2033

Niall had been in the kitchen when the doorbell had rung. The bird he’d been staring at had suddenly flown away from the branch it had been perching on for the last hour.

He knew it was Harry. His old bandmate had called him last night to tell him he was on his way to Ireland. Nothing else, just that, but Niall had known it wasn’t a social call. Harry hasn’t made one of those for the past few years. It’s what you get after not being in a band together for so many years.

The coffee sloshed in Niall’s white cup as he shuffled toward the door. He could see Harry’s face through the small round window that allowed Niall to see the person who was waiting in front of his house while they couldn’t. He looked tense, anxious.

When Niall opened the door, a surge of recognition unsettled him. The man in front of him had the same long hair he had years ago, the year before the breaking of the band, and he was as tall and broad as Niall remembered. But there were more lines on his face and his green eyes were not as lively as he recalled them as having been.

Neither Niall or Harry said anything for Niall didn’t know how long. Time went by unnoticed while he took in the sight of his old friend.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

The lightness of tone was belied by the sadness in Harry’s eyes. This hadn’t been the first time that Niall had seen Harry behave like this, pretending to be strong while he felt anything but.

“Yes. Come on in.”

Niall hadn’t looked back while he walked toward the living room. Only when he had sat down on the couch did he look at Harry. The younger boy looked back at him from where he was seated on the chair next to the couch.

“I’ve come because of Bonnie.”

Pulse quickened. Cheeks flushed.

“Is she alright?”

The expected smile did not emerge. Instead, a crease appeared on Harry’s forehead. His hands flexed where he had laid them down on his knees. They were not good signs.

Niall should’ve known that this was about Bonnie. Why else would Harry come to him? If he needed help with anything else he would have asked any of his LA friends.

LA was the city that Harry called home. After having spent years in the Big Apple, Harry had grown tired of living in New York. When the band had said their final goodbyes, he had moved and had taken his new wife with him.

“She isn’t leaving the house, according to her mother.” Harry’s voice sounded strained. He was biting back his worry.

“You don’t check on her?” Niall’s voice sounded affronted because it was what he was. Harry hadn’t been treating Bonnie the way he was supposed to if the answer to the question was yes.

“Hey, she doesn’t need me around,” Harry defended himself. His eyes narrowed in anger. “I’m nothing more than a painful reminder.”

Eyes relaxed as they were cast down. “She probably wouldn’t even let me in any way.”

Niall would have liked to have said that he wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t but he didn’t feel like fighting. Harry hasn’t come to Niall’s house to pick a fight with him so Niall wasn't going to start one.

“What do you want from me?” Though subdued, the hostility was still audible in Niall’s voice.
A cloud passed over the sun, cutting off the light. The room darkened and the shadows grew bigger. All the furniture, the white table in front of the couch, the wooden dining table and the kitchen in the right-hand corner of the room suddenly seemed another color.

Harry’s green irises and his face brightened when after a few seconds, the sun came out of hiding. “You need to go to her. She needs you. You were once her friend, remember.”

Being a friend. That had been the whole problem. She was Harry’s girlfriend, then his fiancée and at the end his wife. And Niall had wanted to be that for her. He had wanted to be the one she kissed and called her own.

Harry had not wanted to see it, or Niall had been really good at hiding it. He had not once asked him if he cared too much for his girlfriend. Or maybe he had known but had not wanted to confront Niall because he’d known that Niall wouldn’t act on what he felt. Unlike Harry, Niall is a good friend.

“I’m still her friend,” Niall protested.

“So, help your friend. Get her to leave the house.”

The request sounded simple but Niall knew that it was anything but. How could he, just a friend to Bonnie, get her out of the house if not even her parents could? And yet, Harry was asking him this of him. For some reason, he thought that Niall could do it. He believed that Niall was the person who could help her.

“Why?”

“Why does she need to leave the house?” Harry asked. The look on his face was one of confusion.

“No. Why me?” Niall clarified.

“Because I think you both need it,” Harry gave as an explanation. “I know you miss songwriting. You were full of bull shite during the Rolling Stone interview.”

It was an issue about boybanders and where they were now. For some reason, they had chosen Niall out of the four members of One Direction. Maybe it was because everybody knew where the others were. It would be a bit silly to interview the triple threat, Harry Styles because everybody knew he was going to star in a movie about the Rolling Stones as the young Keith Richards.

The interviewer had asked why he was no longer in the business. What was it that made him decide to stop making music and try his luck at running a golf course? He had told her that he didn’t feel as passionate about music as he used to. He still loved listening to it – he had a state of the art music stereo and an extensive record collection – but he no longer wanted to make it himself.

“How would you know? We haven’t spoken in years.”

Niall expected Harry to defend himself, to attack Niall so he felt better about abandoning his band mates and best friends. But he didn’t. There was no raised voice or angry eyes.

“People don’t change that much in three years. You are music. You can’t ever not write songs. Not wanting is not the reason why you quit.”

“Why then? Why, according to you, have I stopped writing songs?” Niall exclaimed.

“Because you’re afraid to feel. Because you locked yourself away here, in the middle of nowhere. You’ve forgotten how to live.”

“Really?!” Niall guffawed. Despite his best efforts, Niall felt anger rise inside his chest. They haven’t spoken in years but Harry was implying that he knew Niall better than he knew himself. Harry had no right to do this. He had no ground to stand on. “So, other people don’t live unless they live like you? I’m not writing songs because I don’t go Hollywood parties like you?”

Harry shook his head but like always, he didn’t get angry. Harry almost never got mad. He and Bonnie didn’t break up because they were bickering all the time. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that because you’re not experiencing anything, you don’t have anything to talk about.”

Niall had bought this house during the hiatus of the band. He finally had the time to put down roots, get a place of his own. Up until then, he had always crashed by either his parents, brother or one of his many friends. After he had bought the house, he had invited all of them over for a huge sleepover. His house was big enough.

After the band had broken up permanently, the house had become his sanctuary. The first year, he only left the house to go grocery shopping or to have drinks with mates. During the second year, he traveled a little more but he never left the country. He hadn’t felt the need to travel to England or the US anymore, all he needed was in Ireland. He did talk to Louis and Liam but only on Skype.

“I do experience things. It’s just that I don’t feel like making music anymore.” If Harry wasn’t careful, Niall was going to tell him just what he had been wanting to tell him ever since Harry had decided he was better than his band mates, his friends.

“When was the last time you went on a date? Or gotten laid for that matter? Hell, when was the last time you left Ireland?”

Harry wasn’t letting this go. He really thought he was here to help Niall. It was sad, how little Harry knew Niall when in the past he knew Niall so well. It was as if he had erased all the years they spend together in exchange for a new life in LA.

The man sitting in front of him suddenly felt like a stranger, someone who Niall knew the face and name of but not why they used to be friends.

“Niall, if you’re not willing to do this for you, do it for Bonnie,” Harry proposed with pleading eyes.

“You should ask a professional.” Niall shook his head. “I’m no good. I can’t help her.”

“Nailler, you don’t give yourself enough credit,” Harry exclaimed. He leaned his elbows on his knees and leaned eagerly forward. “She’s going to listen to you.”

“Don’t,” Niall barked, startling Harry.

The gangly man looked at him puzzled. His eyes blinked as he backed up.

“Don’t call me Nialler. You’ve lost that privilege,” Niall declared in an icy tone.

Something flashed in Harry’s eyes but Niall couldn’t recognize the emotion. It seemed that Harry was not the only one who had forgotten how to read an old friend. But that wasn’t Niall’s fault.

“Okay. Niall, do it for her. She needs you.”

And of course, Harry had not forgotten Niall’s weak spot. He had always felt obliged to help the people who needed him. Especially Bonnie. Harry probably had always known that.

“I’ll only go if she wants me there. Ask her if she wants me to come and if she does, I’ll fly to England,” Niall promised.

—-

2020

Harry had been talking non-stop about her days before Niall met her for the first time. For the past few days, Harry hadn’t been able to stop talking about this bird he met during a family vacation. He and his mother and sister had rented a cottage and their neighbors had been the girl and her parents. He wouldn’t stop talking about how they met when he saw her by the lake. It was lust at first sight, Harry had told his band mates, for both of them. She had told him so after they had sex the very next day. But lust had turned into love and now they were together.

And now Niall was going to finally meet her. He was quite curious about her. He has of course seen pictures of her – she’s fit as hell – but he doesn’t know what she’s like personality wise. And she must be really great to have Harry’s head in a whirl. He hadn’t been this obsessed with a bird since he and Taylor broke up.

“He’s late,” Liam complained. He still hadn’t been able to break the bad habit of fretting about time, not even now that he was so much older.

“It’s probably her fault,” Louis declared. He had been fiddling with the switches and buttons on the mixing board for the past few minutes. They were producing this album as well, so there wasn’t some guy telling them not to touch anything. “Probably wants to look her best. We are important people in Harry’s life after all.”

Harry was going to bring her to the studio. She was going to spend the day while they recorded songs. Harry had promised, tongue in cheek, that she wasn’t going to pull a Yoko Ono. Not that Niall had been afraid of that. The bond between him and the boys was strong, they wouldn’t have ended the hiatus if it wasn’t.

All three heads turned towards the door when it was opened. Harry strolled inside with a grin on his face. Following him was a fit girl with brown hair and a tan skin. The eyes with which she took in her boyfriend’s band mates were a warm brown.

“Guys, this is Bonnie,” Harry declared as he wrapped his arm around her waist. “Bonnie, these are my band mates. As you know.”

So, Bonnie knew One Direction. Which isn’t a surprise. There were very few people who didn’t know what One Direction was, back before the hiatus. Bonnie looked like she was in their target audience back then.

Harry didn’t feel the need to introduce his band mates individually, so it was up to Niall, Louis and Liam to introduce themselves. Louis did so with a grin and Liam with a friendly smile. When it was Niall’s turn, he could feel himself blush as he took her hand. No matter how old he grew, pretty girls always made him feel flustered.

“It’s nice to meet you guys,” Bonnie told Niall and the others with a smile of her own. Her eyes didn’t linger, instead, they took in the studio. “So this is where the magic happens?”

“No, it happens here.” Harry pointed at his own head as a grin played on his lips. “It’s the ideas that are magic. Without them, this is just a room with some equipment in it.”

She shook her head and a snicker escaped from between her red lips as she said, “Of course.”

This is how Niall first met Bonnie. She was the first girlfriend that Harry took to the studio, the first who he granted access to the inner circle of the group. That’s why Niall knew that this was serious. Harry saw a future in this relationship, unlike the ones he had had in the past.
She stayed the whole day. She didn’t interrupt or asked questions, she just sat on a chair and watched Harry and the boys work. The other boys forgot she was even there.
But not Niall. He was very aware of the very fit woman watching him and his bandmates' every movement.

Notes

So, here is the first chapter. Please let me know what you thought.