[ Dangerously --- Charlie Puth ]

Harry is right here. At one meter away from me. I'm paralysed on my own steps and unsure about what I should do, but somehow he defines the situation when, distractedly, he meets my eyes already on his. They are just like I remember them and, like the first time, they in still something I haven't felt for years; it's something that I still can't recognize. Yet, it's something I haven't felt for years, it's something close to hope, to the desire of starting again. They shine as if they were signed indelibly. He's handsome in a way that I can't feel indifferent to him.

He keeps staring at me as if he was looking for something in me, then he realizes. He moves his hair with his hand, then he lets it fall to his side before turning completely toward me and walking toward my direction.

"Have we ever met before?" he asks. His voice is low and quite raspy.

I nod with my head. " At the airport, some days ago."

Suddenly his expression changes. " you're Ariel, right?"

" Yes, it's me." I answer, with a smile.

We stare at each other for some seconds, not sure where to start from. But in the end it's always him to start.

"Do you study here?"

"Yes, it's my first day."

"Where do you come from, Ariel.. ?"

"Green. I'm from Maine." Harry has always that bright smile on his lips.

"Why moving here, to Nottingham?" I look down, thinking about the reality and the real reason of why I moved here.

First, It was Stephan, now it's him. It's because of these moments that I feel like I'm at the beginning, again.

"Hey, you are not forced to answer me." he assures me and I see from his eyes that he truly understands me. I've never thought it would happen.

I anxiously play with my hair. "I'm sorry, but it's too early to tell you."

He nods and a littledimple appeared on his cheek while he smiles. "Don't worry."

"What about you?" I ask. Moving the attention to him.

"I'm here to take my girlfriend." he answers, looking around. I should have imagined he isn't studying here. However, somehow a little delusional feeling grips my stomach.

He takes his phone from the posterior jeans pocket and then he looks at me.

"Now I have to go."

"Sure." I say, holding on tight my bag.

"See you soon, Ariel Green." he whispers, giving me a last smile before turning his back and leaving.

"Bye, Harry." I mumble, when he's already far away. While I keep staring at him, I can't think about how lucky is that girl to have him.

🌹

After meeting Harry I walked away and went to the nearest toilets; I needed to be alone for a few moments, to channel what I felt inside.

When I go out I lose my orientation, but there are still many kids to cover the corridors as they walk all of them in one direction. I decide to follow the confident crowd that they are headed to the canteen, where
Stephan asked me to see us.

A large room opens on the left side of the school, where dozens of round tables fill the room. Most of them are already busy, so I'm looking for Stephan hoping he's already arrived.
I keep looking around, but I can't find it. I throw myself headlong into the crowd as soon as I see a free table and sit waiting for his arrival, then I retrieve my cell phone from my bag to face the wait.

As I scroll through some of the photos that
Jasmine sent me of Liam and she at school, someone sits next to me making me jump.

"You scared me." I carry a hand on my chest, while Stephan can't hide a laugh.

"Sorry, it wasn't my intention." I shake my head and smile, putting my cell phone aside.

"Did you meet someone?" I nod, remembering the girl from before.

"A girl I asked her where the Religion room was. Her name is Tara, do you know her? "

"Sure, I know her," he says with a smile. She is also from the last year. Her name is
Tara Lock. "

"Do you have lessons in common?"

"Not many," he says, and something changes in his way of speaking and the expression on his face.

"I've known her for a long time, we grew up together."

We have lunch continuing to talk about the plus and the minus, avoiding the topics that for the moment and for me are off limits.

"What lesson do you have? It's the last of the day. "

I check the timesheet before replying. "Physics."

Stephan smiles. "I have chemistry now, but we can go together. The classes are close."

"Okay." I shrug my shoulders.

So, together we leave the canteen and take the same corridor again this morning. We divide when we are both in front of our classrooms.
The lesson flows rather quickly, while the professor introduces one of the topics that I will have to recover, if I want to keep up with the others. At the end of the lessons I met Stephan again, who insisted on leaving me his number.
I take the subway a few steps from Selston and, after counting the stops that separate me from mine, I can finally sit down.

I survived.

🌹

I am lying on my bed with my mother's notebook in my hands; my father is still at work. The pen slides on the page almost freely, like all the times. I stop only to reread what I have written.

Hi mom, today I survived. I believed several times that I could not do it, that this cannot be my place in the world, and instead I did it. Here people never stop. I would have loved to have you with me this morning and in the same way I would have liked to find you when I would then return. I met a guy who was the first person to be nice to me when I needed help.

I feel the heart speed up when I pass the first part and arrive at the second part.

I also met another person today. It was Harry, the boy from the airport. He remembered me and looked at me like the first time. He looked at me and he did it as if he somehow already knew everything.

I haven't been writing for a while, or at least I haven't done it by addressing her directly. It was her who gave me this small bound diary to allow me to fill the pages in the best way I wanted. I'll tell you about the little things, what I'd say to you personally if I could. Sometimes it helps me a lot, other times it only digs further into that furrow that nobody will ever be able to fill.

My mother has always believed in me, without any reservations and without ifs or buts. It did so despite my constant ups and downs, despite the way I often behaved and faced life. She always had the hope that I didn't have, the same hope that eventually took her away from us.

After her death something inside me completely died, because despite costing me to admit it, I had lost my point of reference. I have seen people come and go, go back to the beginning and then start not doing it anymore. I don't deny that I received the support I knew I would have, but it's not as simple as it might seem. I was alone, completely alone but in a different way, and nobody realized it.

For a long time I was convinced that I had a person by my side that I could always rely on, the one I could have beaten myself on, because he would always have grabbed me before I hit the ground. Only then I realized that the reality was not what I had learned to believe. Jake wasn't the one I should have placed so much trust in, but I was too blinded by what I was feeling for him to realize what he was doing to me. He consumed me by giving me the coup de grace only a week before my mother's death.

The tangle of intersected thoughts about Jake is broken by the sound of my cell phone flashing on the bed next to me. I take it in my hands and unlock it with a smile when I notice that it is a message from Stephan.

Are you free tomorrow night, American girl?

I didn't expect such a request, nor did I expect it to happen so soon. Although I know him very little and I'm not sure what I should do, I answer him anyway.

What do you have in mind?

His answer was not long in coming.

You told me you met Tara, so I thought I'd go and eat something with her and her boyfriend.
P.S. I don't accept a no.

Eventually I accept, and I repeat to myself, that it will only do me good to get distracted and get to know Nottingham better, open a glimpse of it and see what it has in store for me.

Okay, I'm in.