small world

chapter 38

And every girl in the room sang back to them.

For the boys I could only imagine the gratification of ten thousand girls singing the words to your music back at you, on key not missing a beat, the boys fed off of their energy. For me, it brought tears to my eyes. There was no prouder moment than to see the people you love succeed and love what they do, bouncing around stage being themselves and getting this reaction. Their dreams were becoming real.

“They’re real,” a girl behind me gasped and it tugged at my heartstrings, what it must be like to see your idols perform in person for the very first time, people you saw from the beginning and rooted on all the way through, personalities you saw in video diaries and admittedly fell for. The pictures they reblogged and the songs they heard all became real to them right before their eyes. I turned around to see the crowd behind me, looking up every seat was filled by a crying, singing girl with their faces on her shirt, their lyrics on a poser, and smiles that lit up the room. My eyes scanned the room and I shook my head in awe, and as they lowered I barely heard whispers in earshot.

“Is that Charlie Parker?”

“Oh my god, don’t look now but the girlfriends are all front row!”

“That’s the cutest thing I have ever seen.”

“You must be so proud Charlie!” the same voice who gasped in admiration moments ago said to me noting the welling in my eyes, I smiled almost at lost for words making eye contact with the girl’s smiling hazel eyes “I’m so happy for them, this is surreal.”

Warm smiles over mutual feelings were exchanged before I turned back to face the stage, and from that moment on my eyes never left, like the pull the earth had on the moon I couldn’t take my eyes off of them even if I tried. They poured everything into every song, every verse, every lyric, every note. Every song felt better than the last, I could feel the lyrics of certain songs connecting to me especially when Harry sent a smirk in my direction when they were being sung or he himself was singing about me. I still got goose bumps when they sang ‘Everything About You’, every time I heard it, it’d felt like the very first time on Alan Carr. Every time Harry sung his eyes dove into mine, and for split seconds the screams faded and the crowd disappeared and it felt as if we were the only two people in the room.

Throughout the performance they oozed perfection and enthusiasm, their upbeat songs they bounced around on stage without any set moves needed because every single girl who was there loved and appreciated them for being themselves 100% of the time, including on stage. My eyes shifted from boy to boy as their solos came up and as they did quirky things, but they always seemed to fall back on Harry. I’m almost for certain that in this moment I was falling even more in love with him, something I hadn’t imagined possible but a feeling that was so definite. I fell hopelessly for the way he sang so easily, for the way he pushed his arm down when he was hitting an amazing note, how he closed his eyes and threw his head back while he sang, losing himself in his music.

There was one moment, after his big What Makes You Beautiful solo just as the song ended, after nailing it he took a breath, stepped back and looked out at the audience. A camera zoomed in on his face, projecting onto two screens on either side of the stage whilst he scanned the people there for him, and as his eyes sailed along the sea of fans they welled up and glistened like the ocean during a summer sunset. When he got to the edge where the fans met back with the side of the stage, his eyes found their way to mine, locking together breaking a smile across his face.

“I love you,” his lips spelled out toward me, and even more than when I woke up this morning, I loved him too.

 HARRY