part VI. 3-9-15

I got so nervous about the party tonight, I had to call Mr. Dario at home on a Saturday morning. He told me I shouldn't think about it too much, but how can I stop when Arabella Jamison permeates my daydreams like tainted water?

I arrived at her door and she swept it open. "You're early, Harry," she tsked, giggling, but I didn't care because she looked too beautiful for words. Her long curls brushed the bare curves of her waist and her hips, exposed by a silver bikini that somehow made her beauty that much more other-worldly. Her hazel eyes sparkled in amusement. "Quit staring, Harry," she teased. "I've got a boyfriend."

The words sent me reeling, but I tried not to think about that.

There were others in the pool already. Some, I recognized fleetingly from school, but one, I knew by heart. From Ara's descriptions, the pictures on her phone, the way he looked at her, I knew exactly who he was.

Zayn Malik. He was handsome- too handsome for me to trust- and mysterious-looking. I felt stupid instantly. How could Arabella be in love with me, when she had him?

"Harry," she said, softly, her lips nearly brushing my ear as she spoke, "I'm gonna go talk to him. But I'll need you afterward."

I was nervous, elated, jealous and in love. That was way too many feelings for me. I took a drink. I took so many drinks.

After a while, the world was spinning in a hazy cosmic swirl of purple and blue and rose colored glass sheltering me from reality. But even there, in my slightly drunken daze, I saw her.

Arabella.

She was everywhere. She was tapped into every nook and cranny of my mind and soul, she was the end and the beginning, she was more beautiful than any of the colors that rippled on the horizon.

Arabella.

I was so in love with her.

She pushed through the crowd, then, tears leaving a shine on the apples of her cheeks. "Harry," she said, her voice breaking. It was the saddest thing I'd ever heard, I was sure. I held her hand.

She led me to her room, she turned on her fairy lights, and we looked up from on her bed at her little edge of the galaxy.

"Me and Zayn broke up."

"Oh."

I was still holding her hand, though there was a foot of her white duvet between us as we lay on our backs.

"Harry."

"Yeah."

"I'm just not good enough for him."

That made me mad. It made me so angry. How dare Zayn. How dare he make her think she wasn't good enough.

"No," I said. "Stop it. You are so beautiful it hurts sometimes. You make everyday so beautiful, just by existing, by talking to me, and you fill me up with these beautiful words like nobody else. You're like this other-worldly creature and you just make people fall in love with you. You made me fall in love with you." That last part slipped out all by itself. I waited to see if Arabella had heard, and she was looking at me with this wonderful smile.

"Harry," she said, her voice cracking in a completely different way. A happy way.

"That was the best thing anyone ever said to me."

Arabella kissed me. I felt the world melt away in fantastic colors as we lay on her bed, her lips like the galaxy's edge, electric and infinite. I felt her hand brush away my hair, her kiss the color of a constellation falling in to place.

"I love you."

Arabella.