Dear Friend,

chapter 9

Harry Styles

Seemingly out of nowhere I got a text from Lennox asking about my plans and if I would be free. I was immediately making arrangements to take whatever time I could get with her.

We were at Nate and Evie's when I got the text from Lennox. Evie told me that she had just left before I had gotten there and without giving up too much detail she shared that Lennox had a date and it didn't end well so she went to their place for their weekly gossip session.

I kept trying to pry more information from Evie but she kept telling me she was 'sworn to secrecy' or whatever, and when I asked Nate to tell me all he gave me was a head shake and a shrug telling me that he didn't know anything.

I knew it was a total lie. Evie is the worst person to trust with a secret because she'll immediately spill it to either Nate or Lennox.

Since neither of them would break and tell me what had happened, I knew I would have to ask Lennox myself. We've been spending more time together and we've been texting more often too. It seemed like we picked up like normal. I felt like our time apart never happened.

I knew she was still waiting for an answer and I had promised to give her the full story, but we both needed to regain the trust of each other again before that.

Lenn also seemed to spark something in me which got me back in the studio, pushing out new songs for the album deadline that was quickly approaching.

The other day, when I brought her lunch, I had a melody stuck in my head and ended up going home and writing an entire song that was inspired by the sign of classroom rules she had hung up on her classroom wall. In big rainbow letters, it said 'Treat People With Kindness' and I was able to make it fit with the melody I had on loop in my head, and the by next day we started recording. Whatever slump I was in before seemed to be cleared by now.

I was sitting at my piano in my studio at home, trying to kill time before I went over to L's place. I was starting to play another soft melody and pulled out my voice notes app to record what I was playing. I grabbed the songbook off the bench next to me looking at the scribbles of possible lyrics and titles I had jotted down but nothing seemed to match how I wanted it to.

I figured I had wasted enough time and was bored of just waiting around in the unnatural silence of my apartment I grabbed my keys to meet Lenn at her place. I was going to be there way earlier than planned but our plans weren't super serious.

We used to have a pumpkin carving competition each year and we had plans to do it with Evie and Nate on Halloween but I wasn't going to make it so Lennox insisted we do it today instead.

She made the executive decision that it would be less of a mess to just paint the pumpkins. When I accused her that she had the upper hand with painting her sass came out and she asked if I was scared of losing. She won every year so I knew I would lose either way but messing with her was fun anyways.

I told her I could bring paint or paintbrushes and she ended up laughing at me in response and then sending me a picture of the overwhelming amount of art supplies she had.

I got to her apartment and knocked on her door, being met by her wearing a bright blue crewneck that made her eyes look more blue than usual. Her hair was pulled into two braids, and her dark-framed glasses were resting on her face.

She had a confused look on her face as she opened the door looking at the watch on her wrist and then toward the clock in her kitchen before she spoke up to me.

"H, you're like an hour early, I thought you were coming at 2:00?"

"Got bored." I shrugged and continued to stand in the doorway before she opened up the door for me.