53 Dougie's POV
"So boys, there's so much talk at the moment about who the famous mysterious boyfriend is," Oh God this interviewer wasn't going there, please say he wasn't going there, "And you're all keeping incredibly tight lipped, how are you even managing it? We don't know anything about this mystery man Harry, not even his name!"
"Well it's because he wants his privacy, and I'm fully respecting that." Harry answered, body subtly straightening up, like he was preparing for a fight.
"Fair enough on that mark, but we don't know anything else! We don't know what he's like, or what he does, or how you met, surely you can give us a little bit of information can't you? We can't work anything out from that, and if you don't, we're all going to keep on thinking you're with Dougie." The interviewer's eyes glinted with mischief. He went there; he actually went there, oh my God what were we going to do?!
"We can't have everybody thinking that, he's like my brother." Harry ruffled my hair; I pushed his hand away, pretending that that didn't hurt at all. I hated watching him deny that he loved me; it scared me to hear him say it. One of my worst fears was losing Harry in any sense of the word, and hearing him deny our relationship, coupled with his recent behaviour, really, really hurt.
"Of course, that would be very weird." Interviewer joined in, "So what can you tell us about your man? Or are you so sworn to secrecy you can't say anything?"
"Well, I can tell you that erm... He's..." I could see the cogs frantically turning in Harry's head, "He's a lovely human being to start with, who's incredibly kind and loving. And we kinda met by accident, we bumped into each other at a cafe and somehow got talking, I'm not even sure how if I'm completely honest. We hit it off from there and have been inseparable ever since." Harry explained, that sounded half like how we met. Only we had met opposite a cafe, outside the band auditions... though we had first laid eyes on each other when Harry was still inside the cafe, waiting for the auditions to start. We hadn't hit it off instantly though, that had taken until we got into the band house, and started really talking. I had complimented him on his Starting Line t-shirt that day though.
"Aw, that's quite sweet..." The interviewer pressed on, wringing every detail he could out of Harry possible, and even tried to get us to spill some more too.
It was horrible, sitting there and listening to Harry describe his 'boyfriend' who sounded more and more like the opposite of me. He started using the same cover idea every time he was asked about his boyfriend, and while I knew why he was doing what he was doing, it still hurt. Obviously he was describing the complete opposite of me to please his parents and put everyone else off the scent that we were dating, yet it was making me really self conscious of who I was at the same time. I hated hearing him talk about loving someone who was so different from me, it made me feel incredibly inadequate and wrong for him. I shouldn't have but I did, I couldn't help but feel like it, no matter how many times I told myself that this was all complete rubbish and that Harry loved me, not some posh perfect imaginary man.
But he was describing the exact same kind of people his parents were introducing to him at their party, the type of people he had been brought up to like and consider worthy of his love. And I was nothing compared to a well brought up, successful, clever man. I came from a poor family, had absolutely no qualifications to my name and while I was successful in this band, I wasn't in some respectable job either. I couldn't help but feel in those interviews that Harry would be better off with a man like he was describing, not with me.
And the inadequacy didn't go away, it played heavily on my mind constantly, and no matter how many times Harry told me he loved me, or how hard he held me tight in bed, his mental absence helped solidify my worries in my head. Though I wasn't going to let him go, not right now. At this moment, Harry was mine, and I was going to enjoy for as long as possible. I wasn't going to love anybody like I loved this man, and I wasn't going to let him go, not just yet. I loved him more than anything; I never wanted him to leave me. Even if it seemed inevitable, I never wanted him to leave me alone again.
