Anxious [H.S]

Chapter 47: I'm A Mess

"How is Christmas Eve already?" Harry asks as we sit on the couch in the living room of his mother's house. Gemma, Harry, and I are staying the night so we can spend Christmas morning together.

"I think it's because we want time to slow down," I say with my head laying on his chest as we watch Home Alone for the hundredth time this Christmas season. Anne and Gemma went to bed hours ago. It's three in the morning and we are sitting in the dark with the only light being given by the T.V.

"Are you tired?" he asks.

"Not really. Are you?" I ask.

"No," he says, quietly. "Do you want to go for a drive?"

"Yeah," I say as I get up from my spot from the couch.

I put on my shoes, grab my coat, and walk out the door. We get into Harry's car and pull out of the driveway.

"This is looking like another all nighter, Leah," he says, smiling.

"It most certainly is," I say. "No laying in the road this time, it's kinda chilly and there is snow on the ground."

"Okay, I was thinking of something else anyway," he says, pulling up to a frozen pond.

"How is this pond even frozen? I mean it''s chilly but nothing compared to New York," I say as we get out of the car. Harry goes to his trunk pulling out two pairs of ice skates. "Where did you get those from?"

"I bought them before we got here, I thought it would be fun," he says, handing me a pair of skates.

"Is this even safe Harry?" I ask.

"Yeah I used to skate on this pond all the time as a kid," he says as we walk closer to the pond. We both sit on the ground to put our skates on. Harry stands up and then pulls me up. We hold hands as we step on the ice.

This feels like we are some movie. Who goes ice skating at three in the morning? I guess we do. It's so quiet here. All you can hear is the sound of our skates gliding across the ice. The stars are so bright tonight. There is not one cloud in the sky. Harry catches me looking up at the sky. He looks up too.

"The sky is so clear tonight," he mumbles.

"Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing," I say, still looking up. "Never mind what I said earlier. I want to lay in the road, to look at the stars. I've never really seen them this clearly before," I say as I sit down and put my shoes back on.

"That's because in New York there is a bunch of smog, here, there isn't any," he says plopping down next to me to put his shoes on.

We put the ice skates back in the trunk of his car and we walk into the middle of the street. I lay down on the ground first. It's a lot colder than when we did this in New York, the ground is freezing. Harry then lays down next to me, both of us staring up at the sky.

"Do you just ever wonder where you would be if you didn't make a certain decision in your life?" Harry asks after a few minutes of silence.

"Sometimes, when I'm mad about something that's happened to me," I reply.

"What decision do you think about?" he asks.

"When I moved to New York. I think about how bad my life would be if I had stayed there, in Boston. I would most likely still be stuck in that house without a way out. I think about how glad I am that I pushed myself to get out of the situation I was in. I don't think I'll ever regret it," I explain and Harry grabs my hand. "What do you think about?"

"I think about where I would be if I didn't audition for the X Factor. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, I love that I can make people happy through my music. Multiple people have gone as far as to tell me that I've saved their life. I just wonder what it would've been like to go to college because that's where I would've been going if One Direction didn't become what it did. I don't regret it. I just wonder what it would be like to just do normal things without having the anxiety of being mobbed. That's where I think most of my anxiety comes from, my head is always on a swivel every time I go somewhere. I hate being mobbed more than anything else. I love my fans but when that happens it feels like you aren't even a human, I feel like I can't breathe. I don't know if that makes sense," he explains and I remember how he got when we got mobbed in London.