(No Control | Holding Me Ransom - 20 - Don't Look Back)

I feel giddy and reckless until I remember it is past midnight back home, and she is unlikely even to see my text for another seven hours. That means I have the rest of the afternoon and evening to kill, and nothing to do.

I can't sit around the house staring at my phone; I'll go insane. I need to get out.

I grab my keys, jump in my car and head into Beverly Hills, calling my friend Xander on the way to see if he wants to come with me, but he doesn't answer. I call Kendall but she doesn't answer either so I park the car and wander into a couple of clothes shops, staring at anything that might take my mind off Jess and the text. The shops are fairly quiet at this time of the day, and I spend a good hour browsing by myself, undisturbed. I buy a new pair of boots and a pair of skinnies, and the girl who serves me is wearing a plain white tee.

"Hey there Delilah" is on the tip of my tongue but I catch myself just in time, and smile brightly at her as I hand her my card and she swipes it through the till.

She hands me my bag and as I turn to leave I am faced with an entire wall of plain white tshirts in a variety of styles. I stop dead in my tracks and stare at them all, my heart now pounding.

Hey there Delilah.

I'm hit with another pang of loneliness, and I pull out my phone, thinking (hoping) that Jess might just have texted me back, because this feels like some sort of sign that she is thinking of me.

No new messages.

If she doesn't want me back in her life, even just as friends, I honestly do not know what I will do. I feel like my whole existence depends on her reply to my message. I'm terrified and hopeful at the same time.

I realise I have been staring at this wall of tshirts for rather a long time. Without really thinking about what I'm doing I lift my phone and take a picture of the plain white tees, before leaving the shop and sauntering along the pavement, heading in the direction of food before I return to my car. I pause on the corner of a street and look down at the photo I have just taken. The white tshirts fit perfectly with the black and white theme of my instagram profile at the moment. I crop the photo, type the caption Hey there Delilah and post it, before putting my phone away in my pocket.

I mean, it's not like Jess will even see it anyway, after she made a point of unfollowing me on every social media platform available. No - I'm not over that, before you ask. I will never be over that.

I get an early night when I arrive home, but end up lying on my back staring at the ceiling for hours, wondering if Jess is awake yet, whether she has seen my text, if she is choosing to ignore me or if she has actually blocked my number. I am worried I will end up making myself ill if I carry on like this, but how do you stop someone from invading your thoughts? You don't. I try to think of other things; I even run through the lyrics to Walking in the Wind in my head, trying to work a transition from the verse to the chorus, but nothing comes. I am suffering from the worst case of writers' block ever when it comes to that song.

It's the early hours of the morning when I finally fall asleep, and when I awaken I immediately snatch up my phone, sure she will have replied by now and put me out of my misery. But there is nothing.

Disappointment creeps through my veins as I check that my phone is receiving signal properly. It is.

She has ignored my text.

Fuck.

I throw my phone on the bed and drag myself into the shower. I have nothing to do today except mope around the house, and that thought depresses me further. I pull on a pair of swimming shorts and head downstairs in search of breakfast. Once I've eaten, I dive into the pool and start swimming lengths, pushing myself as hard as I can to do ten more, five more, two more, one more, until I practically collapse with exhaustion at the shallow end, my heart racing and my lungs burning. The pain searing through my body from my overexertion is exhilarating. It feels better than emotional pain, than mental pain, and it spurs me into action.

I haul myself out of the pool and walk over to the sunloungers to pick up my phone, my wet feet slapping against the deck and leaving a trail of water behind me. There is nothing from Jess, but there is a text from Louis saying the news about Briana's pregnancy is about to break. I call him but he doesn't answer, so I leave an awkward voicemail (I hate answer machines) telling him to let me know if I can do anything to help. The shit is about to hit the fan (or fans, I think to myself ironically) big time, and I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for all the money in the world.

I open my conversation with Jess and check the read receipt. She has seen the text.

She has seen it, but hasn't replied. She read me off.

Well.

I stare down at my phone for a few moments, my heart sinking as quickly as it had lifted with the exercise. My moods swing like a pendulum these days.

I sit down on a sunlounger and stare at our previous messages, scrolling up through them to the top, to the very first message she sent me that simply says, Hey, it's Jess x, to which I (embarrassingly) replied, How do I know it's definitely you? You could be a crazy stalker ;) x

Why was I so uncool? Why did she even text me back?

I scroll down to the selfie I sent her and recall my attempts to take it and the interruption by Gemma, and stare mournfully at the one she sent me, with all her One Direction memorabilia in the background.

If you'd told me six months ago I was going to hook up with a fan for the night and end up hopelessly in love with her, I would have laughed out loud. Yet here I am, wishing more than anything that I could call her and hear her corny One Direction jokes, or text her corny one Direction puns (the I should have kissed you x text sends a fresh wave of nostalgia crashing over me.)

I spend an hour rereading our entire text conversation; smiling at the lame jokes, cringing at the arguments and cruel words, aching at the mushy sentiments. It's almost like reliving our relationship in polaroid snapshots, but although I dread coming to the end of the thread for fear of collapsing in misery, I feel nothing but determination.

I will make this right, no matter how long it may take. I will explain everything to her, no matter how many times she may refuse to see me. I will mend the heart that I broke, even if it isn't with my love, only apologies for not telling her the truth sooner. I will persevere until she listens and understands what really happened to cause the demise of our relationship and why, and only then will I allow myself to hope that one day she might consider taking me back. For now, at least, being civil is the best I can hope for.

I fall asleep in the sun and wake up to the sound of my phone beeping with a text. Before I have even picked it up, I know. I know who it is. It is Jess, I can feel it.

My heart is pounding as I unlock the screen and open my messages. I was right - it is Jess.

Fine thanks. Who is this?

Well I'm not going to pretend that deleting my number doesn't hurt like hell.

I glance at the time - it's late night again back home. I wonder what she's doing, and decide she is probably in bed, wearing a little top with thin straps and a pair of knickers.

Wait - no knickers.

I indulge this thought for a moment, relishing the tingle in my shorts as I allow my mind to wander back to all the times I made love to her: in my bed, in her bed, in my kitchen, in her kitchen, in this pool... I almost fully hard now, and getting distracted.

I look back at the message, and decide to keep things lighthearted and ignore the meaning behind her deleting my number. I try not to think too much about my reply, and quickly type, Glad to hear it :) It's Harry x

I wait, staring at my phone as the message receipt appears: Seen at 15.51.

I watch it, waiting for the bubbles to appear to indicate a reply is coming. It's a good ten minutes before I look away.

It's a good ten hours before I resign myself to the fact that she is not going to reply, and finally go to bed at almost four a.m.

....

I am beyond exhausted the following day on the flight to Seattle. I manage to catch an hour's sleep on the plane, and brush off the blonde air hostess (Megan?) 's attempts to chat with me. Jess still hasn't texted me back, so I decide to take the bull by the horns and text her again backstage before the show.

I contemplate it for several minutes and eventually decide to stick with the casual theme.

So what have you been up to? x

I manage to focus my thoughts long enough to play the show and give the fans a good performance, even though I feel as though I am ready to collapse. I fly back home immediately afterwards, catching another hour's sleep on the jet, and fall into bed without even getting undressed. I am officially burnt out.

It is past lunchtime the following day when I wake up in exactly the same position I fell asleep in, feeling stiff and irritable.

Instinctively I reach for my phone but she hasn't replied to my second message, and already my resolve to sort this out is wavering. How am I going to explain everything if she won't even respond to a casual, chatty text?

Maybe I'm coming at this from the wrong angle. After all, why would she want to chat with me after everything that happened between us? She thinks she was only ever a toy to me - that's what she told me. I feel sick that she could think that, but I understand why she does. I don't want her thinking badly of me. I don't want her thinking that she was somehow to blame for any of it.

I sigh, push myself off the bed and haul myself into the shower. I indulge in a bit of me-time under the water jets, remembering a particularly hot occasion when she gave me a blow job on my bed while Liam and Louis were downstairs and reliving every second gloriously in my head, my hand replacing Jess's warm wet tongue and having not nearly as good an effect. Once I'm dressed I retrieve my phone from the bed and my heart lurches again as I see a new message from her on my screen.

Fucķ.

I wasn't expecting this at all.

My excitement is shortlived though, when I read her response.

Been busy with work and friends. Hope the rest of the tour goes well.

Her dismissal couldn't really be any clearer. She may as well have typed fucķ off and stop texting me.

I think I actually would have preferred her to say that, rather than this plain indifference. I try not to think about how I did exactly the same to her as I was getting on the plane to Helskini after I found out that she had kissed Louis. I deliberately dismissed her, because I knew it would hurt. And I was right; it does.

But I am not to be beaten. I will not give up yet. Correction: I will not give up AT ALL.

It takes me half an hour to articulate a response, and as I am about to press Send I realise that if she has been watching her phone, waiting for a reply, she will have seen the typing bubbles dancing repeatedly, and will know how long it has taken me to compose this, and how much thought and stress has gone into it.

I don't know if that makes me caring, or a loser. I suspect the latter, but hope for the former.

Thanks. We've got Vancouver tomorrow, then a few days off. Do you think maybe there's a chance we could stay friends? x

I know I'm jumping the gun, but I can tell from her replies that she isn't up for a casual chat about the weather. I need to lay my cards on the table, before she actually does block my number. And I realise with disappointment that by the time I have sent this it is past midnight at home and she is probably asleep.

Kendall comes over in the afternoon and I update her on the latest situation. She is impressed at my persistence, and her encouragement lifts my spirits again. Talking to her about this helps a lot because she is completely impartial, having known nothing about my relationship with Jess until recently, and she is blunt enough to tell me the truth regardless of my feelings (which can sometimes be both a curse and a blessing.) Right now I am just grateful for her honesty.

After we have exhausted the topic of Jess it is her turn to whine about her relationship problems, and we lounge at opposite ends of my sofa until the early evening, our legs over each other, putting the world to rights. A couple of times I go to stroke her leg, and then remember with a pang of misery that she is not Jess, and my heart breaks a little all over again. I wish I could just stop missing her, just for a few hours.

Kendall declines my offer of staying for dinner, and after she is gone I spend an hour in the kitchen cooking a Spaghetti Bolognese using my mum's special recipe. Even though I follow it to the letter, it doesn't quite have the same taste, so I call her to let her know that I miss her home cooking (and her hugs) and I'm looking forward to seeing her in August.

Her concern is evident in her tone, and when she asks me if I am sleeping properly I can't lie to her, which only intensifies her worry. I assure her I am fine, and I tell her I have made attempts to contact Jess again but so far it isn't going brilliantly. I can tell she is worried that I am placing too much emphasis on this relationship, but I know she also understands how important Jess is to me, so she settles for reminding me that I can call her any time of the day or night if I need to talk.

As we're saying goodbye my phone beeps in my ear, and after Mum has gone I look at the screen to see that Jess has replied to my text about staying friends.

My heart is in my mouth as I open the message thread.

I won't go to the media. You don't have to keep me sweet

I feel like I've been punched in the stomach.

She thinks this is about damage limitation? She thinks that is my motive for texting her?

Does she really not know me at all?

Does she think I am that calculating; that self-serving? Does she think I would use her that way?

Deep down, I know the answers to all of these questions. Her opinion of me couldn't get any lower right now, and I am almost entirely to blame for that. I have treated her appallingly. Why should I expect her to think the best of me when all I have shown her recently is the worst?

But fuck, come on, she spent long enough with me to get closer to me than anyone else in the world, other than Mum and Gemma. She knows every inch of me, from the touch of my hand to the rhythm of my heartbeat. How can that count for nothing?

I'm hurt and angry.

I know you wouldn't. That's not my intention, I reply, with shaking hands.

It's 3am when I finally get a response:

Whatever