HARRY STYLES
Three Years Ago
"Can I ask you something without the intention of freaking you out?"
Scarlett slowly looked up at me from her phone, laying on the opposite side of my couch from me. "What?"
"Well, I was just sort of wondering if maybe you've considered the idea of, like...living together."
She blinked at me with an otherwise impossible-to-read expression on her face. "What do you mean?"
I cleared my throat and felt myself start to sweat a bit. "I just thought because you're here all the time at my place with me, so...wouldn't it kind of make sense if you lived here? Financially, I mean."
Then she looks more confused, and I couldn't blame her. That wasn't how I meant to word it. "You want me to move in here because it makes sense financially?"
Albeit nervously, I laughed. "No–I mean, yes, but not just for that reason. It would just be a perk, but I feel like it makes sense, no? If we're together almost every single day?"
She shut her screen off and set her phone on the couch to give me her attention. "What happens when we stop seeing each other?"
I immediately noticed that she said "when", not "if", and told myself that it was a slip-up on her end. "Well...you could live with Seth until you found a new place, right? Or you could keep this flat and I could find a new one."
Her nose scrunched up, which was her universal sign for when she wasn't into the idea of something. "Just seems like not a great idea. Too stressful."
Hesitating for only a few seconds, I nodded and watched her pick her phone up again. "Yeah, you're probably right."
***
"Dude," Seth slaps his hand down on the desk we share, making me jolt in my seat.
"What?" I exhale at the scare as my pulse starts to slow again.
"Why are you so fucking antsy? You're stressing me the fuck out."
"Oh," I set my pen down now that I realize I've been clicking it open and closed as a nervous tick. My leg also just barely stopped bouncing. "I don't know. Sorry."
He gives me the look a best friend does when they're silently reminding you that they know you better than you think they do.
"I'm sort of thinking about asking Scarlett to move in with me...permanently."
Under usual circumstances, I think both of us understand that this shouldn't be such a shocking request. To be quite frank, if a couple had been together for as long as Scarlett and me, minus our two years apart, it would be strange if we didn't ever live together. But these aren't usual circumstances and Scarlett is far from being a usual girl.
"Are you?"
"Yeah, I mean...it's been over a year now since she came back to London and just shy of a year of us being together since then. And she hasn't gone back to her flat in I don't even know how long now. She'll go back to get things, but I don't remember the last time she slept there."
Seth gives me a slow nod in return. "I guess that's a good sign."
"And things are so far a lot different than they were when we were together the first time," I quickly add. "We're exclusive with the label now, and we say we love each other daily without it being weird. So...moving in together only makes sense, right?"
