serendipity // harry styles au

chapter 1

The house was different with each of them. With Harry, it was filled with music - only ever heard from a record player. The kitchen was never used, except for the microwave with an occasional TV dinner. And he constantly had friends around - in the guest rooms, out on the deck drinking beer, or just using the shower after they'd spent the morning down at the beach and needed somewhere to wash off.

With Andy, the house stayed silent. She really only ever did three things while here: read, write and sleep. She did use the kitchen, stocking the fridge with fresh food every morning from the market, cooking for herself something new every night. Sometimes her dad came down from New York and spent a few days reading, writing and sleeping - just as Andy did.

Neither of them knew the other, and each season, only slight remnants of the other remained. When Harry arrived in the summer of 2018, Andy had left a bottle of Sriracha in the fridge, and a copy of a Truman Capote novel on the bedside table. In the winter of 2018, Andy had found sex wax on the deck and an Elton John record left on the machine.

Each season, without meaning to, they left parts of themselves at the house. And each season, both Harry and Andy tried to imagine who would leave such things. Harry, specifically, was always worried about meeting whoever it was that left this stuff. After the Capote novel, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses found down the ridge of a couch, and a vanilla candle in the ensuite bathroom, he'd pulled together an image of a woman that made it almost disappointing every time he met a girl and she hadn't ever read Capote, or preferred a citrus-smelling candle to the sweet of a vanilla one. 

But neither one of them ever saw each other, or tried to find out who the other was. They were just left with small clues, and images of another person's life that ran somewhat parallel to their own life. 

However, one summer, Andy ventured to Southampton at the same time of the year everyone else did, rather than during her preferable secluded winter-time. She was staying with a friend up in East Hampton, and rather than her usual read, write, repeat situation, she was being her more New York-self: drinking, dancing and socialising. 

One afternoon,  Andy and her friend, Nora, ventured down to the beach in Southampton, wanting to stray away from the larger group they were spending the weekend with. Andy felt almost like she was cheating: walking along the familiar beach, but not treating as she usually did. She was holding a beer, slightly buzzed from lunch, and her friend was blasting music from a portable speaker. She seemed like a teenager, not the calm person she tended to be during the winter. For the whole walk, she almost dreaded seeing the small house just up beyond the sand dunes. However it was she remembered it, she was worried she'd see it completely differently on a hot summers day, while slightly drunk.

The house was one of the smallest on the beachfront - however small a house in Southampton can be. It has a white wooden outside, and its paint had worn a bit from the weather, but it made it look better, not worse. The front deck stretch across the width of the house, and looked out towards the bay. Andy would usually pull one of the arm chairs from the living room onto it so she could curl up comfortably and have a good view of the water, and the white noise of waves crashing not dulled by the glass sliding doors. In the winter, the warm yellow lights of the inside made the house look like the sun against deep grey clouds. The house, in Andy's eyes, was the epitome of home, comfort and solitude. But when she saw the house for the first time during the summer, she felt no sense of familiarity. 

Harry, who was lodged there at the time - obviously - didn't bring the arm chair out onto the deck to read. Instead, the space where Andy usually read had been loaded with surfboards. A bunch of what clearly seemed to be rich-boys-on-vacation sat at the outdoor table, all with a beer in hand, like Andy down on the beach. You could tell they were artsy boys - left wing rich kids who spent the summer in the Hamptons to write a novel, or songs for an album. They were playing loud 70s music which drowned out the music Andy and her friend had been playing from the speaker.