Loved You First

I was 13 when I had my first kiss.

“Hazzah?” I asked, looking over at the older boy next to me.
“Yeah, Ela?” His eyes met mine and he smiled, his green eyes brightening.
“Have you ever kissed a girl?” I asked, looking down and biting my lip.
“Yeah, I mean I guess. It was more of a peck. And she slapped me for it, so,” Harry chuckled, shaking his head and blushing.
“What? Why’d she hit you!?” I asked, incredulous.
“She said I was vile and I’d better not come anywhere near her again. She was right, I suppose. She was really fit. Way too fit for a bloke like me,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean, ‘a bloke like you’? Any girl would be lucky to have a guy like you!” I cried, waving my arms around frantically.
“Yeah? Tell that to the girls in my year,” Harry laughed bitterly. I frowned and moved closer to him, plopping myself in his lap, my legs thrown over his.
“Harry,” I laced one of my small hands with one his large ones. “Tu eres hermoso.”
“Hermoso?” He repeated, the Spanish sounding foreign in his British drawl. “That’s ‘beautiful,’ yeah?” I nodded, hiding my face against his neck. “Well, I’m flattered that you think so.”
“What about you, little bird? Ever kissed a boy?” He asked, running his hands down my sides soothingly. I shook my head, my nose brushing against his collarbone, my face reddening.
“Really?” He sounded shocked. “I’d think the lads in your year would’ve been fighting over you by now.”
“All anyone ever talks about is my sister. Solo soy 'la hermanita de Cynthia' pero yo no quiero que sea eso. No otra vez!” I slipped into Spanish as I got agitated.
“You lost me, love,” Harry chuckled, kissing the top of my head.
“I said, I’m only ‘Cynthia’s little sister’ but I don’t want to be that. Not again,” I sighed. “I love my sister, but it’s always like this. I know I can’t resent her for being such a bombshell, but, it’d be nice if for once, someone noticed me for me, not because I look like her, ya know?”
“I noticed you for you,” Harry said quietly, tucking a stray curl behind my ear. “Don’t worry about it, Ela. Cynthia and Gem are finishing their A-Levels this year and then everyone will forget about them and we can just be Ariela and Harry. Not ‘Cynthia’s little sister’ and ‘little Styles,’ for once.” I hummed in agreement, letting my head rest against his shoulder and playing with his fingers.
“Ela?” Harry said after a while. I made a noise of acknowledgement, still occupied with one of his hands in both of mine.
“Do you want to try? Kissing, I mean?” He asked quietly, sounding shy and so unlike himself that I had to look up to make sure it was indeed Harry speaking. Are you offering to kiss me? I nodded, biting my lip and staring up at him with wide eyes. Harry was fifteen and I was thirteen, so in my eyes he was older and infinitely more experienced, even if he’d just told me he’d never really kissed a girl.
Harry stared at me for a beat longer, his green eyes boring into my dark brown ones, and then he was cupping my face with his hands and pressing his lips against mine gently. I held onto his wrists and leaned into him. He kept the kiss chaste but it was sweet and my tummy was erupting in butterflies when he pulled away.
“There,” he said, eyes darting away from mine and cheeks flushing. “Now you’ve kissed a boy.”
“Thank you,” I breathed. He raised his eyebrows at me in question. “For making my first kiss be with someone who actually cares about me.”

////

I was 14 when I had my heart broken for the first time.

His name was Daniel. He was in Harry’s year, two years above mine. Harry had warned me that he was bad news, but I didn’t believe him. How could I? Daniel was so sweet to me. He had all the right moves and all the right words and he made me feel wanted the way that no one ever had before. We’d dated for three months and then he’d dumped me unceremoniously over text.
“Oh, my God, Styles is beating the shit out of someone on the quad! Let’s go!” I heard someone yell, reading something on their phone. My head immediately snapped up at Harry’s name. It had been thirteen days since Daniel had broken up with me. I knew because I had been keeping count.
I took off sprinting down the hall and burst out the door to the quad. The crowd parted easily for me as I shoved through, calling Harry’s name anxiously.
As I got closer, I heard Harry’s voice,
“You never deserved her, you stupid fucking prick!” Each word was punctuated with a thud and grunt.
“Jealous I took your bird, Styles?” I heard Daniel’s strained voice and I froze just as I reached the edge of the crowd. My ex-boyfriend was flat on his back against the ground, Harry was sitting on top of him, one hand pinning one of Daniel’s arms down and the other raised in a fist.
“Don’t waste your time, mate,” Daniel continued, smirking when his eyes met mine over Harry’s shoulder. “She doesn’t put out.”
There was a sickening crack as Harry’s fist met Daniel’s nose, and then there was chaos. Blood, blood, blood everywhere. I pulled Harry up off of him as Daniel screeched about his nose being broken. I laced my fingers with his, ignoring Daniel’s blood on his hand, and we ran, with no destination except away, away, away.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, when Harry and I had reached a park a few blocks away and slowed to a walk, our hands swinging between us.
“He deserved it,” Harry said simply. We walked up to a water fountain and I took Harry’s hand, rinsing the blood away under the water.
“So much blood,” I murmured, massaging his hand gently. Once I was satisfied with his hand I picked up the other one and inspected it for damage, smiling when I found nothing. I took his face in my hands next, noticing a small cut on his eyebrow. I ran my thumb across his split bottom lip.
“’M sorry if I scared you,” Harry whispered, kissing my thumb lightly.
“It’s okay, Haz. I’m not scared of you.”

////

I was 15 when Harry left for tour for the first time.

I was extremely proud of Harry, really, I was. And the other boys, too. They’d all worked really hard and I was so happy that their dreams were coming true even without them winning X-Factor.
But it was easy to be proud when he was here, in England, with me. I’d been a bit lonely without him at school, but he’d been driving out to Holmes Chapel to pick me up all the time. He’d let me sit in the studio and watch him and the boys record and I’d loved every minute of it.
But today he was leaving for tour and I was standing in the airport watching him go through security and the reality of my best friend leaving me hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, I was sobbing violently and my sister had to catch me to keep from collapsing to the ground.
“Ay, mi Arielita, ay,” Cynthia cooed, pulling me against her. Gemma wrapped her arms around us, crying silently, and then Harry’s mom pulled us against her.
Harry had heard our commotion and was trying to get to us, but security wouldn’t let him back through.
“I love you!” He called, leaning over the barrier and waving at us frantically.
“I love you, Gem! I love you, Mum! I love you, Cynthia! I love you, Ela!”

////

I was 16 when Harry started dating Taylor Swift.

“Isn’t she kind of old for you?” I asked hesitantly. “She’s like, what, 21? 22? You’re not even 19 yet.”
“She’s 22. But does that really matter? She’s really sweet and not exactly bad to look at and I like spending time with her,” Harry replied, his voice slightly garbled by the phone.
“As long as you’re happy, Hazzah,” I sighed.
“I am happy,” he insisted.
It’s not that I didn’t like Taylor. It’s not that I was jealous. It’s just that for the three or so months that they were together I hardly heard from Harry at all. His schedule was always crazy and now that he was spending all his free time with her I was put on the back burner. Even when he was home for Christmas, I only got to see him for two days before he was flying back out to America to go skiing or something.
And maybe that shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. And maybe I shouldn’t have been relieved when he called to tell me they’d ended things.

But I was.

////

I was 17 when Harry brought me onto the red carpet in London.

“I want you to be on the carpet. At the premiere,” Harry said randomly one day, a few weeks before the premiere of This Is Us.
Lou was helping Cynthia get ready for a photo-shoot. Harry and I were watching Lux play in her backyard, the little girl giggling as she chased the bubbles I was blowing for her.
My eyebrows shot up but I just nodded and continued to blow bubbles.
“Cynthia, too. She’ll like that. Gem and Mum will be there, too, and the lads’ families. Eleanor and Perrie should be there, too,” Harry continued, his eyes on the horizon. “You got on with them, well, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, Harry still not looking at me. “Yeah, I got on with El and Perrie and yeah, I’ll be on the carpet for you.”
Harry finally turned to me then, grinning widely, his dimples making an appearance.
“You’re the best.”
The girls banded together at the premiere: Gemma, Cynthia, Eleanor, Sophia and I walked together, trailing behind Perrie and the rest of Little Mix and avoiding the intrusive questions of angry reporters and excited fans. Zayn’s, Louis' and Liam’s sisters weren’t far behind us, either.
We didn’t get to see the boys really at all, except for brief glimpses, but we had fun nonetheless, all of us marveling in the fact that all of this fuss was for our boys.
Once we got seated in the theater, Harry plopped into the empty seat next to me and leaned over to whisper,
“You look gorgeous, Ela.”
“You’re not looking so bad, yourself, Styles.”