The Love Club

They cancelled the tour on my twentieth birthday.

It was not even noon on February First when Richard Griffiths sat me down in his office to deliver the executive decision. I remember walking to his office, feeling comparatively okay for the first time in a long time, the sun breaking through the cloudy London skies. I hadn’t been planning on going in that morning; he’d called me at nine or so the night before, assuming I wasn’t doing anything (rightly so, I reckon), and told me he needed to talk to me straight away in the morning, and could I come over to the offices around half nine? I didn’t have anything planned until that night – and I was contemplating not even going to that for starters – so yes, I could, and yes, I would bring his favorite double-shot-no-whip-skim-whatever-the-hell.

I remember it being bright out, unusually bright out for my birthday. I can’t remember the last time it was sunny on my birthday, much less any day in February in Britain for that matter. I wonder now if it was sunny in Holmes Chapel that day, but I guess that I didn’t really care – there wasn’t much for me there anymore, anyway. I instead enjoyed what I could of the nice weather in London, the still decaying leaves littering the sidewalks, loose slabs jilting beneath my worn-out boots every few meters. If my mouth hadn’t been securely wrapped in some trendy scarf Caroline picked out for me, I’m sure I could have seen my breath. Instead, it was trapped in some navy-and-black piece of fabric that would be flying off the shelves this time tomorrow – but nevermind, I didn’t have much energy to care about things like that, then. And I was about to care even less.

After the words came out of Richard’s mouth, he immediately filled it with coffee. His lips pressed together in a thin line and his eyes watered a bit, and I could tell immediately that it was too hot, but he was trying his best to be calm about it. I, on the other hand, was trying my very best to be calm about the fact that I was for some reason no longer allowed to do what I love.

“Is this because of the Dubai thing? Because if so - “

Richard shook his head, waving his hand to signal no as he still struggled to down his coffee. His face was now beginning to blossom red around his lips, skin blotching with the heat. I sat patiently, feeling the heat rising inside me, too, but doing my best to keep calm.

Another outburst would just make them cancel more.

“It’s just… you’re a liability, Harry,” Richard explained finally after a large gulp. “We can’t afford to have something happen.”

Surprisingly enough, he took another sip. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do remember thinking how odd it was, him having just scalded the inside of his mouth and all.

I was quiet for a moment, turning the thought over in my head over and over and over, thinking – I’m a liability now. It was as though, at any moment, I may spontaneously combust, burning everyone to a crisp and taking them down with me. But now that I think about it, I guess that is kind of what it was like.

“And the lads are okay with this?” I couldn’t imagine the lads would be okay with this.

“They actually helped me come to this conclusion.”

I guess I was wrong.

“Oh,” was all I could mange from the thin slit between my wind-chapped lips.

I wanted to flip his desk and watch all the papers go flying like a flock of doves, peppering the air with engagements and responsibilities. I wanted to punch the light bulb in the ridiculous light fixture above me and let the rays shatter around me. I wanted to take his cell phone and crush it beneath the heel of my boot, stamping out the prospect of every contact, every calendar appointment, every to-do-list item.

Instead I nodded, numb.

“I think it’d be best to just take this time to work it all out, Haz,” Richard pressed, leaning forward on his elbows and setting aside his coffee for once. “Get some fresh air. Maybe write a little in that notebook of yours, I know that helps. Have you still been to see Veronica?”

Veronica was my therapist, the one that someone on his management team picked out for me after we came back from New York. That felt like ages ago, then.

“Yes,” I answered flatly. I was still thinking about the fluttering of paper around us, how easy it would be to dismantle it all in one fell swoop.

“Good,” Richard hummed, reclining in his chair and reaching for his coffee. “Good. I think that will make all the difference. Tasha was really struggling with things and her therapist really brought her out of her funk.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell that what I was going through was a little bit more serious than his thirteen-year-old daughter’s “funk,” so instead, I sat and stared out the window. Blue, blue skies. Twenty years old.

After a long period of silence, Richard clapped his large hands together and gave me a smile. “Well, off you go then. I have a meeting with Scouting for Girls in fifteen and I’d really like to grab a Bueno Bar from the vending machine. Isn’t it your birthday today, anyway?”

I nodded.

“See! Even more reason for you to be happy. Go do what you love Harry – be with people. I know how happy a good night out makes you.”

I wished so terribly I could explain to him – that’s not how it works. You can’t just turn on being happy like a light switch or a shiny black button; at least, that didn’t work for me. I guess it maybe worked that way for Richard, to be fair.

I took the tube. I didn’t do that before. But I progressed to the point where I could, if I just looked past the stares and the camera-phones and the “I-Love-You-Harry”s. Instead, I was thinking about how serious things must have been for Richard to cancel the tour. Richard never cancelled anything, even when one of us had a cold. In fact, he’d rather double book on a sick day, insisting over iMessage, “It builds character.”

I was sat in St. James’s Park, watching the drooping willow branches place brushing kisses on the face of the pond when I felt my phone ringing in my pocket. Before even seeing the screen, I knew who would be on the other end. It was no surprise to me when I heard his voice.

“Hiya mate, you alright?”

“Grimmy,” I greeted. “Don’t you have something better to be doing? Ordering a shot luge or something of that ridiculous nature?”

“A shot luge?” Nick Grimshaw asked innocently – I could hear the amusement in his voice and I knew immediately that he wasn’t alone. Soon, this would all be relayed to everyone in the room with him, or worse, the radio.

“A brick of ice with a slide cut down the middle like a luge, you know, the Olympic sport,” I clarified with weighted words. “You send shots down it. They had one at some party in Vegas once, but it melted pretty quickly.”

“Oh no!” Nick sighed. “Now the party won’t be complete without one. Just when we thought we’d gotten everything taken care of, right lads?”

I could hear Niall make some ungodly noise in the background and without a further notice, my blood ran cold. The lads, my bandmates, who signed off on the warrant to cancel the tour for my benefit. The lads who I didn’t know whether to be mad at or apologize to. Did I owe them or did they owe me? Did I have to add them to the ever-growing list, headed with “People You Owe A Proper ‘I’m Sorry?’”

“Hazza,” Nick spoke again, taking my silence as a warning. “You aren’t going to stand us up tonight, right?”

I didn’t. As much as I wanted to stay home, as much as I really truly wanted to, I went to the bloody party. It took a half an hour of convincing myself with shots of rum pulled straight from the neck of the bottle, blaring strains of The Pixies, and a good pep talk in the mirror, but eventually I was out the door. Caroline was kind enough to pick out an outfit for me – it was a social event after all, another publicity event, and I needed to be dressed to par – and I even felt like my old self for a minute, sliding into the door of my car and leaving for this nonsense party Nick insisted on throwing me.

I wonder if I knew what I know now if I would have gone. I guess there’s no way of knowing at this point.

The club was bursting with cheers when I walked through the door and I must admit, I was filled with the most insane combination of exhilaration and absolute terror. In moments, Louis was by my side, clapping his hand against the back of my leather jacket, nearly knocking the wind right out of me. The smile on his face was contagious; in seconds, it had crept its way over to mine and I found myself beaming, gazing into a crowd of faces.

If those lights had a personality, I would say they were frenetic at best. The music was some insane combination of all these different weirdo bands Nick had tried to push on me, trying to make me feel better – and at the moment, it was working. Everyone was holding a shot glass, it seemed, raised in the air in my direction, and in moments, Liam was putting one in my hand too, mischievous grin on his face. Maybe Richard was right. Maybe all I needed was a good party.

And Grimmy sure knew how to throw a party.

“Happy birthday Harry!” the conglomeration roared, and the liquid was searing down my throat and I swear for a moment I felt something stir inside me.

I was passed around like a lighter, friends sparking me with compliments and liquor and watching me ignite. It took a bit of convincing, but I decided with a bit of reckless abandon that it was my birthday, and god damn it, I was going to celebrate. They cancelled the tour and I may as well give them a real reason. The night could turn out to be a PR nightmare and maybe they’d cancel all my other engagements as well. That would be the best birthday gift of all.

“Hazza!” Nick exclaimed when I finally reached him, of course at the DJ booth, heckling a rather fit looking Rita Ora with her left hand placed lazily on the remastered Broken Bells record playing alongside some trance-y backbeat. She only had time to place a kiss on my cheek before Nick dragged me away to the bar to buy me a drink.

“You’re proper knackered already?” he questioned, trying to gain some assurance that his party was going his way. And admittedly, it was – I was already feeling the sway from the string of sparks that led me to him, those little liquid flint stones that kindled something I felt was lost. I was starting to feel like my old self again. All I could do was nod.

“Ace,” Nick approved, his lips curling into a pouting smile. He handed me some concoction the bartender whipped up at the open bar – bless that Nick Grimshaw and wherever he’d found the funds – and he didn’t take his eyes off me until I’d taken a nice long swig of it.

I suddenly had the urge to tell him. I’d been compartmentalizing the meeting all day, keeping it bottled inside me. That was the problem with all of this in the first place, my tendency to keep things bottled inside me until they burst. Nick was safe. Nick couldn’t have been in on all of it. And I was beginning to be feel the music in my limbs, my body dancing without me. My lips started dancing too.

“They cancelled the tour!” I shouted over Rita’s mix.

“What?” Nick exclaimed incredulously. “Because of the Dubai thing?”

“No!” I replied, my voice breaking with the pressure to be as loud as possible. “Because I’m a liability!”

I had to shake the fringe out of my face to see Nick, and when I did, I found him laughing.

“I wouldn’t disagree with that right now, love,” he hummed, shaking his head. “Let’s talk about this over a cuppa tomorrow. Right now, I want to see you have a good time. Please, just have a good time.”

He disappeared into the ebbing throng of people whirring around us before I could even say anything more – I spotted him up next to Rita again, picking up another record and placing it on a third turntable, ready to blend this song into the next. In response to his encouragement, I downed my drink. I was determined, then. I needed to have a good time. Maybe if I had a good enough time, they would give me the tour back. Maybe that was Richard’s master plan in the first place. Performing was the only thing left.

The song switched and I ordered another drink as the distorted guitar cords echoed through the space. Everything stilled for a moment as I watched the bartender swirled the liquids together into the solution to all the problems that had just accumulated over time. I turned to the bartender living as Harry Styles, the troubled one. I turned around to a changed world.

Bang bang! He shot me down! Bang bang! I hit the ground!

She was standing down the bar from me, drink in her hand and smirk on her redred lips, gazing out into what now seemed to be nothingness with those hazel eyes. And I guess that was the moment – the moment that, from then on out, nothing would be the same. It was now a world with her in it. A world I didn’t know before.

Bang bang! My baby shot me down!

Lex Parker is the sound of bursting bullets shattering against the walls of my soul. I know that seems dramatic now, but it resonates in me something fierce. I think she would agree, if she knew. All those letters tried to tell her, but I don’t know how good of a job they really did.