When Harry Met Luna

“You’re late.”

“I know.”

“For the sixth consecutive time in the past two weeks.”

“Well technically it’s the fifth time in the past ten days.” I corrected her.

Janet gave me a hard, cold stare. I realized maybe correcting her was a little out of line, especially since I was the intern and she was head honcho. I looked at the wall covered in band posters behind her to avoid her annoying beady eyes.

“I should fire you.” She cracked her knuckles while she spoke sternly to me. I couldn’t help but watch her fingers, cracking one by one. She had a ring on every finger, some of them silver, some gold. It was kinda weird. “But I won’t because I know better than to piss off your father.”

My Dad. I had more things to worry about than getting fired and having the talk about responsibility and work ethic from my dad. Oh no, no. I was more worried about my dad finding out about me and Harry.

See, now that shit would piss off my father.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been sleeping over at Harry’s apartment almost every other night. There were several reasons for this. One, hello, it was Harry. He was gorgeous and funny and adorable and kissing him made all my hatred for this dumb Earth (and Janet, more specifically) melt away. Two, it was nice sleeping with someone. No, not like banging each other senseless (which we haven’t done yet, by the way). What I mean is, it’s nice to really sleep next to someone. Falling asleep to him beside me was great, but waking up to his sleepy smile was even greater. It’s been a while since that happened. Even when I dated Derek and he would sleep over, I always woke up in an empty bed. He used to always leave and do an early work out before I could blink away my sleep. That was something I didn’t miss.

Now that I think about it, I didn’t miss Derek at all.

In fact, I haven’t thought about Derek in days. I haven’t received a text from him in over two weeks and that was probably because I stopped responding. The last time he attempted to talk to me was on Facebook chat, but I tactfully signed off and pretended I didn’t see it. Had it been four weeks ago, or maybe five weeks ago, it wouldn’t have been as easy for me to ignore him.

There was one more reason I spent so much time at Harry’s apartment in the past couple of weeks: redecorating.

Harry was finally done with all my moaning, groaning, complaining and back-handed remarks about his apartment being the most uncomfortable and unwelcoming apartment in all of London.

“Alright fine, Luna! Let’s have it your way then!” He exclaimed last Tuesday evening as he stood in front of his stove. Harry decided that he would make us a really nice Mexican dinner for the two of us (cute, right? I know.) with an apple pie from Tilly’s Treats as a dessert. While he worked on our quesadillas and enchiladas, I was threatening to stab his puke-colored couch with a steak knife I found in his kitchen. “Just rip it up already!”

At first I thought he was really angry with me, that I’ve gone too far with my remarks. He sounded angry and the echoing through his open floor planned apartment didn’t exactly improve his tone of voice. I would be lying if I said I didn’t panic a little when he dropped his spoon into a bubbling pan of hot sauce and marched right over to where I was standing with my knife. Without a word, he picked up the abstract pillow I once made fun of the first night I came here and headed over to the sliding glass doors that led to his balcony.

“Wait, what are you doing!? I was only kidding! Wait!” I exclaimed, dropping the steak knife on the coffee table and following him out to the patio. He walked over to the banister and lifted the pillow up. My eyes widened. “HARRY, WHAT ARE YOU-NO!”

He threw it over the railing and walked back inside. I paused for a minute, looking over the railing to watch the pillow plummet to the ground. Harry lived on the twenty-first floor. It wasn’t as high as the penthouse I lived in with Dad and Beth, but it was high enough to let that pillow fall through the air for longer than a couple of seconds.

I ran after Harry inside. I caught him fishing through his black jacket that was hung up by the door. “Are you out of your mind!? You just threw a £500 pillow out the window!”

Harry paused and looked at me. “Wait, how did you know how much it was?”

I crossed my arms and looked away. “I may have googled it.”

He finally pulled out his wallet and threw it at me. “If you hate the way my apartment looks, then I hate the way it looks too.”

I was still confused as to why he threw his wallet at me though. “Harry-”

“If I give you permission and the money to redecorate it, will you stop moaning about how awful it is?”

I looked down at the wallet he threw at me and then back up at him. “Wait. Really?”

Harry sighed. “Yes, really.”

I grinned. “Hell yeah I’ll redecorate it!”

He smiled, walked over to me and kissed me on the forehead. “Good.”

“Hey, you could have killed someone back there.” I followed him into the kitchen. “It’s against the law to throw objects off a building.”

He laughed and picked up the spoon he was once using to stir the beef. “Luna? Shut up.”

After getting Harry’s blessing on becoming the next Rachel Zoe of interior design, I got straight to work. I told him what had to go and what could stay and for the most part, he was pretty compliant with my orders - save for that stupid leather recliner in his living room. He fought me for a solid twenty minutes on not throwing it away (“We kissed on it, Luna, it holds memories!” He argued when I tried pulling it towards the front door. I had to roll my eyes at that one.). I was on a mission to give him the coziest apartment in Soho and god help me, it was going to be as cozy as a set up in Ikea! If not, cozier.

“Are you even listening to me!?” I was brought back to reality when Janet stood up from her desk chair. She looked even more upset with me now which was something I didn’t deem possible. “Is your head always in the clouds?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I replied. “I just...have the worst migraine.”

That was a lie. I was just tired from staying up half the night with Harry because I was teaching him how to make waffles.

“If you’re late to work one more time, Ms. Monet,” Her teeth were clenched. I was pretty positive she wanted to slap me across the face if she could. “I will have no other choice but to fire you.”

I nodded, knowing if I spoke she’d somehow find a way to get angry at me.

She cleared her throat before sitting back down at her desk ever so elegantly. She turned to her desktop and began typing furiously. “You’re excused.”

I waited until I was outside her office with the closed door to let out an aggravated sigh.

I caught Mallory’s attention the minute I walked out of the office. She shook her head at me. “You know, I get that you and Harry are like a thing now, but you gotta tone it down with the adult sleepovers.”

I dropped into my desk chair and looked at her. Our desks were right next to each other and we were suppose to be getting flyers ready to post around London’s hot spots. It was such a mundane task that Mallory and I made sure to take our time getting them done.

“But they’re so much fun.” I tried to reason, but it came out as a moan.

Mallory shook her head again, this time with a smile. “You’re gonna get caught by your dad one of these days and he’s gonna flip. There are only so many times you can ‘sleep over my house’. What if he catches me without you one morning?”

She was totally right. It was something I was paranoid about all the time.

Instead of telling my father where I was actually going, I kept telling him I was sleeping over at Mal’s flat instead. “It’s easier” I would say when he questioned the fifth time I was ‘sleeping over’, “She lives much closer to work!”. Of course it was a lie though, because she actually lived much farther from the Columbia Records building then we did.

“I know.” I sighed again and swung my chair around for emphasis. “Thanks for covering for me, regardless.”

“Girl, you know I got your back!” She replied before turning back to her computer. “Let’s get this shit over with so we can be back in time for lunch. I have a list of addresses Janet wants us to put the flyers.”



“Wait, don’t move. Sit very, very still.” Beth gripped my shoulders tightly. “I don’t want the dye to stain yer neck.”

I took a deep breath and kept my shoulders square as Beth’s plastic glove-covered hands yanked and pushed and pulled my head around.

Beth was in Cosmetology School. Did you know that? Because I certainly didn’t know that. While I spent my 9-5s at Columbia Records, I always assumed that Beth spent her days at our Penthouse, surfing high end boutiques online with my dad’s black Amex card in hand. No, she spent three out of the five weekdays at a tiny cosmetology school in downtown London learning how to cut, dye and style hair. I felt guilty when I only found this out over a week ago after meeting up with her for lunch one day. I spent the beginning of the summer judging her for being a ditsy, dumb blonde who was only marrying my dad for money when it was actually not like that at all. Ever since she kept my rendezvous with Harry secret, I’ve grown to tolerate her a little better. I would actually acknowledge her if she was in the room I was walking into, I would hold longer conversations with her in the kitchen when making breakfast and I would even ask her questions pertaining to her life.

And now I was letting her practice her new skills from Cosmetology school on my head.

We were stationed up in the master bathroom with towels strewn across the white tiled floor. While my dad was holed up in his office downstairs, we were making an absolute mess upstairs with Bruno Mars playing in the background.

To my right, there was three boxes of black hair dye set up and to my left, there were huge curlers heating up on electronic prongs. I tried to concentrate on the conversation I was having with Beth as she smoothed the dye through my ‘goodbye brown’ hair. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entirely terrified of how I would look by the end of this Beth’s Brilliant Makeover - she titled it, not me.

“I’m so glad you came home tonight, actually.” Beth hummed as she continued to paint my head with the dye. I couldn’t help but watch her in the mirror in front of me as she kept her eyes on the back of my head. She looked like an artist working on a masterpiece with her beautiful blonde hair tied up in an incredibly messy bun and her tongue hung loosely at the corner of her mouth with absolute determination. “I’ve been dying to try me knew curlers for a while now.”

I smiled. “How much longer do you have classes for?”

“About three more weeks, I believe.” She responded, thrusting the brush into the tiny plastic bowl. “Then I’m off until the middle of September. That’s when I start the make up classes.” She grinned to herself, obviously anticipating this with great excitement. I wish I felt the same way about my classes at UCLA.

“I go back to school in September too.” I groaned. “I’m absolutely dreading it.”

“Wow, but you’re going back to the beautiful sun and wonderful Los Angeles.” She sighed dreamily. “I’ve always wanted to go there. Everyone seems so relaxed and happy there.”

The last time I was there, I was heart broken and humiliated by my ex-boyfriend.

But I didn’t say that out loud.

“Will Harry visit you often?” She peaked up at the mirror to catch my eye in the mirror with a smirk. “You two are outright adorable.”

I bit my lip and looked down at my hands. “I don’t know, really. I haven’t thought about it.”

I didn’t want to think about it, was what I actually meant. We were nearing the end of July and the beginning of August. I was going to be home for another seven weeks and then I go back to California. I haven’t thought about what would happen between me and Harry because I simply, didn’t want to know. If I thought about it too much, I’ll start to panic and over think just about everything.

I guess my facial expression was giving away my thought process because Beth was looking at me in the mirror with a sympathetic smile. “Don’t be worrying about it now, love. Everything works itself out, even long distance relationships.”

Yeah right, I thought. Long distance is the last thing that works out.

“Oh you are going to look like an absolute superstar by the time I’m done with you!” Beth gushed before putting the empty bowl and brush on the counter. “Now we wait, wash, and then the curlers go in!”

What only sounded like a thirty minute job, actually turned into a two hour session. By the time I left their bathroom, curlers twirled tightly into my new jet-black hair, it was almost midnight and I was practically sleepwalking towards my room. I was on strict instructions to leave the curlers in for at least twenty minutes before going to bed. When I got into my room, I threw my phone on the bedside table, and jumped right into bed with my remote. I propped up enough pillows to help me sit up & stay awake while I settled on a channel that was playing some Matt Damon movie.

I guess I fell asleep at some point of the movie because before I knew it, I felt myself waking up to the loud shrill of my phone on the table next to me. I jumped, quickly reaching over for the phone. I didn’t even bother to open my eyes to see who it was.

“This better be an emergency.” I groaned into the phone.

“It is an emergency, Loon!” Harry’s unnecessarily loud and excited voice responded excitedly. “I’m hungry and I need pancakes!”

“Are you kidding me right now?” I yawned again, lazily pulling my body over to the bedside table to see the time. It read 4:35 am. “It’s four in the morning!”

“I know. I couldn’t sleep.” Harry moaned in response. “Felt a bit weird without your adorable bum in my bed, love.”

That woke me up slight. “Don’t be cheeky.”

I could hear the grin in his voice. “Come get pancakes with me? Promise it won’t take long.”

“This can’t wait until the morning? Like actual morning?”

“Luuuuunnnaaaaa,” His annoying voice moaned again. “Pleeeaaaseeeee.”

“Alright, fine.” I sighed, regretfully pushing back the duvet. I then realized I still had the stupid curlers in my hair. “Give me ten minutes.”

“Perfect! I’m already outside your building.”

Before I could protest and question him further, he hung up. I slowly stood up, the curlers now lazily hanging dangerously low near my face. I stumbled with sleep into the bathroom, my eyes squinted when the light switched on. I yanked the curlers out of my hair and discarded them into an empty basket by the sink. I quickly brushed my teeth, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and went back into my bedroom to quickly changed into a pair of soccer shorts and a blue sweatshirt I found laying on the floor. With another tired yawn, I grabbed my black flip-flops, phone & keys before tip-toeing past my dad’s bedroom, down the stairs and through the main doors to our penthouse. Once in the elevator, I slipped on my flip-flops with a sigh.

By the time I stepped out of the elevator and into the quiet foyer, I tugged the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, nodded my head at the poor sleep-deprived doorman and walked outside to Harry’s black Range Rover parked by the curb.

I opened the door to the passenger side of the Rover and hopped in.

“Yo.” I yawned, pulling my hood back down.

Harry switched on the car light and let his jaw dropped. “Um. What?”

“What?” I furrowed my brow. I really didn’t feel like putting up with Harry’s sass at four in the morning.

“You look like you just walked off a runway.” Harry reached over, twirled one of my fresh black curls around his finger and tugged softly. “How are you looking this beautiful at four in the morning?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I can’t decide if I like that you’re showering me in compliments or if I hate it because I know you’re just buttering me up since the sun isn’t up yet.”

Harry leaned back into his seat with a smirk and shifted the car into drive. “Next stop: Pancake Central!”