The Smiths - Golden Lights

I popped a DVD into the player but the movie was quickly forgotten when Rose started to ask questions about the party. She scraped her wild ginger curls into a bun and ate her soup slowly while I told her everything.

“There was one… strange thing that happened, though”, I hesitated to tell her when I had tried to walk away from the table.

“What? Other than following you outside and looking at your messages over your shoulder? The youth of today!”, she shook her head before sipping another spoonful of soup.

“Well, when the others joined us I got up to leave, feeling like the mum at the kids table, but he stopped me.”

“Harry?” I nodded.

“He put his hand on my knee and didn’t take it off until the Liam and Niall left, then he did it again five minutes later!” I looked at Rose hoping for confirmation that I was being over dramatic and that I was just attention deprived.

“Show me how he stopped you.” I felt stupid but obliged, showing her how he stopped me first, my hand pressing gently enough on her kneecap that it wouldn’t hurt but she would get the message. “And the second time.”

Looking down at my own leg, the vision of his large hand having been permanently at the front of my mind since I’d woken up, I moved my hand from her knee to further up her thigh.

“Fuck”, was all Rose answered with, a heavily breathed expletive. “He was totally trying to sleep with you!”

“Oh shut up!”, I snatched my hand back angrily. She was meant to be telling me I was being crazy, not encouraging my thoughts! “He was drunk!”

“If he was just drunk he wouldn’t have said hello to you today!”

“Rose,” I rolled my eyes and threw myself back onto her bed, “he was being friendly! Apart from the knee thing he was perfectly lovely!”

“Listen, Mrs. French, you’re one hot lady and not everyone is like Will. Some men would kill to get a piece of that gorgeous arse!”

“Maybe,” I frowned, wanting to end the whole conversation, “but not Harry. Look at her!” Stretching over Rose’s legs I grabbed the magazine I’d wanted to burn earlier and flipped to the picture of Harry smiling over dinner, hand reaching out to his petite, blonde and gorgeous ex. “I am not her! I’m twice the size of her and half her height!”

Rose rolled her eyes this time and sucked her teeth. “Maybe Harry wants a woman this time and you’re really not th-”

“Right! No! We’re not talking about this any longer, it shouldn’t even be a discussion! I have a husband and Harry was drunk. End of.”

I tossed the magazine across the room, out of the bedroom door and heard it hit the hallway wall.

“Well,” Rose spoke, breaking the silence that followed my overreaction, “I’ve never seen the phrase ‘the lady doth protest too much’ so accurately portrayed.”

I huffed in her direction but she just looked back at me with a smirk on her face and an eyebrow raised until I finally cracked and started to laugh.

“You’re such a pain in the arse when you’re ill.”

“Yes, but you love me anyway!”

Harry wasn’t mentioned again for the rest of the day. In fact, he wasn’t mentioned again for weeks until Will said over dinner that the band were really happy with the first sketches of the stage layout.

“Actually, Harry did ask after you. He said he’d enjoyed your conversation at the party, but you never mentioned you’d spoken.”

My stomach had a brief moment of butterflies when I remembered looking down at Harry’s long fingers on my thigh, the feel of his warm palm on my skin; it had been more of a conversation. Clearing my throat, I suppressed the image.

“Don’t you remember that we were speaking when you came over and introduced us?”

Will’s brow furrowed with confusion, and then a bemused smile spread across his face. “Did I introduce you?”, he laughed and shook his head. “And I thought it had been you who’d drank too much that night.”

Reaching over to pat my hand patronisingly, I gave a tight smile and knew full well that it most likely that Will had clean forgotten I had even attended the party with him until Harry had mentioned it. I wriggled my hand free of his touch and went to grab my wine glass but stopped myself, remembering what he had just said about my drinking, and instead grabbed my water glass and took a large gulp.

Will smiled at my decision, a smug satisfaction that made my eye twitch with rage, and went back to his steak. I looked down at my chicken salad and pushed it away having lost my appetite and excused myself from the table, the need to get away from my husband suddenly so overwhelming I couldn’t breathe.

I locked the downstairs bathroom behind me and splashed my face with water. I needed to get a grip and remember that Will was a busy, hardworking man that, despite his faults, was loyal, and loving. I was lucky to have him.

Notes