Archive of Our Own

Meet Me In The Hallway

1.
The steaming hot shower barely managed to clear her head and her body was in no state of performing. She barely even had the time to shave, let alone moisturise and scrub it or to even think about the ten different products she used to keep her skin and hair looking silky smooth and fresh. The LA Ballet would have to do with just her presence that day.

A sound in the room next door reminded her of that other thing she had to take care of. There was still a gorgeous, dark haired, olive skinned, Italian girl in her bed. A guest ballerina with the travelling section of company and a guest at her house for the night. She wasn’t quite sure how that happened but she was certain that she didn’t regret it. However, the timing was kind of bad for something that had been in the air for months. Every minute now, the guy who rented her spare room for the next two months, could arrive and she would prefer if he wouldn’t have to run into the girl he would most likely never see again.

With a towel still wrapped around her blonde hair and her silk robe untied and flying out behind her, she ran around the house to clean up the last couple of bits, making the space as representable as possible within this non-existent time span. This guy would be the closest thing to a new roommate since she had to put it up on Craigslist when her previous roommate left her with a one day notice, to move in with a guy she met in Barcelona.

Coming back into her own bedroom, she found Olivia on top of the sheets, wearing nothing but a pair of dusty pink frilled briefs. A hand on each side of her face, looking like the star in a Victorian oil painting.

“I have to leave in about fifteen minutes,” she tried, thinking she had already been clear about wanting her gone before she disappeared into the bathroom half an hour ago.

Olivia rolled over on her stomach, not looking or acting like she was offended. Or cared. Everything about last night told her this hadn’t been a first for either of them. In many ways. They hadn’t even really spoken before and they definitely hadn’t spoken a lot last night but it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Which was exactly the kind of thing she was looking for these days.

Olivia moaned lazily and pusher herself up, butt first, head still half on the pillow as she stretched out a leg to place a foot on the floor. A typical bruised and beat up ballerina foot, much like her own, looking like it belonged to someone else. Terribly misplaced under all that perfection. The entire act of Olivia getting up was dramatic but she figured that with a presence like that, everything always deserved to be.

She took a moment to watch Olivia collect her clothes and put them on. A wine red silk wrap dress, patent leather Valentino stilettos in a matching shade. It made her look the kind of put together and sophisticated that only people like Olivia were capable of achieving. She stuffed her bra and her phone in her Saint Laurent bag and looked across at her with hazy eyes. Smiling a little as flashbacks to the previous night still danced on both their minds. Not having taken a shower yet, Olivia looked like they both felt. Crazy hair, rosy cheeks, parts of her skin slightly bruised. “I guess I’ll see you around when I’m back from Asia,” she sang, a gorgeous Italian accent prominently noticeable as she spoke.

She just nodded, not putting too much weight to her words. She knew Olivia would be away for at least three months on an Asian tour, starting tomorrow. Come to think of it, the timing was actually kind of perfect.

Following Olivia through her bed room, the living room and kitchen into the hallway, passing her to unlock the door with a set of keys she grabbed from the dining table, she shot one last look around the house, thinking: ‘good enough’. She pulled forcefully at the front door to get it to open and found herself standing eye-to-eye with the guy she immediately knew was her temporary roommate.

He looked instantly amused when he stepped aside to let Olivia pass and took a second to scan her even more temporary roommate up and down as she walked away before letting his glance go back to her.
“Don’t get your hopes up, you will most likely never see her again,” was the first thing she said to him. She was sure that sentence wasn’t high on the list of Craigslist guidelines if there was any.

He smirked as he spoke. “Didn’t think so.” The Cheshire accent unmistakably present in his voice, more than it was in hers, these days. The depth of his voice throwing her off a little bit. She knew who he was since his assistant who applied to the listing for him revealed his identity. Of course she had been sceptic at first but when she had a few people at the ballet look into it, the name and contacts of his assistant actually did lead back to him. In the direct e-mail conversation that followed he explained that his own LA home was being renovated and being in the midst of writing on his new album, he didn’t want to deal with the stress of staying at a hotel and much rather preferred to keep a low-profile with someone in downtown LA. He had chosen her listing because of their Cheshire bond, as he called it, and she decided not to question it too much. Only a week later his people had her sign a contract of confidentiality in which she stated not to sell him out to anyone not involved in her daily life and he signed the leash.

He was dressed in all black. Black jeans, a plain black t-shirt under a knee long black wool coat. A pair of black and white Vans on his feet. Gucci travel bag, leather red and green strap resting casually on his shoulder. A pair of oval, white rimmed sunglasses hooked into the neckline of his t-shirt. Notebook in one hand, guitar case in the other.

Moving his notebook to the hand with the guitar, juggling the strap of the case and the book between his long fingers, he extended her the other. “I’m Harry.”

“Jimmy,” she said. This was the first time he heard her first name. She had gone by her initials up until then.

“Jimmy,” he repeated, as if he was trying out her name on her, making it sound like ‘Jimm-eh’ in a way that reminded her a lot of home. “Short for?”

“My parents thinking they were having a son,” she said, which was sad but true. Her name was her biggest party-trick these days and she had grown to love it a lot. Started to see it as a part of her as much as her blond hair, her love for Springsteen and her birthday on the first day of winter.

He chuckled and nodded, almost as if he was giving her his approval and she stupidly found herself wanting it. As a moment of silence went by, she eventually stepped aside to let him in. She wasn’t sure why but she did feel some restrain to do so. Maybe she hadn’t thought this through entirely. Maybe she should have discussed this with more people than just her one best friend, who, as a former proud Directioner, was all for the idea.

As he passed her, a wave of musky perfume and something she feared was just him reached her nose. It was then that she realised it really wasn’t one of her best ideas agreeing to this. But who the hell would have thought that goddamn Harry Styles would decide to rent her spare room when she put it online.

He dropped his bags nears the kitchen table and waited for her to follow him back in. She was still dressed in just the silk robe but made sure it the belt was securely tied around her waist. Wet hair clung to her neck and she was barefoot and she had about five minutes left to change. She began pointing at doors as she was definitely running out of time. “From left to right it’s the bathroom, your room and my bedroom. The rest kind of speaks for itself,” she said waving around the open era of the rest of the loft that had the kitchen, dining room and spacious living room all in one. Grab everything you want, open anything you want and your keys are on the table. I won’t be home for dinner tonight, or most days because we are in the middle of a run of Sleepy Beauty at the ballet and I will be performing most nights.”

“I know where to find you then,” he said. He was still speaking as slow as he had done and she didn’t think it was necessary until he did it. Other than that he just stood and took it all in while she did her very best not to stare at him too much. And within the next few minutes she was back in her bedroom, getting dressed, before leaving him alone in her house for the first time.

2.
It was just after nine when Jimmy returned to the flat. They only had a show at five that day and she had managed to get out of the sponsors lounge relatively quickly that night. She didn’t mind spending time there because she understood those were the people that the company was built on but talking to more of the same people night after night could get boring.

Getting into the living room, she found Harry spread out on the couch, guitar on his lap, beer in front of him and eyes closed up until he noticed her. She had heard him humming a melody through the closed hallway door but he became quiet the moment she came in, pushing himself up in the pillows.

“Not wasting any time, are you?” she said, noticing her own accent was a little stronger now that she was tired.

He noticed it too. “Where in England are you actually from?” he mumbled, picking up the beer from the table and taking a long gulp. She watched his Adams apple move as he downed the liquid.

She threw her keys on the table and hung her red denim jacket over the back of a chair. She wore a red denim skirt to match, with a white t-shirt tucked inside and a pair of old Vans with white ankle-long sports socks. No tights because winter was always kind to LA. “Hartford,” she responded and sat down in the midnight blue velvet arm chair across from him. It wasn’t often that she could just name her place of birth without giving at least some sort of direction on the map of England.

“My parents live in Scotland now though, they own the most beautiful inn you have ever seen, just across the water from Isle of Skye.”

“We should go there someday then,” he said as he offered her his beer.

She took a sip before handing it back to him and chose to ignore his comment. “We are not very well presented in LA, are we?” he mumbled.

“How long have you been living here for?”

“I’ve never lived here permanently, I’ve always travelled back and forth between LA and the UK, but I’ve had my house for a couple of years now and there were of course girls....”

Jimmy just smiled and decided that any other question she could ask would be somehow inappropriate. Instead she got up and poured herself a glass of wine over her vintage serving cart that stood by the ceiling high windows. Traffic outside was busy as always and the sky was turning all sorts of purple and pink behind the buildings. She had no trouble imagining that there were always girls in his life, but having him here now probably meant that there wasn’t anyone specific in his life at the moment.

“Speaking of girls…” he continued then, teasingly, voice even deeper than before, a dangerous smirk on his lips.

She turned around with the glass of Merlot between her fingers and grinned despite herself. “That was nothing,” she stated once again. “Like I said, you will probably not see her again.”

“I’m only joking, Jimmy – I recognize a booty call when I see one.”

Jimmy took a sip of her wine and hid a smile. He was still wearing the same outfit he wore when he showed up at her door earlier that day. But now that he lost the coat and the shoes – he was barefoot – he seemed a little more accessible. His hair was a little more fluffy too, which made her realise that he had probably taken a shower.

“I’m still being haunted by the demons of my last boyfriend so I’m taking advantage of this new found freedom,” she explained, even though he didn’t make her feel like she owed him one. She figured the whole truth or even slightly more than what she just shared wasn’t exactly the kind of small talk she should have with someone she just met and that she was supposed to live with for a few months to come.

“Glad to hear, princess.”

Princess, it came as much unexpected as it came natural. She shot a glance his way but he seemed completely unaware of his effect on her, or maybe he just did that naturally, too. Maybe this was who he was. She could just about imagine what it was like to be a former member of one of the biggest bands the world had ever known, and look like that.

He interrupted her thoughts by getting up and nodding towards the balcony door. “I need to make a quick call, talk later.”

She didn’t wait up for him and made sure she was done using the bathroom before he was back. By the time she heard the balcony doors open, he was just finishing a call and she was under the same duvet that she shared with Olivia just the other night. But truthfully, that was the farest thing from her mind.

Billy had spammed her with texts all day, begging for an invitation, asking what it was like and she had basically ignored all of it. Billy was one of two people that had shared the identity of her new roommate with so far. Even though she knew was allowed to share it with the people she knew she could trust, she still couldn’t quite shake that feeling of wanting to keep it for herself just a little longer. Give them both a little more time to adapt to the new situation, give herself some more time to get used to having him around. Because truth was that she had underestimated it. The effect that his presence already had on a room, her life and on her.

Having spent only an hour of her life with him so far, she began to understand why there was always talk of him. Where she grew up and where she was now, in the media, among her friends. She began to understand why he was the most-talked about without having to say much himself at all. It was his natural flamboyance and his easy charm. Those goddamn eyes that were always wondering and only serious when they needed to be. Those stupidly long legs and boney, long fingers. And the way he already dominated her thoughts without having done much at all.

3.
Harry wasn’t home the following evening, when Jimmy hosted a release-party for a short movie that one of her friends had made. Oliver was a photographer and aspiring director from New York who specialized in a kind of LGBT-cult type movie that she had never seen before. She met Oliver in her first week at the LA ballet because he did the occasional photography work for the company to be able to pay the bills and took her portrait for the website. They instantly became friends. Jimmy had only invited Billy to the party. Billy was her best girlfriend who was born in Dallas and came to LA to become a model but was currently working in a Starbucks around the corner from the LA Center. They initially bonded at said company when they found out they both had boy’s names. Oliver had invited a bunch of his own artsy friends who she had seen around but never really talked to. The timing of the party wasn’t all that great therefor, as Billy and Oliver were the only ones that knew about her house mate until then.

She was especially worried for Billy, who claimed she was over her fangirl days but still acted like she wanted to believe this was fate and that it would turn out she was destined to marry Harry by the time the night was over. But as long as he wasn’t home, they would be fine. No matter how disappointed Billy tried to hide she was.

He still wasn’t around by the time Oliver finished his speech and put the movie on. Neither was he there when, 40 minutes later, the movie was finished. And she found herself kind of wishing he would show up then, because Oliver made an absolute heart-breaking masterpiece about two young gay LGBT-activists in love in modern America.

Another thirty minutes later, when everyone was chilling in her living room, drinking beers and listening to one of Jimmy’s Spotify playlists, he came walking in. Looking like rock ‘n roll itself – black vest, frilled shirt, flared black trousers, heeled boots – the type of outfit that made him look terribly out of place, even in a room full of creative souls and that made her wonder where the hell he had been. She had a feeling though that for him this could just have been a casual evening over at a friend.

Billy’s mouth opened and Jimmy immediately reached over to kick her in the foot, reminding her to function. “Guys, this is Harry, he’s staying in the spare room.”

Everyone else kept their cool, even the ones that didn’t expect him, maybe because they had absolutely no idea who he was, maybe because they were cooler than her and Billy both.

Harry nodded politely and took of his vest before putting it over her denim jacket that hang over the back of one of the dining chairs. She kind of wished he hadn’t done that. He could have picked any other chair or even the coat rack in the hall. It wasn’t even the chair closest to him. She started to think he was doing it on purpose but that was probably just her imagination.

“Evening,” he mumbled before turning to Jimmy. “Evening, princess.”

Everybody except Billy resumed their previous conversations. Harry grinned a little. He really was messing with her.

“You wanna join us?” Jimmy asked despite herself, standing up and walking over to where he still stood near the dining table to give Billy some space to get herself together. She didn’t expect that he would want to stay but then he nodded.

Jimmy told him to take her seat on the couch, not adding that she just wanted him to stay away from Billy as far as possible.

When she returned after getting him a beer from the fridge, Harry was talking to Oliver about his movie but he shot her a glance, patting on the small spot that was left on her black velvet couch between him and the arm rest. She hesitated for a moment before sitting down in front of it instead. On the floor, back against the seat, her arm brushing his calve every time each of them moved even a little bit.

On her other side, two of Oliver’s friends of whom she only remembered the name of guy who called himself G, were talking about an exposition that would launch in an abandoned sugar factory down town and she mingled in. Anything to not have her full focus on Harry and the way her own skin burned on every spot it touched the soft fabric of Harry’s trousers.

Jimmy only tuned back into his conversation when Oliver stood up and walked back to the TV. She looked over her shoulder and up at Harry who was smiling back at her. “Gotta see what all the fuzz is about tonight, babe,” he spoke lazily.

She smiled at him. Him actually wanting to hang out with her friends and showing interest in them up to a point where he wanted to commit to watching a forty minute long movie one of them had made was the last thing she expected.

“Did he tell you what it is about?”

His eyes shot dark as he grinned. One arm over the back of the couch, legs just far enough apart for it to still be appropriate. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t mind an adventure on the other side every now and then, princess…”

Jimmy looked away, wasn’t sure who heard his words but Billy certainly did. To get out of the moment, she got up and announced that she was going to get more snacks for the next round and Billy instantly followed.

“What the hell was he on about?” Billy said, the minute she caught up with her at the kitchen counter, where Jimmy was already tearing open a bag of vegetable crisps.

“Olivia,” Jimmy said dryly. “The gorgeous Italian girl from the company? She was here… on her way out the morning he arrived.”

Billy groaned. “Please can I just have even a little bit of your life? You get all the best men and women… Even Harry already wants you for fuck’s sake. He’s been here for literally 24 hours.” She made sure to lower her voice for the last part of her sentence.

“What the fuck,” Jimmy said. Balancing two bowls of crisps on one forearm as she kicked the fridge shut with her foot and handed Billy a few bottles of beer.

“The tension in here is unbearable… You want him and he’s all over you. You could have sat anywhere.”

Jimmy just shook her head she left Billy in the kitchen, not sure if she wanted it to be true or not. Not sure how much truth there was in her friends words anyway but choosing a seat on the other side of the L-shaped couch for the sake of it.

It was much later when everyone left and coming back into the living room she found Harry collecting empty bottles and shoving them back in a crate.

“So, when were you home in Cheshire last, Jimmy?” He had opened the windows and shot her a questioning look as he picked up a pack of cigarettes Oliver had left behind. She nodded to give him permission to smoke in the house and accepted a cigarette when he offered her one. He lit it for her.

“A couple months back, it’s hard to leave during the season you know… My parents sold my childhood home to my sister when they moved to Scotland. She still lives there with her two kids and her husband.” She started making a pile of empty bowls with her free hand.

“What about you?”

“The other week, actually. Went to see my mum for a bit. It hasn’t changed since you were there last in case you were wondering…” he paused. “Same old, same old.”

She realized this was the most he had spoken to her at once since his arrival. “I miss it sometimes.”

She didn’t realise that was true until she said it. She just assumed that what she missed were her parents, her sister, but thinking about it now she really missed the carefree, plain boring city where nothing ever changed. Over there she never had to deal with any drama and the worst thing a boy had done to her there was forget her birthday when she turned sixteen. Which was enough reason for her to end things with him, but still. The first day of winter, it was pretty fucking easy. She did also realise though that the comparison wasn’t fair. She had only been twenty when she left. Her actual life was only on the verge of beginning back then.

“Me too, even when things were really crazy for a while, Holmes Chapel was always the same. They even make me pay for my groceries back there,” he joked, eyes sparkling. She laughed.

“LA isn’t quite the same, is it?” He raised his eyebrows before shifting his bottom lip to let smoke escape that way.

“The weather is better,” she said smiling and he chuckled.

“Yeah…” he mumbled, “the fucking weather.”

She went to bed shortly after, telling him to do the same and that she would clean up her mess in the morning. She didn’t see him that next day, or the ones right after. And maybe it was for the better anyway.

She knew there was a thin line between affection and addiction and this wouldn’t be the first time she would cross it so easily. But it could very well be the most dangerous one yet.

4.
There was no denying the fact that Jimmy felt a bit lost in the days after film night. She was busy enough at the ballet, where a new production just finally premiered and the company needed her for all sorts of promo. Yet there was this unsettling feeling that she was in the wrong place. That feeling that she was missing out on things that happened at her house.

A part of her was glad that nothing else happened, but another part wished she could at least have had one more conversation with Harry. Or an actual, proper conversation. She knew he was still a guest at her house but she couldn’t shake the thought that maybe he was avoiding her.

Even Billy had been slightly disappointed as well, when she found out nothing spectacular had happened between them after she had been the last to leave. So in a very strange attempt to still some of her curiosity, Jimmy found herself stopping by a local record store on her way home from an afternoon class. She didn’t have a show that night and didn’t feel like going home yet. She didn’t think she could stand not finding him there once again.

She wandered around the store for a while, flicking through the records and finding herself relax. No matter how big the cliché, she loved hanging out in these places and was sad to see so many disappear. Music was her escape, even though she was a dancer and music was what she did for a living, it still made her able to clear her mind and get away from the ballet for a while.

Then, failing to find what she was looking for, she headed for the counter. “Do you have any One Direction records in stock at all?”

The guy behind the desk looked up from his computer. He was tall, handsome – with tattoos sleeves on both his arms and on his neck. A pair of retro round RayBan glasses on. He wore an Arcade Fire t-shirt and his dark green eyes looked at her kindly, surprised too.

“One Direction, huh? That’s a question I haven’t heard for a while.” He said, meanwhile typing something into the computer.

“I’m only familiar with their popular radio stuff, but I think I’m looking for the last album they did.”

“I don’t know… I don’t really know much about them to be honest…” the man said and she had to give it to him that it was remarkable how he wasn’t judging her.

“Me neither, but I’m looking to get into them.” At the same time thinking to herself that she could have just said it was a gift for someone. With all due respect, she didn’t think Harry’s formed band had the kind of back catalogue that you could really investigate like she already spend years of her life doing with Springsteen.

“You may want to check them out on Spotify before committing to something,” he suggested as if she was asking to buy the entire Beatles catalogue at once.

Jimmy nodded. She couldn’t tell this guy that she wanted to keep it private because it would be pretty damn awkward if someone could see her listening to the band of the guy that was currently staying at her house. She asked for their two last records instead.

Ten minutes later she left the store with the requested cd’s in her bag. They didn’t have anything on vinyl and these cd’s were the only ones they had in stock anyway.

Another two hours passed when suddenly the door to Harry’s room opened. He found Jimmy in the living room with Made In The AM on. The booklet on her lap. She had a feeling that those few songs Harry had co-written the words for could give her a better idea of how his mind worked than any conversation would have done. She wasn’t sure whether it worked that way for a band that was created on a talent show but it was worth a shot.

“What the fuck,” she said, not moving because there was no way she could hide what had been happening while apparently, he was home all along.

He was grinning as smug as she had ever seen him as he chew his gum and leaned against the doorframe. Arms and legs crossed. “I didn’t know you were home,” she said, now making a move to get up from the couch.

Harry gestured that she could stay where she was. “I was in there writing, Jimmy. Writers don’t tend to speak or move a lot.”

He finally came into the room and sat down on the couch beside her. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard these, what do you reckon?” He picked up the booklet and turned it around to scan the track list.

Jimmy wasn’t sure if she wanted to have this conversation with him and out of all the awkward things that happened in her life, this would forever remain very high up on that list.

“It’s pretty good… I was just… getting curious about your previous work. I love Olivia and Where Do Broken Hearts Go on the other one.”

“You could have asked, you know,” Harry said, still visibly and understandably amused.

“It’s not like you’re ever around.”

“That you know of,” he said, looking at her meaningfully. “I’ve written a lot over the last couple of days,” he said, “and I’ve been recording too. Had a photoshoot. You can come over if you want, take a listen at what we have made so far.”

Jimmy nodded. “I’d like that.” She hadn’t meant to sound like he owed her an explanation but was glad that he gave her one. If she wouldn’t stop behaving like this around him though, he would be gone before she’d know it. That was something she knew for sure.

He took her up to the studio that same night and the entire ride there, Jimmy wondered if she was the only one that could feel the tension between them. She kept looking aside at Harry, who sat next to her in the back of the cab that he called while she was getting ready.

His hand, on which he wore three different rings, between them on the cushion, the tip of his pinky just barely touching her bare thigh under the hem of her denim skirt.

Jimmy looked at his hand and then at him. “What are we doing…” she whispered, afraid to acknowledge everything that she had meant to ask with that phrase and even more scared that he would ask.

He sat and lifted his head, squeezed her thigh as he rested the elbow of his other arm on the car’s window sill, forefinger against his bottom lip. From under furrowed eyebrows he looked at her.

“The best we can, princess.”

Too soon and after way too long the car pulled over in front of a beautiful modern villa in a peaceful street and it was just about the last place Jimmy had expected him to take her. She got out of the car after the cab driver opened it for her and waited while Harry paid.

“Calvin’s house, he’s one of the producers, has a studio in his basement, quite convenient,” was as much as Harry cared to explain. And when they walked side by side over the enormous driveway towards the house, Jimmy asked him about Stockholm Syndrome. Another track that stuck with her.

“You’ve been thinking about it,” Harry said, smirking.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “It just think it’s a good song.”

“Do you now? Have you been listening to it more than once?”

Jimmy threw a hand in the air as she told him to fuck off and she heard him chuckle beside her.

Not much later, Jimmy found herself in said basement of said Calvin’s house where he worked on Harry’s record. And whatever the hell else it was that he was doing there. She had just met his stereotypical plastic LA wife, who was as much gorgeous as she was fake. She didn’t join them in the basement, probably couldn’t care less about the things that were going on in there anyway but there were a few other people there. A session musician or two, another producer and a bunch of people that just like her, didn’t necessarily have to be there.

Everyone was already hanging around in chairs rather than that they were sitting in it, beers in hand. To say Jimmy felt slightly out of place was an understatement. And definitely not because she was the only girl in the room. Nobody else seemed to find it weird, or they didn’t make her feel like that anyway. In fact, they all seemed pleasantly surprised when she had entered the room with Harry.

“We’re just gonna listen to some recordings we’ve done so far,” Harry explained as he sat down on the leather beat-up Chesterfield couch and Jimmy sat down with him. “We’ve done some great stuff so far if you ask me.”

She spent the next twenty-five minutes or so listening to a bunch of raw recordings of tracks they laid down in the past couple of months. Most of them didn’t even have lyrics yet but she had to admit that it did sound pretty great. Even unedited, even without his voice.

During a specific line in a track called Sweet Creature she looked aside at Harry. He almost immediately caught her looking and flashed her a meaningful smile. “This one is quite new,” he mumbled. The only light in the room was provided by the computer screen at the mixing desk and his bronzed skin seemed to be glowing in its reflection. She knew that he had just very recently come back from a writing trip to Jamaica and it was still showing on the surface of his skin. She held his glance and smiled back before looking away.

When silence returned to the studio after a while, nobody said anything until Harry got up and walked over to the fridge to get everyone who asked and didn’t a beer.

About an hour later the beers had been replaced for Scotch and shots and Jimmy could feel her head getting hazy. At the back of her mind there was a voice that tried to remind her of the two shows she had to do the next day, but she didn’t feel like being sensible. It just wasn’t that kind of night. Or that kind of last few months for that matter. It was the kind of night where she felt like having intense, semi-pretentious discussions for hours on end without really making a point. The kind of night for laughing at stupid remarks and for letting her Cheshire accent run free.

She was just talking to one of the producers that wasn’t Calvin and the woman that was Calvin’s wife, who had joined in by then, when Harry caught her eye from across the room. He was sitting down with Calvin himself in two arm chairs by the closed curtains and lifted his pack of cigarettes at her. Just like her, he wasn’t so much a smoker but didn’t mind one when the moment was right. She excused herself and made her way over to him.

He clearly had been drinking too and surprised her when he grabbed her hand and pulled her down on his lap. She felt the leather of the trousers that he wore with a plain white tee immediately sticking to her leg. His move had been so naturally though and she was overwhelmed by being so close to him so suddenly. All cigarette smoke, scotch and cologne as he caught her glance with alcohol-hazed dark eyes.

“You enjoying yourself?” he asked as he handed her a cigarette before casually placing a hand on her bare thigh.

She nodded, trying to also keep her cool and only managing because of the amount of alcohol in her blood. She looked at his hand on her bare thigh, fingers spread wide, digging in a little. Burning a hole right through it. His natural tan making her pale skin look ghostly. She swallowed hard.

“Your new songs sound promising, you know,” she said and he chuckled.

“That’s what they say…”

He began caressing her thigh with his thumb and her eyes shot dark when she looked at him. She wanted to speak but nothing came out. She wanted to tell him to stop, get the hell away from her and pack his bags to find another place to live. Even though all of that was the farest thing from what she was actually feeling. She vaguely noticed that Calvin got up from his seat to give them some privacy but he knew just about as little as them about where this would lead to.

He groaned when he phone rang as it lay on the armrest of his chair. “You’re gonna get me in some serious trouble one day.” It was a whisper more than anything but she heard it and she saw the torture she felt reflected in his eyes.

“You’re gonna get that call?” she asked and he nodded. “I’m afraid I have to, princess.”

With a squeeze in her thigh he broke the spell and she got back up. He followed and brought the phone to his ear, turning his back at her and moving to a far corner of the room to answer the call.

Within the next five minutes she said her goodbyes and went outside to call a cab home. Thinking she needed to grab this opportunity offered by the mystery caller with both hands. Thinking she needed to breathe and take a step back to think. Neither of them would get in any trouble if she didn’t let it come that far. And if it wasn’t going to be him, it would have to be her. It was her only task back then. The only thing that was expected of her.

She would not allow herself to go back to that place.

5.
The next morning, Jimmy woke up with a throbbing headache and an unsettling feeling in her stomach that wasn’t so much caused by the amount of alcohol still in her body as it was by the thought of last night. She hadn’t heard Harry come home and wasn’t even sure if he was there until she dragged herself out of bed and found him at the dining table. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him for a while. Thinking how it was remarkable really that he didn’t act any differently when nobody was watching him. He carried himself in the exact same way. All charisma and beauty. An odd combination of amusement and concert constantly present on his face. There was a light frown on his forehead as he was bend low over the leather-bound notebook in front of him, cup of coffee next to it. Only every now and then he looked at his phone just to pick it up and key a quick message into it.

He also looked as rough as she felt. Grey Calvin Klein sweatshirt above a pair of shorts, bare feet. This had to be him at his most domestic.

“Heyyy, look who the wind blew in,” he said when she finally entered the room and had him looking up. Voice more hoarse than it usually already was.

“Is everything alright? You disappeared last night.” He put his pen down and didn’t bother to cover up his writing. She didn’t try to read it.

Jimmy tugged at the belt around her robe to make sure it was secure but it was probably only drawing more attention to the fact that she was completely naked underneath. “Yeah.. I just… I have two shows today, I had to go.”

He leaned back in his chair and started playing with one of the rings on his middle finger, pushing it round and round again. A lazy smirk on his face. She wouldn’t say she had ever seen him act arrogant or with attitude necessarily but he definitely knew what he looked like and he used I well. She couldn’t blame him, it worked wonders.

Taking a sip of his coffee, he nodded. “There’s more if you want some.”

She shook her head. “I don’t do coffee…”

“I’ll make you tea next time,” he said and they were silent for a few moments.

“Listen…” she then said, no longer able to ignore the elephant in the room that was last night. “about last night… I don’t think we should be doing… I don’t think we should… you know what I mean.”

She couldn’t even describe the thing that hadn’t happened last night.

“I know what you mean,” he confirmed, “and I agree.”

Over at the kitchen sink, Jimmy took a deep breath and got herself a glass of water before going over to the table and sitting down in a chair opposite from him. The one over which he had put his jacket when he came home during the night. The thick wool collar wasn’t comfortable against her back but she liked it that way. Wanted to feel something of him now that they had cleared the air about the rest of it.

“So, how are you getting along then?” She nodded at his note book. Knowing deep down that those few sentences hadn’t settled anything but willing to play the game along for as long as he was able to.

He didn’t hesitate and pushed the notepad across the table towards her and what she read what the first attempt at what would become ‘Two Ghosts’ and it was beautiful and poetic and still chaotic and exactly the kind of thing she would imagine was going on in his head.

“You and I, we should talk more often,” he said as she gave his writings back to him. “I’ve written more in the past couple of days than I have during all my time in Jamaica.”

She smiled wryly. “I think that depends entirely on the kind of album you want to make.”

She could see him think about her comment for a while but was glad he didn’t ask anything else. Then she pointed at the bathroom. “Gotta…”

He nodded. “Of course.”

By the time she came back out of the bathroom, he was gone. And he remained gone during the days that followed. She heard him move around in his room every now and then, or take a shower when she was just in bed or just getting out of it, but she never saw him. And every time it hurt a little bit and every time it did she felt guilty. And confused as to how he got her there so quickly.

6.
One evening, a couple of days later, she unlocked the front door with a hand heavy on her lower back. Warm through the fabric of her silk Valentino dress. A voice dark and low behind her, telling her to hurry up. The exposition they just attended at the old sugar factory was just a weak excuse for them to hook up after spending the whole week texting back and forth and they only lasted a good thirty minutes there. When she finally managed to let them in, he grabbed her hand and led her through the hallway and into the kitchen as if he had done it a thousand times before.

She startled for a second when he was right there on the couch, a guy she vaguely recognised from that night in the studio beside him. A pile of papers in between. But she managed to greet him like she didn’t care and G, which turned out to be short for Geoff, didn’t give her any more time to hesitate as he was already waiting in the door to her bedroom. She followed him in and slammed it shut, throwing herself in Geoff’s arms. His dark skin blended perfectly with the shades of pale of her body and his stamina and flexibility combined with hers took them to a whole new world that night.

She could still feel him all over her the next day and barely managed to hide her discomfort from her dresser in between two acts of the Swan Lake matinee. December was just around the corner, which meant that everything else was now put on hold for the annual runs of all the holiday classics. That day they would have two shows and she had only made it through one fourth when his text came in. In between padding her sweaty face dry with tissues and trying to catch her breath, she read the four words he sent her.

HARRY, 1:30PM: ‘got a show tonight?’

“Good news?” Her dresser Maria interrupted Jimmy’s thoughts and she realised she had been smiling a little. And also that she had kept Maria waiting with the costume for the next act in her hands.

Jimmy shrugged her shoulders to try and look like she didn’t care, even though there was no need to keep up an act in front of Maria. She had no idea about her life outside of this dressing room anyway. “I guess, how long do we have left?”

“We have a couple more minutes, take your time.”

JIMMY, 2:45PM: ‘right in the middle of one, got another one at 8’
HARRY, 2:47PM: ‘you’re a hard worker, was thinking about dropping by…’
JIMMY, 2:48PM: ‘you want to see a show?’
HARRY, 2:49PM: ‘if you want me there’
JIMMY, 2:50PM: ‘i’ll hook you up with some tickets, gotta go now’

It was busy in the lobby when Jimmy finally made her way down there after the evening performance. It was a little after eleven. She had tried but it had been impossible to break away sooner. Thordal, head choreographer, had dragged her from sponsors to company friends to God knows who for twenty minutes on an. Jimmy had tried to get Harry to come join her but he had declined, understandably. She had been glancing at the clock every other second though, and was thankful when Thordal finally picked up on her hints and allowed her to go.

All the visitors had gone home and it were mostly just other dancers and their friends and family that were dotted around the velvet couches by the front entrance in the hall. Sports bags and water bottles by their feet. It wasn’t hard to spot Harry though. He stood right at the entrance, leaning against one of the white marble pillars. One helmet around his arm and another in his hand. His free hand in the front pocket of his tight blue jeans. The leather of his jacket stood out against all the white and gold in the lobby. He looked beautifully out of place.

Jimmy could literally feel the eyes of her fellow dancers burning in her back as she made her way over to him. They were playing a dangerous game but that made it all the more exciting. Of course by then some had heard that he was staying with her and she knew that this would start some crazy rumours. She couldn’t care less though as she saw the weakest hint of a smile appear on his lips when he noticed her too.

“So does this mean I finally get to take a ride on that bike of yours?” He had mentioned his bike a couple times but she had never seen him with it.

“Jimmy,” he nodded, greeting her. A warmth in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. “I see you are dressed for the occasion, good.”

He looked appreciative at her patent pink leather Topshop trousers that she happened to have picked to wear that morning. “You ready, princess?”

She decided that once again all of this would work a lot better if he didn’t always talk like that but she smiled all the same.

“Definitely.”

He held the door open for her, which made it seem more like something it wasn’t in the eyes of their spectators. The whole way this was arranged made it look a whole lot more than it was at that point anyway. She hadn’t even really talked to him that much all together, come to think of it. She also was aware of the fact that Harry must have felt it too. The looks and the undeniable judgement forming behind their backs but he really didn’t seem to give a fuck.

He had parked his bike right in front of the building, where she was pretty sure no bikes or any other vehicles were allowed. And when he handed her the helmet, he took a little too long before letting it go. He looked at her in anticipation, waiting for her to make a comment on his ride. She couldn’t help but let her eyes wander back to him. Leather jacket open around his shoulders, a bright yellow button up underneath - but with the top three buttons left undone revealing two necklaces against his inked, bronzed chest. The sparkly pink helmet she thought would be hers, already on top of his head. She didn’t think this would be the right moment to let him know she liked him better than the bike. It was a cool bike though, she guessed. And because she thought that was the safer answer, that was what she told him.

He smiled a little before closing the clasp of his helmet and swung his long, skinny leg over the seat. She stood aside and watched him position himself before bringing the bike to life. He looked over his shoulder then and reached to knock on top of her helmet playfully.

“This won’t work with you just standing there, you know,” he said over the roar of the engine and she laughed while finally climbing on behind him. And she only realised how close they were required to be for this when she did.

“Good - just hold on to me, alright?”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, forcing herself not to think more of it than it was and pulled her legs up as he pushed the machine onto the street.

She held on to him tighter as he sped up and took a sharp right. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of the wind roaring around her, a mixture of his musky cologne and leather reaching her nose. ‘Rock star,’ she thought to herself and smiled into her helmet.

Jimmy couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when, about fifteen minutes later, she noticed that Harry was slowing down. She had forgotten how good it felt to be on the back of a motorcycle. That tingle in her stomach caused by a wonderful cocktail of excitement and fear and in this case also definitely a dangerous drop of admiration.

When they were back in the apartment and Jimmy came back in the living room dressed in Adidas sweat pants and a black LA Ballet hoodie, she followed Harry’s glance wandering to her bare feet. Bruised and stained. Some old blisters still healing and red marks from where tape had cut her feet a little bit that night. He had poured her a glass of wine and got himself a bottle of beer. Nothing about him seemed like he was in a hurry to leave.

“You looked beautiful up there tonight,” he eventually said.

She smiled a little. “I work hard for it.”

He asked her a little more about the ballet and she answered all of his questions. Then they really started to talk. About life and music. She admitted that she didn’t have many heroes but that Bruce Springsteen was her guy and they talked about home. About England. He was a year older than her and they could only find a friend of a friend who’s name they both knew from back then.

He told her about his sister and growing up with divorced parents and how he used to go play in a park nearby with his friends until the sun went down and how they always had friends over for dinner.

Jimmy didn’t have these stories from her youth. She was always dancing. First in her hometown then in Manchester and London and eventually LA. And it was okay because it had always been her own choice but she loved listening to Harry. It probably didn’t even matter what he talked about, as long as just did.

And they kept talking until two in the morning when Jimmy finally dragged herself up from her seat and went to her room where she laid awake for the longest time. Thinking about how out of character it was for her to want to open up to someone like that. Especially a guy. And especially to him. She didn’t want to keep things for herself, she wanted to share them with him because he made her feel like he wanted her to. And it was kind of sad to realise that while it seemed so natural to him, it was so new to her. No guy had ever really bothered. Not like that. Not in that genuine way he did. And if anything, that scared the hell out of her.

7.
It must have been around eleven at night when Jimmy found herself waking up from music drifting in from the living room. She kept her eyes closed a little longer as she processed what she heard. A guitar, some maracas and someone drumming along softly on what was probably just her coffee table. Along with some voices singing along to the unfamiliar melody. Harry’s voice a little clearer, a little hoarser and a lot more confident than the rest of them.

A melancholic harmony of voices.

‘ohh tell me something I don’t already know’

She had no idea when his guests arrived but figured Harry had brought them from the studio or a pub, which was a first. During his entire stay so far he hadn’t really had people over. She once again hadn’t seen him much but that was mainly because it was her this time who had barely been home. It were still the most busy weeks of the year at the ballet and her days were filled with classes, physiotherapy, costume fittings, meetings, photoshoots and shows. She was stressed out and her body was aching so she went to bed early most nights to get all the sleep she possibly could.

Outside her bedroom door, the band had changed to another laid back tune and she closed her eyes again as she thought about Harry’s long, ringed fingers around the neck of his guitar and then she felt them on her skin. Long, skinny fingers on her cheek and on their way down to her chin and further. Until somewhere they became her own. She squirmed and pushed her heels into the mattress with eyes squeezed shut, keeping the thought of him as close as possible.

She kicked the white sheets back, grabbing onto the fabric as she parted her lips slightly.

In the other room, the music had stopped and Harry’s voice was the only thing that filled the house, her bedroom, her body. Right until Jimmy’s breathing was cut short by an array of tiny explosions in her head and low in her belly. She spread her legs and laid still, panting with a sweaty forehead and a mixture of satisfaction, shame and confusion on her mind.

In her bedroom, the grey/blue of a brand new evening came in through the slit in her closed curtains, casting shadows of the white on her walls, sheets, floor and skin. Her mind clouded with thoughts and the nothingness of pure satisfaction.

Outside the boys were laughing and the sound of more bottles being opened was the last thing she heard before she fell back to sleep.

8.
JIMMY, 3:43PM: ‘home early today, care for pizza?’

Jimmy wasn’t sure if there were guidelines on how to treat a houseguest and if it was okay to treat him like a roommate when he was staying for a month or two. She also wasn’t sure if there was a chance he would stay longer after that. She kind of hoped he wouldn’t. She also wasn’t sure how much of this was really just her treating him like a roommate. With everything that was going on between them, or at least on her side of the line, it was rather confusing to have him around all the time. With the first month almost behind them, she didn’t think she ever stood a fair chance against him anyway.

HARRY, 3:55PM: ‘I didn’t think ballerinas were allowed pizza’
JIMMY, 3:56PM: ‘there’s a lot of things you don’t know, Styles’
HARRY, 3:57PM: ‘count me in. x’

Just about three hours later they were both sat on the couch, watching the millionth rerun of an episode of FRIENDS with an opened pizza box on the couch in between them. “Seriously though,” he said as he stuffed his mouth full of Margarita pizza and took a long gulp of his whisky without flinching.

“I only ever see you eat yoghurt and the occasional spoon of Nutella.”

Jimmy chuckled. “Trust me, I wouldn’t still be here if that was all I ate. Sure, there is a strict diet but I could starve myself and still have curves so I am definitely allowed a pizza every now and then.”

“A ballet star with the body of a Victoria’s Secret model…” he mumbled.

“Are you gonna write a song about me now?” He laughed mysteriously and shook his head but never answered the question.

They went on to talk for a little while. She learned that the album was planned to be released in May and that it was top secret. She also discovered that he had been writing during most of his time in One Direction and only gave up some of his songs for band records.

“We were on the road for the best part of it and had a lot of time on our hands because in some countries we couldn’t even go anywhere, we weren’t allowed because it wasn’t save so I started writing a lot. Being alone in a hotelroom with just your thoughts all the time is very confronting. I could have gone mad” he said at some point. Jimmy had no idea what it was like to tour the world in one of the most famous boybands the world had ever known and the closest she had ever seen it was from some friends who were with the travelling group of the ballet company and she did know it was a lot let glamorous than people would think. “I was drained, took a year long break once the word about the hiatus was out.”

“So what have you been up to in your well-deserved break?”

“Writing, travelling, becoming a hermit, making memories with all the wrong people, trying to replace them with new ones you know… existed.”

She smiled vaguely, relating to that feeling of wanting to replace bad memories with new ones but experience had learned her that it usually didn’t work that way. Bad memories had the tendency to stick with you more than the good ones. She told him that too and he looked at her wondering what she could mean. Wanting to disagree as it wasn’t in his nature to think that way but knowing she was right all the same.

“I happen to have a history with some of those wrong people myself…” she confessed.

He told her about his last girlfriend who was in fact a Victoria’s Secret model and Jimmy couldn’t help but laugh at the cliché a little and didn’t ask any names. He learned she dated a ballet dancer from New York not too long ago and the glance in her eyes told him there wasn’t anything to laugh about. She didn’t enlighten him but she did tell him that “it was everything you would imagine…”

She dumped the crust of a slice back in the box as the thought of Scott filled her mind and pushed away her appetite. It had been four months since he went back to the New York Ballet when they offered him big money and yet he was haunting her still.

“And so was she, I bet…”

She looked at him while he thought about the girl who was mostly too busy to spend time with him and was always surrounded by other guys and loved it more than he deserved. She also really wasn’t that interesting and the sex wasn’t even that good. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at the beautiful, tortured creature in front of him who he hadn’t been able to get his head around nor get out of it.

“Not really, he said.

“So that’s another wet dream crushed?”

He laughed before admitting that it never really had been a dream of his to get screwed over by an angel-winged girl. “We started retelling stories after a week, that’s when you know it’s not gonna work out but you know… when you think you’re in love but never say those things that should be said…”

“Always having to hear new things can be bad as well you know, but I guess you’re right.”

They sat in silence for a while, both overthinking each others previous lives and heartbreak without mentioning it. Then she got up from the couch, not really having anywhere to be but thinking it was better not to stay around.

“So how long do you think you will be around for?” she asked, already half on her way to the door of her bedroom. She had to ask it. She had to know.

“As long as you will have me,” he said but then furrowed his eyebrows. “No, honestly – the construction is going well so I should be gone at around Christmas. I think it’s best for you and me both in order to… you know…”

He didn’t finish his sentence and she nodded. It was best for them to regain some space and be able to think with a clear head. To be able to think at all.

9.
It was 7:38 when Harry found Jimmy running around the house like crazy. Throwing things in her sports bag while putting on black leg warmers over her Adidas sweatpants and the FILA sneakers she was already wearing. And getting stuck and almost falling over while doing it. Black hoodie unzipped, sliding off her shoulders and revealing a dusty pink Spandex leotard that clung to her body in all the right places. Her hair a mess on top of her head. He watched the spectacle unfold from the doorstep of his bedroom with his arms crossed in front of him and an amused smile on his lips. He had probably heard her get home early in the morning and was judging her for being late. And counting.

When she knocked over an empty beer bottle from the counter in an attempt to quickly throw together a lunch salad, he finally came to life. “Calm down princess, I’ll drive you.”

Taking a moment to breathe and look over at him, she realised he was already dressed. Or hadn’t even been to bed yet as he was wearing the same black Calvin Klein hoodie and skinnies as the night before. “You sure?” she said, not actually wanting him to take care of her problems but also definitely not wanting to be late for class.

She was already subject of all sorts of rumours anyway, ever since word about Harry being her roommate and her escapades with Olivia came out and knew the ballet had always been very open-minded to her. But she also knew that could change in a split second if she started to neglect her career. Harry just nodded and grabbed his car keys with the Mercedes keyring and the Rolling Stones tongue from the table while letting her know he would get the car from the garage and would be waiting for her at the front entrance.

She knew Harry drove a 1966 Mercedes convertible amongst other cars but she had never been in it before. Not being able to hide a smile as she stepped in the white retro car and put her sports bag at her feet, he shot her a questioning look. “You’re such a rock star,” was all she said.

A side-lopped, amused smile appeared on his face when he put the car in gear and pulled up. “Living the cliché dream,” he mumbled.

For the first time in a long time, Jimmy wasn’t so much aware of how easily she had stepped in his car with him, until he screwed up when he just about barely hit a red light.

There was no danger in it at all other than the risk of having been seen by a police car, but Jimmy flinched and closed her eyes shut. “What the fuck,” she yelled and Harry looked aside at her alarmed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, confused. Panicking slightly.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, realising she must have looked crazy. “I’m sorry… it’s fine… I just…”

Harry turned a corner and they almost immediately hit traffic. She had already informed her teacher about not being able to make it on time and decided to just accept it. Harry was looking at her with furrowed eyebrows and she sighed.

“It’s… well you probably figured by now that I’m still recovering from a very unhealthy relationship. It was bad most days but there was this one night… at a company sponsor night I got talking to this guy who was an artist and made these incredible surrealistic paintings. And Scott, my ex… he just lost it. He demanded we left right away and I… like the idiot I was, obeyed. He drove like a maniac once we got into the car. Too fast, on the wrong side of the road, through all the red lights and anywhere but home. He was drunk, at least, and pulled my hair, hit me in the chest and kept yelling that he wouldn’t stop until I proved I belonged to him and wouldn’t forget that again.”

From the corner of her eye Jimmy saw how Harry had changed positions and was now clenching his firsts around the steering wheel while his jaw tightened. There was silence for a while before he quietly asked if she managed to leave him that night.

She shook her head in shame and admitted no. “That was only the beginning. He dropped me off at the apartment eventually and disappeared into the night like he often did. When he showed up again the following day and saw the bruises on my chest he cried and apologised. It was the first of many times it was like that and it wasn’t the worst time but I’ve had a hard time being driven around since then.

“I feel like a complete asshole for not knowing what to say but Jesus Christ, Jimmy… I figured shit went down but…”

She smiled a little. “I’m actually okay. I don’t usually talk this much about it either, you know.”

“You shouldn’t feel like you can’t though Jimmy, okay? I wanna hear anything you want to share with me. I won’t have any advice and I will get mad but I want to hear it if you want me to.”

She blinked hard a few times to avoid the tears from coming because in his despair to find the right words, he did just that.

“We met shortly after I came to LA, it was perfect. I was the perfect victim for his sick ways. I’m worth a lot more than he wanted me to know but it’s hard to hold on to that when someone belittles you, manipulates and abuses you, makes you fear for your life and does everything to ruin your career and keep you indoors. I’ve danced shows just after he raped me, had to wake up hours early to cover bruises from colleagues. But one day he just stopped showing up and left me constantly afraid. I desperately tried to reach him and just when I started to believe that maybe I got away, he stood at my door again until he eventually went back to New York without giving me a head’s up. The ballet company there was offering him money to dance for their travelling company.”

They moved in silence for a while, slowly but certainly getting closer to the ballet centre and though her heart was racing as she looked back at that night, she smiled because she survived. And though the thought of him being able to come back at any moment still haunted her sometimes, she was doing a lot better now than she was a few months ago and she had a feeling that she owed a lot of it to the guy sitting beside her.

Just as they passed another green light, Harry let go of the steering wheel with one hand and placed it high up on her leg. She put her hand over his, feeling the cold silver of his rings on her skin and she kept it there as she continued to look out of the side window at the city. The roof was closed even though it was a good day and she was happy about it. Thinking that right there, in the car with just him, under the blue sky and in the midst of life in LA, was where she wanted to stay.

“So I’m not as much fun to be around as you may think but I put most of it behind me thanks to therapy and a strength I found within myself and I’m sorry to have just dropped it on you like that. I didn’t mean to,” she concluded and Harry laughed a little.

“This is real Jimmy and I can’t deny that I look at you a little differently now but not in the way you think. But it’s just… you can’t ask of me to pretend that I don’t know because honestly, I always will and I’m glad. It would have been nice to have known before I started driving like an asshole though.”

She smiled. “It’s fine, I didn’t think it would matter, but it still does sometimes. It probably always will and now you know… at least a little bit. And you drive just fine.”

They remained silent for the remainder of the drive and his hand remained on her thigh until he pulled over in front of the ballet centre and she reluctantly opened the door.

“In a few months time he will be dead to me, I’m sure of it,” she said, leaning forward at the passenger side to look at him. He remained calm but she saw a hint of a smile play around his lips as he raised a hand to wave goodbye.

“Thanks for letting me know. You know, everything.”

10.
Harry was away a lot. She knew that most days he was at the studio with the band, putting finishing touches to the record. And that sometimes he was just wandering. He tended to do that a lot in the final stages of a new album. She knew this because that’s what he told her when she did see him. He told her about how he sat and watched the world go by for hours on end. She didn’t tell him how much she would love to join him on his wanderings. Just sit beside him without talking and watch him watch the world go by. But most of the time she didn’t know where he was and she wouldn’t see him come home and wasn’t there to see him leave. Or she wasn’t aware of it at least. And it was fine.

It did occur to her that maybe their last proper conversation in the car scared the shit out of him. She wondered whether she ruined something that could potentially have been growing between them. Even if it was something as innocent as a friendship. Maybe it was impossible for him to see her in the same light now. He kind of already admitted that to her, but maybe it did matter. Instead of what he had wanted her to believe in the car. Maybe he had realised that it did and that he didn’t want to spend his days with someone who would eventually use up all his energy along with her own. Or maybe he just didn’t want to have to let her know that it did.

Deep down she knew that wasn’t true. At least not anymore. But she also knew what she had sounded like and looked like and she knew what she had told him was only the tip of the iceberg and he must have realised it too. And he must have known that if he wanted an out, that this was his chance to take it.

She also knew that it was unfair of her to think that way. But she decided to let him know that it was okay if he felt uncomfortable and that she wouldn’t talk about it again if that was the case. As soon as he would give her the chance.

And the chance came that evening when he came home relatively early at around ten. Jimmy laid on the couch, curled up under a blanked with a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. She barely looked up when she heard him because she figured he would go straight up to his room. But he didn’t. Instead he put his guitar case down by the arm chair before sitting down on the seat.

She put her book down, coverside up, on her stomach and smiled at him. He looked tired, tortured almost and she immediately started to feel bad for waiting to start the conversation she had planned to have with him.

“I’m sorry if… you know…”

He interrupted her before she could finish her sentence. “If this is about what you told me in the car the other week then please don’t.”

She couldn’t help but lift her head a little to be able to look at him better. He really did look extremely tired. His hair curling down both sides of his face as it was growing a little longer than she had seen it up until then. Dressed in a floral shirt, top couple of buttons open, plain black skinny jeans and worn leather boots. “I meant what I said and I won’t change my mind. I am gonna feel really bad about what I was gonna tell you now though.”

Jimmy’s heart immediately responded as it went up a couple beats per second and she took a moment to put her book on the table and sit up. He waited patiently for her to do so, he always was so goddam patient. Sitting back, ankle of his one leg resting on the knee of the other. “I got a call about my house earlier today, it will be ready in the next couple of weeks so that means I won’t be coming back here after Christmas.”

She blinked, half expected for it to hurt more and gave herself a second to let the words sink in. What she found surprised her. She found relief. “Oh wow, that’s great,” she said.

He looked amused and he shook his head. “Fucking hell,” he mumbled and Jimmy was smiling too.

“No, I’m serious,” she said and she was. “We knew this was just a very temporary thing and to be honest I don’t mind it. I think we can both use some space.”

“You’re just glad you didn’t actually scare the shit out of me with your story,” he said and Jimmy laughed then, not denying or confirming that he was, of course, right too.

She could have said to him that his presence was so goddamn heavy that she hadn’t been able to think straight since the day he walked into her life. Or that she wasn’t even sure if she ever wanted to again. The real weird thing was though, that he had ensured her of not wanting an out from whatever this was they had going, with just a sentence. And that she wasn’t scared she would never see him again when he would move back into his own place. She realised that there were two sides to this and that they were each constantly on both of them, together.

11.
Nearly the first day of winter. And by the time the clock would strike midnight, also Jimmy’s 22nd birthday. A house full of her friends. And Harry. She had told him to bring whoever he wanted, mostly to cut Harry some slack but it didn’t look like he had taken her up on her offer. Right then it was just her, her friends and Harry.

He occupied a corner of the room with Oliver, who he befriended really fast after meeting him for the first time, and some of the others who had been there on film night. He was mainly minding his own business, talking to the guys around him, not aware or looking like he was aware of what was going on around him.

She wasn’t necessarily avoiding him, or admitting that she was, for that matter. But it did startle her to find out that he followed her to the balcony. With the drinks she just got out of the rental fridge already in her hand, she found him grinning down at her. A pair of the clearest eyes she had ever seen looking right back into hers. And she couldn’t ignore how hideous the shirt he was wearing was that night. Designer, without a doubt but there was no excuse for all that bright yellow floral. And that he was so much more beautiful from up close. And taller too. She thought about how all that time had been living with her in her house, they hadn’t been standing this close together for longer than necessary. And now he had her wondering and understanding why at exactly the same time. And it wasn’t just because of the way he made his thighs stand out in those black skinny jeans and neither was it hiss brown prince-charming curls. It was that boyish innocence and a hint of something darker, of someone who had maybe seen too much after being thrown into the spotlights at a very young age, for a very long time. And the confident, carefree way he carried himself.

His full, rosy lips mumbled an excuse at her but his eyes were sparkling because they both knew he was right where he wanted to be.

“What do you want, Styles?” she said, also grinning. She knew before it arrived that this night was going to be tricky. They would both be drinking, it were their last days together as she would go to her parents in Scotland in just a few days. He would leave right before her and everything that had been in the air all the time was reaching a boiling point. And seemed less dangerous now they knew they weren’t going to be seeing each other for a while.

“I hate what this is going to sound like but it is killing me to see you with other guys. I’m gonna be the last to tell you what to do but you have to know…”

This was just about the last thing she had expected to hear.

“Jimmy” Jimm-eh...

He leaned on the balustrade and she could only make out the parts of his face that were lit by the fairy lights above. He lit a cigarette and took a long drag before he spoke. She realised he looked tired and slightly tortured but she waited for him to continue. She had a feeling there was going to be more to this conversation than him making her knees go weak by just saying her name like that.

“I tried staying out of your way to clear my head. And think…”

She still didn’t relief him by speaking. Instead she jumped onto the table that stood at the wall and took a cigarette from his pack without asking.

“You smoke at least as much as I do, but your hair smells like raspberries and cinnamon gum. You speak in mysteries and act like you are a fucking poem. It’s those kind of things that I fucking think about when I wake up now, Jesus. It makes me wonder. Everything about you constantly makes me wonder and I don’t know what anything means but here you are, looking like that and it’s this kind of images that will haunt me.”

Jimmy subconsciously glanced at her own reflection in the window. She wore a figure hugging black leather mini dress. Bright red lipstick and her skin was radiant. Hair slicked back with an incredible amount of gel to get that wet look effect.

He spoke in his typical lazy manner but even slower than usual, as if weighing every word carefully before it left his mouth. But his eyes were big and full of the wonder he mentioned while looking at her. It was the first time she saw it. Or realised what she saw. They would both be heading home within the next couple of days and there he was, turning her world upside down with just a couple of words.

“I tried to ignore it because I hate to make you any promises as that is when you get hurt and I’m gonne be the last person to give you shit. I’m gonna be away all the fucking time come May. It’s fucking selfish…”

It had crossed her mind. The question whether it was even worth letting him in because he wouldn’t ever really be. But maybe he was right. Maybe it was too late to be sensible.

She told him that too. “And stop trying new fucking lyrics on me… I don’t know, Harry… I don’t seem to know shit these days.”

“You think you’re being funny?” he growled but she saw a sly smile on the surface of his lips.

Right at that exact moment, Billy appeared in the doorsill and was startled by the image of the two of them together, out there in the dark. Tension almost visible in the little air that was left in between them. Jimmy could just about imagined what it looked like to her friend. Wasn’t sure if she wanted it to but it was too late now anyway. She recovered quickly. “Jimmy, it’s gonna be midnight in just a couple of minutes, get the fuck in here.”

Jimmy looked at Harry. “We’ll talk later,” she said and he just nodded.

Midnight arrived what felt like seconds after she stepped back in and she spent the next couple of minutes kissing and hugging people. She accepted presents, mostly money, and tons of kisses on the cheek.

Harry had been watching all that time and was the last to come up to her. Everybody was watching them together and he grabbed her hands, kissed both her cheeks and handed her a thick envelope. Her name in swirly letters on the front. She was almost certain he had someone do that for him.

Stepping back a little, he kept looking at her in anticipation as Billy encouraged her to open the flap already. She did with her fingers shaking and gasped before he mouth literally fell open as two front row tickets to Springsteen’s Broadway show came sliding out between her fingertips.

“I didn’t know what to get you, please don’t feel obligated to take me,” he said dryly, almost looking a little shy as everyone in the room was in awe. The Broadway show was all she had been talking about over the past couple of months. Her love for Springsteen was as common to everyone as the fact that she had blonde hair and everybody felt for her when she hadn’t been able to get her hands on tickets.

In a moment of complete joy, she threw herself in his arms and his long fingers naturally curved around her hips as he lifted her a couple inches of the ground into a tight hug. More than ever she was surrounded by his scent. Musky cologne, something sweet and boyish that was just him. She didn’t know what was happening around them. Whether everyone was looking or pretending not to like they had done with him the entire night. She didn’t know what they were thinking and what their possible thoughts would lead to. She didn’t even know what she was thinking herself but there was no point in denying any longer that she adored him. All of him and his mystery. Even if he hadn’t given her Springsteen tickets. Even if this was the last thing she needed in her life right now.

She turned her head a little to be able to whisper in his ear while she could still feel his fingers digging into her skin as she slid back down to the floor. She rose to her toes and turned her head a little to be able to whisper in his ear as her fingers found the hairs in his neck.

“Meet me in the hallway.”

12.
Even though it probably looked like she thought it through, she hadn’t. She waited for the party to come back to life and rudely avoided Billy, telling her “not now,” when she almost instantly came up to her to have a good chat. Jimmy knew she had every right to want to know more but right then there simply wasn’t anything to say. Billy already knew everything there was to know. There wasn’t anything specific that led to this moment. Except every second of the last couple of months.

Then, when she thought nobody was really paying attention to her anymore, she snuck into the hallway and waited. A whole two minutes or an eternity later, the door opened and he appeared. He was smiling widely but didn’t speak as he closed the door behind him and wrapped her back up in his arms. There was a moment of resistance between the both of them that vanished when she looked up through her lashes and he was already on the way down.

The kiss was as much urgent as it was hesitant before it became determined and his full lips felt a bit rough against hers. Had to be the effect of all that LA sun on his British skin, she thought before she almost drowned in his taste. Vodka, chewing gum and something sweet that was his own. She didn’t want it to ever end but was gasping for air when she broke away. Overwhelmed by the things she felt, weak knees and a racing heart – the full package, it was almost embarrassing. It came to a point where she was sure she was no longer breathing air. She was living on his touch, the look in his eyes, fully alive on him alone.

But then he whispered a soft “wow” and she looked up at him. Eyes wild, lips slightly parted, brows furrowed. The confirmation that it wasn’t just her made her regain her confidence and she smiled a little. “Almost as good as the present you gave me,” she whispered.

He groaned a little. “Happy birthday, princess.”

When they eventually reappeared in the room, the party was back on and people were dancing and drinking and laughing and she knew she could no longer ignore Billy. She shot a look in Harry’s direction as he headed over to get himself a beer and he just nodded encouragingly. She admired that in him, his blind trust in her while they both had no idea what exactly it was she could share.

She told that to Billy as well. “But did you kiss him?”

Jimmy’s grin gave it away before she could even nod and Billy squalled softly. “How long has this been going on for?”

“This was the first time we kissed.”

“That’s not what I meant,” her friend said, looking almost insulted.

“Then you know the answer to that question.”

“Day one,” she said before adding: “I love how I am always right.” She grinned and Jimmy couldn’t help but laugh. A mixture of excitement and that feeling of being caught doing the forbidden. She wasn’t sure if it was or if it should be, but she was glad that after so many weeks, things finally started going somewhere.

They managed to stay away from each other for fifteen, thirty minutes tops. But it was clear to everyone in the room that something in the air had changed. It were their looks, and the undeniable tension. And when Harry called her over to where he was sitting on the couch, she let him pull her on his lap. He bend over, reaching alongside her to put his beer on the table and she felt the stubble on his chin rasp her bare shoulder as he went back. His hair brushing her cheek, tickling her lips, stinging her eye just a little bit. She felt comfortable among her friends and honestly had a hard time thinking straight about the consequences while he was looking at her like that. Pulling her face down towards his with his long fingers on each side against her cheeks like that. Kissed her again like that.

A lot later, when everyone was gone, though she had missed at least half of them leaving, they stood in the kitchen together, piling up glasses and collecting empty bottles of wine. And when she looked over at him, head a haze despite all the alcohol she didn’t have, he was already looking back. Jimmy knew that if it was ever going to happen, whatever it may be, there may not be a better place or time. Right here in the house that still carried so many bad memories, and where she hadn’t dared to make new ones like this before. There was nothing she wanted more than to wash away some of the worst ones with something new. Something better. A promise for a lot yet to come. And already, all of that seemed a world away. And when she looked up into those eyes, a terrifying realisation came over her. She felt safe with him. Safer than she had probably ever felt before.

“I know that he’s messing with your mind love, but I’ll be good to you. You know that right?” A finger brushed her cheek and he took her chin between his forefinger and thumb. “Have I ever not been good to you? Have I ever not been careful with you, Jimmy?"

Not intentionally, Jimmy thought to herself. He had done everything right to wrap her right around his finger and she wasn’t sure if he even really had been trying in the first place. He was a lyricist and a brilliant one at that. He was good with words and it made him dangerous. But it also didn’t just develop overnight in a haze of drinks and loud music at the back of a smoky pub. It had been hanging above them for months and she hadn’t given him a single reason to stay – yet he did.

Maybe the most stupid thing she had done was letting one guy ruin her ability to receive unconditional and passionate love, rather than falling in love with him in the first place. Maybe it wasn’t. But if she wouldn’t at least give it a shot, she would never know.

“You don’t need to be careful, I just need you to be patient,” she whispered, tilting her head against the slight curve of his fingers. She could feel the cold of his big ring against her glowing cheek.

“Was it a test, Jimmy?” he looked down at her through his lashes, eyes a different kind of dark, while his forefinger followed the line of her jaw to her ear. “Did I pass?”

He pushed his fingers in her hair and took a strand between his fingers, following it all the way down as he let the back of his hand brush over her breast. She swallowed hard and shook her head slowly. “Not even close.”

He chuckled and slid both his hands around her waist. Making it seem like had had done it a thousand times before, lifting her up on the counter. And he had, just not with her. The sound of a couple of bottles being knocked over not giving them enough to reason to be more careful. And Jimmy gasped, because the only other time it had happened to her was when she allowed her mind to go there. She wrapped her own hands around his neck and for a few seconds it was just that. Just the two of them standing there and looking at each other, music still playing but other than that, complete silence.

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Or maybe she just didn’t try hard enough as she could feel him grow hard against her stomach. His hands found her ass by then and he dug his fingers into her skin as he lifted her off the ground. She obeyed and wrapped her legs around his small waist as they began to finally kiss again. Lips tasting of scotch and cigarettes and her own lipstick.

They kissed until they were out of breath and she flashed him the most genuine, beautiful smile he had possibly ever seen. Her light brown eyes hazier than usual and her lips puffier from the kiss. He used the moment to carrier her to the bed and she lowered her feet back to the floor. Her chest rising and falling quickly as she laced her fingers together against the back of his neck to pull him down. His forehead rested against hers and their lips were so close that they touched when he spoke.

“I have to ask you this because I fucking care too much… Are you sure?”

She looked at him, a shiny strand of hair falling in front of his eyes. She didn’t know what was going on in his mind because she could just never really tell, but she got better at reading those dark eyes. She saw affection, lust. And it felt like nobody had ever looked at her like that before.

“Just make sure I won’t regret it,” she teased with a smile and Alex groaned as a sly grin appeared in the corner of his mouth.

“The only thing you’ll regret is that comment, love.”

As they kissed again he gently pushed her backwards towards the bedroom and they only paused when he quickly pulled his t-shirt over his head and took his chance to take hers off too. When her calves bumped against the mattress of her massive and perfectly made bed, she had no choice but to sit down on it. Harry’s hands moved down to his belt but she instinctively grabbed his hand to stop him. “Let me do that.”

Harry smiled slyly. “Did you have some dirty thoughts about me, Jimmy?” he said lifting his hands to let her open the buckle and looked down at her hands while they did it expertly.

After kicking his jeans aside, he bend forward and over her. Hands sliding down her bare sides before he hooked his fingers into panties to pull them down. She lifted each leg separately to help him and then crawled back up on the bed, using just her elbows and heels. He made sure to drop his boxers before he followed. She was breathing fast when he lifted himself on top of her eventually and could feel him pressing against both their bellies between them. A soft moan escaped her mouth when he lightly bit at her chin before his lips found hers again. His fingers meanwhile well on their way to open the clasp at the back of her bra. Her nipples brushed his chest with every breath she took and he cupped her breasts in his hands as they kissed again. Endlessly. To make up for all the time they wasted with all those innocent texts and stupid games over the last couple of months.

Hours later they lay together on top of a mess of damp crisp white sheets. Sweaty skin pressed against each other, his thigh high up between her legs. She wanted a shower and sleep but her legs wouldn’t be able to carry her and sleep would just put an end to this moment. So she decided that right there, was good as Harry just laid there grinning, satisfaction and exhaustion in all of his limps.

Without her wanting to, her mind travelled to the early days with Scott. Back to the only time where she came closest to remotely feeling how she was feeling about Harry now. Or even in the months before. Though it was hard to remember the good times these days. They met in his first week of joining the corpse the ballet, fresh out of New York with the drive and the attitude to match. Looking back at it now she didn’t think she ever stood a chance against him. She would have fallen head over heels for him any other time anyway with his slick back hair and his beard, his tattoos and his dark eyes that predicted some kind of trouble. The American bad guy stereotype except that he shared her passion for ballet. He had her at her most fragile though. Mentally unstable and stressed out, mourning the loss of a friend and still new to LA. Fresh out of London where nothing compared to her new life. And not even half of the time in the good way. She basically threw herself at him.

The first time they spoke, the subject was last night’s episode of Game of Thrones and while a bunch of other girls tried to join in at first they were soon left alone as it turned into a pretentious discussion about the deeper meaning of it all. He was a smooth talker but he challenged her and offered her just the right amount of distraction and excitement she so desperately needed. She ended up in his bed at the end of his first week.

And all was great with him at first despite that her life really was not and he treated her like a princess. Within a couple of weeks they were the talk of the company and she proudly let him hold her hand in the corridors for everyone to see. The ballet staff was glad to see her finally turning into the dancer they hoped to had reeled in from across the pond. So glad in fact that they were willing to let it slide when someone walked in on them having sex minutes before she was due to go on stage. Which for anyone else, at any other time, would have caused serious trouble. And rightly so.

But she was in love and didn’t care and only started to see cracks in his façade when he got sloppy, or just could no longer hide his demons from her. It started with insults that he tried to let slide as jokes, then it turned into making a fool out of her in front of others and would eventually become him forbidding her to wear certain things, getting angry when she was home later than he’d expected or when he just saw her hanging with someone else that wasn’t him. He also began to force her to watch weird, creepy conspiracy videos on YouTube about terrorism, medical experiments and that really, the earth wasn’t round. She would spend hours arguing with him but he was so goddamn convincing that by the end of the night, he had her checking out the flat earth society.

There were certain people that tried to warn her, Billy certainly tried and so had some people within the company. And while she admitted he was problematic, she argued that she was too and that she loved him.

If she would have tried then, maybe she could have gotten out before everything started to become a whole lot worse, but she didn’t. Because she was scared, weak and really thought she was better off like this than left alone with her own feelings. If anything, at least he made her forget. And soon she was so caught up in everything that she didn’t even notice the little things anymore. She learned quickly how to avoid making him mad and started not telling him things or plain lying to please him. She also stopped opening up to people around her because she got sick of the judgement and because, really, Scott had asked her to. “They’re only jealous baby, we’re exciting, we’re alive, they will never understand it and they’re better off that way.”

She wanted to believe so much that it was true that it became easy to quiet the voice in her head. When he noticed that it began to take over anyway and she started to doubt his intentions, he took her on a holiday to Rome and by the time they came back, she felt like she was on top of the world again.

That was the beginning of what would come closely to the end.

At some point she apparently dozed off into a nightmare as she woke up with Harry’s arms around her, what felt like seconds later but could also easily have been hours. He held her tight and brushed her hair. As he noticed she was awake, he began telling a story about his favourite park back in Holmes Chapel, where he grew up. It didn’t have anything to do with anything but it did the trick and she loved him for it. She didn’t even know what she had been dreaming about anymore, but she knew what triggered it. He didn’t ask any questions as if he knew that she did not want him to. She felt herself relax, though the muscles in her shoulders and arms were still a bit tight.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” he mumbled after a long silence. “This really wasn’t part of the plan.”

“One should hope so,” she mumbled and he laid his head on her upper arm, heavy and lazy. It made her muscles burn too much, too soon but she didn’t dare move. She brushed waxy hair from his forehead and waited for what felt like an eternity for him to speak again.

“I knew from day one you would be trouble for me you know, I meant what I said yesterday, all of it. And I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time but I took it slow. Too slow for my liking and for yours, I know that. But I thought it would be better…”

She sighed a little, didn’t want him to stop talking but he remained quiet. “The timing will never be good. Not with our jobs, our lives… not while we’re both the way we are. There will always be something going on and if it isn’t work it will be something else. Anything else. Even Christmas, I’m going away in two days, you’re fucking leaving tomorrow.”

“Let me come visit you there, let’s take that trip to Skye.”

She chuckled and he did an half-hearted attempt to lift his head and look at her. “What?” he said and she began to realise that he was dead-serious. And she seriously wanted him to be. Even though it was stupid and even though none of it would work.

“What about your own family?”

“Aren’t you staying ‘til just before the New Year?”

She thought for a few moments before nodding.

“We’ll see if you can find the time.”

He fully turned around then, eyes grinning as much as his full, now puffy lips. The thought that they were like that because of her made her lower stomach muscles clench. “Is that a yes, Jimmy?”

“Don’t make me change my mind.”

13.
Pictures emerged of Harry Styles in the middle of a heavy make-out sesh with ballet dancer Jimmy Wilde in her LA loft, last night. According to our source, Styles (23) and the ballerina were all over each other at Wilde’s 22nd birthday party just the other night and barely had eyes for their surroundings. Wilde, who is the star of the LA ballet and an occasional model for brands like Gucci and Miu Miu, was pictured straddling and kissing Styles for what apparently went on for hours and there has been no sight of him leaving the house at any point during the night.

Wilde came to LA a couple of years ago after starting her career at the London Ballet. She was born and raised in Cheshire just like Styles and it seems like that connection goes deep. It is unclear how and when the pair met as our source refrained from sharing any more information. We will of course dive in head first and will report back as soon as we know more. Until then, we’ll let the pictures do the talking.

With the online article came a few grainy photos of which they had put the exposure all the way up to be able to even tell that it was them. But it were them, and you could tell. It was his outfit, his hair and the contours of what were undeniably his tattoos on his arms. Her profile, her hair and her outfit and most important to the people who knew her, it was her couch in her house. She was so stunned by the turn of events that for the longest time it didn’t even occur to her to think about who was TMZs so called source. And when she did, she couldn’t for the life of her figure it out. As the night went on some people had arrived that she barely even knew but she had been too far gone. High on a haze of his attention. All of what she had craved for too long. So it hadn’t bothered her.

People had been drunk by then, used to it by then, the new ones soon would be too. Because they had walked into them the way they were photographed. And everybody had let them be. But it was most likely one of them. One of those she didn’t know because she knew the others too well. Some of her friends had texted her before the article was even published, asking her for news on ‘the Harry thing’. She hadn’t bothered replying yet and with the article now out she knew she never would. It didn’t matter what everyone thought anyway. It was out of her hands now. The website captioned it well, the pictures spoke for themselves. She had been sloppy, driven by desire, too comfortable in her own place. In too deep with him. She hadn’t even cried yet. Wasn’t even sure if she felt embarrassed or just angry. Unable to decide if she had any reason to feel ashamed either.

Harry was pissed off to say the least, absolutely furious and devastated to be more specific. He had been on the phone all morning with his people talking about lawsuits and cursing a lot and she let him. If it meant it could lead to the pictures being removed it was worth a shot. Even though a quick look on her social media told her that the damage was already done. She had received calls too. Nicky from PR, people from the board – all giving her instructions not to speak out as if she had been on the verge of calling TMZ herself. She hated everything about it. The very first night she decided to test the waters with him, it was thrown right back in her face. The reality of it all. A downright real sneak peak of what being with him would be like.

But most of all she hated to see Harry look so guilty. He kept pushing his hands through his hair, shooting her looks to check on her from where he was sitting at the dining table in her house and shaking his head as she tried to smile. As if to say that he didn’t need a fake promise of her being alright. In between calls she called him over to her and forced him to sit down with her.

“Please stop acting like this is your fault. I know it sucks and I know it is bad but nothing would hurt me more than to think you regret anything about last night.”

“I don’t,” he insisted immediately, tired eyes shot dark, a greasy curl on his forehead. They both still really needed a shower. She could feel all of him all over her still and she didn’t mind keeping it that way just a little longer, especially now she wasn’t sure if she could ever have it again.

“I don’t regret anything that has happened but I hate that you get confronted with what it will be like to be with me on the first day. Like… we both know it would have led to this eventually but not like this, in your own house. The first time. On your fucking birthday.”

“Just don’t beat yourself up over it,” she said and he grabbed her hand, squeezing it, just when his phone rang again. He answered it as he got up and she watched him turn his back at her.

The ballet had given her the day off, mostly because they knew the press would be waiting there for her and the last thing they wanted was to feed these rumours any more. The PR department went on a lockdown and nobody was allowed to say anything. And even though they ensured her that none of this was her fault, she had a hard time holding on to that and believing it wouldn’t get her in trouble at work. It truly was crazy how much of an effect just one kiss, for as far as they knew, could have on the world. Hers, his, everyone’s. It was crazy how much it mattered.

Another hour later, when she had escaped to the bedroom with a book without being able to actually read anything, she heard him yell through the door.

“I’m not leaving her alone right now….”

“…. I am not going to a hotel….”

“…in two days”

“No...”

Jimmy got up from the bed and opened the door to see him walking up and down the living room, his face hard and distant. She lifted her hand in order to let him know she wanted to say something and without saying anything to warn the person on the other line he blocked the phone with his hand and looked at her.

“It’s okay if you go, you know. Just as long as you’ll come back.”

His expression softened a little, like it did every single time he had put his attention on her that morning. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know, but I mean it.”

He asked her if she was sure about four times and she stayed put because she meant it. Maybe it was good for the both of them. He waited a couple of more seconds until he seemed convinced that she told the truth and sounded cold when he agreed with whoever was on the other line. “3 hours,” was how he ended the conversation. Then, when he tossed his phone on the couch for the first time that day, he repeated it. “3 hours.”

She looked around feeling slightly panicked all of a sudden. His stuff was all over her place, still. She didn’t think this was how their time living together would end. Him rushing around the place to grab his shit and leave. He chuckled when he noticed. “I will be back though, Jimmy. We won’t spend our time packing.”

For the first time since they found out about the pictures he reached out for her and wrapped her in his arms. Pressed her against him with his big hands on her small back, fingers spread wide to get as much of her as possible.

“I’m so sorry, baby girl,” he said and she just shook her head before getting out of his grip and grabbing his hand, pulling him towards the bathroom.

“Let’s get you in the shower, Styles – you smell,” she said grinning and he laughed, shaking his head a little as he went on to unbutton last night’s shirt that he quickly put on. His joggers and boxers followed quickly.

Once again she was overwhelmed by his beauty. Which was kind of crazy because she had been living with him for so long now. But it was almost as if she had been so busy trying and failing not to fall in love with him that she hadn’t really given herself the opportunity to really look at him. Of course she was also seeing parts of him that she hadn’t seen before. All that ink on a perfectly tan and toned body. Carried with so much confidence. Waiting for her to take off her incredibly oversized Springsteen tee that functioned as a night gown. And she did as he turned on the massive rain shower that almost immediately steamed up the glass wall.

He disappeared behind it and she followed after diming the light a little and putting on her favourite Arctic Monkeys record.

“I love this song,” Harry mumbled as She’s Thunderstorms filled up the silence. “Thinking about it now it probably tried to warn me for your existence before I even knew.”

She shook her head a little and grinned as she looked up at him, wrapped her arms around his waist just because she could.

“You’ve got your poet speech on again.”

They stood in silence like that for a while. Naked bodies wet and warm, touching at all possible places. Warm water raining down on them and the sound of it colliding with the tiles mixing with the poetic words of Alex Turner in the background. Looking at each other and saying things without speaking until he was afraid that she couldn’t read it in his eyes.

“I think that what I fear most of it all is the thought that this could change your mind before we even had a shot. And you have every right to do so."

“Maybe, but I can’t and I don’t want it.”

“Man, I am glad that you are stubborn.”

“You are going to regret saying that.”

After the shower they both wrapped up in towels and went back to bed. Enjoying as much of each other as they still could as if this was the last time, while it was the first time. They spoke and then didn’t and by the time he had his driver waiting outside for fifteen minutes to take him to some uptown hotel for the night, they were both ready for a shower, once again.

14.
As soon as he was gone, a sadness came over her. It was exactly what she feared would happen. Because before last night everything had been kind of alright when he wasn’t around. Because when he wasn’t around she had been able to tell herself that she could stay away from him and she would have meant it. She would have been able to tell herself that if it wasn’t for his stuff lying around the place, she wouldn’t have thought about him as much. When he wasn’t around and she wasn’t able to see the way he would sometimes look at her, how he would steady his glance on her with that sparkle in his dark eyes whenever they were close enough, or how he would smirk at her from across the room, it was easier to ignore it. When she wasn’t able to hear his voice and the way he lowered it as he bend over and whispered something in her ear that only she was meant to hear. If she didn’t see and hear all that, she actually was able to make herself believe that she would be fine once he was gone again.

But she knew now that anytime soon she would continue to miss those little things she memorized and it would start to hurt more every time she did. Like how he would smile while he teased her or answered a question she asked him. She would miss the glint in his eyes while he spoke, the look of wonder and interested while he listened to her talk about the things she was passionate about. How he had been patient enough to watch Springsteen live videos for an hour on end. Multiple times. Furrowed brows, chewing his bottom lip, asking questions. And hell, now she even knew what he looked like when he came. What he sounded like when he did. What it felt like to have him inside her while she did. And not knowing all that had made him bad enough. Made him something she could easily get addicted to. It made her feel special and wanted in ways she didn’t even know were possible.

And she knew that she would from that moment on always miss these things when he wasn’t around. Because she would eventually discover over and over again what she had known form the start. That she had never met anyone like him and whenever she wouldn’t be around him, she wanted to be. And it would come to a point where things would only be alright if he was near. And that night, as she regretfully but wisely had to let him go, she found herself going in that direction faster than she ever thought was possible. And she realised that it wasn’t up to her to stop it and he definitely didn’t plan to do it for her. With the promise of being back the next day before heading home to Holmes Chapel, he had shut the door behind him and before he could have possibly been at the hotel, he texted her. Capturing her feelings in only a few words, assuring her that he felt the same.

So she felt lost in her own house in the hours after he was gone. She sat on the couch in just her robe as her hair slowly air dried in the living room. Air that, she hoped, still had some of him in it. He had stopped responding to her messages a while ago, explained that he called a meeting with lawyers and just as she drifted off to a restless sleep, her phone buzzed.

She saw an unfamiliar number and her heart immediately started racing as she propped herself up in the pillows and opened the text and the ones that kept coming in after that. Knowing she shouldn’t but unable to stop at the same time.

‘I see you are forgetting about me, Rosie… we might be in trouble here.’
‘Do you like attention that much? I think I have some footage the media might be interested in.’
‘Why are you lowering yourself to that boyband singers standards, Rosie… you really are a mess.’
‘You’re crazy’
‘Slut’
‘I think I might have to come back to LA and get some sense back into you’
‘haven’t you listened to me when I said I don’t like seeing you with other boys?’

Her sight blurred as her heartrate went up. She felt sick with anxiety as she recognised the references instantly. Rosie, there had only ever been one person in her life to nickname her by her second name Rose. The house around her started to feel even bigger, even more empty than it had done before and she forced herself to take deep and slow breaths in order to stay sane. After all those time, just when she finally started to believe that maybe she could let someone love her again, he forced his way back into her life. Reminding her of the fact that he existed where she was, and always would. No matter where in the world he actually was. He would always be there to threaten her without really saying anything, to ruin her life.

When the photos where published it did occur to her that he would probably see them but he hadn’t reached out to her in months, was on the other side of the country. But for all she knew he could be on his way to her right know. She still lived in the same house that he knew damn well how to find.

Picking her phone back up as the messages were still coming in, getting more graphic, including attachments in the form of photos she would never want to look at because she knew what they were, she began scrolling through her contacts. Meaning to find Billy, who was still in her phone as Starbucks Billy. She left it like that ironically and to Billy’s annoyance. But as her hands shook uncontrollably she found her forefinger hovering over someone else’s name. In that moment she knew that was the number she would end up dialling. Partly as a big ‘fuck you’ to Scott but also because she had gotten so used to telling him things that he was now the only one she really wanted to talk to. And that surprised her.

“Jimmy?” he answered almost instantly.

“Hi…” hearing his voice eventually made that she could no longer hold back the tears she collected this afternoon and during the night that followed.

“Heyyyy, are you okay? What is going on? Talk to me.” She heard the genuine concern in his voice.

“I’m so sorry, I know you’ve got a lot going on right now and maybe I shouldn’t have called you but it’s just that…”

He interrupted her. “There is no way you are hanging up on me now. Talk to me, Jimmy.”

“You can’t ask any questions, okay?” she began, not sure whether that was fair but she was suddenly so exhausted. She went into her bedroom, closed the door and laid down on the bed that still had him all over the sheets. All that time not saying anything else and neither did Harry. She assumed he was just waiting for her to continue. And eventually she did.

“You know about Scott… the guy I sadly loved… I haven’t told you much about him but he was a drug addict and a monster…” Failing to describe the narcissistic, violent and controlling person that he was but trusting that Harry had an idea from that time she told him about the car incident, she went on.

“He saw the photos.” Harry remained silent and she didn’t hear any background noises anymore. She pictured him being alone in a hotel room somewhere at the other side of the city and wondered what he had been doing before she called him. The meeting had to be done by now, for sure. Maybe he had been writing, watched a movie or played with himself at the thought of last night and the afternoon.

“He keeps texting me, threatening me that he is coming back to LA and I know this is pathetic but you have no idea what he is like and I am scared of what he will do.”

It was weird. She didn’t know what she was going to say until the words came out but this was as close to what she actually felt as she could have been. Harry was still silent on the other side and she feared that he would get the idea in his head of calling the police, wanted to sue him like he was going to with the magazine. And she would have to tell him that there was no point as his texts weren’t evidence of anything. And he was a good manipulator. He was smart enough too.

“When are you leaving for Scotland again?”

His question surprised her. Made her silent for a while before she answered. “In two days.”

“You’re going tonight.”

“What… I…”

“I don’t want to have to worry about you when there is nothing I can do from this stupid fucking hotel room. I need to be sure you are safe. I need you safe right now, okay? And this is the only way for me to be sure that you are.”

Jimmy swallowed while he continued to talk. “Okay, Jimmy? Did you call anyone else?”

Jimmy shook her head, realising too late that he couldn’t see before whispering: ‘no.”

“Call Billy, get her to help you pack and I’ll get my people to book you a flight and e-mail you the details. A car will be on the way to pick you up. Don’t let him ruin your Christmas, princess. He’ll be there to worry about in the New Year, right?”

She hadn’t thought about leaving early just yet. It was possible because today was her first day of a three week holiday. It was exceptional but the ballet had made that exception since she had stayed in LA all summer to teach summer clinics to dancers from abroad at the company. She was also a bit overwhelmed by everything he offered her. But the thing that meant the most was that he didn’t try to make it sound any better than it was. He didn’t pretend there was nothing to worry about or that there wouldn’t be once she got back. And she hadn’t even told him much. She hadn’t even told him about all those other times she had feared for her life.

“Thank you…” she whispered as the tears were no longer running down her cheeks.

“None of that… and Jimmy, thank you for calling me, okay? I want you to keep doing that because I mean it, I need you safe, always.”

It took Billy half an hour to arrive and only then Jimmy told her everything that happened. Including the raunchy details from last night and the day she had after the photos were published and the phone call to Harry and what he’d suggested. Billy immediately approved of that plan and got to the point. The point of wanting to know what it was like with Harry. What it was really like.

It made Jimmy laugh despite the whole situation and she took a moment to talk about it. “Oh my God,” she responded and sighed. Wondering if that was enough of an explanation to her friend.

“I can’t believe it was really that good. The only hope I had left was for him to be super selfish or unhygienic or whatever.”

Jimmy chuckled once again, flashbacks to last night and even just this past afternoon overruling her worries for a moment or two. “Oh, he was selfless, alright.”

As Billy took control over the packing, pointing out that her entire room smelled of them and that it was disgusting, while also asking everything else she wanted to know, Jimmy felt herself relax a little bit. Billy had immediately approved of Harry’s plan as well and her goal was to get Jimmy the hell out of LA as soon as they possibly could.

And Billy’s determinedness made Jimmy realise even more that Harry had been right. All she had to do right now was get away from LA, from all the drama and into the save and welcoming arms of her parents in Scotland.

15.
Glenelg, Scotland. A tiny village in the highlands. Approximately 280 residents. A number that would only drop further in the future. It wasn’t the kind of village that attracted a lot of new people. It was the kind of village young people would abandon and forget about the moment their parents would let them. It didn’t even have a supermarket and the only café belonged to her parents’ inn. The only people that ever really came to visit also came to the inn. They were loved therefore, in Glenelg. Her parents were as much part of the small community as the residents that were born and raised and stayed there. And when Jimmy was there, she was too.

The inn was beautiful, far up in the Scottish Highlands, overlooking Isle of Skye and tucked away safely between the sea on one side and the grassy mountains of the mainland on the other. Nature at its calming best. Flocks of sheep dotted around patches of dune grass. No phone reception except for in a far corner of the colourful hotel garden. No tv’s or wifi in the guest rooms.

JIMMY, 7:14PM: Arrived in Scotland, it looks the same
HARRY, 7:16PM: glad to hear x

She drove up by herself from Glasgow airport in a black Volkswagen rental and was welcomed by her parents waiting for her on the Inn’s parking lot. It had been snowing when her plane landed but the sky was clear and starry now. Apparently there was a lot more to come. Jimmy loved it. The thought of snow, hot chocolate and watching Christmas movies in her parents living room in her PJ’s warmed her heart. It was carefree and cheerful. Pretty much everything that life in LA hadn’t been for ages. Or ever, maybe.

It was probably because of that, that the reunion with her parents had been slightly more dramatic than she would have liked. She burst into tears in the car the moment her parents came in sight. Her loving, hard-working, sweet Cheshire parents tucked away in their winter coats. Her dads cheeks red from the Scottish winter elements and her mum waving excitedly up until she got out of the car. And she’d missed them. She had missed just being home and not having to be Jimmy the ballerina, or Jimmy with the troubled ex-boyfriend, or Jimmy with intimate pictures published online. She wasn’t sure if her parents had seen them but she had a feeling they hadn’t. Nonetheless, she knew as soon as her parents wrapped her arms around her, she knew that all she had to be for the next few days was their daughter.

Luckily, her parents thought the tears were just because she was tired from the long trip and because she was so happy to be home. She didn’t even consider changing their mind. She let her mum grab her hand as her dad took her suitcase and her mum started to chat away about what was waiting for her at home. Her eleven years older sister Olivia and her husband Mike and their three kids would arrive the next day from Manchester and they were all staying over for Christmas. Just like every year. And to hear that really nothing had changed made her more happy than anything else could have in that moment.

Her parents lived in a big detached house on the same property as the inn, located just behind the building. They told her that they had taken the night off from work so the three of them had time to catch up and after a few hours that were all sorts of cosy and peaceful she fell asleep with not a single worry in the world. Or able to pretend anyway.

The following morning after breakfast, when her parents went to work for a few hours as they were awaiting the arrival of Olivia and her family, a text arrived.

HARRY, 9:06PM: glad to hear you’ve arrived – I don’t think you were right though, it has to look a lot more beautiful now, I’m sure x’

That was the last time she heard from him right up until Boxing Day, when the sound of an incoming message made Mike and her dad flash her a disturbed look as they could barely get themselves to drag their eyes away from the television.

When she read the message her heart skipped a beat and she shot a look in her dad’s direction as if he could have guessed what was going on. She got up from the couch with the lame excuse that she was going for a walk

HARRY, 11:42: Let’s visit Skye tomorrow, I could get there tonight

She knew they had briefly talked about going to Skye but she didn’t think he was even that serious. And if anything it was supposed to happen after Christmas. She went outside, wrapped up in her faux fur coat, a scarf and a hat and walked around the inn, past some guests on the terrace deck and through the small gate in the garden to descent down the small grassy hill towards the water. It was further back now thant it had been when she arrived but as long as she had to concentrate very hard on where to place her feet, the thoughts in her head wouldn’t overwhelm her too much.

She eventually sat down on the rocks and pulled her legs up. In the distance a few sheep were wandering closer to the waterline and a bank of sand formed a tiny island just a little bit further down the beach. Skye was looking as glorious as ever on the other side. Behind her was a man in a forest green rain coat and a fishers head, walking his dog.

She took a deep breath before replying.

JIMMY, 11:58 ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you already’
HARRY, 12:01 ‘I want to see you now.’

She knew she would have a lot of explaining to do if for some reason Harry would really go through with this and show up at her door before this day was over. But she knew she’d rather do that than not see him and not take that trip to Skye that they talked about. Though, she didn’t think it was serious until right about now. After a few more texts it became clear that he really was, and that he already had an option on a flight that would allow him to arrive at the inn in about 5 hours. Which seemed impossible, but then, she didn’t know what it was like to have a bank account as big as his.

She went back inside and immediately ran into her nice Kyra, who was five years old and always on the hunt for someone to play with as her 9 year old sister Anne was too busy helping out in the kitchen. Jimmy told Kyra that she would be right with her and headed over to the kitchen where her sister Olivia and her mother were preparing the last Christmas dinner with Anne.

“I have invited a friend over,” she announced just to get it out of the way. Her mother looked up from the vegetables she had been chopping.

“A boy?” There was a certain hope in her mum voice that made Jimmy and Olivia exchange a glance. Even though everything with Scott had happened thousands of miles away from home and her parents didn’t even know half of what actually went down, they still were extremely worried. But they always were, even when she was still in England. It was probably because her sister was a 35 year old who had always been the unproblematic good kid. She and Mike got together when they were both sixteen and got married ten years ago. Mike worked as a lawyer at a big firm in Manchester and Olivia used to work as a teacher before she became a stay-at-home mum. They had three kids, a thirteen year old boy named Jake, Anne who was 9 and then little Kyra who was only 5. All in all her sisters life couldn’t be more different from Jimmy’s if they tried.

“Yeah, it’s a guy. The one who rented the spare room for a few months.” She could only stay this vague because she had figured out by then that neither her parents or her sister saw the pictures yet.

“Is he from the area?”

Jimmy closed her eyes, thinking that maybe she should have taken more time to come up with a story and then shook her head. “No, he’s from Cheshire.”

“So a boy you live with in LA, who is from England is coming all the way over here to the middle of nowhere to spend some time with you today, on Boxing Day?” Olivia raised an eyebrow at her and Jimmy sighed.

“I think he might be staying over. We want to visit Skye for a bit tomorrow.”

Olivia opened her mouth but their mother give her a warning look. “Of course that’s okay, darling.”

If this already, rightly so, caused so many questions, she wondered what would happen when they found out who her company turned out to be.

About six hours later, when both Kyra and Anne had gone to bed in one of the guestrooms upstairs, the doorbell rang. Everyone else was gathered around the television in the living room to watch the last bit of Home Alone but Jimmy hadn’t been able to focus on the movie. Good thing she had seen it so many times that she still knew exactly what had just happened every time she tuned out. Jimmy could just feel the tension rising as she got up from her chair and disappeared into the hallway.

“Look at that, I should have brought my jingle bells…” Harry mumbled as he greeted her.

He eyed up her Christmas jumper, an oversized one in bright red with snowflakes, a Christmas tree that actually lit up and bells around it. She wore it with pair of Adidas leggings and thick fluffy Primark socks. The jumpers were a tradition they once started that nobody ever seemed ready to give up on. She had considered changing out of it before he would arrive but then she decided against it. She didn’t actually care if he saw her like that and she also didn’t want to make it seem like she did in front of her parents and Olivia and Mike.

It was extremely weird to see Harry. He contrasted against everything. He wore mustardy-yellow cord trousers, a solar system jumper that was unmistakably cashmere with a white t-shirt underneath, a pair of Vans and in his hand a black wool coat and a leather Gucci travel bag. His hair a curly mess. One arm against the door frame as he looked down at her.

“You’re killing the festive vibe a little bit but you can still come in if you want.”

He chuckled softly as she stepped aside. “You’re too good to me, princess.”

When she turned around in the hallway to walk back to the living room, she was extremely aware of the fact that Harry was walking right behind her in the house she made so many memories in. It wasn’t the one she grew up in but it definitely felt like home. The sound of him moving filled the hallway of the house that Scott never even got to visit. And just as she was about to push the handle of the door to the living room down, she felt his heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he asked, green eyes dark, piercing hers, searching for clues. God, he was so much taller than her. She immediately knew that he was referring to their last conversation. The one in which she had been panicking and crying, asking for help. The reason why she arrived here two days early. She just nodded. This wasn’t the time nor the place to talk about it anyway.

“Good.”

As they fell silent she knew there was no way back. She had no other choice but to open the door and introduce two parts of her life to each other that she didn’t except she would ever have to. And definitely not this quick or at Christmas.

The first thing Jimmy noticed as they came back in was how her mother tried very hard to seem less curious than she was. She only managed to not look at him for a couple of seconds and when she did, she saw the surprise on her face. Jimmy highly doubted her mum recognised him, but Harry was quite a show as it was and he was probably the last thing she expected to see.

Jake, however, recognised him instantly. “Wow, you are that guy from One Direction,” he said as his mouth dropped.

Olivia, who had also obviously recognised him and was trying to get over her own astonishment, shot a glance in her sons direction. “Jake!”

Jake looked at his mother as if he had no idea what was wrong and shouted: “Rad!” He got out his phone and began typing away, probably letting his friends know about the turn his boring Scottish middle-of-nowhere Boxing Day had taken.

Jimmy looked over at Harry apologetically but he just laughed. “I know, man.” He offered Jake his hand and shook it tight before he went on to introduce himself to the rest of the family. Olivia and his mother before the guys. And she saw that her parents were the only ones who didn’t quite understand the kind of status Harry had outside their little world that mainly evolved around the inn.

“So, you’re in that X-factor boyband?” her dad said, slowly making the connection.

“I make an appearance, yeah,” he said, meanwhile looking over at Jimmy with a grin. He was clearly amused by the whole situation. Not in the least because he probably knew how uncomfortable it made her. She had noticed before how easy it was for him to socialise in groups and among her family he was a gem. Calm, confident and charming. Smiling politely as he answered questions and asking just the right ones back.

Jimmy watched him from her chair and realised this entire happening was so weird. It was as if their parents were meeting their new son-in-law, except that they weren’t. Jimmy wasn’t sure whether they believed it and she wasn’t sure either who, in fact, they were meeting but her father already took it upon himself to throw some critical glances in Harry’s direction. It was cute and Harry made it very hard for anyone to remain sceptical about him anyway.

Another half an hour went by in which he just sat down with her family in the living room, mainly answering Jake’s questions. Jimmy had tried to stop him at first, but Harry ensured her that it was fine. She realised that he was probably more comfortable talking about his career than he was talking about her to her family anyway. So she just sat back and watched it happen. It was surreal to see him on her couch after being in LA. It seemed different – a lot more real. Even though they had lived together. The way he sat back with the side of his right shoe, resting on his left knee – one hand casually on his other knee and the fingers of the other playing around the rim of his glass of scotch that he put on the arm rest beside him. His jacket over the back of the chair Jimmy was sitting on. Causing her to be surrounded by his scent, fearing she could drown in it.

He seemed so out of place. The black swan in a puddle of white ones. A lot like she had always been.

Her family was the most loving and tight clan she had ever known. But also one big stereotype in every sense of the word. Their choice in fashion, careers and politics were never really bold. Everything was average and they all seemed so happy with those lives that it made Jimmy a little jealous sometimes. She had never been like that. She had always craved adventure, was always looking for the deeper meaning behind everything and to top it all off, she had chosen a career in ballet when her sister and friends had long moved on to other sports and dream jobs. The most adventurous thing that had happened to her family before Jimmy was born was when her dad bought a motorcycle.

A few drinks – scotch for Harry and red wine for Jimmy – later, Harry suddenly rolled his head to the side over the back of the couch and looked at her.

“So, how about you give me a tour round the house?”

He flashed a cheeky grin that was only meant for her and looked at her through his long lashes. Jimmy couldn’t deny that it made her feel all sorts of things and knew he was aware of his effect on her to. He had always been. Even before she had admitted it to herself.

Her mother, of whom it was unclear whether she was aware of the tension, clapped her hands enthusiastically. “You go do that, Jimmy, while me and Olivia make us all some snacks.”

Olivia looked at her mother wondering the same thing. Did she really not pick up on it or did she not care? But then Jake cheered at the mention of snacks and Jimmy knew there was no excuse for her to decline Harry’s offer. Except maybe the sound her dad made as they both got up. She decided it was best to ignore it.

“Well you’ve seen the living room and the kitchen is through there…” she started nodding her head, already halfway back into the hallway to the stairs. Harry smirked as he followed her out of the living room and closed the door behind them.

Her heartrate was breaking records as she began to climb the stairs and felt him follow her. Her heartbeat hadn’t come down ever since he arrived anwyay. It was the sign of danger and fear but of the good kind. The adventurous kind. And the urge to find out what could come of this evening was once again stronger than her ability to think straight.

16.
Jimmy held her breath as she pushed open the door to the bedroom that her parents had named as hers when they moved in. There wasn’t really anywhere else she could go that would make sense. The guest room was occupied by Kyra and Anne and taking him into the bathroom or her parents and Olivia’s bedrooms was pointless. She knew better than to think he cared about any of that anyway. His intensions of wanting to be alone with her were obvious from the start. No matter how patient he had been before and she would be lying if she said she wanted it any other way.

She turned around and laughed. He had looked out of place in the living room downstairs, but it was nothing compared to the way he looked in this room. Her parents had moved some of her stuff from her old bedroom into this one, but they hadn’t done anything about the soft pink walls or the silky lilac curtains because it looked like her own bedroom at home when she was much younger. Her white furniture including a single bed unmade with her old Sleeping Beauty bedsheets and the first pair of her pointes hanging from a shelf by its ribbons made it the stereotypical room of any young ballet dancer and nothing like the person she had moved on to become. Right then she was glad that he had seen every part of her own apartment back in LA.

Meanwhile, Harry had put his focus on the framed black and white picture of her as a little girl. In the particular photograph she was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and a long blonde ponytail at the back of her head. A ribbon wrapped around it. Dressed in a leotard and pointed and with her already full lips slightly parted. Ambition and hope reflecting in her big eyes as she looked up to the person that wasn’t in the picture. Her ballet teacher back home in England. The first woman to ever acknowledge her talent and the one who signed her up for an audition at the Royal Ballet. A woman who she owed a lot to. Ever since her passing three years ago, the picture became even more valuable to Jimmy.

“You should take this back to LA with you,” Harry mumbled, not asking any more questions after listening to her story. He just looked at her with eyes as calm as she had ever seen them.

“I never even had a choice of becoming anything else, had I?” she said, still looking at the picture.

“I know what that is like,” he said as he pulled a hand through his hair as he began to cross the room back over to her. Meanwhile dragging a hand along her desk. “and now look at us,” he smiled satisfied.

She chose to look at just him instead. At how he stood there smiling, all confident – looking like the embodiment of rock & roll itself. There were huge differences between stage Harry and private Harry, she was sure. It was just really hard to draw the lines. But there was no misreading the look he flashed her then. All genuine affection and curiosity as he reached her, where she was still standing by the door. Afraid to even move.

A few moments of silence passed. Chests rising and falling to the unsteadying beating of their hearts until he lifted his hand and left it hanging inches from her face. Almost as if to give her a chance to change her mind about what was about to happen under her parents’ room, with her family waiting for their return downstairs. She noticed his incredibly long, thin fingers and swallowed hard. Suddenly there was no more denying the reason why she herself took him directly to his room.

God, how she needed him. And had needed him for such a long time then.

The sounds of the television and the murmur of voices coming from downstairs were a distant reminder of where they were and that it probably, really was a bad idea. But her hands were already firmly tugging at the bottom of his jumper, pulling it towards his head and as soon as she threw it aside, he grabbed hers, laughing into the kiss as the bells hit the floor and jingled in protest. Her leggings and socks were next and she liked how he was already a lot less careful with her then than he had been before.

Eventually, when he finally lifted himself above her, a hand on each side of her and a leg between hers, on top of her Disney covers on the bed that was too small to fit him alone, let alone the both of them, she felt so small beneath him. It wasn’t just because of the small bed, or because he was so goddamn tall. But there was something in the way he looked at her, like she was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen, that made her feel that way. And he was more beautiful than he had ever been. Beneath the faint light of her sparkling plastic pink chandelier, whose beaded chains threw dusty rose shadows on the walls. She automatically closed her eyes as she felt him lowering himself towards her, but then he stopped.

“Look at me Jimmy, I need you to stay with me.” And she did. A light gasp escaped from the both of them when he entered her. He watched in satisfaction as her lips parted and every single part of her body betrayed how much she wanted him.
She felt a faint pain deep within her as he went even deeper and she wrapped her legs around his waist to keep him right there. When he began to move then, slowly but urgently, she moaned unsteadily. God, he felt so good.

“That’s my girl,” he whispered softly as he held still for a moment before increasing his pace slowly but certainly. She titled her head a little to reach for his lips and dug her nails into the sweaty bronzed skin on his back. There was a moment during which she believed he was going to kill her. He took possession of her body in a way she had never experienced before and all she wanted to do was beg him to stop, to go on, to never stop again.

Too soon she could feel an orgasm starting to build up deep within her and Harry sensed it too. She trembled as he whispered: “Come for me princess…” and for a moment Jimmy feared that she would actually die, or explode. Either. Both.

The orgasm she felt coming up was so intense that she grabbed the sheets beneath her with one hand and arched her back. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and sunk into her one last time. He pressed his forehead against her shoulder and she gasped. “Fuck,” he groaned, wrapped her in his arms and turned them around.

Jimmy landed on his chest, leaning on her elbows on each side of him. She felt the sweat running down her back and she followed a drop that made its way down his beautiful strong jaw with her eyes before she caught it between her lips. He combed his fingers through her moist hair and stared into her bewildered eyes. Neither of them spoke for a while and he held her tight while a few strong aftershocks went through her body.

Eventually Jimmy broke the silence. “I wish we could do that again,” she said knowing that they’d already been away for far too long.

Harry chuckled softly and crawled up from underneath her, forcing her to sit up on his lap as well. He was still hard and kissed her quickly. “We can, but just not right now, I believe your mum said something about snacks earlier.”

17.
The thing with experiencing something out of this world was that always, at some point you had to come crashing down. Whether it was an amazing Springsteen gig, the high she got from an extraordinary performance with the ballet or amazing sex – the point where you would have to burst the bubble was inevitable.

That night, Jimmy just couldn’t get herself to do it just yet. It was too quick and she was far from ready to get up from her tiny bed and away from Harry’s arms that he still had wrapped around her even though they were sitting up. So she pushed Harry back down and nestled herself in the small surface between the wall and his body. Without a single protest, he pulled her close. She didn’t speak and neither did he. She made it pretty clear that she didn’t care for snacks or anything else that did not involve staying in this moment when she nestled her head beneath his armpit.

He watched how she closed her eyes and felt how she relaxed in his arms as she slowly drifted away.

She wasn’t there to hear him whisper her name to the ceiling. Twice. “Jimmy, Jimmy…”

Or to see him smile as he shook his head lightly at the thought of her. She didn’t hear how he heard someone coming up the stairs and then coming to a stop in front of her door. He heard their breath and kept his own until the footsteps faded. The subject of their concern laid facing him with her legs pulled up. One of her knees against his hip and one of her hands flat on his chest. He didn’t know much about ballet but he had seen her in Swan Lake. He remembered its two main characters. A black swan, Odile and a white one named Odette. Odile was passionate, strong and confident. Odette romantic, fragile and graceful.

Jimmy was everything at once, all the time.

-

When Jimmy opened her eyes, the room was bathing in a strange blue-ish light as the sun peeked through the lilac curtains. The air was the kind of cold that told her it had been snowing even more overnight and his presence was heavy beside her. Just like imagined the earth would feel underneath a thick blanket of snow. He was still peacefully asleep on his back. One hand above his hand on the pillow and the other just below hers on his chest. She looked at his face. His features seemed softer now that his eyes were hidden behind closed lids. Lashes feathered out over his cheeks. His defined lips slightly parted. Every now and then a soft sigh would escape from between them.

The intimate setting she found herself in made her smile a little, as did the fact that it didn’t scare her at all. There he was all peaceful, and vulnerable in the middle of her family life in snowy Scotland, a day after Boxing Day. It was quite the contrast against everything that had happened in her room just the night before, and she still had the stickiness between her legs to make sure she wouldn’t forget that.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. It was quite possibly quite a questionable thing to do, given that her entire family, including Jake, would now know that he wasn’t just a friend. Or that at least, her perception of a friend was a bit different from theirs. She hoped to God that they hadn’t been too noisy as she could vaguely recall being quite vocal but they would know what went down either way. She did also wonder if having to face them now would be any better than if she had done it last night but her thoughts were then rudely interrupted by Harry. Who lifted his head a little in order to smile at her, looking like the mess she felt.

“Morning, princess,” he whispered before surprising her with a kiss on her temple. He caressed her bare back at the top of her spine with his flat hand and pressed her closer against him for a second.

“You good love?” His voice was raspy and deeper than she had heard it.

She nodded before letting him kiss her again. The front part of his hair had split in half into a perfect midsection during the night and had fallen down his forehead like two curly curtains. His eyes were all puffy and she couldn’t discover a single sign of hurry or regret in them.

She turned over and rested her chin on his bare chest while looking up at him. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re so beautiful,” he said softly as he went on to trace her bottom lip with the tip of his finger. He smelled like her and she knew she had his scent all over her too. “I can’t wait to go on a little trip with you today,” he added and she smiled. Not knowing what to do with his sudden softness, she decided to ignore it. Him telling her things like this was definitely something she still needed to get used to.

“So that’s still a thing, is it?” He just laughed and rolled over and on top of her and after another half hour of kissing and cuddling and fooling around, Jimmy jumped up to the sound of a knock on the door.

“Jimmy, mum is setting the table for breakfast in case you guys are hungry and I suppose that you are,” her sisters voice came in through the closed door. But it wasn’t enough to hide the cynical tone in her voice.

Harry and Jimmy exchanged a glance and a couple of minutes later, Harry reluctantly sat up, putting his feet to the floor and stretching his arms above his head.

Jimmy watched in silence as he picked his boxers up from the carpet and pushed his feet through the legs of his jeans. She sighed while getting up as well and wandered naked across the room to pick up her soft white bathrobe.

“It’s okay if you change your mind, you know. Because we both know this is going to be awkward as hell.”

“Jimmy,” Harry said, furrowing his eyebrows. “This wasn’t just another fuck, okay. I wouldn’t have come all the way here and into your family like I did if it was just that. I’ve had months to try and get you into bed if that’s what I was doing it for. So let me have a damn croissant with your parents and watch me try and safe your ass before we leave.”

Harry watched as she wandered over to the nightstand and slid a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the front pocket of her robe.

“How do I look?” she asked him.

“Hot…” he said. “Hot and fucked. And like you may be auditioning for the next season of Love Island.”

She desperately began finger-combing her hair until Harry grabbed her wrists and pulled her towards him. He kissed her again, and it felt so scarily natural.

“There is no pointing in trying to trick them into thinking we’ve been doing a jigsaw in here, princess.”

After a couple more minutes she finally opened the bedroom door. All the other doors in the hall were already open and she heard voices coming from the dining room downstairs. There was an awkward moment then, where they just stood there and looked at each other as they both didn’t want the first to go down but then Jimmy took the lead. Figuring she owed it to him since it was her home and her family and frankly, her responsibility.

And it was as bad as they thought. Mike couldn’t do anything but grin meaningfully while Olivia clearly wasn’t too sure how she felt. She clearly shared that feeling with their father while their mum was just trying to lose herself in a little act of getting to be the perfect mother-in-law. She pulled two chairs back and got Harry and Jimmy to sit down as she was balancing two mugs and a coffeepot in her free hand. She slammed them down on the table in front of them and when finally everyone was gathered around and ready for breakfast, they fell silent.

Jimmy shot an apologetic look to Harry and Olivia was the first to speak. “So, did you and your friend have fun last night? It sure sounded like it.” She made sure to put the emphasis on friend as she shot a look from Jimmy to Harry and back.

Jake giggled a little and couldn’t hide a blush.

“Shut the fuck up,” Jimmy said, looking at her sister and Mike placed a hand on his wife’s arm as a warning.

“Well, this all looks so good, let’s eat,” her dad groaned and what followed were what could easily be the most awkward thirty minutes of her life. Her dad mentioned the snow that already started melting again and tried to start a conversation about football with Mike but nothing every really got them off.

By the time she finally had Harry back in the hallway, it was ten in the morning and she was already exhausted.

“So, let’s do this again sometime?” he joked, meanwhile letting his hands travel inside her robe, his fingers folding around her bare breasts. She gasped at the flashbacks to last night that instantly appeared in her head at only the sensation of his fingers on her still oversensitive skin.

“Maybe for a tour around my own house…” she said, joking, kissing him. They were interrupted by a door opening and Anne appearing in the opening, followed by Olivia who shot them an glance and pulled Anne back into the living room.

Harry chuckled. “That’d be good, let’s get out of here before your sister will be traumatised for life.”

They went back upstairs for a shower, separate ones for everyone’s sake. And as Harry fell back down on the bed, probably overthinking the disaster that breakfast just had been, she figured she’d go first.

In the bathroom she was confronted with her own imagine for the first time since the night before. And she couldn’t believe she had even showed herself to her parents like that, but at least Harry’s words made sense now. ‘Fucked’ was the most accurate description she could come up with as she looked her tangled hair, her slightly bruised lips and her flustered cheeks.

The shower barely managed to wash him away, because even after she had wrapped her hair up in a towel and put a pair of clean panties on, she could still feel his lips on hers, his fingers digging into her hips. She could hear him whisper words of encouragement and affection in her ear and smelt him on her body even after washing it entirely and thoroughly.

And the fact that he got a firm grip of her ass underneath the towel as she passed him in the hallway on the way back to her room didn’t help either.

Neither did the fact that, when she entered her bedroom in her underwear, her sister appeared from out of nowhere. Olivia sat down on the unmade bed and began to talk about Harry, but stopped before Jimmy could figure out what she was trying to say. She followed her sisters eyes to her hipbones as she dropped the towel to get dressed and discovered a few faint red and purple bruises on them that were going to remain visible for a few hours to come. She hadn’t noticed them before but it were, without a doubt, his fingerprints.

Olivia kept staring at them in horror and Jimmy caught her glance through the mirror .She didn’t know or wanted to know much about her sisters sex life but neither her sister nor Mike appeared to be the wild or adventurous type. Besides, they had three kids and she could only imagine what kind of effect that would have. And it was all fine but if she wasn’t going to judge Olivia, Jimmy expected the same of her sister.

As if Olivia could guess Jimmy’s thoughts, she went on to say: “Look… I know my sex life is pretty non-existent at the moment and you and I are probably nothing alike but are you alright? I mean… you are bruised.”

Jimmy didn’t care what people thought of her and she didn’t even care that much that everybody in the house knew what happened between her and Harry while they were all downstairs watching some Christmas movie, but she didn’t want her sister to get the wrong idea about him.

“Don’t, okay Olivia… he’s not... just… let me have this one, please.”

Olivia looked concerned but she must have also seen the sincerity in her little sisters eyes. “You’re just better off not knowing some things,” Jimmy added and Olivia got up, throwing her a meaningful glance.

“It would help if you were less vocal about them, sis.”

As she headed for the front door with Harry, about half an hour later, Jimmy’s mum called her back in. She was in the kitchen doing the dishes and looked tired. Before serving breakfast to her own family that morning, she had been at the inn long before sunrise to prepare food for all the guests. Olivia and Jimmy had both offered to do it for her, but she had insistently declined.

“Listen,” Jimmy began, “We’ll talk about it once I figured out what to say, alright?” Meaning them, but also her and Harry. She wasn’t going to speak to her mum about things that she hadn’t even talked about with him.

Her mother nodded, she was used to her daughter talking in mysteries and Jimmy was sure she could handle another one.

“Of course, darling. I just wanted to say that we have had a cancellation in the inn, so you two could take that room for as long as he’s here if you want. Not that we don’t want him here, but you know… maybe at night… just to give the two of you some privacy without the kids around…”

Jimmy felt the blood rush to her cheeks before smiling as she processed the idea. It was as much awkward as it was lovely. “We’d love that, mum, thank you.”

Outside on the parking lot, Harry stood waiting by his Audi rental on the melting snow that was there as a sad reminder that Christmas was really over. During the morning the temperature had gone up from somewhere below zero to about fifteen degrees. She wasn’t sure how exactly that was possible but this was Scotland they were talking about. The country that would take on every opportunity to go back to a dreary, grey, unspecified climate. She told him the news about the room that was made available for them in the inn and he thought it was all sorts of hilarious.

“We sure know how to make an impression, princess,” he said as he opened the car door for her and walked around to get in himself.

18.
He drove with one arm on the windowsill, his hand loosely on the steering wheel. They had left the little wobbly ferry that took them across the water with about three other cars about an hour ago. The sun broke through the grey skies and the weather was actually lovely for late December.

They had been driving in silence for a while and more than ever before, she took in all the sights. Just as they started climbing another steep hill, he let go of the steering wheel with one hand and put it on her leg, much like he had done that time she freaked out in the car. It felt like ages ago and she smiled a little. Things had changed for the better for them so much, since that day.

She cupped her hand over his, feeling the cold metal of his rings press against her skin and she kept her hand right there as she continued to look out of the window. Thinking that it was weird how she was simply allowed to do something like that now. And that right there, surrounded by the beautiful green of the mountains and the pastel grays and blues of the sky above, she was where she wanted to stay. Right then, anyway.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, knowing she surprised him as she wasn’t great with sharing her feelings with him most of the time. If anything, her being so hard to read was the reason why it had taken them so long to get here in the first place.

“Glad to hear,” he said, smiling. “So am I. I had friends coming over to Cheshire tomorrow but I cancelled. I want to see where this can go. I want to see where you can take me. I’ve been writing some real great stuff too, Jimmy.”

She knew they had to talk about things. About how it could work for them back home in LA, where they were no longer sharing an apartment and where his life was about to get into another whirlwind as his debut solo album was mere months away from its release. But today wasn’t the moment for any of it. If this was the only time she could share this with him, being there at Skye, pretending they didn’t have a single worry in the world because the island let them, she didn’t want to ruin it with reality. Because unlike these sights, reality would still be there tomorrow

They drove further up a green hill, closer towards the grey skies, leaving a blue lake behind as a George Ezra song filled the car. She knew it pretty well. Would have skipped in under any other circumstances, but now she just let it be. Let the reality of his words float through her and then away. As she once again realised that this car provided a kind of safety net that was highly confusing and definitely new. She watched Harry take in the words as well, watched him almost drown in it as he too, found recognition in the lyrics.

you may think that he's a demolition expert
when he's finished with your self-esteem
it may be true we all need knocking down a few
come find shelter, oh your shelter with me

“Could have written this one too if he hadn’t beat you too it, right.”

A faint smile broke out on his face. “You think he would notice?”

When the song was over, they switched to a Stones playlist and they were in the middle of a dramatic duet to You Can’t Always Get What You Want when Harry pulled over on the parking lot of what definitely had to be the world’s most scenic Co-op supermarket, crammed between the dark sea on one side and the clear green hills on the other.

Jimmy stretched her arms high above her head as she got out of the car and let the weak sunbeams caress her cheeks.

After walking the short distance across the parking lot, the doors of the building swished open in front of them and they were welcomed by that typical, bright light, superficial supermarket environment as if this was Oxford Street around lunch time, instead of one of the most beautiful islands on the planet. So much for scenery.

Jimmy immediately headed over to where sliced fruits were displayed in plastic cups on a huge bucket of ice and picked up two while Harry headed for the bakery department. She just caught him slide two cinnamon buns in a brown bag and put it in the basket as two girls gently tapped him on the shoulder. Come to think of it, she had seen them giggling over at the butcher’s but it hadn’t occurred to her that Harry had been the reason. Which, she felt like, it should have done.

She waited at a distance and couldn’t really understand what they were saying but could just about imagine it. It ended with Harry posing for a couple of pictures with the girls and the process repeated itself with about ten other people as Jimmy went out of her way to stay out of his. He posed for every picture unapologetically and only caught up with her again at the register.

She placed her fruit and bottles of water in his basket and he put his hand on the small of her back while stepping alongside her to pay for the groceries. Sending sparks down her spine that exploded right where he touched her.

She wouldn’t discover the gossip that her presence fueled among his fans until much later. They had of course all read the article about him but nobody seemed able to confirm that it was her who was with him that day. And luckily, this time the media had not picked up on it to help the fans. It did however, once again, give her a good insight on what it was like to be with him.

Back in the car she asked him about it. For the first time since they met. He just shrugged his shoulders as he looked at her.

“You have to realise that for all those people it is the first time they see me, they don’t know that it sometimes happens fifty times a day, you know.”

Admiring how much he really was made for the job, but not feeling the urge to continue on the subject, she smiled and squeezed his thigh. Then they continued to drive until they hit a spot where the road literally split in half. He stopped and looked at her, grinning. “I feel like there should be a symbolic meaning behind this, what’s it going to be, Jimmy? The tourist route or the unknown one.”

Jimmy smiled back as she looked at the sign that listed all the tourist attractions they would find if they went one way, and then the other, much smaller road, that had no signs at all. A nod was all it took for Harry to take a right, where the road took them away from civilization in record time. In a car that costed more than a couple months stay at the inn, with a GPS tracking device that made all attempt for adventure a laugh. Yet, it felt amazing.

As they drove for about half an hour on a road that became less of a road and more of a sandy, swirly path with every mile they left behind, they hit jackpot. A small, distressed sign hidden behind a couple of trees indicated there was some sort of waterfall hidden behind there somewhere. Pointing it out to Harry caused him to pull over instantly and ten minutes later they found the place.

A couple of small waterfalls lead them to a big one, complete with a half open cave behind the tallest one. Creating a space that could easily hold a small group of people. But there was nobody there. And even though it was only 15 degrees out ,the snow was barely gone and the water was probably freezing and even though they weren’t actually that far away from civilization as they felt they were, Jimmy took of her white tee and started unbuttoning her charcoal jeans before kicking off her trainers.

She pulled her hair loose and as she saw the amusement and appreciation on Harry’s face, she decided to go all the way. She took off her bra and wiggled out of her black lace panties, leaving them all at Harry’s feet before getting into the water.

It was terribly cold, but not half as bad as she imagined so she went on with her plan. And Harry caught up with her when she was hallway up the stream of the biggest waterfall.

Nothing but the sound of water colliding with the surface below and some sheep in the far distance. He was still wearing his black Calvin Klein boxers. She thought that maybe the risk of getting caught would be worse for him.

Jimmy squeezed her eyes shut and pinched her nose as she reached the wall of water in front of her. For a second the water came down on her head and shoulders at full force and she lost complete sense of direction, but with another step forward she was through. Where, strangely, the sound of the water sounded further away than it had done on the other side. And it was nothing but her own naked body and wet rocks glistering in the weak afternoon sun that forced its way in through the water.

She stepped up on a bunch of flat rocks so that the water could no longer reach her and then Harry appeared.

“I can’t help but feel like we somehow ended up in one of those cheesy romance books you can buy at the supermarket and I can’t say I hate it,” he mumbled, pulling his wet hair back with both his hands. It was impossible not to stare at him as he stood there like that. Drops of water drawing invisible lines on his tan skin, cutting right through the ink on his chest and arms without leaving a mark.

When he sat down beside her, she rested her head on his shoulder and he rested his arm over her legs, cupping the thigh farthest from his reach. His thumb brushing over the goosebumps on her pale skin. She watched him do it for a couple of minutes. Even the most tender of his touches made her feel like a queen.

By the time she looked up and aside, his face was already there. They started to kiss and as things seemed to go with him, one thing led to another and his CK’s were gone in a split second. Even though the rocks they lay upon were far too slippery for any of it. And even though the temperature was way too low, she figured that as long as she held on to him tightly, she would be alright.

Back in the car they turned up the heat as well as the GPS to take them back to one of the main roads as the sun started to set and they wanted to make the ferry back to the inn before everything would go pitch black. He gave her one of his jumpers from the truck of the car that smelled too much like him and Harry’s album of choice was Coldplay’s A Rush Of Blood To The Head. They barely spoke as the sun fell further, along with Jimmy’s shield.

She sat beside him in silence, warming her hands in front of the heating vent as water dripped from her wet hair on the car seat. She watched it form a small puddle where her leg met the leather. So many times she had thought that something was perfect when it turned out to be the absolute opposite that she was almost scared to let herself enjoy the moment too much. But that feeling only occurred to her when she allowed herself to step back and think about it for a while. Because everything had been so goddamn great with him. Especially since the night of her birthday party, when she finally decided that, fuck it, maybe she did deserve a shot with him.

It all felt very different too, because he didn’t really even try that hard to please her, or spoil her or to make her feel good. She just did because he did it naturally.

“It’s just so easy spending time with you…” It left her mouth before she could decide if it should have and he smiled.

“Back at you, despite what you may think. And I plan on doing it for a long time to come.”

The climb back up the mountain to the ferry was a lot less frightening that she thought it had been when they arrived that morning and it went by far too quickly, too.

There was a short queue in front of the mini ferry but they made it on the first time and within ten minutes they made it back to the other side.

“Shouldn’t more girls be like her?” Jimmy said as they drove away from the tiny dock, talking about the girl that singlehandedly pushed the top of the ferry including all the cars on it around every time they arrived on either side of the water. She had admired her strength and wondered what made her end up there.

“More guys should be like her too.”

It was only a very short drive back to the inn and when Harry pulled over on the parking lot, she felt like she hadn’t seen the place in days. So much had happened since.

“What do you wanna do now?” she asked, a bit frightened of the answer as if he would just bluntly let her know that he wanted to forget that any of this had happened and move on with his life and focus on his damn album for once.

In between the rambling in her head she could barely hear him say that he was starving and wanted to eat dinner and her for dessert. That sure was a way to bring her back to reality and she laughed at his choice of words while letting herself out of the car.

“Let me get the key to our brand new bedroom from my mum first,” she said, craving a bath more than anything. More than anything that didn’t involve the boy in the car with the dark curls and the Calvin Klein jumper with the naturally always warm hands, that naturally always seemed to find her these days, anyway.

19.
Up in their room, which was one of the best ones the inn had to offer, with a beautiful view over the colorful inn’s garden, the water and Skye on the other side of it, she took a bath. Harry was still stuck downstairs as he somehow got involved in a conversation with some of the locals at the bar. She noticed before that it always seemed to happen to him. He naturally attracted people, even the ones that didn’t know or didn’t care about what he did for a living.

She promised she wouldn’t be long but laying down in the warm water, staring at the clouds that passed by the window above, she knew she would take a while. A beautiful palette of grey and white mixed with patches of clear blue floated by calmly as thoughts fought each other for attention, her head heavy with the weight of it all. Quite the contrast to the tranquility of the place and eventually she managed to let it all go.

After wrapping up in a fluffy towel half an hour later, her fingertips wrinkled and her skin smelling of a mixture of lavender oil and Ylang Ylang, she fell down on the gigantic bed and the urge to dress up for dinner came and left quicker than he had her come earlier that day. This place wasn’t the place for smart dressing and this dinner certainly wouldn’t be the occasion either, so it was fine.

She quickly pulled a comb through her knotty, damp hair and didn’t bother with any make-up other than mascara. She put on a pair of black skinny jeans, a red knit jumper that she found in the sale at & Other Stories a while back and put on thick grey knit socks with her black Doc Martens.

When she arrived downstairs, she found Harry still in the company of a worker guy in a neon orange vest and massive muddy boots with a worn face, with whom she had left him earlier. But her dad had also joined whatever conversation they were having. They greeted her and the bartender, Kyle, with whom she had done things in the past that it was best Harry didn’t know about, provided her with a glass of wine without her having to say anything. God, she loved this place so much.
Much to her amusement, she found that the conversation had landed on football. She wasn’t sure how much Harry was really interested in the subject, but she admired him trying.

He loosely wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek, meanwhile managing to whisper in her ear how good he thought she looked. Jimmy smiled a little shyly as she didn’t expect him to be like this around her dad and meanwhile tried to avoid looking directly at Kyle. The brief, one week fling they once had was ages ago and she had never thought much of it, but different people had told her that Kyle, in fact, had. Apparently he still wasn’t over her. When she looked up and saw that he was basically shooting daggers at Harry with his eyes, she began to believe that maybe, there was some truth in those rumours, after all.

“Dinner is ready in ten, back at the house,” her dad said, already looking at peace with the boy that so rudely came to interrupt their family Christmas and then took their daughter away for the day during a visit that was already rare as it was.

Harry did some quick math in his head and concluded that it was just enough time for him to jump in the shower and they agreed to meet back in her parent’s house.

Everyone was already gathered around the dining table as Jimmy and her dad came walking in.

“Where did prince charming go?” her mother said, carrying two massive lasagnas at the same time, each in one oven glove covered hand, before putting them in the middle of the table.

“Taking a shower back at the inn,” Jimmy said.

“Did you have a good time on Skye?”

Jimmy nodded and couldn’t help but smile at the thought of it. “Actually, yes. The weather was really nice as well.”

“It’s gonna stay warm over the next couple of days,” her dad said, willing to share his knowledge about the weather at all times.

“Do you love him?” Jake asked bluntly and all of a sudden, then, with the innocence of a thirteen year old. Throwing her off guard more than it probably should as she didn’t think Jake expected any kind of a serious answer. But Olivia must have seen the struggle on her sister’s face and sounded surprise as she said:

“Wait, you actually do, don’t you?”

“Olivia,” Mike insisted, trying to get his wife to shut up.

“He’s wonderful,” Jimmy concluded, not ready to admit to anyone, let alone herself, that maybe, in fact, she did. God, yes, she did. “He really is.”

“Oh my God, you’re in love with that boy.” Olivia yelled, realizing the same thing just then, sounding surprisingly amazed and happy. “You’re in love with Harry Styles.”

“One should hope so, considering she brought him here on Christmas,” her dad said, but he winked at his daughter, who, if anything, wished she could disappear in one of the massive lasagna dishes on the table.

She knew it was ridiculous and she hated to think that she was anything like the other hundreds of thousands of girls out there who felt the same way about him. His fans, or even the ones he actually spend the night with that he left unintentionally heartbroken because he had never meant anything more of it. She hated that it had come so far and she hated how her sister had pointed it out like that. But then Mike decided to save the day.

“I don’t think that is the deal here, Olivia. She did or didn’t fall in love with a guy, who came all the way here to the middle of nowhere during Christmas time to spend time with her. And it just happens to be a world famous one but there’s a huge difference there. Besides, look at the girl, have you ever seen her this happy?”

“We all know how he does that now,” Olivia said, but Jimmy could see in her eyes that Mike had gotten his point across and with that, their mum decided that it was time to change the subject. Just in time for Harry to reappear. Smelling of her soap, with his curls still wet and pushed back over his head, Calvin Klein jumper on with the same pair of yellow trousers he had worn when he arrived the day before.

“This smells amazing, Martha,” he said, smiling at her mum. Stealing her heart as if he still needed to.

-

After helping her mother and sister clean up in the kitchen, she and Olivia went outside to go find Mike and Harry, who had headed for the bar in the inn. And they found them outside on the terrace along with two guys who worked at the inn’s kitchen. The table top was hidden under empty beer bottles and Harry had a glass of what looked like whiskey by his feet.

They were all laughing and Harry was laughing the loudest, twinkle in his eyes. A fisherman’s hat was now covering most of his hair. As soon as he saw her he made place for her on the small bench he was sitting on, that was probably made for one, and she squeezed in beside him. Olivia, in the meantime, took her own seat across from Mike on a chair. For the next hour and a half everyone shared stories of previous travels and although Harry must have seen the most out of everyone, he chose to mostly just listen. And with the ever present awareness that the full length of his thigh was pressed up against her own, Jimmy told the story of her road trip through the south of America from New Orleans to Nashville and Memphis and everything in between. She left out the part where here trip ended with a pilgrimage through New Jersey as she had a feeling that nobody would find that quite as amazing as she did. Except for her online Springsteen-friends, maybe. But they already knew everything about it.

By the time her story hit New Orleans, she let one of the cooks take over, as he had been there once in the 70s, and Harry placed a big hand on her thigh, sanding a tremor down her spine. She placed her hand over his, like she had done before, and curved her fingers around his pinky and forefinger. With a racing heart and a smile constantly on the verge of breaking out on her face. Meanwhile wondering how she could already crave all of him so much again already.

She stopped sharing stories and listened to an almost hijack in India that happened to an elderly couple that had by then joined them.

Long after the moon had set and the clock hit midnight, they were alone on the bench. And the many seats around them made her realise how clingy they really had been all night. Out of nowhere, almost. Compared to last night anyway, when she had still tried very hard to make everyone believe that he was just a friend.

She absentmindedly traced the tops of his fingers with her forefinger and he watched her do it in silence.

“Are you okay, right now? Right here?” he asked, nothing but a whisper that almost got lost in the wind and the sound of the water in the background. The murmur of the last bar quests floating in through the opened glass doors just behind them. His voice so heavy that it weighed down on her heart.

She looked aside and nodded. “Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to forget about the rest of the world out here?”

He agreed with a silent hum. “How I wish I would have discovered this place sooner. And you with it.”

Not much later she found herself fiddling with the lock as she struggled to get it to open. There was a massive metal number ‘2’ keychain attached to the key to their room. Of the kind that people actually put up by their front door. She never understood why, but her parents still thought it was hilarious.

As she cursed at the lock, Harry wrapped his arms around her and slipped his hands inside her sweater. Warm hands pressing against the bones of her hips as he dug his nails into her skin slowly. She gasped and he chuckled.

“Easy, princess….”

He kept walking right behind her as she finally managed to open the door and they stumbled in. He gently pushed her towards the window sill and turned her around in his arms with the expertise of someone who had done it one too many times. She couldn’t care less about that though, as he started to kiss her and lifted her up from the floor, placing her up on the sill. She wrapped her legs around his waist and couldn’t care less about the fact that the curtains were open and the lights in their room were on. And for the first time in a long time, she couldn’t care less about going back home. Just as long as she could have more of this, and more of him. Forever, or as long as he would let her have it.

20.
She sat on one of the wooden tables in the hotel garden, feet on the matching bench in front of it. Book upside down in her lap. She wondered if getting things done would always remain impossible around him. He was wearing black skinny jeans that day, a white tee loosely tucked inside. His jumper neatly folded up on the table just beside her. A pair of rainbow Gucci loafers on his feet. Pink oversized Gucci sunglasses hooked on the neckline of his shirt as if this wasn’t the middle of nowhere, where most people dressed like they were about to go on a daylong hike or just came back from one.

He was making a couple of phone calls in that one corner of the garden that had reception.

She knew what they were about. He was trying to push back his flight one more day, and pushing his luck with it.

Because when he eventually returned, he was grinning. “I think everyone might hate me now,” he said jokingly and Jimmy laughed. She knew he wasn’t one to take advantage of who he was all too often, but when he did, he believed it was worth it. Everyone, in this case, were his employees that all had their schedules messed with and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be the reason behind it. But she also really didn’t want him to go. And if she could get one more day, she would gladly take it no matter the consequences.

They spent the rest of it mostly in and around the inn. They had said goodbye to Jimmy’s sister and her family that morning and her mom and dad were hard at work. She had offered to help them but her mother was having none of it and ordered her to spend her time with Harry. Of course, she didn’t have to tell her daughter that, because it was all she had wanted to do.

Harry did some writing and she sat with him, reading one of the many books the inn provided. They went for walks, purposely getting lost on their way back, took a bath in a tub that was too small to fit them both and played a board game. They kissed, fucked and sat silently by the fire on the carpet side by side for what could have lasted an eternity.

But way too quickly and definitely too sudden, they were in bed for another long and sleepless night followed by a morning that couldn’t be as lazy and cosy and particularly sleepy as the previous ones because he had to leave.

“You honestly were the last thing I expected to find,” he began the unavoidable conversation called life outside of Glenelg. The conversation called life in LA, where nothing would ever be the same and where they no longer lived in the same space. A conversation that she feared could lead to a senseless goodbye.

They laid together with bodies a wet mixture of soapy bath water and post-sex sweat. His wet hair pushed back as he rested his face in the palm of his hand and towered over her as she laid unattractively and completely worn out with all her limbs spread out on top of the sheets.

“and the fear of leaving here for God knows when I will see you again is the last thing I need right now, but this is where it came to. I really wanted to be your friend, you know. I want to be your best friend just to have the certainty of being able to see you, or call you whenever I want, but I don’t know if I can do that. If I can do just that because I will forever end up wanting all of you, time and time again.”

Tears started rolling down her cheeks halfway through his monologue even though she had promised herself a thousand times that she would not cry. It had never been a certainty that back home in LA, things could still work out for them. She hated all of it, but realistically, there would not be much of a future for them as he would be away all the time and she would forever have to stay. But for the first time she had gotten an insight in to a future she might actually wanted to invest in.

“I guess knowing what it is like doesn’t help it either, does it?”

He started tracing a line with his finger from her neck all the way down to her belly button as if splitting her in half and she couldn’t ignore the irony of it.

“Absolutely not,” he said, furry eyebrows over hazy eyes.

“As much as I didn’t want it, we could just go for the cliché of seeing where it goes.”

“If we both want the same thing, we can go pretty far.”

She looked at him, all stretched out and sweaty on top of the sheets. So much of him she had yet to discover, realising she would gladly take not just this extra day, but every extra second she could have with him. Knowing it was a mistake the second she made it but in too deep to do something about it. After being with someone who loved to hurt her, she now ended up being with a boy of whom it hurt to love.

“If I get you whole” she whispered.

“You’ll get so much of me, you’ll get sick of it.”

She chuckled, thinking he really had no idea and shook her head. “We’ll see about that.”

And with that, without having actually said the words Jimmy knew that they agreed on giving LA life together a try. If anything it hadn’t worked for her with anyone else or alone so it couldn’t get any worse anyway.

She didn’t notice that Harry stayed awake when she eventually dozed off. And how he climbed out of bed and into the window sill with his leather bound notepad. His back against the closed curtains, pressing against the cool glass of the window and like that, with nothing but the light of his phone to guide him, he wrote while she slept.

Oh, how we started
Two hearts in one home
It’s hard when we argue
We’re both stubborn
I know

21.
“Harry said I should bring it back home to LA with me.”

Jimmy walked into her bedroom to find Billy looking at that picture of her as a little ballerina. She had put it above her dresser. It wasn’t framed yet but she loved looking at it now. It reminded her of home in a way it had never done before.

Billy looked skeptical as she turned her head over her shoulder. “I bet he also said he’d call, didn’t he?” she remarked darkly and Jimmy sighed. She had noticed that Billy’s excitement about the events that took place in Scotland had died down drastically with every day that went by since he had left the inn. He hadn’t called yet. Neither had he sent her any texts for almost a week now. Tomorrow was New Year’s, which officially marked too long since she saw and spoke to him last.

She too, was disappointed that she hadn’t heard from him, but she realised damn well that in contrary to popular believes, she could have texted him too. She knew she had to stay real though, and she knew that it was highly unlikely that they would ever be able to take whatever they had anywhere, anyway. It had all sounded oh so romantic as they were so far away from home, but maybe it was impossible. Maybe they would only be able to see each other occasionally and to make that happen, they would still probably have to try really hard. Maybe this was just a good taste of what the rest of her life would be like. Her being mistreated once again by a guy she lost her heart to, and allowing him to do it because of it.

She knew though that whatever she could say to Billy now, would just sound like she was making excuses for him.

LA seemed relatively quiet and calm when she returned, the day before. The only thing she had to deal with so far had been Billy’s skeptical and judgmental remarks about Harry. She understood that her friend found it hard to believe that he hadn’t had one spare minute to send her a text, but she hated to hear her talk about him like that. She hadn’t been there in Scotland. She hadn’t felt what Jimmy had felt and she hadn’t seen the way he looked at her. The things he said. And how he showed her off to everyone at the bar whenever he got the chance.

“I’m sure there is a reason,” Jimmy sighed as she tied the belt on her bathrobe and pulled a towel out of her wet hair.

“I am sure there is,” Billy replied quizzically and shrugged her shoulders as if she finally decided it was none of her business.

“Just be careful, okay?”

Jimmy nodded. She knew that was the essence of her friends behavior anyway. And Billy had seen more than enough to have a right and a reason to be. In fact, upon Jimmy’s return, Billy had insisted on staying with her for a few days, just to make sure that Scott wouldn’t get it in his head to actually turn up at her house. So far, everything had remained quiet ever since she left and blocked the number he had used but she was still scared. Not that there was anything Billy could do but she appreciated her friend’s gesture and loved not having to come home in an empty house. Which, all things Scott aside, was the main reason why she dreaded going home. Not having to hope that he would be there or wouldn’t. The worst part was knowing that he wasn’t.

“Anyway,” Billy continued. “I am going for a drink with the girls, you are welcome to come as always but something tells me you don’t want to, as always.”

Jimmy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You guessed that right, as always.” Billy’s ‘girls’ were all very lovely but they just weren’t the kind of people Jimmy liked to spend her time with. She had to deal with enough drama and gossip at the ballet already and she didn’t need any more of that bullshit in her free time.

“I’ve got other plans anyway,” she said, “Oliver invited me to the opening of his new exhibition, apparently he’s featuring some photos of me that he took during rehearsals last month. You know, the photographer who also makes movies now,” Jimmy added because Billy seemed incapable of keeping her friends apart. No matter how often she saw them. According to them they were all weird artsy people.

“Such a shame, we could have set you up with a nice guy, you know… to set your mind on something else.”

“Says the girl who has been pushing me in Harry’s direction for months,” Jimmy said as she folded up the wet towel she was still holding.

“That was back when I was still a blinded fangirl and before he started behaving like a right dick.” Billy walked around the bed to kiss Jimmy on the cheek.

“It’s just that you deserve a lot more than you think you do, and you definitely deserve better than a guy who doesn’t know this. I swear to God, Jimmy.”

Billy’s words kept haunting her after she was gone. Maybe she was right. Maybe she had become the blinded fangirl who couldn’t see any harm in his actions. Maybe she had ended up in the exact same situation as before where she let a guy push her around just because she had been stupid enough to fall in love with him.

-

“Oh, look who suddenly remembered he had a thing going on,” Jimmy said, meanwhile having to blink a couple of times to be sure she had really just opened the door to find Harry standing there. Billy had left two hours earlier and Jimmy had just picked up the blow-dryer when the doorbell rang. She had lost all urge to go out after letting Billy’s concern get the best of her but she knew she couldn’t let her friend down. Looking at Harry, she also realised she really wasn’t mad at him. And that she should know better than to think he would ever treat her like Scott did. Or any other guy for that matter. Except for not hearing from him for a week he had given her no reason to even doubt his intentions. And judging by the way he was looking at her then, that silence also hadn’t meant shit.

He looked amused by her reaction and was dressed in blue denim and a hideous floral shirt that he left half unbuttoned and that worked wonders for him. He carried a Gucci bag and held a pair of RayBan shades in the other hand.

“I haven’t forgotten about you, Jimmy. Anything but, to be quite honest.” A shiver went down her spine as she watched him standing there and she knew it had nothing to do with the weather. Winter was always kind to Los Angeles and this week had been particularly warm.

“I’m not gonna be that girl that asks you why you haven’t called, but honestly, it was quite a shitty thing to do.”

“Jimmy…” she looked in his tired eyes and waited for him to continue. She didn’t think he came all the way over to her apartment just to seduce her with his rock and roll attitude and by saying her name like that. Although, if he tried hard enough, it would probably work.

“I was busy with the move and frankly I did it on purpose. I needed to get away from you for a few days to try and clear my head. And think.”

“You thought…” she replied, not allowing herself to be satisfied with that answer, though she understood it all too well. Over the last months they had been constantly around each other, even when either of them wasn’t physically around and it had been pretty hard to get her thoughts straight. “And what did it lead to?”

“To you.”

“Once again…” she whispered.

“Once again.”

And suddenly it seemed so stupid that they were wasting so much time figuring something out that was clear from the start. Ever since the first kiss and even just before it even happened, they kept having the same conversation over and over again. Saying so many words when only meaning one simple thing.

“I need you with me.”

She said it out loud this time and stepped back into the hallway. Inviting him in and he took her up on it. Took her in his arms as well. She tilted her head back a little to look at him. “Just don’t do that again okay, ignore me. I hated it.”

“I can’t even if I wanted to, princess.”

They continued to kiss as they walked back into the house and he started to pull up the bottom hem of the Ganni dress that she planned to wear that night over her thighs and hips in a way that ensured her that he was definitely done ignoring her, and wasting time. Making their way through the kitchen, across the living room, heading straight for the couch, they never let go of each other. Jimmy sat down on his lap with a knee on each side of him and he took advantage of the opportunity to cup her ass before he let his fingers find the elastic band of her thongs. She could feel the lace fabric cutting her thigh as he stretched it out until it snapped between his fingers. Just as something snapped in her chest, making her gasp for air and unable to look anywhere but down at him.

He then pushed her down on the couch, her dress still only just about covering the top half of her body and she watched him loose his jeans and boxers after kicking off the Gucci loafers that were forever on his feet. She vaguely noticed that he wasn’t wearing any socks.

When he crawled back on the couch he kept one foot on the ground for balance as he placed the knee of his other leg next to her thigh. With his hands on her hips they looked at each other for a moment. “Fuck, I missed you.”

She bend one of her legs and hooked it over the back of the couch to give him more space. And as he began to move she brought a hand up to his face and followed the throbbing vein beneath his sleep with her forefinger. “Jesus, I need you so much.”

Barely half an hour later, Jimmy laid on top of him, the skin of her by then naked breasts pressing against his toned, sweaty chest. His fingers drawing lazy circles on the small of her back and tracing a path up and down her spine.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” she whispered as she lifted her head just about enough to look at his dark shot eyes. Her promise to Oliver and his exhibition the last thing on her mind. Only caring about keeping him close to her for as long as she could.

He nodded. “But I need a shower first.”

She grinned. “You can even use my shampoo, it’s raspberries. You might like it.”

Harry groaned darkly at her not-so-subtle reminder of his speech from a couple of weeks ago as he slapped her ass playfully before grabbing it tight. “Don’t fucking mess with me like that, Jimmy.”

22.
Jimmy had moved to the bedroom in the time Harry took his shower. She didn’t think Billy would be back yet but she preferred not to risk it anyway. Having thirty minutes away from her also seemed to have cleared Harry’s mind. Because when he came back, wrapped up in a huge towel, he eyed her up before saying:

“Weren’t you getting ready for something earlier?”

She moaned and fell back in the crisp white pillows, spreading her arms dramatically. “Oliver is opening an exposition tonight and I promised I would go. I am in it, apparently.”

“Then what are you doing laying around, c’mon, let’s go.” He tucked at his towel and threw it at her. Unlike Billy, who she had known for a very long time, Harry did seem to remember the names of her friends that he had met just a couple of times.

Lifting herself up on her elbows, she shot a look his way. For some reason she hadn’t expected him to want to go with her. She knew it was tricky and he wouldn’t know anyone there. And with his schedule as busy as it was she thought this was about the last way he wanted to spend his evening.

“You want to go with me?”

“There are a lot of things I’d rather do with you…” he said but he was smiling a little and already halfway done getting his clothes back on.

“It’s a good thing you’re always dressed like you’re ready to hit some red carpet,” she said, raising an eyebrow at the undiscussable floral shirt, of which she had by then seen the label. It was, of course, Gucci.

-

Fourty-five minutes later, Jimmy was back in her Ganni frilly wrap dress and in the back of a cab. Not feeling as fresh as before, but a whole lot better anyway. She kept looking aside at Harry, sitting next to her. One of his heavily-ringed hands on her bare thigh, just underneath the hem of her dress. Right on the spot where it always seemed to naturally be these days.

“So, did they like the things you wrote?” she asked, surprising him a little because she didn’t often ask about it. Not because she didn’t care but because she knew that if there was anything he wanted to share about it, he would.

“Yeah, laid the vocals down last night – I think we’re weeks away from finishing the record now.”

She sighed and dropped her head on his shoulder, knowing that all too soon, she would have to say her first of many real goodbyes to him.

He just rubbed her thigh with his thumb and nodded. Not needing to hear an explanation of her move but understanding the meaning behind it. “We will figure it out.”

-

Her arriving with him at the event in the abandoned sugar factory at the edge of the city caused the stir she could have expected. She just hadn’t thought of it until people were nodding in their direction and whispering behind their backs as they walked in. She realised that come tomorrow, she would probably see her face all over the internet again.

Harry didn’t see bothered. He was holding her hand and had his stage face on as they made their way in. She knew that if they were photographed again it would be different anyway. And she also knew Harry felt the same way. Over time he had told her many times how he didn’t care about being seen with her. He just hated that they didn’t have any control about the first time it happened. And he despised to expose her to a world in which very intimate images of her got published without her consent. She realized now that they should have been more careful with so many people around, even in the privacy of her own house, but that still didn’t make it okay. If they were to be outed now she at least knew what to expect.

It wasn’t hard to track Oliver down in the room. He was surrounded by several people who all seemed to want something from him as the star of the night, but he immediately broke away from everyone as he saw her. “Jimmy, you came!”

He then look from Harry back to her and grinned. “And you showed up tonight.”

Despite how bad the joke was, Harry and Jimmy both still laughed and they both hugged him. Harry congratulated him on the exposition before he stepped back a little to give her some space with her friend.

As always, Oliver was the best company to be around. And he was just about the only person in the room who didn’t make a fuzz about Harry. Not instantly anyway. Because there was no ignoring the way Harry made sure to keep his hand on the small of her back at all times while she stood talking to Oliver about his pictures. Only ever letting go when people came over to him to ask for a picture.

“So, when were you going to tell me that this actually became a thing. You and the popstar.” Oliver asked as he grabbed two glasses of wine from a passing waiter. Harry was distracted by a group of women who also wanted a picture. And a whole lot more after that if they were given the chance.

“Not that I am one bit surprised,” he added. “I mean, look at the two of you. You were made to be together.”

“I am honestly not even sure what that thing is exactly right now, though” she said, ignoring Olivers’ praise.

“So he isn’t your boyfriend now?” Just as Oliver asked her that, Harry returned to her side, glass of scotch in hand, the other one instantly back on her back.

She looked up at him, not sure what to say. “Only when he is around,” she replied eventually, causing Harry to chuckle.

“Which is why I soon will be unemployed,” he mumbled, pressing a kiss on her temple. “So, where are those pictures of you, princess?”

Jimmy could literally see Oliver melt away in front of her as he heard the way Harry spoke to her. She made a mental note to tell Billy that reaction later. She could learn from that.

Oliver pointed them to a corner of the room, where they found a series of three massive black and white pictures of Jimmy in an abandoned studio, rehearsing for a piece, dressed in all black. And Jimmy could be wrong but she was almost certain she saw a hint of pride on Harry’s face as he watched some other people looking at her pictures.

After a few minutes, Oliver came standing beside her again. “Please promise me, that if you guys ever do this big wedding spread in People magazine, you let me take the pictures.”

Jimmy almost choked on her wine and was glad Harry wasn’t within hearing distance. But when he turned around and winked at her, she turned to Oliver.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

23.
“I have to get up,” Jimmy hated to be the one to break the spell the following morning but she definitely had already given herself more time than she could afford to, still lying in bed with Harry.

She turned around and climbed on top of him, on top of the sheets too, as she bend forward. His hands immediately slid up her sides and then down again while she finger-combed his floppy hair. It had parted right in the middle of his head again like it tended to do a lot overnight, creating those curtains that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 90s teen movie. He grinned lazily and she smiled.

“What are you smiling for?”

She shrugged her shoulders as she ran a fingertip over the necklace he wore. “You look cute with your hair like this.”

“Cute isn’t good for my image, Jimmy.”

“I don’t care about your image,” she replied instantly, playfully pressing her knees into his sides as he grabbed both of her hands and laced his fingers through hers before pulling her down. Moving their hands to his shoulders. When her lips were just an inch away from his, he scanned her face with dark-shot eyes. “So I have noticed….” He mumbled before kissing her gently.

She rolled off and away from him and he groaned in protest when she sat up right away, knowing that if she didn’t do it then, she probably never would. The thing that made it even harder to move was that it was technically still her holiday. She had just agreed to assist at the last lesson of the year for the company’s youngest, which was always a lot of fun. She also had an interview scheduled and would stop by her physiotherapist while she was at the ballet and it was already noon. It began to dawn on her that this entire thing would have been a lot less difficult if they hadn’t also both been so in love with their jobs.

She held the sheets up against her body with one hand and Harry, who hadn’t moved at all, lifted his hand up towards her. He lazily started to caress the small of her bare back and Jimmy looked over her shoulder at him.

“You on the other hand, don’t seem to be in a hurry this morning.”

“You should be more appreciative of that princess,” he said as he flashed a playful grin that made her heart jump. He kept calling her princess. She wasn’t exactly sure whether it was because of her role as princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty that she had been dancing at the time they first met or because of else but it did incredible things to her body and mind. She wasn’t sure whether it was possible to feel words on her skin but his she definitely could.

When she came out of the shower and entered the living room dressed in black lace panties and a matching bra with a towel wrapped around her hair, Harry greeted her with a groan. He was sitting on the armrest of the couch and fiddled with his phone. He was also already dressed. Same blue jeans as last night but with a plain white t-shirt tucked inside.

“Don’t fucking tempt me,” he hissed and Jimmy just grinned. She could have stood there for ages, just to be able to look at him looking at her that way. Eyes dark and with admiration flickering all through. It was new to her because it seemed so genuine. But it was the clock behind him on the wall that gave her the reality check she needed and she hurried into the bedroom to come back out only a couple of minutes later, carrying her sports bag.

Harry immediately pushed himself back up on his feet and at that exact moment Billy appeared from what had previously been his bedroom. She didn’t look half ready for the day ahead as she was still dressed in a cami top and cotton pj shorts. Her face a mess from last night’s make-up.

Jimmy realised she hadn’t even heard her coming back in, but then again, she had been quite occupied.

“Oh, so it was you then,” was how she greeted Harry. They hadn’t seen each other for a long time.

“So it seems,” Harry said quizzically and Jimmy stood between them for a minute before she broke the silence. Billy didn’t even pretend she was over her vendetta against him and Jimmy decided it was best to ignore it.

“Alright,” she began instead, “I really have to get going in a minute.”

Harry nodded. “Are you sure there is nothing I can do to change your mind?”

Billy softened a little just when she heard the way Harry spoke to her and Jimmy couldn’t help but smile a little. It wasn’t just her then, who couldn’t deal with that. And despite that Billy walked straight passed them to sit down on the couch behind his back, she didn’t actually seem that annoyed with him anymore. It was the effect he had on people that was as much a gift as it was dangerous.

“Alright, in that case I guess I’ll go,” Harry interrupted her thoughts. He eyed her up and down before grabbing her arm and kissing her gently, politely almost. As if they hadn’t spent the entire night doing things that were far from polite. Or gentle. He didn’t say anything about when they would see each other again. And she wanted him to. She needed him to. She couldn’t just let him walk once again.

Harry’s leather bag caught her eye and instead of straight up asking him the question that was burning on her lips, she bend over and pulled a denim jacket that laid on top out of it and then on over the baby blue leotard and the black skin tight jeans she was wearing.

“I’m taking this,” she said and Harry pushed his tongue in his cheek as he smiled and tilted his head a little while he watched her push the sleeves up towards her elbows.

“It’s looking like you are,” he said, lifting his bag over his shoulder. He pulled a hand through his still floppy hair. He hadn’t bothered with gel or whatever the hell he used. She liked it that way. It made him seem a little more accessible.

“Let me know when you need it back,” she said when Harry’s reply remained nothing more than what he had already given.

She got a yoghurt from the fridge and started peeling off the thin foil lid.

“I’m not that attached to that jacket, you know,” he teased and Jimmy realised how hard she had been trying. And how much he was messing with her because of it. She was also aware that Billy had been watching them all that time in silence from where she was still sitting on the couch. And by then also raising her eyebrows behind Harry’s back.

Jimmy just smiled then. The fact that she was surrounded by the scent of his musky expensive cologne and even a hint of cigarette smoke coming from the jacket would keep her occupied until she would see him again. And she knew that it wouldn’t be long.

“I’ll text ya,” he said smiling back at her and with that he left without kissing her again.

“What the fuck was that,” Billy questioned and suddenly Jimmy found herself wishing she would just go. Suddenly the thought of an empty house was the nicest thing she could imagine. She felt a little guilty because Billy only meant well, but she didn’t want to explain anything. Billy wouldn’t understand why she hadn’t just asked him the question and that was completely fine. Much like she had asked of her sister back in Scotland, she just wanted everyone to let her have this.

“You don’t understand,” was the answer Jimmy settled for eventually and Billy shrugged her shoulders. It gave Jimmy and easy way out but it was also true. There was no explaining what had just happened unless you knew what they both knew. The time where they could easily spend a long time not being together was far behind them. In fact, she wasn’t sure if she had known such a feeling since the day he walked into her house and her life with his Gucci bag and his rock star everything.

“Sure I don’t and I also don’t know where you found the ability to walk after last night and this morning. Hell, if I had known I wouldn’t have come back here.” Billy was grinning then and Jimmy laughed too.

“I meant to text you,” she said. Which was true as well.

“But you got distracted.”

Jimmy pulled a face at her friend. “I have a feeling you won’t have to come back here tonight either.”

“I hope you are right,” Billy said a little darkly. Jimmy sighed. It was pointless trying to talk her out of her judgements and it was completely fine.

Before Jimmy even left the house, he proved that she was right to have faith in him though, as a text came in.

Harry, 1:23PM: ‘on second thought, that was a good jacket, meet me at the pub tonight, I’ll text you the address’

She was still on a high when she entered the dressing room at the ballet center and another text came in before she had even replied. It was the address of a pub where he would be celebrating New Year’s with a couple of friends and apparently if they felt like it, they could also go to another party afterwards. Jimmy decided that her answer could wait. He kept her waiting a week just to show up at her house unannounced. And he already knew that she would show up anyway.

24.
She was surprised therefor when she saw his name popping up on the screen of her mobile phone. It was just after seven and she was still at the ballet, in the middle of a fitting for a new piece that was scheduled to premiere in April of next year. The fact that it was New Year’s Eve didn’t change anything at the ballet. Though surely, everyone would leave right after she was done.

She shot a guilty look at the people in the room before excusing herself to answer the call in a corner of the studio.

“Hey,” she said.

“Princess,” he mumbled. She heard cars driving by in the background and instantly pictured him smoking. Which told her he probably had been drinking as well. Otherwise he would never take the risk of being seen like that. He wasn’t a smoker as much as she wasn’t but she got to see exactly when that would change and it usually had to do with alcohol or sex. The cliché was almost too much to handle but as things tended to go, it really worked for him.

“Are you still at the ballet?” His impatience was undeniably present in his voice.

“Not for long,” she said looking down at the navy blue tutu she was wearing, meanwhile calculating how long it would take her to get out there and go home to change. The gold lurex thread woven through the skirt sparkled underneath the bright TL-lights as she told him: “Give me an hour.”

He nodded and disconnected the line after making a remark about her Christmas jumper that she, despite his demands, definitely would not wear that night.

Arriving in her empty house in a hurry, she rushed into the bedroom to open the closet. She had no clue what to wear to a New Year’s Eve that started in a pub and ended with some pretentious party at God knows where with God knows who. Before she met him she thought her life was unpredictable and crazy but it was nothing compared to his.

She eventually settled for a tailored metallic soft pink co-ord with a blazer and a skirt and themed it with a crème coloured fluffy crop top and a pair of Prada platform sandals. A dark lip and natural eye make-up finished the look quickly.

The pub was only a ten minute walk from her house so with a faux fur coat that reached to her ankles to keep her warm, she decided to go for it. It wasn’t hard to spot his Harry’s crew when she opened the door to the pub. The place smelled of beer and firewood in a way that wouldn’t have been out of place back in good old Glenelch and she instantly got back in the festive mood. Harry and his friends, who produced a remarkable amount of British accents for them being in downtown LA, occupied the longest table in the center of the room. When all heads of his company turned, Harry leaned over the back of his chair, looking like he expected it to be her and then he grinned.

“Look who the wind blew in,” he said, getting up and kissing her on the lips in front of everyone. He backed away too soon for her liking but there was a definite promise for more. He was dressed in custom Gucci himself and she had to give it to him that New Years was as good an opportunity as any. Both jacket and pants in black velvet. The blazer with gold stars embroidered on it. The pants had lightning bolts to match. Catching her looking at his outfit he bend over to whisper in her ear:

“I have a suit that matches yours exactly.” She looked at her metallic pink assemble and doubted it, but would learn not long after that he had been telling the truth. In fact, his metallic Gucci suit, that was made from exactly the same metallic pink as her outfit, was also covered in rainbow glitters from head to toe.

Back at the pub, a quick scan around the table told her that she literally only recognised Calvin, and judging by his surprised expression, Harry hadn’t exactly kept him up to date on his love life. She also saw some more surprised glances from people she vaguely knew from the past at other tables and she was sure she made out with one of the guys at a table just across from theirs. She was worried about what would come out of this, but the fact that Harry, who had made sure to keep his hand wrapped around her waist, wasn’t bothered by it at all made it easier for her to push the thoughts away. As someone else pulled a chair to the table for her, Harry finally introduced her. “Everyone, this is Jimmy. The ballet princess with the rock star name. She is also from England but unlike some of us, she was smart enough to move to LA.”

A bunch of people started shouting their names but she only remembered those of the people sitting nearest to her. And only for a couple of minutes, because it quickly became clear to her that Harry hadn’t invited her to bond with his mates that flew in from the UK or the ones he met over time during his travels with and without his former boyband. He really just wanted to be with her. And talk to her and generally just have her there because he had to be.

“Please tell me we won’t have to stop doing this,” he mumbled in her ear. She knew he had been drinking but more often had he expressed his affection to her when he was completely sober, so she waited for him to continue. Curious as to what could come out of this. “Now that I am no longer in your house, I mean. God, I am gonna miss being in your house so fucking much.”

Jimmy smiled as she accepted a pint from her direct left neighbour. “You weren’t exactly there much,” she reminded him.

Harry chuckled. “You always make things so difficult for me, darling. What is it about you that turned me into this mess?”

He smiled until she kissed it away from his lips. “Just remember this,” she whispered, by then completely forgetting about the fact that they had company. And judging by the way he pulled her back in when she withdrew from the kiss, so had he.

She wondered if he even realised that all this time it was him who had her completely under his control. And she wondered when exactly that had stopped scaring the hell out of her and just became that one thing she couldn’t get enough of.

Gasping and shooting a bewildered look around she noticed that nobody was really paying attention to him, or doing a good job pretending anyway. Curving his ringed fingers around her cheek before pulling away and turning around to one of his nameless mates, he chuckled. Knowing that he left her squirming in her seat. He made sure to keep his hand high on her thigh at all times, even when he was in conversation with his other friends and Jimmy had a really hard time keeping the meaningless one on her other side going.

A guy named Steve asked her where they met and where she had been hiding and how long they had been together for. She answered LA, LA and not very long. Lacking a better answer. In all honesty not even knowing if they were at that point. No matter how possessive Harry was behaving, it was still just an assumption. Man, they needed to have a talk about it at some point.

Rescue came in the shape of Calvin, who pushed his chair back and called her name. “Jimmy, care for a smoke?”

She shot him a thankful glance and only just about managed to escape Harry’s grip. She nodded at Calvin when he gave her a questioning look as to where she thought she was going and then smiled. “Don’t be long, princess.”

Outside, Calvin lit her a cigarette and leaned back against the wall. They had gone out to the street side and watched a car make a u-turn in a road that was too narrow. “I have known Harry for a long time and you should know that he doesn’t usually get like this…” Calvin said unexpectedly. “In fact, I think I’ve only ever seen it once before and that shit was real.”

Jimmy looked at him. She didn’t expect that Calvin would want to discuss her relationship with Harry, or his previous ones for that matter. She knew who he was talking about. Hell, everybody and their mother had told her about his relationship with that girl. A model. A famous one. One that she was nothing like. She appreciated the gesture though and smiled a little. “It started off so slowly but now it is going real fucking fast.”

Calvin chuckled in acknowledgment. “Yeah, that’s Harry for you. He’ll be good to you though, don’t worry about that. He’ll be the last to ever hurt you.”

Jimmy smiled. That was quite a thing to say and something she wasn’t so certain of. But she knew that Calvin was right in saying that he would never do it on purpose and that was more than she had known before. She smiled. “I will need to be reminded of that every now and then.”

Coming back in she found Harry on a stool at the bar, as he waited for a new round of drinks that he had just ordered. He had left his blazer hanging over his seat at the table and she could see his muscles defined through the thin fabric of his crème coloured shirt. Veins shifting beneath the skin of his forearms as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Without hesitating she walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him from behind, hugging him tight and filling his neck with kisses.

“I missed you out there,” she said, revealing the ridiculous truth to him.

He smoothly turned around in his seat and grinned as he jumped off the stool. Abandoning the freshly poured drinks, much to the dismay of his friends, he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him to the back of the pub. And right there in a dark and dirty toilet stall, he let her come as close as she physically could. Proving to her that he had missed her too the best way he knew.

When they returned, lacking the subtlety that was required in a situation like that, everyone was just getting ready to leave.

“Styles, there you are.” A guy she would later learn was named Charlie, shouted at him. Drawing even more unnecessary attention towards them. Unlike many others at the table, he spoke like a true American kid. “You think you and your girl can find the time to join us at my place?”

Looking aside at Jimmy for her reaction, Jimmy nodded. “I’ve got all night,” she said, tucking at her skirt. Unsure whether or not she had it on the right way around after having to pull it back down from above her hips just minutes before.

25.
Billy, Oliver and a couple of her other friends ended up at Charlie’s party along with a whole room of people she had never seen before. And Harry. Who she had lost to literally everyone in the room since their arrival. Some wanted him for ages, some just wanted him for a moment or two. Just to be able to tell stories about it later. The night they spoke to Harry Styles or how they spend New Years’ with him. But she knew that he was constantly aware of her whereabouts because whenever she looked over to him, he was always looking back. Sometimes he would flash a smile so subtly that she wasn’t even sure it happened. Most of the times it was just a quick glance to remind her that he hadn’t forgotten. But that he just was too polite.

Just as she was in the middle of a discussion about the likelihood of Tina Turner ever performing a concert again, Harry popped up beside her, grabbing her hand and gently but certainly pulling her away. Billy, who was among her company, looked insulted but didn’t truly mean it.

“No matter how much I want it to be true, I just don’t think she would still be able to do it,” Jimmy drew a quick end to her monologue and Harry raised an eyebrow at her.

“Tina Turner,” she said, offering barely an explanation as she looked up at him.

Harry furrowed his brows and nodded understandingly. “That would be great, wouldn’t it,” he mumbled. Ever so monotone, ever so serious.

“Sorry about that but it’s almost midnight,” Harry said as he pulled her away just a little further, towards a corner. Underestimating the DJ, that they were right next to. And who instantly saw an opportunity to make Harry the unwanted center of attention.

“The last song of 2018 will be presented to you this evening by mister Harry Styles,” he shouted before pushing the microphone in Harry’s hand. Judging by the look on Harry’s face, this wasn’t part of anyone’s plan. Or at least not one that he was in on. He pursed his lips as he thought about it and then pulled a silly face as he spread his legs, raised one arm in the air and shouted: “Tina Turner, Simply The Best!” in a manner that only he could pull off.

People laughed, people cheered. And Jimmy looked at Harry deciding there was only one possible way to end 2017. And just as he pulled her close when the clock was about to strike midnight and people around them were singing along and looking for people to hug and kiss just so that they were prepared, she looked up at him, thinking she had never been more prepared for anything in her life.

“I love you”.

He smiled the biggest smile she had ever seen, told her he fucking loved her too and kissed her at least a minute too soon.

It was nothing like in the movies and anything but perfect. Considering they were in a room full of drunk people with camera’s on their phones and they had never met more than half of them before. They couldn’t even hear the fireworks over the music that was blasting in their ears. People were bumping into them, trying to get to the balcony they were blocking the door to and only ten minutes earlier someone had tried to hit on her. And by the time they got outside too, most of the fireworks had already dissolved against the pitch black and slightly cloudy night. But she had never had a better start of a new year in her whole life.

She realised for the first time that she had fallen in love with him when it dawned on her that he had made her feel safe in her own house again. Not because having him there made her feel safe but because having him around made her forget. For the first time in a very long time she could come in through the front door and not think about all the times he stood waiting for her right behind it, accusing her of having been with another man because she was home later than she said she was going to be. It was where they first met and first kissed. She did no longer look at the dining chairs and thought about the time he slammed one over her head. It was the spot where Harry sat and wrote. Or how he bruised her ribs by smacking her into the washstand. It was where she had tried to tell Harry stories with the toothbrush still in her mouth and more often than not he understood. The bathroom floor was no longer the place where he sat on top of her and pulled hair out of her head when she wouldn’t give him the address of a friend that he didn’t like. It had just gone back to a place where they left towels lying around for too long. And for that she was more thankful than she would ever be able to let him know. Over time it had become one of the many reasons why she got herself to say these words but she hoped she had a lot of time left to tell him about these things.

She didn’t have time to look at her texts until New Year’s Day was halfway gone. She had spent most of it in bed with Harry. Up and under and beside him in all possible ways with no obligations on her side and some on his that he probably chose to ignore. He stayed until four in the afternoon, when he eventually had to drag himself out of bed and under the shower and out the door because his family would arrive in just under an hour but he would send a car to the airport and figure out an excuse in the meantime.

It wasn’t until she would meet his gorgeous mother for the first time that she found out he had been completely honest about his whereabouts and his disability to pick them up himself. Minus the details, or so she hoped anyway.

Most of the texts came from people at the ballet. Vague friends that she didn’t bother to actually spend New Year’s with and of course from her family back over in Europe. But there was one message that instantly made her feel like someone wrapped a hand around her throat and kicked her in the stomach. She gasped as her sight blurred.

‘Happy 2018 Rosie, I have a feeling it is going to be a good one…’

Minutes passed in which she tried to calm down and when she eventually came to her senses she got angry. Angry at Scott for having the balls to ruin her perfect start of the new year. Angry because of course he would. Angry that a single text could still get to her like that. And in the heat of the moment she made a decision she knew she would regret later. She wished and pretended so hard that she stood above his bullshit but by not responding to this text she couldn’t help but feel like she still let him win.

‘I think so to, because you’re not going to be a part of it and I’m blocking this number like I did with all the others you tried to text me with. Goodbye, Scott.’

And she did just that, but not quick enough to escape the last text he would ever be able to send her from that number.

‘Careful what you wish for, baby’

26.
And as always, it turned out that things got bad quicker than they had worked out for her. Not at first. Actually, the first couple of weeks of 2018 were everything she never thought she could ever have in her life. Rehearsals at the ballet had started for a piece that was written exclusively for her. The piece that required the navy blue costume with the gold specks of lurex thread. Scott had remained quiet after his text on the first day of January and Harry stayed. Despite the few outbursts in public, they still tried to keep a low profile and she was surprised therefore when Harry showed up at rehearsals on a stormy afternoon in mid-January. Causing quite a stir in the room as he pushed open the door unannounced. Jimmy was just in the middle of a solo routine so everybody else sat against a wall in the back, watching her. A position that provided them with a perfect view of his entry. Jimmy was mid-Arabesque and almost tumbled forward when she saw him. Dressed in a long wool black Gucci coat over yellow Adidas track pants and a black hooded sweater. A sailor cap over his curls and a look so serious that she was instantly worried someone had died.

She crossed the room to get to him, knowing that everyone’s eyes were following her and she shot a questioning look towards the choreographer. Who had watched the whole thing unfold in silence. He gave her a quick nod and clapped his hands to announce a five minute break. Following Harry to the corridor, she hoped those five minutes were all she would need.

“Listen, princess, I just got a phone call from my PR people, they received a message from TMZ, they are going to break the news about us tonight. They have everything. Scotland, New Year’s, Oliver’s exhibition. It’s all there. I have my lawyers looking into it right now but I don’t think there is anything we can do to stop them, this is TMZ… I offered releasing a statement but my people don’t think it will stop them. The biggest impact isn’t going to be the news about our relationship, because most people probably know that by now. It’s the photos. Some are said to be really intimate.”

Jimmy was silent for a long time, thinking about the ballet and how they warned her about not causing any drama when they found out about Harry. She promised she would make sure of that but now often wondered if she should have told them earlier so they could have tried to damage control. She knew they weren’t going to be happy and TMZ was just about the worst thing that could have happened regarding drama. Harry went on to show her pictures that they had and said he would have his team e-mail the spread to her so she could prepare herself. Then he apologised about a thousand times.

“Stop, it’s not your fault. And maybe it is time for people to find out. It is just that I hoped it wouldn’t have to be like this… But maybe we caused it by wanting it to remain a secret for so long and not trying hard enough to maintain it. I mean we have been pushing our luck. I think… I need to sit down with the staff and prepare them for what is about to come.”

Harry furrowed his eyebrows and wrapped her in his arms, hugging her tight. A hand flat against each shoulder to press her against his chest. She wrapped her arms around him inside his coat. “I’ll go with you,” he said.

She laid her chin flat against his chest and looked up at him. “Do you have time for that? It seems like your people are going to need you as well.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s the least we can do.”

Half an hour later she found herself at a table in one of the offices at the LAB centre. Around her were directing staff, head choreographers, lawyers and every single member of PR. Once again it dawned on Jimmy how insane it all was. The impact that a relationship between two people could have on so many people. The meeting was short and the plan was clear. Jimmy wasn’t supposed to respond on any of what was about to come and the two of them were to lay low until the biggest storm blew over. The ballet wasn’t going to give any kind of statement in any situation and made clear that they wanted nothing to do with it.

It was only once that someone from PR got to the point of expressing that they felt sorry for Jimmy and it was only because Harry made it clear to everyone that it was Jimmy’s life they were making executive decisions about. Twenty minutes later it was over. She was given the rest of the day off but was told to be back at eight the following morning to pick up rehearsals where they had left of. It seemed hard but Jimmy was happy about it. She didn’t want this to change anything. Not more than it already did that was out of her control.

When she got out of the room she was exhausted and she felt like crying but she also felt Harry’s concerned glance landing on her and swallowed a couple of times before smiling a weak smile. “We are going to be fine, right?”

He grabbed both her hands and nodded. “Of course we are. Are you going to be okay on your own for a few hours? I will come over as soon as I can.”

Jimmy nodded. In all honesty, she couldn’t wait to be alone for a while. Ever since Harry came into the studio and broke the news to her, she hadn’t had a single moment to think about what was about to happen. And the consequences. Harry kissed her goodbye and Jimmy took an Uber home. From the back of the car she called her parents and Olivia and then Billy to update them and after that she send a text to those she also wanted it to hear before they would find it out for themselves and by the time she locked the door of her apartment behind her and fell on the couch, she had received an e-mail from one of Harry’s PR girls titled ‘TMZ spread Harry and Jimmy Wilde’

She stared at the subject for a while. It was so distant and weird. There was a whole team of people out there talking about her love life and making decisions for them that she hadn’t even met. She thought that was scarier than the fact that millions of people were about to see pictures of them together that she hadn’t even known existed. Thinking that, she realised it was probably about time for her to take a look at them.

BREAKING: Harry Styles and ballet star Jimmy Wilde are dating and it’s looking serious. Over the last couple of months TMZ received photos from several sources, confirming rumors that have been circling around for a long time now. Harry and Jimmy Wilde are a couple! The pair met when Harry became the ballet star’s temporary roommate when he was reconstructing his LA mansion and according to one of our sources, they ended up only needing one of the two bedrooms in Wildes downtown LA apartment within weeks. Things became so serious, so quickly that the former 1D star even made the trip to visit his new girl at the scenic inn her parents have far up in the Scottish Highlands over Christmas. There, the pair took a romantic trip to one of the nearby Islands and had a hard time keeping their hands off each other. Other photos reached our offices from several different occasions that shows the pair being all loved up. Styles is known for keeping a low profile regarding his love life so it is safe to assume that he must mean real business with his ballet princess.

About Jimmy Wilde: Jimmy is a 22 year old, English born ballet dancer. O’Conner’s career kicked off at the British Royal Ballet before she moved to LA to join the LA Ballet center as a first soliste with the company. Rumors have been going around in the circuit about Wilde possibly being given the very rare title of Prima Ballerina within the next couple of years. Sources say she has had a very colorful love life but has been single for months before she met Styles. The LA Ballet center was not available for comments on her relationship with Harry.

She spend the next half an hour studying the photos. It were about fifteen different pictures and one video and she couldn’t stop looking at them. Grainy photos of them at a parking strip near a cliff at Skye, holding hands and kissing passionately. Better quality photos of them holding hands and Harry’s hand at the small of her back at the exhibition opening late last year. Photos of them at the New Year’s party that must have been taken moments after she told him she loved him for the very first time. One of them at her parents’ inn by the fire. When he was writing and she sat with him reading. The video was of the moment at her birthday party where she sat on his lap and kissed him. But from a different and better angle than the photos had been. On the video you could clearly see both of their faces. Eyes closed, surrendered to each other and completely unaware of their surroundings. The cameras. It was weird in a way because she had many photos of them together on her phone. Of more intimate moments and from the exact same days as the photos that were published but they had always taken those themselves. It was so surreal to see her with him from a different point of view. The way others saw them.

She couldn’t explain why but looking at those pictures made it all a lot more real than she realised it was before. All these weeks she had completely lived in her own world, completely dedicated her existence to him. Not having space left in her head to think about their place in the world and it showed in the pictures. She was completely unaware of her surroundings when she was with him. Hadn’t thought about their position in the lives of her family and friends and how it would all probably change forever now that she had brought someone as famous as him into it. She didn’t think anyone minded but she definitely underestimated the impact it had. Not just on her but also on everyone around her. And she swore to herself that it would change. It had to or she would end up in the papers like this every other day.

27.
The days that followed were some of the most chaotic of her life. Every day she made it down to the LAB center in a car that they sent to pick her up. Every night she made it back to her flat the same way. She didn’t see Harry by her request, hoping that if they weren’t seen together in public, the storm would blow over quicker, but it was killing her slowly. And every time they speak to each other in video calls, he told her the same thing. But he remained supportive of her decision and kept telling her that someday soon it would all be over and forever behind them.

Having had a taste of the media circus surrounding their relationship, she doubted that. But she didn’t know for how much longer she could keep fooling herself into thinking not seeing him was the best thing to do right now. Because this could have been the best couple of weeks of her life. After months of playing stupid games and trying to get herself to believe that she wasn’t in love with him up to a point of no return, she finally accepted that in fact, she was. And he finally stopped trying to make her believe otherwise. Yet, there she was, coming home to an empty house every single night. She admired him for his patience and most of all for not telling her that her plan didn’t work. Because it didn’t.

So, one evening right after rehearsals were over, she Facetimed him and he immediately answered. He was in his bed in what she assumed was his bedroom. She hadn’t even had the time to see his newly renovated house yet. He looked sleepy and wore an Adidas hoodie with the hood pulled up over his curls and smiled when he saw her.

“Heeeey, princes.” His voice was extra deep. The kind of raw that told her she probably woke him up from a nap.

“I have tomorrow afternoon off, can I come see you then?”

Harry was surprised and silent for a few seconds. “Are you sure about this?”

She nodded instantly. “Yes, I don’t want to do this anymore. I need to be with you.”

He sighed a sigh of relief. “Jesus Christ, I need you to. I’ll have someone pick you up from your house at two, yeah?”

She nodded. Tears already burning in her eyes at the thought of just how much she really missed him. Loving him for barely trying to change her mind. Making her feel like he needed this as much as she did. “Good.”

“Good.”

They disconnected shortly after, when someone knocked on Jimmy’s dressing room door. She told the person on the other side to come in. Thinking it was her physiotherapist with a remedy to reduce the chance of blisters that were due to break out because she had been breaking in new pointes.

She only looked up when she heard the lock on the door turn around. She only looked up too late.

When she slowly turned around in her chair, Scott was already standing there. Blocking the door he had just locked. Bulky and tall as ever, yet he seemed even bigger than she could recall. Her mind blocked immediately and she lost her ability to move. Scream. God, she knew she should scream. He was smiling calmly. He had that look in his eyes that she had seen one too many times. Flashbacks of his weight on top of her, her hair being pulled out of her head and his fists ramming into her breasts blurred her vision. And as he started moving towards her, he began to talk.

“I gave you a chance to change your mind, Rosie. One too many chances if you ask me. I warned you that if it wouldn’t stop, I would come back to remind you that you still belong to me. You will always belong to me.”

She closed her eyes when he reached her and stopped in his tracks. His chest was rising and falling quicker than she had ever seen it move before. The last thing she heard was his voice. Calm as she had ever heard it, while he told her that out of all the things she had done, this was the one she was going to regret the most. The last thing she felt were his long, strong fingers closing around her throat. Pulling her up out of the chair and slamming her against the wall. Unlike all other times, he left no room for her to breathe. Not once, not even at the beginning.

There was no such thing as a tunnel, no memories or flashbacks to look back on her life. First there was light and then there was dark. Very slowly and then a little faster. Which was funny, she thought, because it kind of still was her life in reverse. All there was left at the end was acceptance. Acceptance that apparently she was put on earth to live a shitty life filled with abuse and sadness and that just when things maybe could get better for once, her time was up.

28.
The news of Scott’s death reached her through the police, who originally came in to file a report against him. He drove his car against a tree at full speed after leaving her house. The police believed it to be an accident and was no longer interested in her story as with himself, he killed the relevance of it. To them anyway and that was more frustrating than the fact that Scott would never have to pay for what he did. Instead they wanted to know if he had been under the influence of anything when showing up at her house. If there was anything else that was unusual that she noticed about him.

It cost Jimmy all of the very little strength she had left to speak to the cops. A tall and muscular guy with a dark buzz cut and a smaller, older guy with a grey moustache. Neither of them looking like they wanted to be there. Billy was constantly on the verge of sending them away.

“He always was under the influence of something,” Jimmy said eventually. “And he almost killed me which wasn’t unusual but I was too busy trying to fucking survive to really notice anything else about him.” Still trying to process the news of his death, she spoke softly and in a voice shivering with anger. Beside relief a weird sadness came over her. Despite everything she had wanted better for him. Better than for him to end with his body slammed up against a tree in a car that they had to pile off it. But then again, if better wasn’t an option and neither was him paying for what he had done and this is what it would take for her to be free – either her death or his, this was the better out of two evils.

The police officers lingered in the room, hoping to get more information out of her until the door burst open. Through it came Harry, looking as bewildered as she had ever seen him. Bloodshot eyes and greasy hair. His jaw tight and fists clenched. He flew across the room towards the bed and tears were welling up in the corners of his eyes when he looked down at her. Saw her flinch under his careful touch that had him pulling away in horror before she grabbed his hand and held it. He wore a Rolling Stones tee that was washed one too many times with Adidas track pants and Vans. The urgent smell of anxiety sweat reached her nose and she inhaled a deep breath of it. It wasn’t until then that she knew she was alright. And would continue to be.

In the far distance she was aware of the fact that Billy told her she would be in the waiting room and ordered the officers to do the same. Harry hadn’t even acknowledged them but Jimmy knew that at least the younger of the two was stunned by the sudden visit of a world famous pop star.

With her voice down to nothing but a whisper, she managed to tell him everything that happened that night and she could see him struggle with his emotions. He felt angry, guilty, sad and sorry but all of it was pointless because within a few months, all of it would be behind her, forever. And all she wanted was for him to still be around by then. She told him that and that she knew he couldn’t make that promise but he did it anyway. And she had never seen him so certain of anything before. Soaked in rage and honesty he promised her that he wasn’t fucking going anywhere.

When a nurse came in to check on her, Jimmy could see the astonishment on her face as well. Surely she didn’t wake up that morning thinking it was the day she would meet Harry Styles but she was definitely happy with the turn of events. She managed to stay professional when she told him that: “Ms Wilde had been very lucky given the situation. I’m not a doctor so I can’t give you any details but we are planning to keep her here for observation for the night and she can go home tomorrow.”

Harry nodded politely and then took her outside to take a quick picture when she had gathered the courage to ask him for it. When he came back in a few minutes later he was just ending a phone call. “I just made sure that the hospital won’t talk to the press about what happened here,” he said and Jimmy attempted a smile. It wasn’t until months later that she brought the news out in an exclusive interview with a magazine that she respected and had respected her as well. Not because she needed the pity but because she wanted to spread awareness for domestic abuse. And because she hoped there was at least one person out there that would feel encouraged by her story and dared seek help. She hoped to be that voice that she had needed but never heard when she craved it most.

And when the inevitable question about Harry’s support was asked by the interviewer, she had told them that: He had been the best support she could have wished for while he let her go through it by herself. Because she had asked him to. And because he knew for sure that she could. And that he was the only boyfriend she had ever had that made her feel that way. That made her feel like it was worth believing in herself and her strength. And that therefore, she had loved him more than she ever thought she was capable of.

They sat in silence for a while, just the two of them, the buzzing sound of the bright white lights that accentuated the sea green walls in a very unsettling way. Until Jimmy broke the silence. “You know what the worst part is?” she said and Harry looked up, waiting for her to finish the sentence.

“He will never know that I got to live.”

29.
He didn’t leave her side at the hospital and even took it upon himself to speak to her worried parents on the phone. They were on the verge of getting on a plane and they would have if Harry hadn’t calmed them down. Promised them that if he thought it was necessary, he would have already had them on a plane to LAX. It was the beginning of a very close bond between them, between Harry and her parents, her sister too. And when she was ready to go home, he took her to his place in a wing-doored Tesla with a driver that had been waiting for them at a backdoor of the hospital.

The past 24 hours were a blur but she knew that Billy took care of informing the ballet and they had already given her time off and Harry had tried his best and succeeded to keep the news away from the press. The news of Scott’s death got lost at the bottom of a barely read section in the paper in a small square reporting a ‘tranquilized 28 year old New Yorker got killed when he drove his car off the highway and against a tree’. Not a single mention of his name. Dead without attention, not even a single tribute at either the NYC ballet or the LA ballet when they were informed of what went ahead of the accident. Nothing like he had imagined it. Exactly what made her feel just a little better.

Jimmy was dressed in the clothes that Billy brought her as they arrived at Harry’s house. An oversized grey Royal Ballet hoodie and black Adidas leggings with the white stripes. Harry still wore the same outfit. She didn’t think he had slept since he arrived at the hospital.

“You must be exhausted,” she said as he let her step into his hall.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said firmly and without thinking as she wrapped her arms around him, smiling up at him despite the pain. She could barely walk and felt muscles she didn’t even knew she had. Which was specially odd in her case, because as a ballerina she thought she had felt them all before.

“This is not how it is going to be from now on, Styles. All of this is going to take a hell of a lot of time and you are not going to be a hero the entire time.”

He buried his nose in her hair and smelled her floral perfume, sweat, make-up, hair spray, anxiety.

She didn’t know how long they stood like that. Could have been seconds, could have been minutes. Could have been hours for all she cared. She also knew that no matter how long they stood there for, it would not have been long enough. And he seemed to sense that she needed it. Just that hug and his arms around her despite that it hurt. And when she finally let go of him to be able to take a proper breath, he stole a quick salty kiss from her. There was part of him that seemed relieved that she came out of this still being herself. A beat-up, traumatised version of something that was definitely still a lot like the girl that he got to know.

“In that case, let’s start by taking a bath,” he mumbled, telling her to go to the bathroom after giving her directions. And that he would be there in a minute. Suddenly everything felt so calmingly natural.

Harry’s house was an apartment, a big one. But nowhere near as big as she would expect from someone who made as much money as he did. Jimmy liked that. A lot. Especially when he would later explain to her that too much space made him feel uncomfortable. That this space made him feel secure and cosy. She fell in love with it on that exact day when walking through it for the first time. To get to the bathroom she had to cross the living room to get to another hallway where he told her to take the second door on her left. The walls in his house were a different jewel shade in every room. The deepest of blue and the darkest of green. A rusty orange in the hallway. The high ceilings and authentic crowns were crisp white, as were the window sills and all of the doors. The floor was of an expensive kind of vintage wood, laid down in a gorgeous fishtail pattern. The entire house was eccentrically decorated with velvet, brass, art that cost a fortune and stuff that he collected during his tours around the world. It breathed him. A perfect mixture of the most luxury Gucci store and your next door vintage shop.

The bathroom was enormous. A black floor tiled with hexagon tiles and with a couple of white flowers laid down into it. White metro tiles on the walls behind a black cabinet, brass sinks and marble counter tops. A big and heavy marble bathtub nearest to a wall at the far back. A few candles were dotted around the room. She didn’t think about lighting them so the only dim light came from the huge brass chandelier that hang from the ceiling. The fact that he hardly had any products on the shelves beside the sink or on the washstand gave away that he hadn’t been home a lot yet. She thought about how his shampoo was still in her shower to that very day. Just that morning she had opened to bottled to take a secret sniff like a sad and desperately in love teenager.

It wasn’t until then that she saw herself in one of the ceiling high mirrors above one of the sinks. She knew that the brown hued glass, of the type that always provided you with a convenient tan when you looked into it, did a good job at hiding the truth, but it was still bad. Her neck was blue and red and she could still see his fingerprints. It instantly made her feel out of breath. She hated it, the fingers of a now dead body marking hers. Her lip was cut and she had marks around her upper right arm from when he held her up by it. She could barely stand to look at herself and after a couple of minutes, she turned away. Thinking that maybe later she would want to see it again.

She never did. She would end up avoiding mirrors until the last bruises had faded away. It took weeks.

Undressing herself went slowly and was painful but when the bathtub was filled up and she lowered herself in the hot steamy water, her muscles immediately relaxed a little. She rested her head back and closed her eyes until she heard Harry coming in. He was barefoot and the t-shirt he had been wearing dangled over his shoulder much like she had, that one time he wanted to do ballet with her in the middle of her living room. He had been terrible at it and when they attempted a move that wasn’t only impossible but also possibly very dangerous he ended up carrying her to the bedroom, folded over his shoulder with her face near his ass and hers near his. She smiled faintly at the memory.

“Better now, princess?” he asked and Jimmy nodded as she watched him undress. Thinking, ‘yes, now it definitely is’.

When he threw a long, skinny leg over the edge of the tub, she pushed herself forward to make room for him. Moving back between his legs, he carefully wrapped his arms around her from behind and rested his flat hands on her stomach. Unknowingly comforting the exact part where a fist had landed the night before. She hadn’t even told him about that yet. She looked down at his big hands on her pale skin and his long, by then ringless, fingers before she lazily started to play with them. Brushing the lengths with the tips of her fingers and staring at the circles it created in the water. For a while nothing else happened, for a while there was no future and more importantly no past. No yesterdays with crazy exes or tomorrows with more bruises to be discovered. No ballet careers to be kept and no world fame to deal with. And for a while, all was peaceful and all was good.

And then she started to talk. She told him all those things about Scott that she hadn’t told before. She spoke about the good days, because there had been many and about the bad ones because there had been more, in detail. In a way she never had before. She told him about the day before in gruesome detail too, thinking if she didn’t do it then, she probably never would. Knowing that he deserved to know because he wanted to. She repeated the things he said for the first and the last time and pointed at where he hurt her most. Then she told him about the new ballet piece they were working on. She explained that there was one specifically difficult solo choreography and that right before Scott came in, she had danced it better than she had managed to up until then. He told her that she would do it even better as soon as she was allowed to dance again and she believed him because she thought so to.

Then they talked about everything else. Life and music and poetry and about the many books they both read and loved. She told him how she learned to play the piano but hadn’t done it for years and he told her about how he learned to play the guitar. They spoke about Springsteen and how Call Me By Your Name had been made into a brilliant movie. He spoke about his childhood and even about the early days in One Direction and then the last ones. And how he didn’t think that book was closed for good. It was the first time he answered a question she, as one of very few, had never asked him.

She could have sat there for ages, for the rest of her life if they let her, but the water was getting colder and so was her skin and he must have noticed when he suggested to get out and go to the bedroom. He got up and helped her step on the tiles with her hand tightly wrapped in his. Then he leaned over to grab a big fluffy emerald green towel and wrapped her up in it before quickly drying himself off with a different one. After which he took her hand in his again and led her straight to the bedroom. By then Jimmy was exhausted and barely looked around anymore. It was a big, square room with the biggest bed she had ever seen against the wall opposite from the door. The walls were a rusty shade of orange, the bed was made up with burgundy, navy and crisp white. There were white double doors that presumably led to his closet and a huge bookshelf and she decided that someday soon she was going to spend the afternoon looking through both if he let her. And of course, he was happy to. But not in that moment. Then was for sleep. And more Harry. Preferably for as long as she could have both.

The crawled up underneath the sheets together, all rosy skinned, moist hair and tired eyes and didn’t even use up one-third of the bed. She crawled up against him and they started to kiss. A long, slow and needy open-mouthed sloppy kiss. And after that there was nothing. Nothing but sleep that they were both in desperate need of and that they didn’t wake up from for roughly fourteen hours.

Out of which Harry could really only have taken seven. Because when they woke up and the afternoon was already halfway gone, his phone was exploding. Still, she had to almost order him to get to work before he did something about it. She knew that the album was almost fully done. That the release was going to be announced any time now and that he was going out on the road to do those things pop stars did any time soon, but she couldn’t get herself to think about that just yet.

At first she didn’t notice how Harry, when he came back in after answering yet another phone call, looked at her sitting at the edge of the bed, naked. The sheets a mess behind her. Keeping the secret of their early afternoon save with them. Her legs dangling over the edge with a bottle of beer pressed between her bare and bruised knees. She looked up at him with her light eyes that always seemed to make excuses for her beauty. She didn’t know how he thought she was a song in itself, a whole record ready to be written. One that he would never be able to actually put down the words to. All he could do was just sit and watch and wonder. And admire. And hope he could offer her what she didn’t even know she deserved.

“You’re so beautiful.” She could tell he said it before he knew he was going to. He had never said it so directly either and it made her smile. “No, that’s you…”

She watched him exchange his track pants for a pair of clean blue jeans and they were silent for a while. She knew this indicated that he had to go out and wondered if it was time for her to get dressed as well. As if he could read her mind he told her that he would be gone for two hours and that she could stay if she wanted to. And that he hoped she did.

She got up and placed the empty beer bottle on the floor, but instead of putting something on her body, she walked straight over to Harry, who was fully dressed again and just sat down on a velvet chair across the room to lace up his black and white Vans. She climbed on his lap, a knee pressing in each hip. The fabric of his jeans feeling rough against her already so sensitive bare skin and she looked down.

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she admitted.

He smiled a relieved smile and brushed his thumb across her upper lip. “I think you are the most exquisite person I have ever met.”

She was sure he saw the doubt in her eyes before she quickly closed them for a second. And when she opened them again, they were calm. “That’s still you,” she whispered. “But there is always going to be a part of me that will believe you are going to leave and I don’t want to pressure you into having to prove me otherwise. And the worst part is that you already do, naturally, every day.”

Harry sighed, both his hands were now gently massaging her thighs where he knew it didn’t really hurt anymore. “I am always going to be just arriving or will be about to leave, Jimmy, but when it comes down to it I will always come back to you.”

Jimmy smiled and leaned over, resting her cheek against his chest as he said exactly what she had meant. She felt his already so familiar warmth through his black t-shirt and closed her eyes as the soothing motion of his breathing caused her to move back and forth against his chest ever so slightly. "That’s good enough for now,” she whispered.

Harry crossed his arms behind her back and put his hands around her hips, pressing her even closer against his chest before she felt his chin on top of her head. “I think that will do.”

“You think too much.”

She felt him smile above her head and grinned into his shirt.

30.
Three weeks later, Jimmy was just finishing her first week back with the ballet. Her body was almost completely back to normal and though her mind was far from, it felt good to dance again. She knew it helped her a lot more than just staying home or speaking to her therapist and Harry was the first to encourage her to go back. She had spent most of her time recovering at his place and had a feeling that they had become closer than she ever thought was possible. They talked, read, fucked, kissed, cuddled, took long showers and binge-watched series and she got to know his house while he was out finishing the album. That by then, was only a month and a half away from its worldwide release. She had heard it a couple of times and claimed to be completely unbiased when she decided it was a masterpiece.

Because his people thought promotion for the album couldn’t start soon enough, he was scheduled to be a guest on an American live show that same night. To perform a couple of new songs and to talk. And especially that last part was the reason why she found her phone close to exploding when she entered the dressing room just after the show should have been on.

She fell down in a chair, drenched in sweat and started pulling pins out of her hair with one hand as she put her bare, sore feet in a tub of warm water that was left for her by one of her assistants. Behind her was the first of a series of final dress rehearsals and despite her two-week absence, it had gone really well.

With her free hand she started scrolling through the messages on her phone and it didn’t take her long to discover that apparently Harry had said something about her on a show that had millions of viewers on a bad night. She only needed to log onto her Twitter page to find the specific clip she was looking for. Most news outlets and a frightening amount of his fans had found her in the last couple of months and now floated her feed with a mixture of congratulations, death threats, unwanted opinions of all sorts and convenient links to her exact minute of fame.

She randomly clicked on one of them and was redirected to a YouTube video where Harry, dressed in custom purple floral Prada for the occasion, was sat opposite the presenter on a comfortable velvet couch. Pretty early on in the video, the presenter dropped the ‘Jimmy’ bomb on him.

“Now, Harry… I wouldn’t do this if we weren’t friends but we need to address something… A specific thing that has been all over the media these past few weeks…” The camera zoomed in on Harry, who was already grinning and then zooming out to reveal that the slide show of their by then world famous photos had started playing in the background. She had to give it to them though, they had filtered out the most revealing ones.

“It seems that you have recently developed an interest in classical ballet…”

The audience laughed and Harry’s eyes started to sparkle while he laughed. Jimmy had to bite her lip to stop herself from stupidly laughing with him.

“I was first introduced to ballet earlier this year as you all saw and I have to say ballet is very beautiful, James.”

Everybody laughed again and started cheering as Harry looked meaningfully at him. She hadn’t gotten to see much of Harry the way the world knew him yet but she had to give it to him, he truly was born for the job. Back on the screen Harry suddenly looked a little more serious: “Alright guys, I will answer it for just this once: her name is Jimmy and it is true what they write: I am very much in love with her.”

She wanted to laugh and throw her phone across the room at the same time. There were so many questions she wanted to ask him and before she knew it she was on the phone to him. She waited an eternity before getting his voicemail and disconnected before it got to the point where she could leave a message. She wondered if he had known this was coming and if he had planned on revealing it the way he did. She seriously doubted it and if he had known, his people definitely hadn’t. She wasn’t mad though, if anything it was a relieve.

At that exact moment someone knocked at her door. “Jimmy? People are waiting for you in the lobby, are you alright?”

She heard worry in the voice of the teacher on the other side and it occurred to her that being back in this dressing room should probably have been more traumatizing. It was just that she had so many other things going on to really think about it. She looked at her bewildered face in the mirror. Sweat still coming out of every single pore in her body, eyes wild, hair a mess. “Yeah,” she said hesitantly, “tell them I’ll be out in ten.”

Fifteen minutes later, when Jimmy set foot in the lobby after a quick shower and an outfit change into something less ballerina, she saw him instantly. Sponsors that had attended the first dress rehearsal were coming over to congratulate her on her performance, younger ballerinas wanted to approach her for advise or whatever it was they needed that day, but she only saw him. Two of his bodyguards waiting cautiously at an appropriate distance. Tall and glorious, light tight denim under a black hoodie, fisherman’s cap over his hair. Probably literally drove straight there after the show. He waved sheepishly and she grinned, trying hard to refrain from giving him the finger.

She ignored everyone that tried to approach her as she made her way across the room and realised she could get in trouble for this as all the staff saw it happening. But she figured they would give her the benefit of the doubt for at least a few weeks to come as her almost death had made quite an impact on everyone. She also had a feeling that nobody had recognised Harry yet as she couldn’t see how nobody would have warned her if they had known he was there. Or maybe they just assumed he really was into ballet these days.

He opened his arms for her when she still was another ten steps or so away from him and she walked right into them without hesitating. He pulled her close as she buried her face in his hoodie, taking in the scent and the feel of his arms around her as if she hadn’t woken up exactly the same way just that morning.

“I fucking hate you,” she said while she laughed. Just to let him know that in case he was still wondering, she had seen what he had done.

“Yeah,” he responded calmly, ringed fingers of both his hands spread widely across almost all of her back as he kept pulling her close. “We’ll have to deal with that later.”

There was a lot more they would have to figure out. A lot more that had to be said about a lot of things but those things were no longer about the meaning of them. Because they both knew that out of everything, they had never been more sure of something their entire lives.

31.
When she got off the plane at London Heathrow she finally felt like she could breathe again. The flight was too long for someone who hated it as much as she did. Too packed for someone who needed their space as much as she did. And packed with couples too clingy for someone who was by herself. Which was bad enough as it was, as it gave her too much time to think about all the reasons why that was the case. Getting out of LA was good though. There were so many memories weighing down on her in that city all the time that she just needed to get away from for a while. So it was a good decision to leave. As good as she could make them these days.

These days she was willing to give the world for an hour with him. They were prepared though. And she felt like they were dealing with it the best they could. Because they realised all too well that the first half year of their relationship was not a good reflection of the reality it would soon become. This was reality. Her career always keeping her stuck in LA and his always taking him away from it. But this weekend they were going to be together and she would cherish every second. It was for celebrating too.

Celebrating his new album with an exclusive show for a handful of lucky fans in London and an after party with all of his friends and family from that side of the world. And hers too. People from home. Many of them who were going to see them together in real life for the first time.

The reunion in his hotel room was quick and as intense as you would expect from two people deeply in love who hadn’t seen each other in two weeks. And it was over too soon when they were interrupted by a knock on the door and the entrance of his team of stylists who pushed a rack full of clothes into the bedroom. If they were surprised by how they found them naked in bed with rosy cheeks and messed up hair, it didn’t show. There was no time for jokes or embarrassment anyway. In just under an hour he was expected to be on stage, performing the songs he cared so much about to fans who possibly cared even more.

Keeping with his album aesthetic, he insisted that she wore her metallic pink suit from New Years to the after party, just so he could wear his Gucci suit to match. Jimmy was anything but sure about the whole idea, not keen on sparking any more media attention now that everyone finally had come to terms with their relationship. Their friends and family had never been the problem. Anyone who had seen together had known what it would lead to. Even from day one. And personal opinions, jealousy and worries aside people admitted it made sense before either of them had even been close to daring to think it.

His people, her people and the media had been a whole different story. She had been in meetings over the past couple of months she had never known could exist. Not ever had she realised the amount of people that thought they could be affected by a single love between a boy and a girl. But seeing just how excited it made him and joining him in front of the ceiling high mirror in his dressing room was enough to convince her.

She looked at them together.

At how he towered over her in all his glory. The first boy she wanted to lose herself to without him demanding that she did. The first boy she ever met that she willingly gave all control to without him asking her to give it up. The first boy who let her just be Jimmy though definitely not always understanding what that meant. And being comfortable with that. The first boy she could fight with without fearing he would leave her or worse. The first boy she lived with without being romantically involved with him and definitely the first boy who gave her back her home when that changed. The first boy she always, at any time, wanted to invite back into it and the first boy she willingly gave up her beloved home for to move in with him.

The first boy she knew to effortlessly outshine her in metallic pink.

Ink showing through the sheer fabric of the white shirt he wore under his custom Gucci. Ringed fingers laced with hers. His black nail polish clashing perfectly with her apple green manicure. Her hair as blond as his was brown. Her eyes sparkling more than she had ever known they were capable of, proud smile on his full rosy lips. His rainbow Gucci loafers beside her apple green Prada platform sandals that still only made her able to reach to his chin without him having to bend down. Prada platform sandals that, in true fashion, he had custom made to match her manicure.

One quick kiss and off they went to create their own iconic Justin and Britney moment that the papers would obsess over for months to come. It was what kick-started the Gucci campaign they landed for autumn of the same year and the first of many times that she would fly out of LA to wherever in the world just to spend a couple of nights with him.

From that first kiss in her hallway to wherever he was in the world. And he would always remain worth it.