Harry does not recognize Sophie right away.
Her long, black, silky hair that he used to love is now strawberry blonde and sits over her shoulders. She has finally gotten rid of her old cheetah-printed glasses that took over half of her face, and swapped them with those trendy rimless glasses you can see on practically every Instagram model. She also looks a lot taller, but it is probably just because of the pastel pink stilettos she is wearing.
It takes Harry a minute to realize that the short-haired, stiletto-and-pant-suit-wearing girl walking toward him is indeed Sophie.
Harry recalls how much Sophie used to hate wearing heels. On their first date, she wore a pair of high-heeled gladiator sandals but after only ten minutes of walking, confessed how badly they hurt her feet. She apparently only wore them to look taller because she was five-feet-tall in flats and "would look like a midget" standing beside the six-foot-tall "heartthrob" (yes, she called him that). She now walks in them with so much ease, and Harry can only wonder how much more she has changed in other aspects.
It has been three years since the last time he saw her, three years since he left without goodbye.
Harry is particularly well aware of what three years can do to a person because he, too, has changed. His hair is now as long as hers, he is now a pescatarian and thus can no longer eat Adobo in that Filipino restaurant she brought him in on their first date. Oh, and One Direction, the boyband he became famous for, has by now disbanded, and it is the reason why he is here today.
Here. Today. In the backstage of the Ellen Show... With Sophie.
On the first night Sophie has not heard from Harry, she was convinced she'd been played. Harry had always had quite the reputation as a womanizer, and Sophie—despite not at all looking like his type—believed she has been the newest addition to his "collection" of women. She thought that the sole reason she'd been able to pique his interest was because she was Asian and thus appeared to him as "exotic." She convinced herself that she was not as special as he made her feel, that what they "had" was all in her head, and that she would never see him again.
But here they are today, in the backstage of Ellen, sitting across from each other—Harry with his guitar, about to promote his first single as a solo artist, and Sophie, having just released a #1 New York Times best-selling fiction book that is about to be turned into a Netflix film, and ready to be interviewed on TV for the first time.
The twenty-year-old Sophie would never in a million years have believed that she would cross paths with Harry again, let alone in Ellen! But the twenty-three-year-old Sophie is here, and the twenty-six-year-old Harry is staring at her.
Now that she is sitting in front of him, he begins to notice the smaller changes in her appearance, such as the tattoo of a sunflower on her left ankle, the fact that she now waxes her brows, and her pierced ears.
Yes, her ears are now pierced.
Harry's chest tightens as he remembers how terrified she was of needles, and how she told him she'd only get her ears pierced if he did. He promised her that they would get their ears pierced together the next day.
That day never came. Harry went back to London and never looked back.
Three long years have passed since then. Harry has toured the world with One Direction twice, dated three Victoria's Secret supermodels, and performed with his (and Sophie's) idol, Stevie Nicks in four shows!
The world seems to have moved on, and Harry genuinely believed that he has, too, but the way his heart is racing now by the mere fact that she is in the same room as he is, makes it very clear he hasn't.
He so badly wants to catch up with Sophie, just like the old times when he could freely tell her anything and everything on his mind. He wants to tell her why the band broke up—Zayn's dispassion, the ridiculous Larry rumors, and the many, many inside arguments inside the band that no one else besides them knows. He wants to tell her what it's like to perform with Stevie Nicks, and how her hair smells like sunshine. He wants to make her a movie list with all the interesting movies he has watched since they parted, and let her know that he's watched and loved every single movie on the list that she made him.
Above all, he wants to tell her why he left.
But he knows what he has done. He knows that the adoration she must have felt for him at least once has probably turned into hate by now. He knows that she would not want to listen to anything he has to say, and rightfully so.
Still, he cannot let her go again this time, at least not without hearing her voice once again—her voice that he hasn't heard in three years, and will probably not hear in three more if he doesn't take his chance now. So he shakes out his long, curly hair, breathes in, breathes out, and tries to find the courage to speak.
But what does anyone say to a person they ghosted?
"Hi"? "Hey"? Is "hi" too formal, given that they were once really close friends? Or is "hey" too casual, given that he left her hanging?
The answer he chooses is neither and both...at the same time.
"Hii-ey, uhm, Sophie," Harry cannot get stupider if he tried.
Sophie looks at him, forces an awkward smile, and takes a magazine from the pile under the coffee table. She begins to flip through the pages and does not speak a word. This is Harry's cue to shut up.
Harry, being Harry, of course does the exact opposite.
"Would you mind if I practice for a little while? I'll perform in, ehm, about fifteen minutes and I thought I could run through the song before the performance."
"No, go on," Sophie returns to reading her magazine. Or at least pretending to read her magazine.
Harry begins strumming his guitar, and Sophie internally struggles not to ask him when he learned to do so.
You see, Sophie has blocked Harry in all of social media before setting all of her accounts to private. She also blocked the words "Harry" and "Styles" on Twitter and Instagram so that she would not see news about him on her feeds (which is also the reason why she's never read any news about Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex in three years). Everything about Harry—his hair, his change in style, and the fact that he now plays the guitar—is new to her.
But instead of asking, Sophie tries to focus on the magazine article she's reading about the 5 key health benefits of honey, which is kind of hard when you hate the taste of honey with burning passion (she does) and when you're sitting in front of a drop-dead gorgeous boy (she is). But she's doing it. She's reading, and she looks focused.
At least until Harry begins to sing.
Tastes so sweet, looks so real
Sounds like something that I used to feel
But I can't touch what I see
We're not who we used to be
We're not who we used to be
We're just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me
Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat
It doesn't take long before she realizes that Harry Styles may have written her a song about her.
