been together. Or the 7 months we've shared his apartment. Truthfully, I've been distracted for five years. Since I looked into green eyes and knew myself. Lost myself.

"Sorry, love," I say, not baby, never baby. I make my way to his side of the tiny table in our breakfast nook and sit on his broad lap. He's so handsome and I try to get lost in his blue eyes or thick scruff or the arms that bulge around me.

"No, it's ok, mi amor, just missed you all week." He eyes me meaningfully and I linger when he puts his lips to mine. My eyelids flutter along with the bats in my belly. The kiss feels like the first drop on a rollercoaster, the best kiss I've had after, well, after everything. It took me years, literal years, and thousands of miles of distance to think about anything but pink lips that plumped at the edges.

When I first decamped to the Philippines and later Singapore, it was about moving forward, fast. Not being in any place I'd shared with Harry was imperative and his name was all over Australia for me. His name was all over nearly the entire world map. Falling in love on a world tour is romantic as hell, but it also changes the dots and stars all over any map into black marks of a different shade.

So I went places we missed, or that my memories were shaky of, and where I was offered jobs. There is that all important consideration. I'm selfish and like to eat a couple times a day. I wanted, no I needed, to be able to support myself. My parents, bless them, would help me if needed. I could tell they knew my flight was about more than just a quarter life crisis, especially my mom, that there was deep heartbreak. They knew who too, but we didn't talk about it.

That may have to be my epithet.

Even with their sympathy, the long looks and soft eyes, I couldn't ask for money when I was leaving home to pursue the career they didn't care for. I didn't go to uni like they wanted; maybe like I wanted, before I wanted Harry more.

So, I ran, far and foreign away and learned to make some kind of sense of different alphabets. It seemed easier to decode than the behavior of someone who claimed to love me. The Philippines, though a firm stepping stone, was such culture shock, I felt like I was literally wandering through a different planet. I was from a place singular in so many ways, and I'd traveled the whole world at the ripe old age of 21, so it was shocking how lost I was.

The language was different, the animals were different, a little less deadly, it was crowded. The people seemed different, but I've found that they only speak a language I haven't learned yet and look a little different, people are people. Complicated and simple and searching for what they want, don't have or once had. Even with a growing awareness of the sameness even in a new place it was still hard, and most importantly, distracting. I worked and lived and tried to learn to eat new things and a new word, never two letters, everyday, the next plan was to learn to talk to a new person too.

I was relieved when my Singapore visa came through. Singapore was contained in a way that the chain of islands and mass of people I'd left was not. There were also a lot more people from all over, and lots of things were in English. I found my footing easier there, and I found friends too. After six months of living away from home, I found an apartment to share with a girl from New Zealand. We were both tall blondes and people mixed us up a lot, though we thought our accents were nothing alike, as we always protested.

Kara became my best friend. She was a blast, and since what was left of me was a blown out bunker, there was no place for me to run into myself and hide like last time. This heartbreak was so much more colossal in scale any way, I couldn't hide it. It was written on my face and stitched into my skin. She never asked for specifics or factoids, except for his name and occupation. It leaked out over time as I started to put the pieces of my heart back onto my sleeve.

"So," she asked the first weekend we spent in our tiny one bedroom where I camped on the couch. "Do you like to be distracted or comforted?" She was pouring herself a glass of wine.

"From what?" I asked and wrapped my arms around myself.

"Alright, distraction it is!" She nodded and grabbed a second glass to fill, overfill. "Let's watch something! Friends or Breaking Bad?" She cued up her Apple TV and handed me my plumb full glass.

"Not Friends," was my response before I took a large swallow. Harry loved Friends.

"Ok," she nodded and started the show that we would mainline like we were the junkies.

And the words didn't come out then, and she seemed ok with that. Kara gentled me into a female friendship, which was a new arena for me, me the girl always surrounded by boys. So we watched shows, and she took me on her exhausting hunts for the perfect dress, hair thing, or k-beauty product. We cooked together and she taught me to make pavlova when we couldn't afford to go home for Christmas.

One night, after a few months, when we were watching another gory show that had little to do with romance, wine in our hands and my feet in her lap, she looked at me with her brow furrowed and a lip between her teeth. "Can I ask you something?"

And I shocked myself. "Um, Yeah?"

"How long ago was your break up?"

I looked away quickly. "What makes you think it was a break up?"

She pushed my foot away from her a little bit. "Melody, come on! I'm not an idiot! You avoid certain things like the plague. I noticed that all the shows we choose to watch are heart wrenching, but in the world-ending sort of way, not the he's a fucker sort of way, and you, well, wrap your arms around yourself sometimes, like you are holding yourself together, especially if I mention certain places I'd like to go. I assumed they had bad memories...."

"No, usually, they have the best memories. That's why I can't think of them. Because, there aren't that many bad memories at all."

"So, why did it end, if there aren't any bad memories?"

That was a question I had myself and looking back, I may have had more of the answers than I realized. So I told her about Harry, how he was my first, and probably my last, because if I want even sure why I'd begun taking on water, I couldn't wade back into the pool without proper protection, I was sure I'd drowned.

"His name was Harry, is Harry I suppose, but I called him H usually," I started and told her about long nights in hotel rooms full of words and revelation, endless flirting and confusion. Then moved to real confession and love. And frustration, I talked alot about frustration.

"Why did it take him so long to kiss you?" She sat rapt. It was another question I had no answer to. No satisfactory one anyway.

"I don't know, but the kissing escalated quickly, and after some hiccups, we couldn't stop kissing. It was all we could do. I was throwing myself on him constantly, even when I should have been asking for answers."

"Answers about what? Was he a cheater?" She looked like she knew a bit about that, and in the name of reciprocity I vowed to myself to ask about her heartache. Kara had some, she recognized mine so easily.

I shook my head vehemently, "No, though he could have anytime. But I believe he didn't. Even when we were away from each other. Which was a lot...." My mouth turned down and my empty glass occurred to me. I fetched the bottle.

"Why was he away so much? What kind of job does a 19 year old have that he's always traveling?" She wondered aloud as I made my way back to our couch, it had seen better days because I pulled it out every night and it was older than either of us. I sat down and worried the fraying seams. I decided to tell her, she had seen me naked the other day and she had held my hair back and cleaned up after me when I got food poisoning. I trusted her.

"Um, did I tell you who my brother is?" I started offhandedly. She was our age and from nearby, Kara would know Michael's band.

"I think you said his name was Michael?" She ahh'ed her first sip of bottle number two.

"Yeah, Michael Clifford, he's in 5 Seconds of Summer." I let it lie.

She choked a little on her wine. "Wait, I've seen them. My best friend loves One Direction, and they opened..!" Her eyes got super wide, which was funny because they were anime-like on a normal day. I watched the dots connect and took a drink on a sigh.

"Wait a fucking minute, when you say Harry, Do you mean Harry FUCKING Styles?"

I'm sure our many neighbors heard her.

"Yeah, though I never called him that." I grinned because I had once, In bed, in Brazil, after lots of caipirinhas. It was nice to smile about a memory. Talking was helping.

Kara just gaped at me for what felt like hours.

"Kara...." I waited for her to speak. She held up a finger and took a huge gulp of her wine.

"So, you're telling me that your first fuck was Harry Styles?" I nodded and she finished her wine and poured more.

"I don't know if I'd call it fucking so much--"

She interrupted me, "You had better have fucked him!"

"Jesus, Kara, our neighbors don't need the details!"

"Well I fucking do!" She leaned in, "Is it as big as it looks?"

I sat back and my eyes bulged. "Um, I don't, I don't ..."

"Holy shit! Is he the only guy you've been with still?" Kara was so incredulous she looked like I had just told her the dog ate my homework.

"Kara, I don't know if you have noticed," I matched her 'are you taking the piss' tone, "But I'm not very chatty with even the people I know, live in a country where I don't always speak the language, and I'm not, I'm not." I took a huge gulp, this time of air. "I'm not over it!"

"Course you're not!" She scoffed. "He's Harry Styles! Unbloody likely you get over him, but doll, haven't you ever heard the best way to get over someone is to get under someone new?" Her eyebrows wiggled like a cartoon villain.

It took me a moment, I'm embarrassed to say, to take her meaning, then I stared at her slack jawed while she drank down the canary and her yellow wine too.

"Um, no I guess I really haven't." I took a drink and tried to change the subject. "Should we restart the show?'

Kara gave me a knowing smile. "Alright, love, I'll let you change the subject this time....But this is not over."

I sighed in relief, both that I wouldn't be continuing with the wrenching self-disclosure or watching her shocking responses to what were now my most bittersweet memories.

Kara started the show and pulled me to lay in her lap, her hands tangled in my hair until my breathing evened out. However, she didn't let her little plan go to bed with me that night. She tried over and over to get me to go out. She was successful with increasing regularity. Our wine nights were now mixed with nightclubs and get-togethers.

When she came home with the International singles flyer I should have recognized the glint in her eyes. Maybe I did, and I felt like I was healed enough to answer with a glint in my own. It still took her weeks to drag me down to a mixer. The first guy I slept with post Harry was definitely not from our club either. Thank God, I would have had to leave the group, maybe the island, if I had sobbed when someone who I shared friend's with came inside me. But, he said my name in entirely the wrong voice. He was a nice looking bloke, even had curly brown hair, but I had hopped off his lap and frantically put on clothes with mascara melting down my face. I may have died of mortification, if that was a thing, if he was even a tangential acquaintance. Instead I felt misty and ill-used the whole of the next day when I noticed the soreness between my thighs.

Then there were the dates with Kara's work friends. I always realized they were dates a little too late when i was suddenly alone with some male under 35 and caught Kara sending appraising glances with whoever had come with us that she had conveniently found something else to do with. At first, I fought these hard. I think our only real fight came on the heels of one.

"It's my life, KARA! I'll date when I am bloody ready!"

"How are you ever gonna be ready! Your head is either in the sand or you are running!! All you do is run!"

I ran out of the room, and true to form, didn't talk to her for a week, until she called me out for the petty grudge holder I am. Having a female friend was a growing experience to say the least.

Then the dates became fun. I took them for what they were, a chance to be young and happy and flirty in public. This was a new arena, one not filled with screaming girls, where I could clasp hands with a handsome boys in front of naked eyes and camera phones. I felt so free that I found my wings again.

That was when I met Milo.

I don't think he had been coming to International Associate Club, IAC, or Ick as well called it, for long when I clocked him.

Milo was hard to miss, his jaw line was strong like a hammer instead of sharp as a blade, but it was his eyes that nailed me to the wall. They were so blue against his olive skin and nearly black hair, I remembered watching my mom put drain cleaner down the stopped up kitchen sink when he first looked at me. And he looked at me a lot.

Within 20 minutes of the bowling outing we were on, he had made his way to the lane Kara and I were sharing with Colette, who had a frog on her name badge, marking her as French, and Mateo, who had a little matador on his, Spanish.

"Do you have a spot for one more?" He directed the question at all of us, but his eyes followed me, and he read my badge with the tiny Koala. "Melody?"

My name wasn't a tune in his mouth, but it wasn't wrong either, and the caress the 'y' was given was enthralling. I looked around at my companions and they shrugged, except Kara, who might as well have been drawing the flowchart she was envisioning for our relationship for all her subtlety.

"Sure," I glanced at his badge, it had a his name, 'Milo' and a soccer ball. Which didn't help that much, with the Spanish inflection. "Where are you from?"

"Argentina." He typed his name into the space we had provided. I guess a soccer ball was only less clear than if it was a little jersey with 'Messi' on the back.

It wasn't the last question I asked him that night, but Kara was the grand inquisitor. What do you do? Finance. Where do you stay? Nearby here actually. What are you drinking? Oh no, it's my turn to buy.

Kara was already team Milo, even before he volunteered for the next two rounds.

He sat by me between go's and his hand found my shoulder when he leaned in to hear me over the music that got louder as the hours grew later. It felt nice, like a buzz instead of a shock.

For the next two mixers we attended, he was there. He admitted later, he went to all of them to see me. Something like five until I let him hug me goodbye and lingered when he kissed my cheek. He smelled so nice I even ran my nose along his neck, if I'm honest.

He asked me out that night. And to be exclusive a month later, and to move in just three months after that. I could blame it on the fact that Kara was going home as her visa expired when her temporary assignment ended, and that made me so sad and prematurely lonely/homeless, I said yes. But truth was, it was so amazing to be openly wanted and chased and adored by a man who was permanent, that I wanted to share an address and a bedroom.

I'd wanted to share everything with him the first time he had kissed me and all I could feel was the warmth of his breath and the curve of his smile instead of a ghost. I'd drink drain cleaner if it reminded me enough of his eyes when he went home for a month at a time.

So I sat on Milo's lap when I got home tonight, distracted, and let him remove my shirt, and lay me out on our kitchen table, eat his fill, and fill me up until the sun rose and he had to leave for work.

But for the first time in a long time I close my eyes and dream of spring instead of looking into his eyes like deep water.

And the next day, when I get a text from an unknown number, I answer it.