Scarlett’s POV
I ran my fingers through my hair, wrapping a hair tie around it so that it was in a ponytail. I had two bobby pins between my teeth, and I grabbed one, tucking away a loose strand of hair. I had showered last night, before Harry had texted me, so I didn’t need to, which I was thankful for—I only had about an hour to get to the studio, where Nicole wanted to discuss song choices for the finals.
I had, of course, woken up next to Harry. Well, I suppose tangled with Harry is a bit more accurate—his arms were around my waist, and I had somehow managed to throw one of mine around his neck, so I had woken up with his face right in front of me. It probably looked like we were going to kiss. I had slowly pulled myself out of our embrace and walked over to the bathroom without waking him. I took off my sweatpants and t-shirt and threw them in a pile next to my dresser before walking into the bathroom to fix my hair.
I hummed a bit, some sort of mix between two different Ed Sheeran songs, and stepped out into the main room.
Harry was awake.
This wouldn’t have been much of a problem if I wasn’t only in my knickers. What a normal girl would do in this situation is hastily cover herself and run back into the bathroom for a towel, or maybe yell at Harry to avert his eyes while getting out of his sight, but I was so shocked by him sitting up and looking at me that I didn’t move. He had been rubbing his eyes, but he turned to his right and there I was, pink lace bra and blue panties adding color to my otherwise slightly-tan body, and his mouth dropped. We stared at each other for a moment before I came to my senses enough to—no, not hide myself, I’m far too large an idiot for that—say something. “Um, you’re up.”
“You’re in your knickers.” That smirk was playing on his face again, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the way his eyes were running up and down my body.
I looked down, even though I was already aware of the situation. “So I am.” I muttered, most likely sounding as if I had done this on purpose.
We stared at each other for a while more, our half naked bodies four meters apart with nothing between, when he finally spoke up again. “Not that I don’t enjoy this situation,” he motioned between us, “But do you maybe want to, you know, cover up? You look a bit terrified, love.”
That finally brought me to my senses. “Yeah. That would be an idea. Uh, can you look away, or something?” He grinned and obliged, staring at a picture of a sunflower that was on the wall. I rushed to my dresser and rifled through my clothes, finally finding something that worked well enough. I ran back into the bathroom, giving Harry one last look before disappearing and closing the door behind me. I stared at myself for a long while before finally pulling on my outfit—a red and white polka-dotted sleeveless blouse and some high-waisted jean shorts—and leaving the bathroom. When I walked out Harry smiled at me from the bed, where he was sitting on the side with his feet on the ground. “Oh, good. I thought…I don’t know. I thought maybe that creeped you out, and you were mad at me.”
I forced a laugh. “Um, I kind of froze. Sorry about that.”
“Hey, no worries. I just got to stare at an unbelievably fit girl in her knickers for a solid three minutes. I have no complaints about that.” He laughed lightly to let me know that he was teasing.
“Yeah, it’s just, you know, you saw me. In my knickers. That’s…strange.” I didn’t have too many issues with him seeing me like that—part of me had certainly enjoyed it—I was more self-conscious, and I felt weird having a boy that I don’t really know watching me.
He furrowed his eyebrows in thought for a moment. “Do you mind if I ask you a kind of personal question?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” I sat down on the bed next to him, in a vain attempt to discard the awkward sexual tension.
“Are you a virgin?”
I laughed. So much for losing the sexual tension. “Harry, is that seriously your idea of a ‘kind of’ personal question? That’s like, the most personal question there is.” He studied the back of his hands and I got a very sudden, very powerful urge to run my hand through his hair. My gaze flicked over his chest, too, and damn, did he have abs. I was pretty sure I had absentmindedly rubbed them during the night, but I wasn’t positive. On top of that, he was bulging a bit. Or a lot—one of the two. I fought to keep my eyes above waist level. “But, to answer your question, and I’m not sure why I’m telling this to you, considering I don’t really know you that well, no, I’m not.”
He nodded slowly. “Okay. Sorry, I was just wondering.”
“I honestly don’t know what you’re going to do with that knowledge, but whatever. I have to meet Nicole at the studio in a little less than an hour. Do you want to call your management and have them send a car for you?”
“Yeah, that’d be good. Shit, they’re going to be mad that I didn’t tell them that I spent the night with someone.”
“If we’re going to leave, it might be an idea to get dressed. It’s going to look really classy when you leave in the same clothes as you came in with.”
He ran a hand through his hair and stood up. “Oh, damn, I didn’t think of that. We should probably leave separately, too, otherwise you’re going to get a lot of shit from the paps. You know what, I’ll wait in the lobby for a while after you leave, just so that no one makes the connection.”
“You can just wait up here for a while more, if you want.” Curse my need to be polite.
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
“Yeah. Just don’t rifle through my stuff.” I teasingly elbowed him. “Alright, I have to get going. Text me when you leave, okay, just so I know. I’m going to go catch a ride with one of the producers.” I grabbed my phone and keys of the nightstand and turned around to find him standing right behind me.
“Hey.” He said. I raised my eyebrows, giving him a questioning look. He grinned. “I just wanted to say thanks. For letting me stay. Also for letting me see you in your knickers. It was good.”
I punched his shoulder. “No problem.” I started to push past him when he blocked me again. “Not quite yet.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, lingering for a bit longer than was normal. I felt myself go weak at the knees, and my heart fluttered. “That’s my proper thank you. I’ll see you later.” He stepped aside and I walked past, managing a smile through my awed expression. I walked to the door, feeling his eyes on my back. “Um, bye, Harry.” I stuttered before slamming the door closed behind me.
What was this boy doing to me?
***
The lights went off, and I heard the last note ring through the empty stage. I had three days until the finals, and I was rehearsing one of my songs: I Knew You Were Trouble, by Taylor Swift. I didn’t really like the way she’d had strings of boyfriends, but I had to admit that I respected her as an artist. Today was my first time rehearsing it on the main stage, with the lights and dancers. The lads had all stopped by the studio—Louis, Harry, Zayn, Liam, and Niall—and were sitting in the front row, watching me. I’d seen them twice since the night of the semifinals—once with Niall and Louis for drinks and another with Niall, Liam, and Harry for a movie. I was insanely busy, and it probably wasn’t a very good idea on my part to spend time with them, but I couldn’t help myself. Something about them just made me drawn to them. I had spent a night looking them up and watching interviews, and I began to understand the scale of their popularity. They all had millions of twitter followers, and I’d seen thousands upon thousands of marriage proposals and girls offering their bodies to them (most were quite graphic). I’d gotten to know their different images.
I heard them clap a bit. As the main lights came back on, I watched them exchange looks. Nicole wasn’t here, as she was rehearsing with Elise, so I figured that I could chat for a few minutes. I hopped off the stage and wiped the sweat off my brow, walking over to them. Panting, I said, “Hey, lads. How’s it going?”
They exchanged another look. I was starting to feel a bit anxious, but I kept it to myself. Liam cleared his throat and spoke. “Uh, we’re good.”
Niall piped up, glancing sideways at Harry, who was grimacing. “Yeah. That…um, you sang well, there.”
I shifted uneasily and scratched the back of my neck. “Thanks. So…what’s wrong?” I’ve always had a habit of getting straight to the point.
Zayn looked at Harry. “Um, Harry, you want to take that one?”
Harry nodded before looking at me. For some reason, there hadn’t been a trace of awkwardness between us even after the incident four days earlier. “Uh, well, I dated Taylor…you know, Swift.” I widened my eyes. How had I not come across that in my searches? It must have been fucking everywhere. I was about to say something when he added, “And that song, that you just sang, that’s about me. Like, she wrote that, about me, after we broke up.”
All of a sudden, I felt a blush rise to my cheeks, feeling like I’d just publically made fun of Harry and that they were all mad at me for it. “Oh. Wow. Shit, Harry, I’m sorry, I had no clue. I’ll go call Nicole and tell her that I’m changing my song.” As I turned around and pulled my phone out of my pocket, he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Scarlett, you don’t have to do that. It’s not really a big deal.”
“I’m not going to sing a song that makes fun of one of my friends on national TV. I’m changing my song.” I pulled out my phone and stepped away from the group, scrolling through my contacts list until I found Nicole. She answered after two rings. “Hey, Scar, how’s rehearsal going?”
“It was going well until…never mind. I need to change my song.” I knew it was a bold and possibly stupid move, but I didn’t enjoy the feeling that I was poking fun at Harry onstage.
There was silence on her end for a moment, and finally she spoke. “I don’t suppose there’s any changing your mind, Scar.”
“Not a chance.”
She sighed. “Scarlett, it’s not a good idea, but I won’t stop you. Which one are you changing?”
“I Knew You Were Trouble.”
“I’m going to assume that this has something to do with your newfound crush on Harry Styles?”
I gulped. “Of course not.”
“Okay, Scarlett. Whatever you say. Did you have anything in mind?”
“I…no, I was hoping that you would help me.”
She sighed again, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to convince me out of it. I’d proved myself to be stubborn over the course of the show, and towards the end, she’d just started submitting to things like this. “Okay, well, why don’t we do one that you learned earlier, but didn’t use. That way, you’d just have to practice it some more and figure out the dancing.”
“That sounds like a good idea. We need something fast. That leaves us with…” I mentally ran through all the songs that I’d learned in case I was in the bottom two or sang for a while before deciding on something else. I finally thought of one, and we agreed to it. I ended the call and walked back over to the lads, who were having a whispered conversation. “Okay, well, it’s done. I’ve got a different song.”
“Scar, I told you, you don’t have to change it. It’s not really a big deal.” Harry stared at me, a funny look in his eyes.
“Seriously, Harry, I’d feel awful about singing it. I have to go, now, because Nicole wants to meet me to work on vocals. I’ll see you later.” I waved to him and the rest of them before turning and running through a side door.

Notes

Here we go.


By the way, Harry and a puppy say hi. So hi.