Another Life

Nostalgia was often something Olivia hated to be associated with. It’s that feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you want to do nothing but bask in your own sadness. Unfortunately that was something Olivia couldn’t do right now, so instead she opted to taking an early cigarette break out the back, and if she hadn’t spent the past two hours worrying over the fact that she was stood right next to the person she used to claim she was in love with, she was now worrying over the fact that she didn’t even smoke. It was just something that had started a few months ago, something that once used to calm her down, but now it just seemed to make her feel worse.

Growing frustrated, Olivia threw the barely smoked cigarette on the floor and made her way back into the store. As she walked back to the end of the table, Andie threw her a questioning look but Olivia simply shrugged and carried on walking.

Another hour or two had passed with the same old thing going on; girls would come up to the table nearly crying, get each guy’s signature and a hug or picture and then leave. Olivia had spent the time trying to work out which one was Louis but ended up giving up, deciding that the two on the furthest end of the table looked far too much alike.

“Alright, let’s go get some lunch, I’m starving,” Andie showed up in front of Olivia, rambling on about the places they could go to eat as they left the table of fans, entering the staff room to pick up their bags.

“Honestly, Andie. I don’t care. I’m so hungry I could eat a pillow and wouldn’t care,” Olivia interrupted her best friend raving on about food places.

“Let’s go to BB’s then, I want coffee.”

Their short walk down Oxford Street was silent as they both tried to not get in anyone’s way. Oxford Street at midday was worse than any other time. There were tourists packed along the roads mixed in with businessmen rushing through the crowds with their briefcases. As they entered BB’s Coffee and Muffin’s Olivia noticed her best friend let out a sigh of relief at the fact that the place was nearly empty. They both ordered quickly, getting their usual, and sat down in the far corner with their lunch.

“So,” Andie carefully sipped her chai latte, “This Harry seems to be the heartthrob of the band,” she laughed, causing Olivia to laugh along too.

“He has a way with the girls, you know,” she smiled slightly.

“So, you’re not angry with him or anything?” Andie took apart her blueberry muffin as she placed a bit in her mouth.

Olivia thought about it for a while, sipping on her hot chocolate, “I guess not,” she shrugged, “It was my own fault that it all happened, so what can I do, you know?” she was a lot calmer about the issue now than earlier.

“On another note, he seems really happy about the music thing,” Andie noted, looking over at Olivia as she finished her muffin.

“I guess so. It’s what he’s always wanted to do, I was probably just holding him back anyway,” Olivia mumbled, swallowing the last bit of her muffin and wiping her hands on a serviette.

Andie shook her head, “You know that’s not true, Liv.”

Olivia simply just shrugged again as they got up to leave and headed back to work.

Fortunately for the girls, the band were onto their acoustic set when they arrived back at the store and were able to just sit around and watch for the time being. Andie complained that they could’ve just had a longer lunch break, but it couldn’t hurt for them to find out if the band were even any good.

The two girls took their usual seat on the stairs that overlooked the first level of the store, watching the five boys set up on stools. One of the band members had a guitar, which was something Olivia didn’t expect in a boy band.

“I bet you £20 they suck,” she held out her hand towards Andie.

“£30 that they don’t,” the blonde held out her hand and shook with Olivia, knowing that if they were this popular they at least had to be good. The both of them looked back out to the band as one of them started speaking.

“So, um,” a boy with a thick Irish accent started, “This song is my favourite on the album.”

“It’s quite a personal one,” Harry mentioned as he looked over to the Irish boy who started playing his guitar, “Enjoy,” he smiled cheekily. The guitar riff started up slowly as the one Olivia learned to either be Louis or Liam started to sing softly.

“It’s been a while since the two of us talked, about a week since the day that you walked. Knowing things would never be the same with your empty heart and mine full of pain. So explain to me, how it came to this, take it back to the night we kissed. It was Dublin city on a Friday night, with vodkas and coke, I was Guinness all night,” he paused and took a breath, moving away from the microphone. He had a beautiful voice, but not even the softness of his voice could take away the feeling of someone jabbing a sharp object into Olivia’s chest.

It seemed that the sharp object turned into some kind of giant axe as Harry lifted his head to the microphone and started to sing the next part of the song on his own.

“We were sitting with our backs against the world, saying things that we thought but never heard. Who would have thought it would end up like this? Where everything we talked about is gone and the only chance we have of moving on is trying to take it back before it all went wrong,” Harry took a quick breath before starting up again with the other 4 boys who sang forcefully into their microphones.

“Before the worst, before we mend, before our hearts decide it’s time to love again. Before too late, before too long. Let’s try to take it back before it all went wrong,” The boy’s harmonies were beautifully in sync and Andie leaned over to Olivia with a smug look on her face.

“I believe you owe me £30,” she smiled, turning her attention straight back to the band as Harry kicked in the next verse.

“There was a time that we’d stay up all night, best friends, yeah, talking till the daylight, took the joys alongside the pain, with not much to lose but so much to gain. Are you hearing me? Cause I don’t wanna miss, set you a drift on a memory bliss. It was Grafton Street on a rainy night, I was down on one knee and you were mine for life.”

Olivia didn’t even know what to say as she listened closely to Harry singing his heart out. When he said it was ‘personal’, he really meant that it was personal. One of those things where it was so personal that only the person it was about could understand. That person seemed to be Olivia Alexander.

Olivia shook her head, attempting to ignore the warm lining on her eyelids as she pulled herself off the stairs and into the staff room as quick as she could. Without even giving it a second thought, she grabbed her bag and practically ran out of the store and into the London air.

Fair enough, Olivia had figured Harry would write songs about them, it was obvious. But she didn’t know it’d be like that. She didn’t know he’d write a song that was so personal to the both of them that literally only the both of them knew what it was about. So personal that no one understood the full meaning of it. So personal that it slowly dug another hole into Olivia’s heart.

As she entered the door to her apartment, Tay called out from the kitchen, wondering why she was back early. Olivia simply mumbled something incoherent before slamming her bedroom door shut and quickly falling asleep atop of the mess of clothes she’d left on her bed this morning.



“Do you think she’s even still alive?” a voice followed by a light thud woke Olivia up a few hours later. She rubbed at her eyes and sat up to find Andie sprawled out very unattractively on her floor and Tay trying to hold in her laughter from the doorway.

“I don’t even wanna know,” Olivia mumbled, throwing herself back down on her bed, only to be greeted by a pair of sequin shorts that scratched at her bare legs. She gave the inanimate object a death stare before throwing them off her bed, along with other random articles of clothing that managed to still be on her bed from Saturday night.

“Imagining those shorts are a certain curly haired boy, are we?” Andie giggled after pulling herself up from the floor and sitting on the opposite side of Olivia’s bed.

“Nope,” Olivia smirked, “Imagined they were you, actually.”

Tay once again tried to hold in her laugh as Andie sent her a glare, much like the one she’d given to the pair of shorts on her floor.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that because I know how much you love me,” Andie spoke as Tay made her way to the open balcony door, taking a seat outside.

“On a much more serious note,” she spoke up, “Care to explain why you left work early in a bad mood to spend the next few hours sleeping?”

Olivia sighed, she’d told them over and over again the whole deal with her and a certain Harry Styles, she didn’t even know why they never remembered. Heaving herself off her bed, she grabbed the bottle of water that always sat on the bedside table and made her way out to the balcony.

The air was warm for only the beginning of summer, and she noticed that the sky was completely clear, something you never usually saw in the center of London. In a way it calmed her, it reminded her of when she and Harry used to sit out on his roof in the summer and watch the stars. The reminder of Harry brought her back to the present though, noticing Andie had come outside too and both of her best friends were staring her down.

She sighed before deciding on only giving them a brief description; they’d piece it all together with the amount of times she’d told them. She explain about how they met in the summer after high school, dated, fell in love to put it simply, and then Harry moved to Birmingham and Olivia to London. She didn’t go much into detail about the actual breakup, because chances are, she’s told them that before too. It was just that saying it out loud reminded her of how stupid she was in letting him go.

“It just makes me think if it was all worth it, moving to London and that. I could’ve just gone to Birmingham and done exactly the same thing at uni there,” she shrugged, taking a sip of her water.

“But then you would’ve never met us,” Andie smiled, nudging Olivia’s leg with her shoulder from her place on the floor.

“True,” she laughed, “I guess I just wish I could go back and redo it all, you know?”