Like Home

“Jesus Christ, Tim spat out as Kit retreated down the stairs. He sighed loudly, his eyes rolling towards the ceiling. “What the fuck is wrong with her?” he wondered, not directing his question to either Harry or Polly, but expecting an answer from both of them. “This guy makes Jacob Oakley look like a fucking saint. Remember that idiot, Jacob Oakley?” Tim asked Harry, scoffing as he shook his head. “Got in a wreck of trouble for kicking his ass, but it was worth it.”

“Yeah,” Harry commented distractedly, fighting the urge to follow Kit down the stairs. “Hard to imagine someone worse than Jacob Oakley,” he added, remembering the schoolyard bully from grade school. “Why would she want to be with someone like that?” he asked, careful to keep his feelings about Kit under his hat. He didn’t think Tim would have the same reaction as he did with the Kevin bombshell, but protective brothers could be scary. He knew, he was one.

“You guys are idiots,” Polly spoke up, easing herself up from the floor onto the armchair. “Oh that’s better,” she sighed happily, taking a long drink. “I mean, you’re beautiful and obviously a god…” she added to Harry, her voice taking on a dreamy tone for a moment. “But you’re both idiots.”

“Why?” Harry and Tim asked in unison, both sounding incredulous, as though it was the first time anyone had said that to either of them.

Polly scoffed, crossing her legs in front of her daintily. “Kevin pays attention to her,” she told them simply. “In case you don’t remember, no one ever paid attention to Kit. How many dates did she go on in school?” Polly continued, asking Tim with a raised eyebrow.

Tim made a face, snickering. “Hell if I know,” he told Polly. “I was too busy going on my own dates to know what that one was up to,” he added, knowing well enough not to expect a high five from Harry, but fighting to resist the natural urge to lift his hand.

“Sure you do,” Polly insisted, holding up her hand, fingers bent into an o-shape. “Zip. Zilch. Nada. No one here paid her a lick of attention. She goes to London and bam! Some good looking, older guy – sorry, Timmy, but he’s pretty foxy – gives her the time of day, and she’s putty in his hands.”

“But if he’s not a nice person, why would she want to be with him?” asked Harry, the entire situation baffling him. Kit was always the girl who stood up for herself. Even when the popular girls were mocking her hair or her clothes, she was confident and proud, and didn’t let their taunts get her down. Meekly letting someone walk all over her wasn’t the Kit he remembered.

“You’ve never been a lonely girl, have you?” Polly said to him, shrugging wistfully. “Attention is attention, good or bad.”

“I find it hard to believe he’s the only guy giving her any kind of attention,” Harry continued, his brow furrowed. “Surely there’s someone who knows just how wonderful she is…” He trailed off, seeing Polly eyeing him questioningly. Feeling his face heat up, he grabbed his phone and tucked his chin against his chest, scowling as he thumbed through his contacts.

“Never mind,” he mumbled, scrolling quickly through his contacts before opening up a new text message. The number in the address bar belonged to a nice girl, a pretty girl… a boring girl, a tiresome girl. But, a single girl. He typed out a charming message, knowing she would answer right away. She always did. He stared at the screen, reading the message back to himself before deleting it with a quiet sigh. She wasn’t the one he wanted.

Polly watched Harry as he fiddled with his phone, realizing his feelings for Kit even in her drunken stupor. She smirked at him, shakily placing her mug on the coffee table before standing up. Walking past Harry towards the bathroom, she nudged his foot with her own, causing him to look up at her.

“Don’t go practising your Oscar speech, puppy dog,” she advised him, raising her eyebrow knowingly. A look of shock covered Harry’s face but Polly held up a finger to her lips, indicating she would keep Harry’s not-so-subtle secret between them. He exhaled loudly, relieved that Polly wasn’t running to tell Kit her discovery. If he couldn’t have her, the last thing he wanted was her knowing he wanted her.

As Polly vacated the loft, Harry shifted his position on the couch and turned to Tim. “So…” he began, covering up his sigh with a snicker. “Manchester, huh? How’s that?”

Luckily for Harry, Tim was a complete dolt and also massively self-absorbed. He hadn’t caught any of the obvious hints pointing towards his oldest friend having feelings for his baby sister, and talking about himself was his favourite hobby.

“Yeah, mate,” Tim answered, stretching his leg out on the sofa. “It’s pretty sick. Nice to be out of this place, for sure. City chicks are a lot better than these small town things, that’s for sure. Right?” he added, wagging his eyebrows. “Come on!” He urged, desperate for a horny story from Harry.

Harry chucked, shaking his head wordlessly. Desperate to get his mind off of Kit and her loser boyfriend – and to get Tim’s mind off Harry’s sex life – he launched into the role of interviewer, asking Tim questions that would make the likes of Oprah and James Corden proud. He was about to ask Tim where in time he would go, if he could go back in time, when Polly stomped back up the stairs.

“Idiots, there’s food down there,” Polly announced, empty bladder and plate full of appetizers. “Better hurry, Kit’s already on her second plate.”

“Is she coming back up here?” Harry asked, the question slipping out before he could stop himself. He kept his head down, staring at his phone again in an attempt to appear nonchalant about Kit’s whereabouts. Just because Polly was already aware of Harry’s crush on Kit didn’t mean he had to flaunt it.

She snickered gently. “I don’t know, but she’s down there,” she told him pointedly. “Sitting beside Grandpa and listening to him talk about which cat litter is the best. It’s Arm and Hammer, by the way,” she added, flopping back into the arm chair. “Maybe you ought to go give your opinion,” she added suggestively to Harry.

“I don’t have a cat,” he told Polly. The thought of discussing cat litter with Kit’s grandfather sounded like the worst pastime imaginable. But he was downstairs with Kit, so maybe…

“Oh,” he added after a moment, cluing into what Polly was suggesting. “My sister has one though,” he told Polly, playing along with her story.

“Grandpa’s always open to suggestions,” Polly replied with a snicker. Tim watched the conversation between the two of them, shaking his head.

“Who cares about cat litter when there’s fried food?” he asked, rolling off the couch and hurrying downstairs. Harry stood up, accidentally catching Polly’s eye. He gave her a sheepish smile before breaking eye contact again, causing Polly to chuckle loudly.

“Could you be any more obvious?” she wondered good-naturedly. “Go on,” she told him, gesturing to the stairs. “And be sure to rave about the hideous food. She made it.”

“It’s not… I mean, I’m not going to…” Harry trailed off, sighing. There was no point in trying to convince Polly that Kit didn’t make his hands clammy and his heart flutter. He waved his hand dismissively. “Thanks,” he finished, shrugging. He wanted to plead with Polly to not tell Kit, but something told him she would be true to her word and keep it between Harry and herself. He didn’t know Polly, but he appreciated her trustworthiness.

The group downstairs must have been mostly relatives, as the decibels coming from the reception room were definitely Carrington-calibre. Harry watched Tim load up a plate, precariously balancing pastries atop one another before squirting an orange sauce all over the bite sized morsels.

“Help yourself, mate,” Tim said to Harry, holding out a plate to him. Harry didn’t notice – his attention was focused on the girl on the other side of the wall, not the piles of food in front of him.

“Hmm? Oh, thanks,” Harry said, taking the plate from Tim. He held it between his hands for a moment before setting it down on the counter.

“I’ll get something in a minute,” he told Tim. “Just going to go say hi to the room.”

He walked into the crowded room, almost unnoticed as everyone was busy laughing and socializing. He spotted Kit in the corner of the room, sitting backwards on the piano bench, silently watching the party. Wordlessly, he crossed the room and sat down on the small bench beside Kit. She looked up at him and met his eyes, giving him a smile that made his heart feel light and heavy at the same time.

“Hi,” he said, bashfully matching her smile, unsure as to what else to say.

Kit’s heart skipped a beat as Harry took a seat beside her, surprising herself. “Hi,” she echoed, letting out a chuckle, sheepishly looking down at her hands. “I’m sorry you had to witness that lovely sibling moment up there,” she apologized, feeling more embarrassed about her relationship status and subpar boyfriend than snapping at Tim, but not wanting to bring Kevin up again.

“That’s okay,” Harry assured her, watching her wring her hands together and wishing he could grab one of them. Instead, he clasped his own hands in his lap and surveyed the crowd.

“Mom looks like she’s having fun,” he observed, catching his mother’s eye from across the room. Anne offered Harry a wave, a bright grin stretching across her rosy cheeks. In unison, Harry and Kit waved back. Anne laughed before turning to Penny, whispering something to her old friend.

“Your mom’s so pretty,” Kit commented, spinning around on the bench to face the piano keyboard. She wondered if she would have a nicer boyfriend if she was pretty like Anne. She tugged on the ends of her hair again, staring at the bright ebony and ivory keys in front of her.

“She is,” Harry agreed, copying Kit and spinning around as well. He wanted to tell her that she too, was pretty, but the words playing through his mind sounded forced and shallow. Instead, he ran his fingers lightly across the top of the keys. “You were supposed to teach me how to play this,” he remembered suddenly, letting out a short chuckle at the memory.

Kit laughed loudly.” I think it was your mom, not you, who wanted me to teach you,” she told Harry, tapping a few chords out. She was quiet for a moment, letting her fingers dance across a few more keys before continuing. “I don’t think you’d have wanted to spend that much time with me.” Her voice was quiet, almost as if Harry wasn’t meant to hear her words.

Harry turned to look at Kit, watching her face as she concentrated on tapping a series of random notes. Was that really how she remembered their childhood? In her mind, was he someone who didn’t want to have anything to do with her? The thought took him by surprise, a feeling of anguish coming over him. “I always wanted to spend time with you,” he admitted to her after a pause, his voice quietly matching hers. I still do, he thought to himself, but kept the sentiment in past-tense.

Stunned, Kit looked up at Harry, a wide smile on her face, as though his statement had been the best thing she’d ever heard in her life. “Well then,” she affirmed, gesturing to the keys. “No time like the present, then. Put your hand here. No, one over,” she told him, nudging his hand into position. “Yes, right there. Pretend they’re numbered… One, two… three, four, five… and six.” She tapped each of the keys as she spoke the numbers, careful not to touch his hand again. She didn’t want to think about the electricity that radiated through her body when they connected.

Harry obliged, following Kit’s directions. He tried not to notice the shock he felt in his hand when she touched him, but it was impossible not to. He cleared his throat, keeping his fingers placed along the ivories.

“One, two, three?” he asked for clarification, pressing on each of the keys as he spoke the number. “And four, five… six?”

“Brilliant,” Kit beamed, pleased he was going along with her impromptu lesson. “I’ll sort of sing out what keys you have to press, okay?”

Harry looked at Kit, feeling self-conscious. “What if I don’t know the song?” he asked her. And what if I mess up and look like an idiot? he wondered to himself, assuming Kevin and Kit spent many nights cuddled up on the piano bench, Kevin tickling the ivories like a member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, making Beethoven look like a novice. He hated him.

Kit laughed. “I promise, you know it,” she assured him, his insecurities suddenly adorable to her. She pursed her lips, internally shouting you have a boyfriend at herself.

“Okay, ready?” she asked him, beginning without waiting for an answer. “One six five four one… one one one six five four two…” She watched Harry clumsily tap on the keys, his brow furrowed with concentration as he searched and pecked, trying to remember which key was one and which one was six. Her knee bumped against his as she pressed on the pedals and he fumbled, missing one of the numbers she sang out.

“Keep going,” she urged him, refraining from helping him by pressing the keys on her side of the piano. “Two six five four three,” she continued, singing the numbers out in the familiar tune. “Six six five four six,”

“Bells on bobtails ring!” Penny suddenly called out from the other side of the room. Harry looked up, startled anyone else was listening to his painstaking piano playing. But had he been facing the group, he would have noticed his mother and Kit’s mother giggling like schoolgirls to one another, whispering about the closeness and obvious attraction between their children. It was a fact they’d both been aware of since their children were young – especially Anne – and seeing them as adults, sitting close together on the piano bench and sharing giggles made their hearts warm.

“One five four three one,” Kit told Harry, leaning closer to him and continuing to whisper the numbers to him as the rest of the room began drunkenly singing along to his piano playing. His face was dark crimson, though more to do with Kit’s close proximity to him and her breath against his ear than the dozen intoxicated people singing along to his feeble plucking. He exhaled, telling himself to only focus on the numbers Kit was whispering.

“What fun it is to laugh and sing a sleighing song tonight!”

“Oh!” Harry suddenly belted out loudly, his outburst causing him to miss his notes. He looked at Kit for a moment, his grin resembling that of a child, seeming proud he knew the words to the popular Christmas carol. Surprised by his sudden solo, Kit lost her place with counting. Laughing loudly at Harry, she inched closer to him and placed her hands on the keys, knowing she would touch his fingers again but telling herself it was the only way to get the song back on track.

“You messed me all up!” she told him, laughing as she scolded him, her fingertips brushing against his hand. She closed her eyes briefly, reminding herself once more that she was in a relationship. “Join in here,” she commanded. “Five… three, two…”

“You messed me all up, too,” he reminded her, though not speaking of the piano playing. He obediently followed Kit’s demands, pressing down on the keys with a bit more confidence behind him. He found he couldn’t sing along while playing, but knowing the tune of the song made it easier to know when Kit was going to speak the number.

“… in a one horse, open sleigh!”

As the song came to a close, Harry bashed his hands against the keys triumphantly, sliding his finger along the entirety of the keyboard and back again in a poor attempt at a glissando. Kit rolled her eyes at him, laughing as he gently manhandled her great-grandmother’s baby grand.

“Okay, Piano Man,” she gently chastised. “You are a proper show off, aren’t you?” she teased as Harry bolted from the bench, bowing to his faithful audience.

“Absolutely,” Harry agreed, sitting back down on the bench beside Kit. She bumped her hip against him, scooting closer to the middle of the bench, placing her hands on the keys. Instinctively, her eyes closed as she pressed on the keys, her shoulders rising and falling in time with the music. He watched her, mesmerised. He’d seen and heard Kit play the piano many times growing up, but the simple tunes she played as a child didn’t hold a candle to the beautiful sounds she was creating.

“Now who’s the show-off?” Harry murmured to Kit, unsure if she’d even heard him. She looked as though she was in a different world. But the small smirk that tickled against her lips told him otherwise. After a few moments, she trailed off, letting her hands fall from the keys as the instrument fell silent.

“That was lovely,” Harry told Kit sincerely, “Might take me another lesson or two to sound that good,” he joked, realising he was hinting that she ought to give him more lessons.

“Oh, you were pretty close,” Kit teased back, shifting away from Harry and sitting sideways on the bench, crossing one leg under her. “I mean, not really, but… it seems like the polite thing to say,” she added cheekily, letting her leg swing gently against his.

“Hey!” Harry exclaimed, attempting to sound indignant. He chuckled, reciprocating Kit’s foot nudge, his stomach tumbling with elation at the light touches. “That was almost Mozart quality, you know that, right? You’ve just witnessed history in the making, and you can’t even take it seriously.” He clucked his tongue at Kit, tapping his foot against her shin once more. He wanted nothing more than to keep touching her, Kevin or no Kevin. He knew the touches and innocent flirtations would only make it more difficult for him to accept the fact that she had a boyfriend, but his infatuated heart was at the helm and his reasonable mind couldn’t take the wheel.

“Oh, my apologies,” Kit quipped, beaming and not appearing apologetic at all. Having a teasing personality, she found it nice to be able to gentle rib Harry and have him able to take it and dish it back. Kevin didn’t have a very good sense of humour, and if Kit tried to tease him about something, he would react like a toddler and pout in his bedroom. For this reason – and his unpredictable temper – she opted to not tease him. It was exceedingly boring.

“It was, obviously, even better than Mozart,” Kit continued with a roll of her eyes. “The way you single-handedly – or, rather… I suppose single-fingeredly,” she corrected, chuckling at her own pun, “plunked out that amazing rendition of the timeless classic was… momentous and… and… life changing. The most extraordinary thing I have ever witnessed in my life,” she added, punctuating her compliments with grandiose gestures.

“Well, now… that’s a bit over the top, wouldn’t you say?” Harry told Kit with a smirk. “It’s okay if you tell a little white lie to appease my ridiculous ego, but you have to try to make it a bit more believable. Something to work on for next time,” he added, grinning at her.

Kit let out a loud laugh, shoving Harry playfully. “You’re impossible,” she said to him, shaking her head at him and trying not to focus on how captivating his grin was. “Maybe next time, I’ll just have to tell you the whole truth instead.”

“I don’t think my delicate ego could handle that,” Harry replied, speaking of more than just his piano playing abilities. But next time… alright,” he added, hopeful that there would be a next time for the two of them. Perhaps by that point, Kit would have wised up and tossed her blowhard boyfriend to the curb.

“You know, I…” he began before being interrupted by a loud laugh from one of the partygoers. He let out a quiet, impatient sigh, looking over his shoulder at the masses behind them. The room was too loud, too hot, too crowded, and he desperately wanted to be alone with Kit. He didn’t know if she would oblige, but he needed to find out and found himself asking her before he thought the question though.

“Do you want to take a walk with me?” he wondered, a bashful red hue coating his cheeks as he voiced his request. As soon as the question was uttered, he wished he could take it back. He was being ridiculous. He was pining for a girl with a boyfriend, a girl he hadn’t seen in three years and a girl he likely wouldn’t see after the holidays. He hoped he would, of course, but despite their conversations about making plans, Harry suspected it wouldn’t amount to a thing.

Kit looked up at Harry, her face painted with surprise before a small grin radiated across her face. She knew Kevin wouldn’t be happy if he found out she was going on a moonlit winter walk with Harry Styles, but Kevin wasn’t here. The thought nagged at the pit of her stomach but she forced the feeling aside – it wasn’t as though anything would happen. Even if she didn’t have a boyfriend, this was Harry. He didn’t look at Kit in any way but as a friend. And even that was indeterminate.

But against her better judgment, she smiled at Harry and nodded. “Sure.”

Notes