Two days after his stargazing outing with Taylor, Harry noticed he was acting particularly out of character.
He hadn't ever been the type to be distracted – even when he was a child in preschool – he had always been able to focus on one task for sometimes up to fourteen hours at a time. His brain was just wired that way. He'd been known to work for a full day on a coding project – with no breaks for food or anything – just him and his computer, stuck in a world where it was just them that existed and mattered.
It was moments like this when his personal assistant, seeing him in yesterday's clothes with slight stubble above his upper lip the next morning when she came into work, would close his laptop and force him to go home, take a shower, and sleep; ordering him to only come back to work the following day.
Harry didn't have problems with concentration.
But for the entire weekend, his mind couldn't stop wandering whenever he wasn't actively focussed on schematics or a computer screen – like when he was preparing dinner for himself at night, he would wonder for a moment what Taylor was doing at that moment. Was she doing the same as him? Did she still have a patient with her or had she gone upstairs, where he had deduced was the lavish townhouse she lived in. Would she watch TV or choose to read a book in the evening?
This had happened a few times – that his mind wandered to his psychologist like this – and he found his curiosity slightly annoying, but not completely unfounded. Taylor knew a lot more about him from their first two sessions than most of his acquaintances had found out about his life in many years. He, on the other had, knew almost nothing about her, besides the basic information he'd found on her online while hacking her phone company – he knew her age, basic identification information, even bank card numbers and the other mostly random things she'd told him – but besides that, he knew nothing too specific about Taylor Swift.
For most of the next week, when he wasn't preoccupied with wondering about a certain blonde, Harry immersed himself in his work and in a few minor trial runs in his lab – luckily, all of them were scientific and not social experiments.
It had snowed sometime during the middle of the week, and everything outside of his apartment and office was covered in a translucent layer of frost and the freezing temperatures left his breath visible in the air every time he breathed. The snow sat on rooftops and on windowsills, reminding him slightly of the weather around this time of year in England.
It seemed as if the snow had arrived with his sister, who was in town for a few days on business. Gemma had, predictably, made time to go to dinner with him on Thursday night, so the two of them could catch up on each others' lives. Harry didn't object to much his sister said – she was after all, the reason his Friday evenings were spent in Uptown Brooklyn seeing a psychologist – so he found them a nice restaurant down the street from the hotel she was staying in.
The first thing he noticed when the host had showed him over to where Gemma was already sitting was the fact that her hair was now a shiny platinum blonde colour. Harry couldn't pretend to understand his sister's relationship with colouring her hair, but he thought that this new colour looked rather nice on her, and he told her so as he sat down.
She thanked him and smiled, noticing that he also had a smile – be it small – on his face. She wasn't used to seeing her robot brother showing emotion this openly. When they had both looked over the menu and ordered drinks in the companionable silence, Gemma leaned back in the booth and studied her brother carefully. She smiled a little bit and then said, "How are you doing little bother?"
"Brother," Harry corrected, swatting at her with his menu even though he was smiling at his sister.
"Right, right. Sorry," she laughed a little and the stopped and said seriously, "You know, I'm proud of you. There was a time I was scared I wasn't ever going to see you smile again. But this is one of the few times I'm glad to be wrong."
Harry's own smile faltered a little bit, but he said, "Working helped a lot; it's got me through a lot."
At that moment, their waiter came back with Harry's orange juice and Gemma's lemonade and they placed their food orders. He went away and they didn't really have the heart to resume their previous conversation, so Harry dutifully started a new one.
"I actually called Mum and Dad yesterday, they were pretty surprised. Really happy to hear from me."
Gemma almost spat out her mouthful of lemonade at his words. The Harry she knew would never call their parents voluntarily when it wasn't one of their birthdays. Harry didn't like to waste time on emotional attachments that weren't her, and so this was a huge surprise to her.
"Wait, is this all Taylor's work?" she asked, eyes wide and smiling.
"Partly," Harry said curtly, hiding the blush that bloomed across his cheeks at the mention of her name. He was bright red, possibly because she had been on his mind so often and it was a bit weird for her name to be said out loud instead of in his own head.
"Well, I'm glad if she's helping you express your feelings, Harry," Gemma said, and squeezed his hand in that way that made him calm down immediately and feel as if he wasn't so alone.
-
When Harry showed up the next day to Taylor's house he'd though about her in passing five more times. He assumed that it was just something friends did when they hadn't seen each other lately and brushed it off.
When he knocked gently, the door opened and Taylor was standing there, right in front of him, real and everything. And something tugged inside his chest and he thought for a second that he might be having a heart attack, and then laughed slightly at the thought. She's smiling as usual, drawn up to her full height and almost as tall as he is, in tight blue jeans and a black crew neck sweater with a ridiculously big cat on the front.
"Hey Harry," she said, but it was slightly muffled because her lips were buried in his coat as she hugged him close. Harry didn't know what to do with his body at first when she latched on, because oh God, this was his psychologist. But she was also his friend who he'd been thinking about for the past week and that he'd maybe missed her company. And with that, his body began to relax and his arms, that had been pinned to his sides slowly wrapped around her torso at a calculated position – not too low around her waist, but not high enough to make it awkward.
He counted three seconds and pulled away from the hug at the same time as Taylor did and she beamed at him. He was about to walk into the study where she saw patients most of the time when he felt a warm hand on his chest, and it must be Taylor's but he didn't process the contact immediately.
"Not, yet. We're going to go play in the snow."
"Uh, I'm sorry what was that?"
"You heard me. Spontaneity is the spice of life, Harry," she said, pulling on a coat over her outfit and slid her sock covered feet into boots.
Harry heaved a sigh, and thought about how Taylor would be the death of him – when he had arrived ready for literally anything on the list she'd given him, she completely turned the tables and added snow to his evening.
Taylor was opening the front door again when Harry surprised both of them, by reaching for her arm and pulling her back towards him.
Their faces were centimetres apart and he cursed himself for pulling her back with too much force. Her breath fanned across his face as she stood stock-still, face close enough to his to see the small scar on his chin and the slight stubble on his upper lip. Taylor shot him a face that was equal parts confused and startled at his sudden movement.
"You can't go outside," he said curtly.
Taylor searched his eyes for some meaning in his words while he looked flustered, the close proximity messing with his head.
"Sorry... what I meant was that, for your height and weight, you should be dressed warmer."
Taylor stared at him emotionlessly for a second and then burst into a giggle. "For real?"
"I'm being so serious," he said, even though he found a smile on his lips, "It's roughly 5 degrees Celsius outside, and not putting on more layers increases your chances of catching illness by almost 65%. Which means going out with just a coat on is inadvisable."
Taylor saw something like genuine concern in his eyes and felt a slight flutter in her heart. She hadn't realised before, but the cold had made Harry's nose turn red at the tip. Harry claimed that he was bad at human interaction, but she could tell that he had the capacity to consider other people's feelings and express his own emotions. It was moments like these, when she felt as if she was getting through to the Harry underneath the genius.
She grinned and gripped his forearm just above where his hand was holding her arm and twirled around, completely taking him by surprise and pulling the both of them towards and the wide staircase that led to the first floor of the house.
Harry panicked a little bit at the turn of events, and at the prospect of entering her personal living space. He almost had to jog up the carpeted steps to keep up with Taylor and her agile and excited pace. After a curve, the staircase led them to an open area on the next level of the house, to a room decorated impeccably in the same classy theme as the rooms downstairs. There was a huge screened TV mounted onto one wall, with a long, white sofa facing it, covered in patterned pillows and a matching khaki throw blanket hanging over one arm.
The room was huge, with another expensive looking rug, in front of the couch, with several doors leading off of it. Harry felt his hand slacken slightly on her arm as he turned completely around and took in all the details of the room he was in. He had given no thought to how big Taylor's house was – granted, he had only been granted access to the lower half – but now he was slightly baffled by how she lived alone in a place so big.
To his right hand side, there was a door that he saw Taylor disappear into with a 'Feel free to look around, I'll be back in a few minutes.'
Harry broke out of his temporary daze and registered that her smell – cinnamon and a sweet perfume.. and something fruity – hung lazily in the air around him. He stepped forward and spotted a low table against the wall by the door to his right with framed pictures resting on top of it. He picked up the first one – Taylor as a toddler, with curly blonde hair and a backpack on her shoulders with an excited expression he had seen before on her face. He smiled and picked up the next photo, in a silver frame. This one was many years later, and had a teenage Taylor and a dark haired boy with sharp features and bright eyes holding each other close. Harry suddenly felt slightly uneasy, and put the picture down. The last picture, he couldn't place – there was a blonde little girl who'd been photographed mid-giggle, with flowers in her hair. She couldn't have been more than eight years old and looked a lot like Taylor, so he'd just assumed it was her and moved away from the table and through the door she'd gone through a few moments before.
He found himself in a hallway that led to the open door of a large, gleaming sliver kitchen on one end. He peaked through the other door which was slightly ajar, and deduced that it was Taylor's own bedroom, since she was standing with her back to him, rummaging in a closet, with her coat thrown onto the huge bed behind her. Harry quickly returned to the living room and seeing as Taylor still seemed busy, he went through the door leading to the left of the room.
On the far end of the hall, he found a bathroom, very clean with a mirror that had lights all around the frame over a porcelain basin. Harry left the flowery-smelling bathroom without even noticing that there was a pink princess toothbrush in the cup holder.
Next door to the bathroom, was a guest bedroom that hardly looked used. When Harry was turning into the last door on the hall, he thought about how he'd basically gotten a glimpse inside Taylor's head and insight into her everyday life – he'd seen the person she was before she came down the stairs and be came his psychologist.
He frowned a little bit out of confusion at the large pink letter 'K' nailed onto the door of the last room. The door was almost closed, but not completely, so he had to push it so he could step inside. What was in there, though was the last thing he expected.
The walls were painted in a pale pink, and several popstars beamed from posters on the wall of the bedroom that looked like it belonged to a little girl. There was a twin sized bed in the corner of the wide room, there was also a white desk and shelves that wrapped around the walls, and were filled with books.
On the bedside table, there was a lamp that resembled a fairy – with her poofy skirt being the lamp-shade – and a picture of the same girl with the flowers in her hair in the photo he'd seen earlier. This time the girl was clinging onto a slightly younger looking Taylor's back as they both laughed. The photo looked like it was taken candidly.
"I was wondering when you'd make it in here," came a warm voice from the doorway, where Taylor had a sort of poignant expression on her face.
Harry shook his head to rid himself of the foggy confusion in his head. "Taylor, who does this belong to? This room, I mean."
"This is my daughter Kennedy's room."
-
After Harry had gotten over the initial shock, and regained his ability to breathe, Taylor had led him, wordlessly to the big couch in the middle of the house and sat there with him, while he looked lost inside his own head. She didn't really know what to expect from him. She hadn't purposefully kept it from him she was a mother – it just sort of didn't seem very relevant to tell her patient (who was now admittedly her friend) that she had a daughter.
"Are you surprised? Ugh, obviously you are. I'm sorry I haven't mentioned it before. It's just – we haven't known each other for all that long."
"No..." Harry found his voice and breathed in deeply, looking over at Taylor's form, with her legs tucked underneath her on the couch.
"No, it's not something you should apologise for," he began, trying to reassure her that this wasn't something she should feel bad about. He hadn't been in the business of trying to preserve other people's feelings for a long time and it felt slightly odd, but he continued. "I mean, we haven't even known each other for two weeks. I just feel like I know nothing about you, and if we're really going to be uh, friends, then um... I think we should share more about ourselves, Taylor."
She looked up from where she had been staring at her hands to Harry, who looked slightly bashful. She took a deep breath.
"I'll tell you about it," she said, at last.
Harry's head shot up and stared at her, surprised. He'd half been expecting her to deny his request, or throw him out of her house, like one of his previous girlfriends from his extremely short-lived relationships had done to him once. Not that Taylor was his girlfriend or anything – or that he was having thoughts of her like that...
Taylor shot up and walked over to the little table by the door, returning a second later with the silver framed photo of the dark haired teenage boy and her younger self. She handed it to him.
"That's a picture of Tom and I. He's Kennedy's dad. Uh," she sighed, as if remembering a story she didn't tell very often. "We met when I was still in high school. He was a year older than me, and he had this British accent that I absolutely adored. We started dating, and it was good, really good. We were really serious about each other. Tom and I had plans to go to college at the same place and get married one day. It was great, really. He graduated high school, and a year later I did too, and I joined him at Berkley. We shared an apartment, and honestly, I though he was the one. I loved him," Harry felt his insides twist a little in that moment, but he ignored it. "He was travelling a lot back then with his band – they were really good. At the time, everything just seemed so perfect – a stable relationship with a British band member – life was just going well.
It wasn't until I was nineteen, and I found out I was pregnant, that things sort of crumbled. Tom wasn't ready to stop travelling with his band and have a family. He never said it, but I could tell. He said it was just one more tour – just another gig. I could tell when he came home that he didn't want to throw away his music career – his life – to get a 9 to 5 job and raise a baby.
His band signed a deal in LA, and I couldn't make him give up on his dream – that's not who I am, but I just wished he cared more about our child, you know?"
The whole time she was speaking, Harry had been staring blankly at the picture of her and Tom, his mind spinning at all the information it was being bombarded with. But when she'd asked him the rhetorical question, he looked up at her and saw her blue eyes watery and sad.
Given their close proximity on the couch, Harry reached over her shoulder and pulled her in towards him, in an effort to comfort her, like he'd seen people in films do, when a friend was upset. She leaned into him as they sat side by side, Harry's arms around her.
"Tom left us when Kennedy was four years old – how could he pass up a world tour?" she laughed humourlessly. "It didn't really matter because it wasn't even like he'd been there those first four years, really. He sent money obviously, but besides that, he didn't even keep in touch for about a year, until I called him one night and told him I was done.
He stayed out of our lives for a long time – by that point, I had my psychology degree and I was practising and pretty successful – my daughter and I moved to New York, when she was five and this is where we've lived since. It's pretty big for the two of us, but it's home. Tom came back and basically demanded a relationship with his kid last year – after practically neglecting her for almost a decade, but I couldn't deny her an opportunity to know her dad. That's where she is right now – Tom has an apartment in Brooklyn, and he takes her on Friday evenings."
It fell silent when she had stopped taking and Harry barely moved, trying to absorb all this new information that was being thrown at him. However, breaking the silence, was Taylor's shaky exhale and he saw a single tear running down her cheek.
"Thank you for telling me all of that," he said softly, because her ear wasn't that far from his mouth.
Taylor just nodded.
"You're really good at this," she sniffed.
"Hardly," Harry said, sure of the fact that he wasn't adequately comforting someone who was upset.
"No," Taylor said, turning her head to the side, so that her cheek rested on his chest instead. "I mean holding me. This feels really nice."