Witness

By the end of the next week, Nick had enough confidence in me to allow me to run the bar on my own during the day, which I had to think was a little misguided though I was thrilled to be busy. I was continuously running back and forth between his office and the bar, asking where things were and exactly how much cost. And when I felt him growing tired of me and my embarrassment progressed to a certain point, I began to ask the waitresses, who didn’t always know the answers either.

I didn’t care if the responsibility was a lot to ask of me on Nick’s behalf – it was a lot better than sitting at home waiting for Harry to return and keep me company. In fact, it began to inspire me to do other things, such as actually call the Internet company and get Wi-Fi installed at my house (oh how I missed Netflix), and purchase some of the art displayed at the fish and chips shop to hang up on my eerily barren walls. I even got pizza with Mary after a busy Wednesday shift one evening, laughing our way until the early morning.

When I lay in bed that night, going over my usual post-life-apocalyptic thoughts, i.e. I miss New York, I Amelia, I miss Thomas, why did we have to break up, why did any of this have to happen, my mind slowly turned to Harry.

I missed his company, his million-dollar smile and incessant chatter, the way his full brown curls fell across his face when he laughed at the ground. And that was probably the strangest part of it all. During those ten days of hiding, I spent the entire time wading in my woes over Thomas, missing him so much it hurt. And it wasn’t that I liked Harry by any means… but I certainly didn’t mind him hanging around.

Thomas. Thomas. Thomas.

That night, I dreamed that I was at his apartment that night of August 21st, watching as he shamelessly broke it off with me. Citing excuses such as, “we’re too different, we both know that” and “two wrongs don’t make a right” and perhaps worst of all “I just don’t feel the same way as I used to, I’m sorry.”

“You can’t outrun me! You never will!”

The sound from behind the door was enough to finally send my bones rigid, the pounding on the wood that followed belonging to fists I hardly knew but knew so well at the same time. Damien. Damien. Damien.

The panic that arose in me was what made me finally realize I was dreaming.

I was aware of the room around me, my bedroom and a pounding at the door, but all I could see were Damien’s glinting eyes. I slapped at my face in a struggling attempt to shake myself awake, but my killer only advanced upon me. And just as he was raising the knife to my throat, I gasped awake.

There was a pounding at the door, my real door, just down the stairs from my bedroom in Holmes Chapel. I was frozen to my bed in fear. Damien.

But then a voice came. “Lilia!” I could hear Harry call from below through the window. Relief.

I bolted from bed and ran down the stairs, leaving the strange dream and circumstanced lacing my bed sheets and far away from me. “You’re back!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms around a rather surprised looking Harry out of sheer relief at being alive and well, and most importantly, safe. After doing so, I was a little embarrassed at my overzealous reaction, pulling away as quickly as I had hugged him.

He laughed. “I’m just absolutely chuffed to see you too,” he teased, running a hand through his hair. “It’s half ten, is it not? I thought it was about time I paid you a visit.”

“Is it really that late?” I exclaimed in horror. “I must have slept through my alarm! I work in an hour!”

“An alarm?” Harry hummed with a sly smile. “I see you’ve decided to abandon the Amish and join the twenty first century in the week I let you be.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I really have to go get ready Harry, I’m so sorry. Later?”

I turned promptly to head back up the stairs, thinking he would be able to manage letting himself out. “Wait!” he called after me, warranting me to turn back in response. “I have a promise to keep. Let me take you to dinner in Manchester.”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, making my way up the stairs sideways while nodding furiously in his direction. “Absolutely! Pick me up at six!”



Harry did pick me up at six, me in one of the only nice dresses I’d brought along with the lights of a skyline twinkling in my eyes. Only upon seeing Harry dressed equally nice in a dark pair of jeans and a grey blazer did it occur to me that our outing could be seen as a date. But in a panicked hurry, I shook the thought from my mind. It was just a favor between friends – he was just getting me out of Holmes Chapel for the first time.

“You look lovely,” Harry complimented as he showed me to his rather nice car. He caught me eyeing it, only to meet me with one of his trademark coy smiles. “It’s my mum’s. Thought I’d impress you.”

“You certainly succeed.”

I could hardly shut up for once on our way to Manchester, grilling Harry on every question imaginable regarding the city. He had answers to very few of them aside from their sports teams, because apparently their football team was his favorite. But his lack of knowledge couldn’t quell my excitement, my hands shaking at my sides as the skyline appeared on the horizon. A city. A real, shimmering, bustling, noisy city.

I mean, I never got around to calling the O.E.O. to see if it was okay. But I figured that Manchester had to be big enough to allow me to be a face in the crowd. Right?

Manchester was huge, huge in comparison to Holmes Chapel at least. The sight of glass paneled skyscrapers streets flooded with taillights made my heart soar. A city, a real city. I marveled at it through the heavily tinted windows of the car, Harry laughing at me all the way.

“Haven’t you been to a big city before?” he teased over the faint tones of some British band I’d never heard before.

I smiled wryly to myself. “Once. A long time ago.”

After finding a spot in a relatively empty parking garage, we stole away to a hole in the wall restaurant off the busy street. When we left the car, this odd aura suddenly came to Harry, who was rather quiet and kept his head down until we made it inside the restaurant. I wondered if he was uncomfortable in big cities after living in the country for so long but didn’t want to ask and insult whatever ego he maintained.

At any rate, he clearly knew where we were going, deftly ducking into the hardly marked restaurant. We climbed a flight of stairs, racing each other up to the top, me grabbing at my skirt as I raced ahead of him in an effort not to flash him. At the last minute he pushed past me, opening the door in a debonair fashion to allow my entrance.

“Wow,” I breathed, my excitement getting the best of me.

The far wall was floor to ceiling windows, displaying an excellent view of the city. The rest of the place was pretty plainly decorated – stylized and comfortable and entirely unpretentious. Something that was rather Harry’s style, as I’d come to learn.

“Table for Styles,” he requested of the hostess, who gladly guided us to our seats. I realized in that moment I’d never learned his last name before– I never really thought to ask, for whatever reason.

There was something oddly familiar about the pairing of his names, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. The view was distracting, at any rate.

“Harry, this is beautiful,” I breathed, gazing longingly out the window as people bustled hurriedly beneath us, a familiar sight of my life in New York.

“Well, I wanted to show you the very best of one of my favorite cities,” he hummed graciously, flashing that winning smile at me.

When our waitress arrived, Harry tried his hand at ordering for me, which was hilarious and actually amazingly accurate. He knew the wine list backwards and forwards, selecting a bottle of his favorite and ordering it to our table as well.

“So what British mob are your parents working for, with the fancy bottles of wine and the nice car and the quaint life in Holmes Chapel?” I teased.

Harry laughed heartily. “I’m a singer. I live quite the rock’n’roll lifestyle. Fancy bottles of wine, glamorous cars, proper fit birds like yourself.”

I blushed at the last one, trying to hide it with a pointed glance. “You’re lying.”

“Your judgment really isn’t as good as you think it is, Lilia,” he tutted. “I really do sing. But it’s not nearly that glamorous. That car really is my mum’s and I really am just trying to show you a good time. So let me.”

I smiled softly. Chatty neighbor Harry, a singer? I found it hard to believe. I wondered what his parents did to help him afford the first class plane rides and expensive wine, but it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it. Harry was not what his parents did, he was what he did. And if he was a singer, I wanted to know about it. I wanted to know everything.

“So, are you in a band or are you a solo act?” I asked as our food arrived. Harry broke out in a wide smile at my interest and quickly launched into a string of stories. He was in a band with a bunch of his best friends and had the opportunity to travel the world, which was why he left every once and a while and could be gone for months at a time on tour. I had to admit, I was jealous of his lifestyle. That was something I’d always dreamed of doing – of travelling without any boundaries, but I’d never had the money. And now I was in a cage.

“What did you do before? When you were in Richmond?” Harry asked between sips of dark red wine.

The wheels in my head immediately started spinning to come up with the proper lie. What did people in Richmond do? What was a practical profession of a girl from the well-to-do southern East Coast, perhaps the descendent of former plantation owners? A pharmacist, a teacher, a strategic communicational guru? Or, even worse, a professional trophy wife?

I couldn’t bring myself to lie about my abandoned passion. “I was studying to be a screenwriter. At University of Virginia.” I gulped deeply at my wine.

“A screenwriter, huh,” he mused, emerald irises glinting the reflection of the illuminated skyline outside. “And what were your screenwriting dreams?”

I gave a feeble smile, the corners of my mouth turned in a melancholy way. “To maybe write a screenplay that would be turned into a movie that would debut at Sundance or Cannes,” I replied quietly, picking at my dinner. “Make something beautiful. Make something that would last forever.”

“And you gave that up to be a bartender in Holmes Chapel?” Harry questioned quizzically, leaning forward on one muscular forearm before taking a bite of his steak.

“And to explore Europe,” I added weakly. “I just have to save up some money first.”

And when I was expecting a scolding from Harry, I instead got the exact opposite. His eyes scanned over me slowly, like he was contemplating my every feature before he responded. And then he grinned.

“You’re very mysterious, Lilia George. Very mysterious indeed. I like that about you.”

I blushed again, only this time with no ability to disguise it.

The food was delicious and I fell in love with the atmosphere of Manchester as Harry and I tooled around the busy streets. He told me stories of drunken nights in the city in high school, sending me into stitches as we ducked in and out of some of his favorite places. A few people even stopped him to take pictures with them, which was strange and hilarious to me. It turned out that Harry was quite the local celebrity.

“Let’s get one of us now,” he prodded teasingly, forcing his phone on a stranger on our way back down Mancucian. I protested immensely before he was able to wrangle me to his side, the skyline lit up behind us as we smile for the camera. When he slinked his arm around my waist my skin got goosebumps, his untamable curls brushing softly against my cheek.

And as he received his camera back from the stranger, I couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of his profile against the shimmering lights. Something about the way his lips parted in a smile, the curve of his nose, the bright quality of his eyes… there was something absolutely captivating about this Harry Styles, my only friend.

But there couldn’t be. There couldn’t be. Thomas.

I spent the entire car ride home talking myself out of those pang of thoughts that continued to strike me as he sang along to the radio in his pure and baritone voice, his hand brushing against mine on the center console. It wasn’t a date, anyway. I was just grappling at something stable, someone who would make me feel less alone. Harry couldn’t possibly be that person.

But he caught me off guard as he walked me to my front door, lingering and shuffling his feet as I thanked him profusely for the night out of Holmes Chapel, how it was a very kind thing of a friend to do. Finally he raised his mischievous green eyes to meet mine, a bashful smile forming on his lips.

“I know I’m still figuring you out, Lilia, and trust me I know there’s a lot to be figured out,” he hummed, running a hand through his hair. “But I rather fancy you. In fact, I rather fancy you a lot.”

Oh god.

“Harry, I –“

“Don’t say anything,” he protested with a laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s better that way. I’ll see you tomorrow, same time as always.”

And as I watched him walk away, a warm glow resonated in my heart. Maybe I didn’t need to say anything. Not just yet.