I knew I'd never be over Harry even the first time I'd been under him properly all those years ago. Though I tried to run from it for a time. Eight days specifically.

"Who keeps texting you? Your fucking phone sounds like a slot machine and we haven't even made it to Vegas yet."

Michael continued talking and I knew he didn't really need an answer when he was this amped. I was very thankful that he was so excited about going to the place he kept calling 'Sin City', like he was so pious in other cities, or he may have noticed my melancholy.

He may have also noticed that my phone had been going off with alarming frequency for nigh onto a week. And that I was more than a little bit pissed at him. The bitch of the thing was that I couldn't even tell him what he had cost me without revealing what Harry and I are, were...

He also hadn't noticed that I had been sleeping in our hotel room. Or he had and didn't want to discuss it.

He was still excitedly going on about all of the plans he had for Vegas.

"You sure you don't want to celebrate your birthday early there?" He'd mentioned this, more than once.

I rolled my eyes, affectionately, he loved me and was a goof, but his self-interest was massive. "I'm not even turning 21. Don't think Vegas is a really great place to celebrate a 19th birthday. Seems like it would just be a night where I was more aware of what I still can't do in this bloody country." I was painfully aware of all the things I can't.

"Not when you are touring with One Direction! Somebody somewhere will forget to look at our id's!" He raises his arms above the hair I had just dyed green and fell onto the couch next to me throwing an arm around my shoulder. "Can you believe they asked us back for next tour? You're gonna come with me again, right?"

I bit my lip to keep the tears at bay, this was not a conversation I wanted to have again. I needed to distract him. "I dunno." I deferred. "Who would know where we can get me in?"

And he was off and rambling and I was choking over Harry's lack of excitement about us joining tour again.

That wasn't fair, but I wasn't feeling especially charitable after our conversation. I was feeling ill-used and tender, and it was so much like the last time I had gotten intimate with a boy that Harry was the face of my twice-broken heart. Which is why I hadn't spoken to him in seven days.

My heart had dropped into my toes the minute 'we need to talk came out of his mouth'. It didn't seem possible that I could fall for two boys in a row, be relegated to best friend status twice, hook up with them while under the influence, and have them give me the 'just friends' talk the next day.

That wasn't fair to Harry either. Jack, the boy of my high school dreams had been much crueler and less thorough when he crushed me years ago. I think when I kissed him with my liquid courage rushing through my veins he had just been teenage boy caught up in the physical sensation. He had been opposite of Harry in every way how he approached our hook up. I can still feel his hand on the top of my head pushing me down. Thankfully, I can't still taste the spunk he didn't ask to leave on my tongue.

The next morning I had woken up to him scrambling around on my bed, that was the first and last time I let Michael convince me to throw a house party. He was putting clothes on quickly and that was all I really needed to know. It wasn't all I got. He came back round later that day to step on my hair a little bit more. "Look, you know I love you, but I just don't see you like that. I was drunk. Can we just pretend it never happened?"

Sure, I didn't get off, but you came in my mouth and left me alone and mostly naked the next morning and then broke my heart.

We pretended it never happened. I lost a lot that night, not limited to my first sexual experience or my best friend. I changed then, ran into myself and didn't come out until Harry met me there.

Harry didn't ask me to forget, but this time I wanted to, I wished for an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind moment. To be that close and feel those things and have him admit reciprocity was like getting into your dream school abroad and being denied a visa.

My brother, unknowingly, the government official holding the giant stamp that inked 'Denied' on my forehead.

"Melody," he'd breathed and sat on the bed running his hand over my hair and cupping my chin. Harry had looked at me then, his eyes wide and a little bit wet. I'd leaned into him like he seemed to be begging me to. Just a hair's breadth away he'd pulled back just in time for me to feel his tongue flick over his bottom lip. His arms had dropped.

"We can't." The crack in his voice widened the cleft in my heart.

Before he could crack open my chest more I put my hand up. "Can you hand me my shirt?"

I looked around the bed and realized all that was there was my borrowed red dress. I swallowed but accepted the t-shirt, the one he had dropped by the bed that last night. It still grated over my skin and his smell and mine were all over it, but it was better than being naked. I was thankful I was still wearing panties, though they were woefully small.

Once I was covered up, I pretzeled my legs so that they were no longer touching Harry and clasped my hands in my lap. "What do we need to talk about? What happened at the meeting?"

"They talked to 5 Seconds of Summer's management. You guys are touring with us again next year."

My face lifted, that sounded like another year of warming Harry's sheets and I was looking forward to turning up the heat.

"Isn't that a good thing, H?" I'd spent the night moaning his full name, but now I was back to nicknames, safer, more casual than this conversation.

He looked at me then and raised his hand, but stopped short of my face, instead he took my hand and a huge breath before speaking. "When they first said it, like, all that I could think about was waking up with your hair in my, um, my face every day and learning, like learning you more."

His cadence was slow and matched the caress he was doing on the back of my hand. Those hands had touched me all over, but this reminded me of my dad holding my hand and my mum's at my gran's funeral more than anything he had done last night. The realization made me suck in a breath. I wanted his passion, not condolence.

"Ok..." I filled in when he went silent on me.

He huffed in again. "But then I thought about like sneaking around with you," he quirked a tiny smile at that idea. "Which is kinda hot, but, um, not what you deserve."

"Harry." I gripped his hand but he stopped me from what I was going to say.

"Let me finish, please." And his eyes slid to mine and the furrow of his brow made me nod. "Then the meeting was over and I was trying to figure out how to tell Michael, like going over lines in my head, when he um, he just exploded on Niall as soon as management left."

"What?" My eyebrows must have been at my hairline.

"Yeah, Ashton, um, had to stop him from hitting Niall. He like," he pulled his hands away from me and rung them. "He started ranting about how friends act, and um, sneaking around with his little sister. Niall was just baffled and told him he'd never done so much as touched you. So Michael, like, scoffed and bunched up his fists at his side. He turned this shade of red I've never seen, even when Louis cheated at Fifa that time. And he says, 'yeah, well then where the fuck had she been sleeping every night, if not with you?'"

I sucked in a big breath and wondered why he'd never asked me the question if it bothered him so much.

Harry kept talking and reached for my hand again, but I didn't want his hand on me for this. I didn't think he was gonna tell me that he rose his hand and explained things to Michael and was only upset that he had to tell my brother how he felt before me.

"So Niall looked so shocked and confused that it seemed to, like, convince Michael that he didn't know what the hell he was talking about." He looked down then and started to pinch his bottom lip. Harry did this when he was thinking how to word something, or didn't want to answer a question. Or when he was trying to be cute, but a lip bite accompanied that pinch, and I knew I wasn't going to see it. "Then Niall said, 'I wouldn't do that to you brother.' And stood up and they shook hands."

And he stopped speaking, though I didn't really know why he was finished or what the fuck Niall had or hadn't done to my bloody brother.

"Then Michael said, 'It's a good thing, I'd hate to have to be around you for another year and a half after you took advantage of my sister.'"

At this I couldn't keep quiet. "Harry, you did no such thing. If you were going to take advantage I'm pretty sure your pants would have come off. It wasn't like that, we weren't just messing about right?"

"No." His eyes came back to mine, but they didn't inspire much hope for me. "I'm wasn't just trying to get in. You mean more than that, but--" He trailed off and I steeled myself. "I don't think we can do this. All I could think about was that in a few weeks, we take another long break before this tour even ends, and then we are all on the road, um, for another year. And how you're supposed to start university." He put his hand on my face. "You should go to school. You're supposed to go to school."

"I haven't even decided I wanted to go to uni." I swore.

"Melly, you're too smart to be out here doing hair, you should be writing and meeting boys who won't be flying away from you constantly."

"Maybe I want to do hair and the boy who has to fly away from me." I felt the first tear break over my water line and fall onto Harry's hand.

"Nah, Melody, you're too good for those things. For me and when, um, when I fuck this up, you're gonna be stuck out here with me and your brother will hate me and you might hate me. I um" he swallowed, "I don't think I could stand that." He put his forehead to mine. "Melly, you're my best friend."

And I wanted to hate him and what he'd just said. But he was my best friend too.

"Why are you so sure you'll fuck it up?" I whispered into his neck after I hugged him to me.

"Because, I always do."

I knew he felt this way, that him, who he was, his job, always ruined relationships. That they were just things he couldn't have.

"What if we didn't tell Michael?" I was desperate.

"No, Melody, you..I can't hide you." He was shaking his head.

"But, we're already hiding us."

"Yeah." He pulled away from me and wrung his hands and I just knew this was going to be the most painful thing he was gonna say. I could feel it, plus he wasn't touching me or looking at me. "I think, um, maybe, you shouldn't sleep here anymore."

He said other things while I was frantically gathering my things and getting dressed and stumbling to the door. I'm sure he'd said other things on the billion voicemails he'd left me since. But being kicked out of his bed felt so much life being kicked out of his life, I ran.

Which is why I hadn't talked to him or slept much in seven days.

I couldn't sleep without him.

Michael was standing staring at me. "Huh?"

"I'm going to sound check. You are under it today, space cadet. I said I'll see you at the arena?" He shook his head at me and grabbed a denim jacket.

"Yeah."I sent him a finger salute and he left.

Not two minutes later a knock sounded on the door and I sighed. "Why can't you ever remember your key on the first time, Michael?" I said as I pulled open the door to green eyes brightened by the reddened whites around them.