I keep thinking fame would feel louder than this. All the screaming crowds, the flashbulbs, the interviews stacked on interviews—yet somehow the quiet parts are what get me. The parts where my phone lights up and I already know which names won’t be there anymore. Yours.

You were there before any of this. Before the stages and the hair and the stories people tell like they own me. Back when my world was small enough to fit in a bus seat, when it was just late nights and stupid jokes and promises we thought were unbreakable because we were young enough to believe that meant something. We were inseparable. I didn’t know how to be anywhere without you then.

Now it’s 2013, and my face is everywhere except where it actually matters. Billboards, magazines, headlines that talk about me like I’m a brand instead of a person. They say my name like it’s a product. They smile at me like they know me. I smile back because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Flashy, easy, harmless. The version of me that sells.

I don’t answer your texts. Not because I don’t see them. Because every time I do, it feels like picking at a scab I’m pretending isn’t there. You remind me of who I was before everything sped up, before I learned how to disappear in plain sight. It’s easier to let the silence grow than to admit I don’t know how to be that boy anymore.

Tonight I’m out with Kendall—allegedly, officially, whatever word the papers want. Cameras love us together. We fit the picture they already decided on. She’s talking, laughing, the city buzzing around us, and I’m halfway somewhere else when I see you.

For a second, the noise cuts out.

You look real in a way nothing else does. Like the past walking straight toward me, unfiltered, unpolished. My chest tightens because I know exactly who you are. I know the sound of your laugh, the way you used to look at me like I was just Harry, not a headline.

You say my name.

And I don’t recognize you.

That’s the lie I tell, anyway. My face stays neutral, confused, practiced. I tilt my head like I’m searching my memory and coming up empty. “Sorry,” I say, and it sounds cruel even to my own ears. “Do I know you?”

I watch it land. The way something breaks behind your eyes. And I hate myself for it, because pretending not to know you hurts less than admitting I do and still letting you go.

The world keeps moving. Cameras click. Kendall’s hand brushes my arm. I’m smiling again, the one they all know. But inside, I’m fourteen again, scared and small, watching the only person who ever really saw me walk away.

Somewhere between who I was and who I am, I lost you. And I don’t know which version of me you’re mourning.