'Tis The Damn Season

part one

December 2016

You've always had a thing for him, who didn't? He was larger than life, commanding attention as soon as he entered a room. He was just popular enough to be able to weave in and out of the different groups in your hometown but mostly kept to himself. You would sit at sleepovers and talk about how much you fancied him but never doing anything about it. His band was performing at a school concert and that is when you knew there was something different about Harry Styles. The way he lit up on stage calling out different names in the crowd, jumping around like he was doing his best impression of Mick Jagger.

So, when the shy boy who befriended everyone went to the X-Factor and seemingly never came back, the longing for him got stronger. Harry Styles, was now on the biggest show in the country and you felt silly because all you could ever think about was how you should've, could've, would've and now the chance was gone.

So, when he walks into the local bar five years after you last saw him you were taken back. The shy, awkward 16-year old was now a tall, broad man. He grew into his features perfectly, wide green eyes to match his toothy smile, his left dimple still sunk into his face like the first time he took the stage at battle of the bands. He traded his school uniform of a blue polo for a black button down, it looks like silk from where you're standing, the top three buttons undone a faint outline of swallows peaking through. He was with the other boys from his high school band, a growing collection of pints scattered around their table.

You were older now, had a career in the city of your own, a nice apartment and a solid group of friends however, as you stood there watching him you felt silly and it immediately transported you back to school. It wasn't his celebrity status that made him feel unreachable, you've actually used it as a fun-fact throughout your adult life. Watching the disbelief in people's faces when you told them that yes, Harry Styles was indeed your former classmate. They'd always pray for more and you'd have to let them down easy, telling them that you haven't seen him in years and at this point, you'd know just as much as they did.

The thing that interested you most about him still all these years later is how he seemed to keep a level head on his shoulders. Everyone knew it was because of the way he was raised, the only boy in a house with two strong women. There was always something different about him perhaps it was how shy he was about his talents, yes he was in a local band but they were all just doing it for the fun of it. He didn't tell anyone about his audition for X-Factor because he didn't want to jinx it. It felt like one day he left town as your high school crush and he came back the most sought after man in the world.

He made the first move over, kissing you on your cheek and greeting your group with a string of compliments. He quickly began asking you and your group of three about your life as if he wasn't the international pop star who just filmed a Christopher Nolan movie after his boyband days were over, not that you were keeping up (you were). His pleasantries had your entire group swooning because no matter how famous he got, he always had a way of finding his way back to being just Harry, the Northern boy who loved a backyard house party and never said no

As the night went on it felt like something was pulling the two of you together. Groups suddenly merge as you all begin to gossip about the things each of your Mum's have said about each other. There are no bigger town gossips than parents whose kids have moved away. The group stayed like that for a bit, shouting over one another trying to connect the dots in each other's lives.

Harry sat next to you not directly, leaving a stool in the middle to create distance. You weren't going to complain, you watched his hand cup his drink fixating on the rings that he had on every other finger, a new addition to the boy you used to know. You tried to get yourself to look away but your vision kept coming back to them. The rings felt like an extension of him, a backstory of the boy you haven't seen in five years.