#the sudden cut to Charles singing a little off-key but you could hear the smile | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

loudsuitlover · 6 years ago

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Ohana

A/N: New series. I’m super excited about this! It’s a new format to the one I’m used to post in here but I got a few asks about writing in a different person- like not on second person and I decided I would share this with all of you. I hope you guys like it!

Preview:

“Okay what’s with you and normal food? There are vegan burgers too if you’re one of those people.”

“Vegan you mean?” She chuckles. “No, I eat meat is just I wouldn’t eat it at this time of the night.” She says but something tells me there’s more to that than the time.

“Well what would you have at this time of the night?” I grin because in my head I had pictured her eating something entirely different at this time of the night.

I don’t really know why- I don’t even know this girl- but I’ve been thinking about her like that since I saw her earlier tonight. She was walking next to Gemma and even though she was nodding her head at my sister’s incesant talking, I knew she wasn’t listening. I don’t blame her though, Gemma can be a pain in the ass, and I bet she was telling her about that stupid dolphins show she made us watch in LA anyway so who couldn’t blame her for not being interested? But there was something about her that got my attention. She wasn’t paying attention at anyone at all. Moreover, I had been looking at her for most of the night and she hadn’t realized until her eyes accidentally bumped into me and the moment I looked at her she looked away and never looked back at me.

I don’t want to sound like a self-centered guy, but I’m not used to having girls look at me once and not make eye contact. I don’t think she’s noticed either how Noah looks at her but I wonder if they have already slept together or he was just doing her on his mind. She just doesn’t seem to notice things. I bet she doesn’t know she frowns a lot when she’s thinking too, but I like her attitude.

Jamie

Leaving Mateo alone is the hardest thing I have done in months. Well, technically he isn’t alone; he isn’t even with just any nanny, he’s with my mum and I can’t think of better hands to leave my son than with the woman who rised me but ever since he was born five months ago, we haven’t been apart for more than an hour. I have decided on breastfeeding him and so far that has given me the perfect excuse not to stay away from him for too long but Charlie is getting impatient- she keeps repeating I can have a baby and still be 21 years old- and because after fifteen years I know better than to fight her, I agreed on going out tonight.

Jack and Charlie said they would pick me up and give me a ride to a little get together at somebody else’s house where I don’t know anybody other than them. How exciting. I stare at myself in the mirror at my parent’s hall thinking back to when I used to check myself out here every day right after school and I would wonder how many hours I had been with that strand of hair looking like a radio antenna on the top of my head. It almost takes me a while to recognize myself, I haven’t worn any makeup since I got pregnant and it’s like I had almost forgotten how I looked like with it on, but Mum insisted on taking care of that for me while Dad “bonded with his grandson” and looking at myself in the mirror now I almost look like the person I was before I gave birth. I grin, like testing it out, but it also makes me somewhat happy that just some light bangs and some eyeliner can make me look as some random uni girl again. I turn to my side, having a look at my flat stomach. It seems unreal to me that I carried a baby in my belly for 39 weeks.

“You look absolutely gorgeous, right Will?” Mum asks dad as they both stare at me from the kitchen door.

I roll my eyes. I could be 41 and they would still act as if I was going out for the night for the first time in my life.

“Guys, I’m just going out with Charlie and Jack. Stop acting as if this was my senior year prom all over again.” I chuckle.

“We’re not.” My mum defends them both. “We’re just happy you get out of the house. You know your dad and I are always free to babysit our lovely grandson, isn’t that right Will?”

I share a knowing look with dad. After 21 years of living together, we both know there’s no way one can contradict Alice Johnson so he just nods at her and we both chuckle, making my mum smile excitedly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon anyway.”

“I mean you don’t have to.” She smiles, encouraging me to get out and be social and all that shit like she had been doing since I got pregnant. “We were thinking you could even go back to your apartment and we’ll drive Mateo there in the morning.”

“And leave Mateo here all night? No way. What if he wakes up crying and I’m not here? He’ll feel abandoned and he’s so little, he’s used to sleeping next to me and I breastfeed him every night, he’ll probably cry so hard.”

“Baby, your mum and I have raised two children. I think we’ll know what to do.”

My dad smiles at me and I regonize that smile. It’s the same he used to give me when I would ask him why to every single thing on Earth when I was seven years old and only then I realize I am getting paranoid. Again. I take a deep breath. If I can’t leave my child with my own parents then how am I ever going to get a job? I start to feel a tinge of anxiety running down the back of my neck when, as if on cue, I hear a car parking on my parents’ driveway and my phone vibrates on my purse.

“Okay, they’re here.” I say, more to myself than to my parents and then I give them an awkward smile. “Just... Please call me if he doesn’t go down okay?”

“We will.” My mum smiles. “Now relax, have fun and” she puts her fingers up in the air as if she wanted to point at the sky and starts moving her hips, I suppose trying to dance, but really she looks as if she’s trying to get a spider off her jeans “blame it on the boogie!”

I don’t know what she wants to say with that, but quite frankly I’m afraid to know, so instead of asking I try to supress my laughter and walk outside the house while Dad asks her what she’s doing. As soon as I make it outside the house, Jack turns on the main beam lights of his car and almost blinds me as I try to walk towards them. I flip him the bird and get on the back seat as Charlie swats his arm playfully but he keeps on laughing. She turns around from the passenger seat and gave me a beaming grin.

“Hi, love! You look absolutely gorgeous! We might have to go out after all so guys can see you! Doesn’t she look lovely, Jack?”

“She does look lovely, yeah.” He smiles.

“And almost blind, thank to you.” I retort but he just chuckles, not even pretending to be sorry the little shit. “And I thought we were going out?”

“Well we are going to Chloe’s.” Charlie says as she does her lipstick using the mirror on the gray flap over the passeger seat of her boyfriend’s car. “But don’t worry, babe, there’s gonna be lots of guys.” She moves the flap so her hazel eyes meet with mine through the tiny mirror and then she wiggles her eyebrows making me roll my eyes. “Single and fancy.”

“I see you’re really up to date on the single guys department, Charles.” Jack jokes making Charlie adorably giggle.

I smile at their interaction, those two are made for one another. I remember when Jack was head over heels for Charlie and she wouldn’t even pay attention to him. He was the sweetest guy in the whole school but of course Charlie couldn’t see that because that was the time when she was obsessed with Zac- I’m pretty sure it was because his name was Zac like Zac Efron- who was the football captain and a total dick, and it wasn’t until they both got into college that she fell for him too; but ever since then they have been inseparable and if there is such a thing as a soulmate then they are that for one another.

“You promised you were not going to set me up with anybody tonight. That’s the only reason I even agreed to come out.” I remind her, hoping she wouldn’t lie to me, even though I know she wouldn’t.

“I know. Relax! I don’t even know who’s going.” She grins. “Entirely.” She adds.

I laugh on the back of their car all the way to her friend’s house and swallow the lump in my throat as soon as we arrive to one of the richest parts in London. I look down at my little black dress and all of a sudden it doesn’t seem to me like something appropriate for this part of town. Anyway I have nothing to fake- I am going to go out tonight with Charlie and her friends and then crawl back to Mateo for another year.

The three of us stand on the door waiting for someone to open it as Jack keeps messing with my newly cut very-light-barely-there bangs and saying I look just like I did in eleventh grade. God I hope he’s lying. I try to decipher the music they’re playing inside, thinkin it can give me a little clue about what sort of people are going to be sitting past the door. I imagine they might be a bunch of snobs who only listen to Alicia Keys or Adele, but instead this music sounds like one of those bands from the 70s my dad would play as he fixed stuff around the house on the weekends when I was little.

A brunette girl with thick bangs and a face full of freckles opens the door. Her eyes strick me for I can’t quite tell which colour they are. One moment they seem green and the next I’d swear they are completely brown and then she looks up at Jack and they seem gray to me. She is gorgeous, that’s for sure, and she has one of those smiles that takes a while to forget. I try to smile back as best as I can but I am already afraid all of the girls in this house are going to be this pretty.

“Hi Gemma!” Charlie greets her, giving her a cuddle as if they had known ech other forever before the girl smiles at Jack.

“Hi, guys! Long time no see! I have to tell you both about my trip to LA!” She sings. “Oh, hi!” Her smile only brightens when she notices me. “I’m Gemma.”

“Hi, I’m Jamie.”

It’s funny how our names sound kind of alike, even though it won’t be funny is I spend the whole night thinking they’re calling my name every time they talk to her. I remember in fifth grade there was a girl in my class called Amy and I always looked when the teacher scolded her- cause she also wouldn’t shut up- and I hated it. The three of them chat among them as we make our way towards the living room where I suppose the rest of the guests are hanging out and I appreciate Gemma’s attempts at including me in their conversation. If she’s going to be this nice, I won’t even mind if I get confused when they call her name. She keeps looking at me as she talks about LA and how she has seen stars at Griffith Observatory and whatnot and I silently feel embarrassed to think the only things I know about LA are that most celebrities go there all the time and that they have long, wide roads with palm trees on either side. It even seems funny to me, that one would go to see starts precisely to LA where I would think the light pollution is so high you can barely even see the sky but it seems like I am wrong about that too.

As soon as we get to the living room I am surprised to see it’s not as big as I thought it’d be. All the way to the living room- and that’s already saying a lot for in my parents’ house it literally takes a minute to walk into the living room from the door; not to mention my apartment, where the door literally opens to the living room, no space in between- but at this Chloe’s house, it all seems to be fancy and expensive- even the paint on the walls seems expensive. But when we get to the living room it seems normal, with gray colour walls, a chimney with no fire on and a tobacco colour couch which seems rather comfy.

Gemma asks me what I want to drink and I politely ask her for a glass of water, apparently making her frown in amusement before she says she would have to pop to the kitchen for that. I stay there glancing through one of the walls which is made out of glass catching a glimpse of the swimming pool and the balcony right before the London city lights. Okay, maybe thinking this house was normal was a little silly.

Gemma comes back carrying a small plastic bottle of water and she gently touches it against my elbow until I face her and she giggles. I thank her and smile.

“Oh, there you are!”

This time a blond girl with long straight hair walk towards us. She has blue eyes and one of the sexiest bodies I have ever seen. I swear she has flesh everywhere you’re supposed to have flesh and she is slender everywhere you’re supposed not to have any. I think about my thighs touching each other under my dress.

Charlie hugs her and I notice that compared to this girl’s hair, Charlie’s hair doesn’t even seem blond but rather hazel and she looks so thin. The beautiful blonde gives her a warm smile before she turns to Jack and greets him with the same enthusiasm.

“Hey Chloe, this is my friend Jamie.” Charlie grins, wrapping her thin arm around my shoulders and pulling me to her side.

“Oh, hi, Jamie! I love your dress!”

Despite looking like a blow-up doll, I like her already.

“Thanks for having me.”

I catch her having a sip of her champagne flute so she just frowns and shakes her head dismissing my comment as she hums with one finger up as if asking me for a moment while she swallows.

“No, no!” She says. “Thanks for coming. There’s food on those tables and drinks...” She looks around the room “Everywhere.” She grins excitedly as if she has just realized that, despite it being her house and that make us all laugh. “I guess you don’t know anybody.” She tells me to which I bite my bottom lip.

She must have noticed my anxious expression because she just chuckles and drops it even though I am afraid her real intentions had been introducing me to everyone. She looks like the kind of girl who would just get up in a table and attract everybody’s attention and say hey y’all, this is Jamie. Well, probably she wouldn’t have said y’all, but in my head she did. She invites me to sit on one of the couches with some of her friends and I just smile at them as they talk to me.

I am not an anxious person, not even socially awkward- hell, I am a waitress and I recommend plates to strangers all the time; but being the only strange person in a room full of people that know each other wouldn’t be easy for anyone, especially when all those people seem to have so much more money than my entire family combined.

Chloe asks me if I do yoga, which quite frankly seems like a rather weird question to me, but judging by the way they all expect to hear my answer, it seems to be something these rich people would talk about. I consider lying, a bit of fitting in won’t hurt anybody, but then I realize I can easily get caught if they start talking about those stretches like the lying dog or the fighter frog I have no idea about and to save myself from the embarrassment I go with the truth.

“She probably said it because your arms look strong.”

Charlie tries to save me and I end up laughing out loud, not only because she can’t not be awkward for the life of her but because for a second I consider telling all these young people my arms aren’t strong because of yoga but after carrying 15 pounds worth of baby- 15,5 if I haven’t changed his nappy after the night sleep.

Realizing I just laughed at something that wasn’t even funny for anyone else, I look away from the people in my new chat group as if trying to get away for a second and then I notice Harry Styles himself is laughing and talking to some random guys. I recognize him straight away, I have seen him before in his own concert. I went with Charlie over a year ago when I had just found out I was expecting a baby, whom I would raise on my own. Apparently, Harry Styles was giving a concert in London that weekend and she thought it would cheer me up. It’s not like I was a fan or anything- I hadn’t even listened to his last album other than that song they always played on the radio, Sign of the times- but she was right, I did have a good time. Especially when both Charlie and I jumped and danced as he reapeated “I’m having your baby, it’s none of your business” over and over again because for the first time since I had gotten that positive result, I was happy Mateo’s father was out of the picture.

I try not to look at him for too long, the last thing I need is for him to catch me staring and think I’m some crazy fan who’s planning how to secretly steal one curl of his head but there’s something quite magnetic about him. I can understand how he sells arenas all around the world. There’s something about the way he just stands there, joking and laughing, as if he owned the room but not being fully aware of it. I won’t deny he is really handsome too, especially when he laughs and those dimples dig holes on his cheeks. Without my consent, my eyes travell down his lean figure. His shirt is black but very thin and is barely buttoned up to where his sternum ends so I can see some of his tattoos an my greedy mind immediately imagines how they would look without the soft cover. I swiftly look away the moment his green eyes fall on me, probably aware of my intrusive stare, but even though I don’t look back at him, I can feel him staring at me.

One of Chloe’s male friends asks if he can sit down next to me and I immediately remove my purse as if I am desperate for somebody to take that place even though I’m not. I know I give him a weird grimace because he laughs but he doesn’t mention it which I appreciate. We all chat in a group for a while and I learn that the girl who’s sitting in front of me is called Olivia and the guy next to her, who I think is Gemma’s boyfriend’s name is Michal. My mind might be playing tricks on me, but I would swear Harry keeps glancing my way from the corner where he’s standing. I’m not big-headed. I mean I think I’m pretty, but not even half as pretty as any of these girls are and anyway he’s a rockstar- he would never set his eyes on me- but damn it if he’s not looking at me. I try to ignore him anyway. Maybe there’s something between my teeth and these people are just too nice to tell me. Or maybe I’ve got a booger. Man that would be embarrassing.

Charlie places a daiquiri on the table right in front of me and I give her a questioning look. I haven’t drank since the night I got pregnant and she knows this but looking at her smile I know what she’s thinking. I smile back, the truth is I’m having fun like I haven’t in a long time and I have bumped enough milk for Mateo for another day so I return her teasing smirk and bring the black straw to my lips. She clapps her hands together and does a little dance which makes me roll my eyes but I smile nonetheless.

Right as I finish my second daiquiri, I accidentally wet the knee of the guy who sat next to me about a half hour ago and that gets us talking. His name is Noah and after some light chatting I learn that he’s American- his accent gives him away- and that we actually have some things in common. We soon discover we went to the same uni- even though I dropped out last year but I don’t tell him why- and there’s no shutting us up after that. From the corner of my eye I can see Charlie wiggling her eyebrows like a fifteen years old teasing a friend who’s talking with a crush and I almost roll my eyes at her but instead I chuckle and blush- Gosh, I’m tipsier than I thought- and then I glance back at Noah and bite my bottom lip, as if apologizing for my weird antics.

“Man” he stifles a laugh “you’re really pretty.”

I grin like the Cheshire cat in seconds. The way he has said that- and the daiquiris- have me grinning like a teen girl. I hoped Charlie was listening so she cuts the bullshit about my flirting skills; or maybe she would expect me to go home with Noah, and even though he seems nice and he is very attractive- with that olive skin and that wavy brown hair and that childish smile, I am not sure I want to go home with him- or anyone for that matter.

“Thank you.” I smile and next thing I know I have got hiccup and my eyes widen as I look at him. he threw his head back and started laughing hard.

I haven’t gotten hiccup in forever, in fact it has been so long I didn’t remember it was so annoying- feeling my chest going up and down on its own. I hold my breath, I heard somewhere it took the hiccup away, because it is too late to lift my arms over my head, you can only go through three hiccups before you do that and my stupid, drunken overwhelm about hiccup has distracted me. As I take a mouthful of air, hoping it would take me through the 30 seconds I had to hold my breath, Noah laughs harder.

“So cute!” He chuckles.

I give him a drunken grin, boycotting my own attempt at land-base scuba diving in the process, before I stand up and prepare myself to find the kitchen. As soon as I get up, I realize I have managed to spend some time without thinking about Harry Styles and I realize too that it hasn’t felt as if he was staring at me. Definitely, it has been my mind playing tricks on me. For some reason, I search for him, maybe to enjoy some of the eye candy he’s displaying but I can’t find him. For all I know he's gone. It’s like I feel a little disappointed, for some reason I thought I might have the chance to talk to him, but of course guys like Harry Styles don’t really talk to girls like Jamie Johnson.

I jump and bring my hand to my chest the minute I get to the kitchen fot there he is, as silent as a house cat, pouring some gin on a glass. He gives me an amused smile and the air in my lungs is nearly gone. He really is handsome and I’m talking, the overwhelming kind of hansome. His face is just perfect, his got a perfect straight nose and I almost bring my hand to mine because there’s just no way someone has a nose like that, and his jaw is perfectly shaped. I can feel thousands upon thousands of girls screaming for me to do something or say something but I’m afraid even though I’m not I might look like one of those crazy fangirls who would give everything they had just to have him signing their boob. I shake my head to clear my thoughts and rest my glass on the table. I decide I don’t have to talk to him.

“Hopefully that scare took your hiccup away.” He smirks and I chuckle, for some reason somewhat embarrass.

“Yeah” I still have my hand against my heart and I can feel it beating. “You made me jump.”

“Sorry about that.” He smiles. His green eyes set on my glass for just a moment and noting it was empty he raises his eyebrows at me and asks “What are you drinking?”

“Uuhh, I think a daiquiri or a caipirinha or something like that. I’m not really sure what it was.”

He smiles again and makes me smile too- his smile is kind of contagious. I didn’t know he was so smiley, he didn’t appeared to me like the kind of person who would smile all the time, but rather like some sort of dark, interseting indie artis who had too many things on his mind to walk around smiling to people. I’m really bad at assumptions. I notice his eyes are glossy and his skin is a little flushed so I know he is at least as tipsy as I am and I think that might be the reason for his smiling nature. His green eyes linger on my face before he looks at my glass again and stretches his hand towards it, silently asking me to hand it to him.

“Oh, no, don’t worry! I can make it on my own!” I lie. I have no idea how to make a daiquiri whatsoever but at this point I’m drunk enough to drink any other thing. “Thank you.”

“Can you please hand me your glass and stop acting as if you knew how to make a daiquiri?” He grins smugly. How the hell did he know that?

“Like you know how to make one?” I tease instead.

He stare deep into my eyes and I know he’s just pretending to be highly offended by my apparent doubts at his ability to make Cuban cocktails. I can feel my lips curl up into a smile before he answers.

“‘F course I know how to make a daiquiri, angel face.”

I don’t know why I’m blushing. I guess the fact that some attractive guy calls me angel face apparently can make me blush. Then I remember even though I know his he doesn’t know my name and I think that’s the reason he called me that.

“So” he starts, having a sip of his drink before he starts reading the label of the rest of the bottles “first we need white rum.” He finally choose a bottle and looks at me with a warm smile. “You see? There’s no cachaza, that’s how I know you were not drinking a caipirinha” he smiles smugly, obviously enjoying leaving me looking like an idiot by proving he indeed knows how to make cocktails. I should have known better. “Where’s the cocktail shaker? Please don’t tell me your friend has been giving you cocktails without having the decency to use the shaker...” He shakes his head, smiling playfully as he searches for a cocktail shaker across somebody else’s kitchen and I start to think he’s just putting on a show “Oh angel face... You’ve been drinking shit all night!”

I throw my head back and laugh out loud as he grins triumphantly. He’s definitely putting on a show. I take it he’s a bit eccentric, not that it surprises me judging by the clothes he chose to wear tonight.

“But we’re going to fix that right now” he wiggles his eyebrows as he softly shakes the cocktail shaker he just found in one of the cupboards “so then, pay attention angel face,” it even sounds natural now, the way he says my new nickname “then you can tell these guys you did it yourself, you squeeze half a lime. It has to be half, yeah? Not more, not less. Then you add sugar and you mix them together and then you add the rum.”

He starts literally giggling as he pours as much rum as he wants to and I laugh, surprised at his showman skills, no wonder he makes a living out of this.

“What?” He asks, faking ignorance.

“How much rum are you supposed to use? You get all scientific with the half lime and then there’s no exact amount of rum? Which I reckon it’s the most important part?”

He chuckles.

“The most important part? Somebody drinks like a pirate here...” He grins. “No, there is, there is. But, angel face, when you’re a pro at making cocktails like me, you’ll be able to measure alcohol with just your very eyes.” He purses his lips and raises his eyebrows as if that would make him right and he makes me laugh. “Now, you shake it with the ice for 13 seconds” He smiles and I start to wonder if he isn’t making the whole thing up and he has never made a daiquiri before. Maybe this is not how you make a daiquiri at all. “Wanna do it?”

“Oh, no, please. I’ll let the expert do the honours.”

“Smart girl.”

He grins and I giggle during the 13 seconds as he counts them out loud, his defined arms shaking the metal glass over his shoulders, his green eyes set on me. I notice they are greener at this close up distance than they had looked at the concert.

“There you go...” He hands me the cocktail perfectly poured on my glass and looks into my eyes questioningly “I don’t think I got your name.”

I knew it. The angel face times are about to end.

“Jamie.” I give him a smile.

He grins, offering me his hand to shake and I take it, once again feeling all his fans roaring through my veins. I think it’s funny that out of all the women in London he has come to shake my hand. I almost tell him I know nothing about him, just to make things clear.

“Harry.” He says. Well that I knew. “It’s nice to meet you.”

I hear Charlie calling my name from the living room so I turn my head towards the door and raise my voice asking her what she wants. If I wasn’t drunk, I would have probably noticed I am being rude, raising my voice at somebody else’s house as if it was my own, but I am drunk enough not to care about it. Harry is smirking when I turn to face him.

Harry

Gee, she’s pretty even with her hair all over her face. She turned her head towards the door so fast that I was afraid she had given herself whiplash but she’s smiling back at me now so I reckon that means she’s okay. I chuckle at how excited she seems to be, even though her friend hasn’t heard her yelling.

“She didn’t hear me.” She points out to me as if I hadn’t been in the room too.

“Yeah I don’t know how she didn’t.” I tease her, but only because I like to see her blushing.

I don’t have to turn my head to know the meat pie I popped in the oven is not ready yet but I’m fearing she’s going to say she has to go check on her friend because I don’t think I’m going to get the chance to just walk back towards her without looking like a creep if she goes to the living room before I do. She looks like she’s waiting for me to say something else and the thought that maybe she just doesn’t want to go either for some reason speeds up my heartbeat. We are just smiling at each other.

“I’m... I’m gonna have to go check on her” she starts and I nod, pretending her words didn’t bother me. “Uh, are you coming?”

I grin. So she doesn’t want to stop talking to me either. I look back at the oven- 12 minutes left and then my eyes met her hazel ones once again.

“I am waiting for a meat pie.” I tell her and she scrunches her nose and gives me a weird look. “I am hungry, aren’t you?”

“Yes but I wouldn’t have a meat pie now.” She says seemingly disgusted at my appetite.

There was pizza on Chloe’s fridge too and vegan burgers but I’m not into that kind of shit. She had lots of vegetables too but I wasn’t about to cook a wok at 9 am so I decided on one of the many meat pies she had on the freezer. I tell Jamie there’s pizza too in case she’s hungry but she scrunches up her nose once again.

“Okay what’s with you and normal food? There are vegan burgers too if you’re one of those people.”

“Vegan you mean?” She chuckles. “No, I eat meat is just I wouldn’t eat it at this time of the night.” She says but something tells me there’s more to that than the time.

“Well what would you have at this time of the night?” I grin because in my head I had pictured her eating something entirely different at this time of the night.

“I’d have ice cream.” She smiles.

Okay, she’s cute.

“Ice cream? What are you? 5?”

She giggles before she rolls her eyes at me. I really like her attitude and then I catch her trying to see how much time left we need to wait for the oven to beep. I realize I actually don’t know how old she is. I look at the timer myself.

“There’s seven minutes left now.”

“That’s barely any time at all.”

She takes a seat on one of the stools in front of her. I’m glad she decided to stay, mostly because seven minutes more with me means seven minutes less with Noah so I smile at her. I’m so hungry seven minutes seem like a year.

“Yeah well say that to all those poor people who had to spend seven minutes of heaven with someone with a bad breath.”

She laughs and I can’t help but grin at my achievement.

“Has that ever happened to you?” She asks.

I shake my head. I have never played that game but I know it exists because Kaia has told me. I wonder if Jamie has ever played and for some reason the thought of someone spending seven minutes of heaven with her brings some sense of protectiong in me. I have no idea what’s going on with me.

“How old are you?” I ask her.

I know it’s a rather personal question and maybe it’s a little strange to ask such a thing at 12 am in Chloe’s kitchen to a girl I don’t know but I’ve been trying to figure it out myself and I have only gotten to the conclusion that she can’t be older than twenty-something but those are ten years of possibilities and I made her a cocktail so I think I’m entitled to know if I did something illegal or not. She looks at me as if she was weighing whether to tell me the truth or not.

“Twenty-one.”

I think she’s being honest and relief washes over me the minute she tells me so I catch myself on the lie I just gave myself about wanting to know her age because I gave her alcohol. I can’t believe I’m considering having something with her but I have to admit I wanted her to be legal for different reasons than alcohol consumption.

“And you?”

“Twenty-five.”

She almost frowns and I have to fight the grin that wants to stretch my lips. I might not know her but I know she’s considering whether I told her the truth or not. Why would I lie? She could google it anyway.

“Do you live here?”

I’m gladly surprised by her question and I know she’s surprised she asked that too. I would give her a hard time about it for frowning so much if I wasn’t afraid she might think she crossed a line and close off but for now it seems that she doesn’t mind personal and I could use that to my advantage. For a second I don’t know what she means by here because to be fair I am indeed cooking Chloe’s food and making cocktails in her kitchen so she might think I actually live in this house, but maybe she’s just asking whether I live in London and I like that’s something she has wondered because it might mean she’d want to see me again.

“In London?” She nods. Good. “Uh, yeah. Well I mean, sometimes it’s hard to know where I live” I chuckle “I travel around a lot but... I guess if I think of home, right after Holmes Chapel I would think of London.”

“So you’re from Holmes Chapel?” She seems interested.

“Yes” I have a sip from my drink “I was born there but then I started singing when I was sixteen and moved to London.”

“You moved on your own when you were sixteen years old?”

She seems horrified by that and that makes me think she is close to her family. She might even still live with them and I find that endearing. I’m close to my family too. I moved away out of need really and I didn’t know how nice it was to live with my mum and sister until I went away. I nod.

“I like London but there’s nothing like going back home and feel how old I am when I walk down the river where I used to go as a teenager.”

She laughs and nods her head.

“What about you? You’re from London?”

I can tell by her accent she is, but she might as well just have been living here long enough for the accent to stick. I know a bunch of people who do that. It’s like Jeffrey, he starts aspiring the ts and the rs if we spend enough time in Machester. Jamie seems to ponder whether to lie again.

“Yes.”

“You don’t look like it.” I say, just to see her reaction.

She frowns a lot and looks at me as if I had lost all common sense. It’s priceless. She’s so expressive.

“And how is a London girl supposed to look like according to you?” She inquires, almost accusatorily.

I’m afraid she might give me a lecture about prejudice and stereotypes and how bad is to be biased but I grin and shrug.

“Like Chloe.” I tell her.

I love it when she frowns.

“You mean rich and blonde and pretty? ‘Cause I’m just one of all three.” She jokes cheerfully and I can tell she’s waiting to see if I find it funny.

I don’t cause it’s true. She is pretty and it kind of bothers me that she would think she could joke about that. I hate it when beautiful girls don’t know they��re beautiful. It’s not about being self-absorbed but rather not pulling themselves down. I’m not saying she’s perfect. Hell, I’m sure she’s got hundreds of flaws but being ugly is not one of them. I choose to tease her instead.

“Oh, so you’re rich?”

She rolls her eyes and I chuckle at her reaction but I’m afraid she might go to the living room if she takes it the wrong way. She doesn’t stand from her stool though, not even when the oven beeps and I turn around to open it. She looks at my meat pie with a disgusted expression and I wait for her to sass me after my teasing.

“You’re not funny.” She shrugs and that only makes me laugh.

“You’re right, I’m not. I’m just very honest.” I keep it up because I know she’s not taking it to heart.

I’ve been flirting with her long enough for her to know I think she’s attractive anyway and the fact that she has chosen to stay in the kitchen with me instead of going back to the party with everyone else kind of tells me she might find me attractive too. She hums and nods as if she was waiting for me to elaborate.

“Really?” She asks when I don’t.

“Really.” I smile, cutting the meat pie in half just in case she wants some after all. “It’s like” I grab my half and blow on it hoping it would cool it down sooner. I’m really fucking hungry. “If you ask anyone out there” I’m thinking about Noah “if that dress makes your ass look fat they wouldn’t even think about it, they’d just say no so as not to hurt your feelings but if you asked me, I’d tell you the truth.”

She is smirking at me and I don’t think she’s aware of what that’s doing to me. I don’t know why but I can’t help but smile too, her expressions are contagious. This time I can’t figure out what she’s thinking and man, I would give a finger away to know. I feel a little giddy, almost like a teenage boy, and I bite the meat pie so as to occupy my mouth on something. She just smiles.

“You’re weird.” She blurts out and I laugh despite the fucking boiling bite of meat in my mouth. Maybe it wasn’t very smart to sunk my teeth that far away on the pie.

“You’re really not going to ask me?” I laugh.

“What?” She frowns.

“If I think that dress makes your ass look fat.”

She frowns again but this time her lips betrayed her and curled into a smile.

“Mmhmm.... No.” She shakes her head. “I know it doesn’t and you’re just looking for an excuse to check my ass out.”

I already checked her ass out. Multiple times. But I just grin at her comeback. I guess I underestimated her when she joked about her beauty, she did because she knows she’s pretty and I like that she’s confident. I also like that she’s not afraid of calling me out or give me weird looks and that despite all that she’s staying here with me anyway. I offer her the rest of the meat pie but she just gives me a disgusted grimace.

“Ew, no” She frowns again making me laugh “Plus I know you’re burning your throat like hell with that.” She mentions making me laugh.

She is smiling at me. She’s engaging without being too nice and I like that. I know she wouldn’t let me walk all over her or impose my interests over hers- she didn’t want meat pie and she said it and she even said she would have ice cream instead. I like that she’s not afraid to speak her mind when she disagrees with me and I know for a fact that she would kick me if I touched her inappropiately, which I would never do; hell, no; but it’s nice to know she’s that kind of girl. Shit, I like her.

Her phone vibrates against the table and only then I notice it’s been there the whole time. I eat the other half of the pie after making sure she really doesn’t want any and nod at her to attend her phone. She texts whoever it is that texted her and I frown when I check the time. It’s almost one am so the thought of her boyfriend texting her is the most plausible one.

“Hey” She looks up at me and I notice that amused spark on her brown eyes she just had a minute ago is gone. Damn it, she’s beautiful even when she’s concerned. “I have to go.” She smiles.

No! I nod.

“I...” It’s like she doesn’t know how to say goodbye to me. “I’m gonna go tell Charlie.”

“Do you need a ride?” I offer.

“No” She shakes her head. “I’ll get an Uber.”

Yeah, at 1 am, alone. No way.

“No, you won’t.” I smile trying to ease this weird protective instinct that’s taking over me. “I’m leaving too. I’ll give you a ride.”

“No, really, it’s 1 am, you... You don’t have to.”

“Precisely because it’s 1 am” I insist “I’m not about to let you take an Uber alone.” She doesn’t say anything but I know she’s thinking of a way to decline my offer. “You can either let me drive you or make me follow your Uber until your house and then drive home.” I shrug.

She rolls her eyes but I know I’ve won this one.

“Let me tell Charlie you’re giving me a ride then.”

I nod and wait for her by the door while I text Gemma I’m going home. God knows I don’t want to go back to that living room and pretend I like any of her friends other than Chloe who I can at least tolerate. I keep my hands on my pocket and rest my head against the wall.

She tilts her head to the door silently telling me to move when she gets back and I even like that too. I seem to like everything she does. She walks next to me but somewhat far away as we make our way towards my car and I try to hide a smile as I see her looking around the different cars parked out here trying to figure out which one is mine.

“So” she tells me “where’s your Porsche?”

I laugh.

“Lamborghini then?” She raises her eyebrows. “Ferrari?”

I can’t take it. She’s funny. I stop next to my black Range Rover and smirk at her and she smiles. I can tell she likes that I drive this car instead of a Porsche. Don’t get me wrong, I have a Porsche too, I just don’t drive it around London; but I won’t tell her that.

“Safety over speed.” She appreciates. “I like it.”

I chuckle as I open the door for her and she purses her lips and tilts her head to the side before she gets on the passenger seat.

“So” I tell her as I sit on the drivers’ seat and start the car “where are we going?”

“I’ll give you the indications.”

I smile. She doesn’t want to give me her address just yet and I respect that. After all, she doesn’t really know me. I’m actually kind of proud that she would take these many precautions. It relaxes me to think she can keep herself safe.

“Alright.”

I turn on the radio and let Stevie’s voice fill the car as I take my eyes off the road for a second to glance at her and watch her reaction. None. I like watching her as Edge of Seventeen is playing. I lower down the volume and ask her.

“Do you know who that is?”

She looks at me.

“You mean the singer?”

I nod.

“I’m not an idiot.”

I smile. I like that she’s mouthy and I think her answer makes her all the more sexy.

“Now turn left.” She tells me.

I do as she says and keep bothering her. For some reason I want to hear her say her name,

“So” I query “what’s her name?”

“You think I don’t know who she is.” She throws her head back and laughs. “It’s not even like I need to know anything about music to know who she is. She’s fucking famous.” She chuckles.

“You still haven’t said her name.” I grin. I know she knows who she is.

“She’s Stevie Nicks and you’re an idiot.”

I laugh at her reply again. I don’t get tired at listening to what she has to say.

“So you like Stevie?” I ask her.

If she says yes I’ll ask her to marry me before we get to her apartment.

“Take the second exit at the roundabout and at the traffic lights turn left.” She indicates and I nod, hoping we’re still far away from her house. “And yes I do.”

“Who’s your favourite singer?” I can’t stop smiling.

“It’s not you.” She jokes which makes me laugh.

I didn’t expect her to say it was me anyway even though I would admit I would have loved it.

“Alright.” I grin at her. “Then who is it?”

It only takes her a second to answer and that surprises me. Most people always think about it long and hard as if they would ever give a right answer. I think she just said the first singer that crossed her mind.

“Steve Perry.”

But Gosh I really like this girl.

“Uuuuh.” I nod my head. “Fair enough.”

“Turn left on this next street and then at the gas station turn right. Then it’s all straight until you have to turn left.”

I don’t recognize this part of town. It’s a residential area for families and I start to doubt whether she has taken me to a fake direction and now she’s just going to knock on some random family’s door so long as I don’t know where she lives. Something tells me she has made me take some wrong turns so I wouldn’t remember how to get to her house, wary angel face.

“This is my street.” She says. “You can stop whenever you want now.”

I see her eyes set on one of the house to our right so I drive up there and stop the car. She gives me a smile but I can tell she’s a little freaked out I got her house right. I smile.

“Well” she starts “thanks for the ride, Harry.” She takes her seatbelt off. I smile and nod. “And for the daiquiri.”

I laugh.

“You’re welcome, Jamie.” I grin. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.” She smiles.

I weigh whether to ask her why she had said I wasn’t his favourite singer or the real question I want to ask her. I go with the second.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

She smirks. I can tell she’s flattered and pleased I asked. I feel my heartbeat speeding up as I wait for her answer. She rolls her eyes and opens the door, getting out of the car.

“If I had a boyfriend I wouldn’t have spent most of the night in the kitchen watching you eat a meat pie.” She smiles through the rolled down window.

I grin. I want to ask for her phone number but something tells me she won’t give it to me so instead I just wink at her and she rolls her eyes again.

“Bye, Harry.”

“Bye, angel face.”

I can faintly hear her laugh as she walks to the door and I wait for her to get inside before I drive away. Something tells me I’m going to see her again. And if not, now I know where I can have a coffee and wait for her to appear.

Part 2

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