Changed

It had been two years since my last summer in England with my aunt and my cousin, Taylor. I was about fifteen years old when I last visited, I remember. I sat on the plane, flipping through some magazines, and remembering how much fun I had the last time I visited.

When I went up I would always hang out with Taylor my only cousin, and probably my best friend while I was in England. Taylor and I would always take the train down to London and go visit all the shops, and do all of those tourist-y sightseeing things, since her small town, Holmes Chapel, could get boring pretty easily.

One day, when I was visiting, at the time I must have been about ten years old; my aunt was baking a cake for Taylor’s birthday. Not to be mean, but my aunt wasn’t exactly the best cook, and the cake ended up burnt, and crusty. Needless to say, we threw it out. She ended up giving me some money and asking me to take a quick run down to the bakery and buy Taylor a nice cake.

I walked down about a block or two to the bakery, and peered over the counter. No one was there. I cleared my throat, and drummed my fingers on the desk to try to get someone’s attention.

“One second!” a loud girl’s voice shouted from the back room. I could hear her begin to bicker with somebody.

“Fine!” I heard someone shout from the backroom. A boy with curly brown hair ran out from the backroom. He was wearing an apron, and had to be about my age. A little young to be working at a bakery… I thought. He had flour smudged on his cheeks and a little bit in his curls. I tried my best not to laugh at him.

“Sorry about that, my sister’s being lazy today and I lost a bet so I get to work here for today,” he grinned at me, and ran a hand through his curls. I gave a shy smile back.

“It’s okay. Do you think I could get a cake, please?” I asked politely. His eyes widened a bit, and then he gave me an even bigger grin.

“You’re American?” he asked excitedly.

“Yup!” I nodded my head. “I’m from Ohio, visiting my family here for the summer,” I explained. He leaned down, and pulled up a white box and placed it on the counter in front of us.

"That's cool. Even though Holmes Chapel is no fun to visit, I bet,” he said. He opened the lid off the box, revealing a chocolate cake. “Does this look okay? I can do the icing and write whatever you want on it.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Could you write ‘Happy Birthday Taylor’ on it?” I asked, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.

“Sure, yeah. What’s your name, anyway?” he said.

“Kara,” I replied.

“I’m Harry. Harry Styles. Nice to meet you,” he said, pulling out a pink frosting kit.

“Harry, you’ll mess it up. Let me do it,” the girl shouted from the backroom. A pretty brunette walked up, and snatched the frosting from him. She glanced over at me, and gave me a nice smile. She had the same smile as Harry, I noticed immediately.

“Hello! I see you’ve met little Hazza here," She ruffled his curls. "I’m Gemma, his sister,” she began neatly frosting the message in cursive.

“Nice to meet you,” I shyly smiled. Harry hopped up on the counter, wiping his hands on the apron.

“Gem, can I help her deliver it? This is so boring,” he asked. Gemma rolled her eyes but nodded her head.

“Yeah, fine. It’s pretty slow business today anyway,” she finished the frosting, and closed the box, and handed it to Harry.

“Go on you two, hurry along!” Gemma shouted. We laughed and left the shop. Harry and I talked for the whole walk home. When we showed up, Taylor ran up and hugged him and asked her mum to let him stay over for the party we were having. Turns out, they were friends from school. Harry hung out with us almost every single day until I left. We turned into best friends. It felt like we had known each other for years, not months.

_____________

It was like that for the last five years I visited, although, the last year I visited I developed a small crush on him. By now, it’d pretty much gone away, but I could feel now that seeing him again could let these feelings resurface. I scrolled through my really old pictures on my phone. Finally stopping on one. It was a picture of Harry and me sitting outside Taylor’s house. He was lazily smiling, and he was wearing his purple Jack Wills hoodie, and his arm was thrown carelessly over my shoulder. I was laughing at some stupid, and probably completely inappropriate joke he had just made. It captured our friendship perfectly. I couldn't wait to see him again. The pilot’s voice over the intercom interrupted my thoughts.

“Hello everyone, please fasten your seatbelts, we’ll be landing in London in about five minutes.”