Crooked Heart

Fiona had to stop by the flat to pick up Harry’s birthday present before she could go to the party. She changed too, because she was still wearing ripped boyfriend jeans and a cable knit jumper, and Harry’s party wasn’t going to be like Zayn’s where she could show up in something like that without anyone glancing at her twice.

Even after she’d washed her face and redone her makeup, dark lipstick and all, Fiona felt strange. And horrible. And very much not like herself. She hoped that with a few drinks her stomach might settle, because it was tearing itself up with nerves. Fiona shrugged on her moto jacket and zipped it up, not wanting the three inches of bare skin between her cropped cami and jeans to get cold. The present tucked into her handbag, she made sure she had everything else she needed and left the flat.

There were messages on her phone, people wondering where she was, but Fiona ignored them. She’d be at the house soon, but she wasn’t ready for it. Fiona wasn’t good with apologies, with fixing things, because she almost never realized what had gone wrong until it was too late. Now all she could hope for was that she wasn’t too late with Harry, even if she had no idea what she was going to do or say when she saw him.

By some odd coincidence, Liam was walking down the pavement from the opposite direction when Fiona turned the corner. He spotted her immediately and waved, breaking away from his slow-moving, small group to meet her halfway, right in front of the gate to the house. Since it was rather late, the party was already in full swing. They’d probably already done cake and sung ‘Happy Birthday,’ which Fiona felt terrible for missing.

“Thought you’d be here by now,” Liam said, giving her a one-armed hug.

“Got caught up,” Fiona replied. “Why are you here so late?”

“Cos apparently it was proper friends only before ten,” he said with a shrug. “Or that’s what Louis said, anyway. The real party only started about thirty minutes ago.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s go in,” he said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. Fiona didn’t try to shrug it off like she normally would’ve; she was almost too anxious to move, so Liam guiding her up the steps was helpful. What she wanted was something strong to drink, so her legs would stop feeling like jelly and her heart didn’t feel like it was going to rip through her chest and run away.

Much to her relief, they made it to the kitchen without encountering any of Fiona’s friends. She nodded in response to Liam’s offer to make her a drink, knowing from past experience that he made them with way too much booze.

“There you are!” Allison cried from the doorway just after Fiona downed half her drink in one go. “Jesus, Fiona, where the hell have you been?”

“Er…” Fiona mumbled, fiddling with the cuff of her jacket.

“Come on, you can leave your things in Louis’ room, that’s what the rest of us have done,” Allison said, dragging Fiona from the room.

She had time to wave awkwardly at a confused Liam before they rounded the corner. Upstairs, Allison checked that Louis’ bedroom was empty before hauling Fiona inside and shutting the door. There was a pile of coats on the bed that Fiona added hers to, slipping the strap of her handbag back over her head and onto her shoulder. She took another drink, and whatever Liam had put in there was already enough to make her feel pleasantly buzzed. She could go for one (or three) more before she would feel ready to so much as look at Harry.

Fiona did not usually get nervous about this sort of thing. But that was because it had never been anything other than sex, there were never any stupid complicated feelings for her to process. Even with Wren, the feelings had been fairly simple to navigate, until they weren’t. Apparently things started out difficult with Harry, which she should have seen coming. Fiona cursed herself for kissing him in the first place, for letting a bit of drink and curiosity get the better of her, planting a seed in her head that she didn’t realize at the time would actually grow into something, leaving her thinking about him constantly and wanting something more.

“Hello? Are you listening?”

Fiona looked up from her drink, which she’d been staring into for far too long, and blinked at Allison. “No.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Allison rolled her eyes. Fiona thought she looked nice in her little black dress, and wondered if Niall did too. “You missed the cake and everything. Zayn had done broccoli and whisks on it with icing.”

“Cute.”

“It was fucking adorable, and you missed it. Harry’s been gloomy all night and I’m pretty sure it’s because you weren’t here.”

Fiona took another drink, finishing what was left of the potent concoction Liam had made for her. While she wouldn’t have been able to talk to Allison a few weeks ago, now that she knew everything (well, nearly everything), Fiona found that she was grateful to have someone to talk to about what was going on in her head when it came to a certain culinary, poetry-writing, messy haired wanker. “I sort of shouted at him earlier.”

“I think he’s used to that by now,” said Allison, folding her arms over her chest. “What was it about?”

“Told him to get over what happened at New Years.”

“You didn’t.” Fiona raised her eyebrows at her friend, and Allison sighed. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I thought he should.”

“Thought?”

Fiona shrugged, tossing her empty cup into the bin next to Louis’ messy desk. “Remember when you said that I couldn’t talk to you forever? That I should find someone to open up to, that it might help?”

The other girl looked at her knowingly, even though she was being vague. Fiona didn’t know what to make of it, there were too many other things on her mind for her to try and figure out why Allison was looking at her like she knew something Fiona didn’t. “You fancy him, don’t you?”

“I have absolutely no fucking idea,” Fiona replied. Allison raised her eyebrows, but didn’t stop smirking. “But I think I’d like to find out.”

They returned to the ground floor, finding it even more crowded than it had been all of ten minutes ago. Fiona managed to find Liam again and asked him to make her another drink, which he obliged to happily, once he made her promise she’d play a round of beer pong with him.

He made Allison one too, but she stopped him from putting in as much vodka as he did with Fiona’s. “You already had one of these?” she asked, and Fiona nodded. “How drunk are you right now?”

“Not as drunk as I’d like to be.”

“You know this is the time to be sober, right? He’s not going to take you seriously if you’re pissed.”

Fiona realized that Allison had made an excellent point, but the alcohol had also done a fantastic job of making her nerves disappear. “Maybe I’ll see how it goes, then.”

“Okay,” Allison said hesitantly. “Find me if you need anything, yeah?”

“You too.”

While Allison left the kitchen through one door, probably in search of Niall, Fiona took the other. It led to the living area rather than the front room, where the sound system (currently operated by Zayn) was located. Fiona budged through the dancing bodies and sat down on the side table next to him, crossing her legs.

“When did you get here?” he asked without looking up, too focused on scrolling through a playlist on his laptop.

“Twenty minutes ago, maybe?”

“Seen Harry yet?”

“Why would you—?” Fiona started, then decided not to finish her question.

“It’s his birthday.”

“Right.”

Zayn nodded toward one of the corners. “He’s over there snogging some blonde if you wanted to say hello.”

It was almost as if the music had stopped, though she could still feel the vibrations coming through the soles of her boots and making her bones shake. Fiona’s nerves had only really started when she got on the bus outside Oliver’s flat, she’d been reeling with the possibility of kissing Harry again and actually meaning it this time before that. Then the nerves disappeared when she had some alcohol running through her veins, and she thought she might actually be able to tell him she’d made a mistake. That she shouldn’t have pushed him away or said the things that she did, because she was paying attention now and wasn’t going to let anything else important slip through her fingers.

Almost as an afterthought, she realized that she’d never actually seen Harry kiss somebody else before. In the time that she’d known him, Harry had dated one or two other girls. Fiona could only remember the name of one, Sarah, because she’d been on Fiona’s floor and she saw Harry far too much that month for her liking. And although she was certain that all he’d ever had were girlfriends, with the rare one night stand, Fiona had only ever seen him hold their hands or whisper something in their ear that made them giggle. At the time, even that had made her nauseous.

This was not like that at all.

She was too late.

“Cigarette,” she said to Zayn, and found the closest door that would get her outside without passing Harry and the girl.

Though she had hoped that something like this wouldn’t happen, she had not really considered the possibility that it would, and what she would do. She hadn’t gotten much further than knowing that Harry was something and she needed to figure out what.

Fiona glared at a boy sitting in one of the lawn chairs until he got out of it, then dragged it away from the other smokers and set up against the opposite fence. She’d forgotten her jacket, but she was too drunk and distracted to feel the cold, and put down her drink so she could light a cigarette. Fiona leaned back in the chair, trying to process what had just happened.

Sleeping with Oliver had made Fiona realize she had made a big mistake when it came to Harry, and more importantly, herself. Seeing Harry kiss someone else had made Fiona realize that if she felt like this afterwards, then she really did like the asshole.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered, and reached for her bag.

Because there was no way Fiona was going back into that party while Harry was snogging someone that wasn’t her, she decided to make use of the present she’d bought for him. It had been a last minute thing, after she saw the books he had in his room and noticed that Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t there, though it seemed to her like exactly the thing Harry would enjoy. The copy she’d picked up was secondhand from one of her favourite bookshops in town, down along the riverbank. Without any hesitation whatsoever, she tore off the wrapping and turned to the first page, the spine already worn and cracked from its previous owner.

Instead of going inside and trying to find Harry and pulling him away from the other girl, Fiona was going to read. It was probably the opposite of what she should be doing, and only making things worse, and not at all the sort of behaviour she wanted to exhibit (since avoiding the issue was exactly what she’d been doing all along), but Fiona couldn’t bring herself to go inside. She still wasn’t ready, even though she didn’t feel as nervous as she had before. There was something like defeat seeping into her system that Fiona didn’t want to accept, because she’d done that before after Wren split up with her and it had resulted in months of feeling sorry for herself and not talking to anybody properly.

Of course, Harry wasn’t Wren, but Fiona didn’t want to keep going on with the same pattern of unhealthy behaviour. The whole point of paying more attention to what was going on around and within her was that she’d start feeling better. It didn’t even have to have anything to do with Harry, he was just the only thing she could think about at the moment, a present and physical thing for her to focus on. The rest of it was all in her head, all tangled and confusing and frustrating. All Fiona wanted was to start feeling like the person she knew was buried down inside her somewhere, the one who’d shown herself in glimpses before, when she slept and smiled more and wanted to be there for other people. Not when she was forcing herself to do those things, but when they happened without her consciously making a decision about it.

She flipped the page.

Once she separated what she was beginning to feel for Harry — or what she had felt before, and not realized it — and the real issue that had been there for months, if not years, without her properly paying attention to it or trying to move forward, Fiona felt herself relax a little. It might have been the cigarette, or the rest of her second drink, but she was going to let it be the other thing.

After her cigarette was spent and she’d read several pages, it was easier to go back inside somehow. No matter how much it felt that way, he was not the most important thing. She had to tell herself — out loud, so her intoxicated brain could comprehend it better — that she couldn’t let herself get worked up over him kissing someone else. She’d fucked someone else, so it was only fair that he did too, if it came to that.

But then Fiona realized that she was thinking like someone who didn’t care about the emotions involved in this sort of thing and tried to fix that.

Harry was there and he was important, but she had to let him do what he wanted. All she could do was make herself clear and tell him what she’d been planning to tell him all night, and hope that it really wasn’t too late. Fiona knew from experience that just because you kissed another person, didn’t mean that you’d moved on. Rather a lot of the time, in circumstances like these, it meant that you hadn’t.

Harry and the girl weren’t in the same corner they had been when she left, but Zayn was still sat cross-legged on the floor with his laptop playing music. She took a seat on the side table again, moving his cup out of the way, and kicked his knee lightly.

“Thought you might have gotten lost or something, you were gone so long. How was your smoke?” he asked, still not looking at her. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“Bit of a shock seeing Harry snogging someone, isn’t it? When was the last time he did that do you think?”

Zayn did look at her then, and Fiona knew immediately that either he’d seen her and Harry on New Years or Harry had told him about it. She guessed the latter, because he hadn’t mentioned it to Allison, and it seemed to her like they rather enjoyed discussing their respective best mates.

“Are you okay?”

“Fantastic,” she said. “Where’s Cassidy tonight?”

“New York,” Zayn answered.

“What? Since when?”

“This morning.”

Fiona frowned, happy to have something else to focus on instead of all the places Harry could possibly be with the blonde girl in that moment. “She didn’t mention it to me when I saw her two days ago.”

“It was sort of last minute,” Zayn shrugged. “She’s been doing loads of good stuff for them recently so the curator said she could come along.”

“That’s brilliant!”

“Yeah,” he nodded, smiling a little. “She’s gonna be gone for a whole week though. It’ll be kinda weird without her here. She’s gone away for that long before, like home and stuff, but New York is…”

“Far?”

“Yeah.”

“If you miss her, tell her,” Fiona said. Zayn looked up from his laptop, a curious look in his eyes. “She might not know she wants to hear it, but she does.”

“That’s good advice, Fiona,” he said. The noise level in the room meant that he was practically shouting, but he managed to send a second layer of meaning through his words anyway.

This time, it wasn’t so much a reminder that she was being hypocritical, telling people things she really needed to be doing herself, but a reminder that she was running out of time.

“Fiona! I need you!”

Both of them looked up, seeing Allison skirting the crowd in order to reach them. Fiona nodded to Zayn and got to her feet. “What is it?”

“Not here,” Allison said, and took Fiona’s wrist.

They wandered through the ground floor for somewhere relatively quiet to talk. Fiona suggested going to Louis’ room again, but Allison swiftly shut down the idea. They started for the front door, hoping that the steps would be clear, and Fiona thought she saw Harry out of the corner of her eye.

She looked toward the stairs and didn’t see him. Instead, she saw the same blonde from before, following someone — who Fiona was absolutely certain was Harry — up them. Something shut down in her, making her want to lose herself in somebody that didn’t matter. But she couldn’t, because this wasn’t about Harry, and it was how she dealt with things that mattered.

Tearing her gaze away from the staircase, Fiona let Allison lead her outside. They sat on the front steps and Fiona lit another cigarette, making sure she exhaled away from her friend. Harry wasn’t the only one who wasn’t a fan of her habit.

“The reason I didn’t want to go upstairs is cos I went up there to get something from my jacket, and I… oh god,” Allison lamented, putting a hand to her forehead and staring into the distance. “I saw Niall go into Louis’ room with this girl. This gorgeous girl, Fiona, you’d probably try and get off with her.”

Fiona raised her eyebrows, cigarette between her lips.

“At first I thought maybe he was just going to get his jacket and they would leave, so I stood there in the corridor like an idiot for five minutes and then I heard them… I cannot believe that just happened to me.”

“That’s…” Fiona said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve heard Niall having sex more times than I am comfortable with, so I know what you’re going through.”

“Fiona!”

She grimaced. “That wasn’t the right thing to say, was it?”

“No. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“I have had two drinks, thank you very much.”

“With the way Liam was mixing them you might as well have had six.”

“Probably true.” Fiona decided not to tell Allison about Harry and the blonde then, but she would when the timing was better. “Do you want me to get your jacket for you? It’s cold out.”

Allison lifted her head, which she’d been resting on her knees. “But Niall is in there.”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay. I think I’ll go home now, anyway.”

“I’ll be right back,” Fiona said, scraping the burning embers of her cigarette against the concrete step before heading inside. She went straight up to Louis’ room and knocked loudly. “Niall! Get your pants on, I’m coming inside!”

She waited a moment before opening the door, and when she did, she found Niall and a very pretty girl naked under Louis’ quilt, which they’d probably just pulled up to cover themselves. Fiona gave Niall a dirty look, because it was not the time for him to be making reckless decisions either, and grabbed Allison’s coat before marching back out. She didn’t so much as glance as the stairway to Harry’s room on the second level before she went back down.

“Here,” she said, holding out Allison’s jacket as she closed the front door behind her.

“What happened? Do I even want to know?”

“Nothing,” Fiona said, sitting back down next to her. “I’ve walked in on him before, and he’s done it to me.”

“And it isn’t awkward?”

“Sex is sex,” Fiona shrugged, unsure of how to explain it to someone who wasn’t experienced with the subject.

Allison hugged her knees and rested her chin on them. “I like him, Fiona. But if he’s gone and slept with someone else, he clearly doesn’t feel the same way.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Why?”

It bothered Fiona that Niall’s actions were like her own, because she didn’t like to think of them as similar. But they were, and in more ways than she wanted to admit. Only Fiona wasn’t sure that Niall wanted to change, that it even occurred to him that it was a possibility.

“He probably has no idea what he’s supposed to do, so he’s acting like normal,” she said finally.

Allison frowned, sitting up properly. “I guess that makes sense. I still don’t like it, though.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I think I’m gonna head home now,” Allison said, getting to her feet. “You want to stop at mine?”

“Nah, you’re all right. See you later.”

“Night.”

Just as Allison got to the gate, other people started to filter out of the house. Fiona managed to slip inside, only to find that the music was quieter and the party seemed to have shifted into the late, hazy stage. She’d never played that round of beer pong that she promised Liam.

She found him back in the kitchen, talking with Louis and a few others. “Hey!” Liam called, as soon as she entered the room. “There you are.”

“Here I am.”

“Where’ve you been all night?”

“Outside, mostly,” she said. Louis and the others continued with their conversation, shifting away from Fiona and Liam slightly. “Did you have a good night?”

By his unfocused eyes and crooked smile, she guessed that he had. “Ace,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “Smashed it at beer pong.”

“I bet you did.”

“Me and the lads were just headed out, wanted to congratulate Louis on his first fucking rager of the year!”

“Cheers, mate,” Louis said with a grin, accepting Liam’s fist bump. “But don’t forget it was Harry’s birthday.”

“Right, right,” Liam waved a hand, turning back to Fiona. “As I was saying, did you want us to make sure you get home all right?”

“I’m just gonna crash here, I think.”

“Okay. See you in class tomorrow!”

She laughed. “Not likely.”

“Oi, I’m still going! If I don’t see you there I’ll be very disappointed.” Liam and his friends started out of the room, but Liam paused in the doorway. “I’ll give you the notes, though.”

“All right.”

“He totally still wants to fuck you,” Louis said, when Liam and his friends had gone.

She punched him in the arm. “Piss off.”

+++

It was half past four and everyone else had gone, including the pretty girl Niall had gotten off with. He was asleep on the floor in Zayn’s room, since Louis had chatted up a girl and they were probably still getting high in his bedroom, and Zayn had gone to bed immediately after the last guest left.

But Fiona couldn’t sleep. Her body desperately wanted to, going numb in places as she lay on the uncomfortable couch and watched The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars marathons on the nights her insomnia was bad had always been Fiona’s go-to activity, next to reading, and the boys had the boxed set), the blanket Zayn had brought down thrown haphazardly over her legs. She’d borrowed a pair of his joggers too, and her jeans were folded up in a neat pile next to her handbag on the floor.

It was difficult to say whether it was the bad couch, Harry, or her own mind keeping her awake. Fiona knew it was more complicated than that, of course, but with her brain still whirring she couldn’t help but wonder what was giving it the most trouble, making it harder to shut down for a few hours.

She knew it was probably Harry, no matter how much she didn’t want it to be, because it was hard to think about anything else when she knew exactly where he was and what he was probably doing.

When she heard the stairs creak, Fiona figured it was Zayn or Niall. She thought that company would be nice, especially if they were going to watch Star Wars with her. Whoever it was walked past the entrance to the living room, and she was too tired to lift her head up and see their face. But when she heard noise from the kitchen that could only be caused by Harry, she felt nerves twist her stomach again, now lacking the alcohol to help dull her senses.

A few minutes passed, and Fiona turned up the film just enough to drown out the sounds of Harry opening cupboards and running the tap, and not wake anyone up. She sat up, pulling the blanket around her like a cocoon.

There was another creak, but from the floorboards behind the couch. Fiona stared pointedly at Luke Skywalker on Dagobah and not at Harry. He sat down next to her and placed a cup of tea on the table. A moment later, his half empty glass of water was next to it. It was quiet as they watched Yoda lift Luke’s X-Wing from the swamp, and continued for a whole ten minutes after that before one of them spoke.

“When did you get here?”

“Half ten.”

Fiona saw Harry nod out of the corner of her eye, his lips jutting out in a pout as he thought about what to say next. “You were… did you come from, um — you were with that guy, yeah? The one you and Niall were arguing about?”

“Yeah,” she said, and Harry hummed. He’d known it already and asked anyway. She decided to do the same. “I saw you go upstairs with that blonde girl.”

Harry cleared his throat, raking his hair back. “Yeah, that was um, like… I don’t really like doing stuff like that. I just don’t really get it, y’know? How you can be like that with a person and it doesn’t matter. Dunno why I did it.”

“It is your birthday,” she reminded him, and Harry smiled into his lap, his hands clasped together. “Do you remember, god this was months ago now, at Liam’s party? You came onto me out of nowhere just to see what I’d do?”

“Then Niall showed up,” Harry said, lifting his eyes to hers. “What about it?”

“Do you think anything would have happened? If he hadn’t?”

Harry’s eyebrows knit together. “I doubt it. Back then you would’ve slapped me if I got too close to you.”

“I wouldn’t have,” she said, and his frown deepened. “I would’ve let you kiss me.”

“No you wouldn’t. You barely did a month ago.”

“I didn’t care enough to stop you the first time. And the second… that was wrong of me. To do that to you and not even consider if it mattered to you or not.”

“Cos it didn’t matter to you,” he concluded. Fiona grabbed the tea Harry had made for her and took a sip, then nodded. There was resolve in his expression, like he was tired of how everything had been happening without him having the chance to do something about it. “I know I said it was fine, but it’s really not fucking fine, Fee.”

She didn’t know how to reply, because he’d finally said something honest when she was certain he’d been holding back for weeks, months even. “I’m sorry for what I said to you today,” she told him quietly. “And for everything else I’ve done these past few weeks. But… I’m not sorry I kissed you.”

She held her mug close to her lips but didn’t drink out of it, too busy watching Harry’s face shift rapidly from surprise to confusion to even more confusion. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Fiona leaned forward and set down the cup, lips pressed together as she rearranged herself so she was sat facing Harry, her knees nearly touching him. His upper body was twisted toward her, his face set in a frown that wasn’t very encouraging.

“It means I’m really shit at this sort of thing,” she began. “But I can’t stop thinking about you and I tried everything I could to stop, but then I realized that I don’t want to.”

Harry didn’t make a joke or smile cheekily, and he didn’t frown either. He looked like he might smile, but she didn’t want to gather false hope.

“Did you hear what I just said to you?” she asked, when he went a full minute without speaking.

“Yeah.”

“Do you realize how difficult it was for me to say it?”

He nodded.

“And?”

Harry leaned forward and touched his lips to hers, lightly at first, then with more urgency when her hand drifted up to his neck and her thumb traced the line of his jaw. One of his hands found her hip, his mouth moving against hers and making her feel light headed — though that might have been the lack of sleep.

Quite suddenly, Harry was battling with the blanket pooled around her waist one moment and pulling her into his lap the next, his hands flattening against her spine. They were surprisingly cold where they touched her bared midriff, but Fiona’s skin was always a few degrees too warm, so she welcomed the sensation. Fiona had not quite realized how big Harry’s hands were until then: it felt like they were everywhere at once, fingers dragging up her spine and down her arms, over her thighs and around her bum to her hips. He paused with them there, because she tugged on his lip with her teeth and it seemed to have gotten his full attention.

When she dragged her fingers down his chest, his thin t-shirt not leaving much to the imagination, Harry hummed low in his throat and it reverberated through her. Fiona realized, with unsettling certainty, that she could have sex with him on that couch and not regret it for a second.

But there was another girl sleeping in his bed upstairs, and they had both forgotten that fact.

Fiona put her hands firmly on Harry’s shoulders and pulled away, breathing heavily. “Wait.”

“Not again,” he shook his head, and connected their mouths once more. He was just being impatient, not forceful, and it was obvious that the blonde had completely slipped his mind.

She twisted her head to the side, and his lips caught her cheek. “There’s another girl in your bed right now,” she said. He fell back against the couch, his jaw working. But he didn’t try to kiss her again, even though she could tell that he wanted to, that she wanted him to. “When there isn’t, things will be different.”

“Don’t do this to me again, Fiona. I won’t be able to handle it a third time.”

Harry stared at her hard, the frustration clear in his gaze. She put a hand on his chest, keeping her touch gentle. Harry’s eyes flicked down to it, the tips of her fingers right between his swallow tattoos, then back up to her face. “I don’t know how this works,” she said slowly. “But I want to do it right.”

“All you have to do is be honest with me,” he told her, his voice remarkably soft for one so low and gravelly. “So that I can be honest with you.”

Fiona mumbled an ’okay,’ staring at her hand on his chest, then crawled off of him. She settled under the blanket once more, and when Harry sat still beside her, she edged a little closer. He seemed to take the hint and draped his arm across her shoulders. When she looked over, he had on his secret little smile.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. “I got you a birthday present.”

“Another one?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes before digging the book out of her bag.

“It was wrapped, I promise. But I was sat outside earlier and I wanted something to do, so I sort of opened it.”

Harry laughed, taking the book from her and examining the cover. “I’ve always wanted to read this.”

“You’ll like it. It’s one of my favourites.”

He smiled and set the book down on the table, his arm immediately going back around her shoulders. “Y’know, this is twice now you’ve stopped kissing me for the greater good.”

“Well,” she shrugged. The honesty might as well start then. “I’m trying to be a better person.”

“Except that both times you stopped because you didn’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings, have I got that right?” he asked, and she shrugged again. “Apparently I lose regardless of who’s feelings you’re trying not to hurt.”

“I disagree.”

“How’s that?”

“You didn’t lose this time.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Little victories, Harry. You can’t have everything at once.”

Harry considered her words. “That’s a pretty good approach to quitting smoking, Fee.”

“Maybe, but I’m really good at not following my own advice.”

“Perhaps part of this new and improved you could be following your own advice,” he suggested.

Fiona raised an eyebrow at his innocent expression, wondering when his personality had stopped being irritating and started making her think. “That’s the idea. But never refer to it as a ‘new and improved’ me ever again.”

+++

After a few fitful hours of sleep, Fiona woke to Niall catapulting himself onto her legs. She didn’t know what time it was or when Harry had gone back upstairs, but the house seemed to be waking up.

The two of them sat on the couch watching the morning news (as per Niall’s demand) until Harry came in and announced that he was making everyone breakfast. His gaze lingered on Fiona’s, the small smile making a reappearance. She was too tired to return it and scowled at him instead, which only served to make Harry’s smile widen into a grin.

Then the blonde appeared at his shoulder.

“Hi there!” Niall said loudly, because Harry hadn’t noticed her.

“This is Beth,” Harry said, shifting sideways so they could see her properly. “Beth, Fiona and Niall.”

“Hi,” she said, smiling tiredly and waving.

“Right!” Harry clasped his hands together. “I’m going to make some food.”

“None of that fancy shit! I want sausages and eggs!” Niall shouted after him. “And plenty of grease!”

“You know he’s going to make something with fruit, right?” Fiona said to Niall.

He got to his feet. “I’ll have none of that after a piss up. What sort of lad does he think he is?”

“He’s a pastry chef.”

“Fucking hell,” Niall muttered, and went into the kitchen to explain proper hangover food to Harry.

Fiona followed a few minutes later, suddenly quite conscious that much more of her stomach was bared in the joggers than had been in her jeans. It wouldn’t have been a problem usually, because both Niall and Harry had seen her in less, but now there was Beth and Fiona had snogged Harry last night and everything was different and weird.

“Tea?” Harry asked her, shutting the fridge door. He had strawberries, milk and eggs in his arms.

“I can make my own tea,” she replied, and Harry raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got beans to make.”

“I wasn’t making beans.”

“You are now.”

They eyed each other, then Harry broke into a grin. “All right then. But you’ve got to try my cinnamon eggy bread. You too, Niall.”

“It’s eggs and sausages for me, mate,” Niall said, stealing one of Harry’s pans.

“I’ll have the eggy bread,” Beth offered. Fiona, filling up the kettle on the other side of the room, frowned into the sink.

Louis wandered into the room then, rubbing his sleep-tired eyes. He also had a girl with him, who smiled at Beth instantly. “Beth!”

“Hey, Christine!”

“What are we having?” Louis asked. “Can’t remember the last time you were here to make us breakfast, Harry.”

Beth and Christine were stood off to the side speaking in low voices, but by the way both of them kept glancing back at Harry, Fiona didn’t have to wonder what they were discussing.

“He really should spend more time here instead of at ours,” Fiona added, meeting Harry’s gaze. He narrowed his eyes at her, fighting off a smile. “There’s more space and the appliances are way better.”

“You’d miss me,” he said. It was cheeky enough not to raise concern, which she suspected he’d done on purpose. She sighed and rolled her eyes at him, but didn’t argue. Harry grinned triumphantly, then noticed Niall was crowding a pan with sausages and went into Harry Styles, Professional Cook mode.

It turned out that Harry was just being polite when he let Beth stay for breakfast, which Fiona had known all along but had been annoyed by nonetheless, because when he came into the living room (having been the last person to do so) and saw that his seating options were limited to the floor and an armchair and Beth made room for him on the loveseat she shared with Christine, Harry opted for the armchair.

It was right next to Fiona’s side of the couch, and she saw him look over at Beth for a moment before leaning in. “Any advice on how to tell her I’m not interested without sounding like an arsehole?”

“Er,” Fiona considered various things she’d done in the past, chewing thoughtfully on a bit of eggy bread. It was probably the most delicious thing she’d ever had, and not at all what she expected to like eating on a hangover. “I usually just say I’m not interested.”

“Will Niall have better advice?”

“Definitely not.”

“I guess I’ll have to go with yours, then.”

Fiona found his eyes to make sure he was paying attention. “Contrary to popular belief, you’re a pretty decent person. Anything you’d think of would be much better than what I could come up with.”

“Remember when I asked you to be honest?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s funny how most of the time, you don’t even realize that you’re lying.”

Oh, how she wanted to believe him. To some degree, she knew that he was right. It was what she’d been telling herself all night, that a better version of her was in there somewhere. But she’d always known it was, and it hadn’t stopped her from being too angry and unkind. That was part of her too, and it had been much more dominant as of late. But being better wasn’t about getting rid of that part of herself, she realized, as Harry stared at her with soft eyes and people talked around her and had no idea what was going on in her head.

It was about being both, because no matter how much she wanted to be more like Allison or Zayn, the reckless, crooked thoughts weren’t going to disappear. As she’d come to understand yesterday, it was her actions that mattered in the end. How she balanced the bad and the good, the sad and the happy, the angry and the kind.