89 - Take You To The Start

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I stared at Callie, lost for words, just like I had been exactly one year ago when she had dropped the same bombshell on me.

She said nothing, but grinned excitedly as a shape approached the door from behind the frosted glass. A moment later it swung open, and a blond haired guy greeted us.

"Hi. Come on in."

We stepped into the hallway and he closed the door behind us. The lounge to our left was busy with people, and I turned to Callie, barely able to form words.

"Callie...," I began. "What... what is this? What's going on?"

She shrugged. "I'm just the delivery girl." She gestured to the doorway into the lounge. "According to history, I think we're supposed to go through there?"

"Oh my God," I whispered, my stomach churning as she physically turned my body and pointed me in the direction of the lounge. "Is Harry really here?" I asked faintly.

She shrugged again, still smiling. "No idea, babe. I just got here. Why don't we go and see?"

I followed dumbly as she stepped into the lounge, where a DJ was set up in the corner of the room like last time, playing Uptown Funk. No one seemed to take the slightest bit of notice of us as Callie slowly manoeuvred her way through the groups of people. My heart was hammering in my chest and instead of scanning the room like last time, I kept my eyes firmly fixed on Callie's back, knowing exactly where he would be when I finally gathered the courage to lift my gaze.

My stomach gave a jolt as I saw a familiar blonde girl out of the corner of my eye, and I couldn't help but look. Ellie Goulding was standing a few feet away, holding a glass of wine and staring straight at me, a soft, knowing smile on her face. I stared back, unable to speak, transported back in time three hundred and sixty six days (it was a leap year) when I had laid eyes on her perched on the corner of a sofa, engrossed in conversation.

Her eyes broke from mine and she turned her head to her right, still smiling. I followed her gaze, and my stomach clenched so sharply it took my breath away. Standing a few feet away, in exactly the same place as he had been the first time I had laid eyes on him in this very room, stood Harry. His hair was soft around his shoulders, but pushed back at the top and flipped over to one side. He was wearing black skinny jeans and an almost identical blue shirt that was partially unbuttoned to reveal the swallows inked on his chest, and as my eyes finally met his I didn't need our fingers to touch to feel the jolt of electricity flow between us. He pressed his lips together nervously, and then his lips broke into a slow smile.

"Hi," he said softly.

A wave of emotion rose in me, threatening to break my composure, and it took everything I had to swallow it and smile tentatively back.

"Hi," I replied, my voice wobbling dangerously.

We stared at each other for a moment without speaking, the only sound in my ears that of the blood rushing through my veins and my heart pounding.

"I thought you were in Holmes Chapel," I squeaked.

He smirked. "And I thought you didn't want to do anything in particular tonight."

"I didn't think you'd remembered," I whispered.

"You didn't think I remembered the day I met the love of my life?" he whispered back, taking a step towards me so there was less than a foot between us.

"You said..," I began, my lip trembling now. "You said you were at your mum's for the weekend."

"I know," he murmured. "I had to say that to stop you planning a big surprise for me. I wanted to do this for you, to make everything right."

None of this made sense, and for a moment my emotion was abated as I looked up at him in confusion. "How did you know I was planning something? What do you mean, make everything right?"

He slid his arms around my waist and pulled me towards him as a couple of people walked past behind me. It didn't even occur to me to stop this public gesture of affection.

"Callie tipped me off," he explained. "She knew what I was planning, and she didn't want you to get carried away planning something of your own. So she told me you wanted to surprise me, and planted the idea with you that I might be busy. So I told you I was. It wasn't a complete lie - I did go up to see Mum on Thursday, but I did that because I needed to be back in London today, and I needed to celebrate Mothers Day with her early."

"So all this..?" I began, breaking my eyes from Harry's to gesture around the room at the people chatting and drinking and paying no attention to us.

He tucked my hair behind my ear and smiled affectionately at me. "Remember you said you wanted to start again? To wipe the slate clean; to erase the bad memories? Well, obviously we can never completely erase the past, and this last year has proved to be the most eventful one of my life, but for all the right reasons. I would relive the heartache ten times over, just for the happy times we had. I can't turn the clock back, or change what happened, but this is the nearest I could get. I wanted to bring you back here, to where it all began, and start us again. Leave the mistakes and the bad memories in the past where they belong and move forward with the happy ones, starting with the best one of all: the moment I first saw you, from across the room. Because... well, I could tell that you were curious."

I hadn't been aware I was crying silently, happy tears streaming down my cheeks, until his last words forced a sob from my throat. The song reference, coupled with the throwback to the moment we met was overwhelming.

"It's been a rollercoaster of a year, Jess," he said, gently. "We've faced more than our fair share of problems, and we've still got more upheaval to come when the world finds out we're together. I know only last week you were faced with a load more trolling because you were pictured with Louis at Heathrow. I can't erase that either, but I hope in time we'll be able to look back and laugh at some of it, because it made us as strong as we are now."

"Harry," I began, finding my voice at last. "You don't need to worry about me walking away from you. I don't want you to feel like you've always got to make things up to me. We've moved past all that, together."

"I know," he nodded. "But I never want you to feel as though I've taken your forgiveness for granted -"

"I know you haven't!" I said, resting my head on his chest and squeezing him tightly. "I know how hard we both worked to resolve the problems we had. I don't think for one minute you took any of that lightly."

"I just saw today as an opportunity for us to start again, and do things properly this time," he said, taking my hands in his. "Like I said, I know we can't forget everything that happened, and actually I wouldn't want to, because it comprises our history. But this is sort of a way for me to give you what you wanted: to start fresh, to draw a line underneath the drama and heartache of last year and start our second year together on the right foot."

I looked into his eyes and he smiled softly at me, his hair falling into his face. He flipped it back with his hand.

"This is so unbelievably amazing, Harry," I breathed, pausing for a moment to brush away my tears and look around the room at our surroundings; at the people chatting in small groups holding bottles of beer and glasses of wine. "How did you manage to pull this off? In exactly the same place?"

"He called in a few favours," said a familiar voice from behind us, and I turned around to see Grimmy beaming at us from next to Callie.

"I asked Grimmy to put me in touch with the guy whose party it was originally," Harry explained. "I told him I would foot the bill, if he did the same thing again with the same music and as many of the same people as possible. And with the utmost discretion, of course."

"You're not going to make me spill my drink on you again are you?" I teased. "Twice?"

"No, you're going to bankrupt me if you keep ruining my clothes," he smiled. "Do you know how difficult it was to find an almost identical shirt after you wrecked the last one?"

"And you were in on this too?" I asked, turning to Callie who was smiling at me from beside Grimmy.

"Yeah, well I owed it to you to help make things right," she said, her eyes darting to Harry briefly.

"Make things right?" I repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Well he fucked up that many times, he's lucky he's still got his own legs," Calvin's voice said from beside me, and I looked up in surprise to see my older brother standing next to my younger sister Maddie, who was red in the face and looking rather breathless.

"You two weren't here last time!" I remarked.

"No, but Maddie wanted to come, so I was the chaperone," he replied. "And... well, I suppose he hasn't fucked up in a while, and this is sort of my way of supporting your relationship."

He shrugged awkwardly: Calvin had never been comfortable discussing his feelings.

I exchanged pleasantly surprised looks with Harry, and decided not to respond to this vague attempt at a compliment, but to leave the sentiment there. Calvin nodded at me, and then gave a reluctant nod at Harry who nodded solemnly in return before looking earnestly back at me.

"Look, I'm not going to do anything crazy like ask you to marry me or anything," he said softly. "I know it's way too soon for anything like that. But what I am saying, is that I'm not going anywhere, and I think we're amazing together. And this is my way of making everything right, for all the pain I put you through last year, for all the hassle you've put up with from the media, for every time you've stood by me when you probably shouldn't have, and for finding it in your heart to forgive me after I hurt you in the worst way imaginable. I needed to put it right; I needed to take it back to the beginning to start again and show you that I won't mess up this time. I would do anything in the world to make you happy."

"You do make me happy," I whispered, tears pricking my eyes again. "No one in the world could make me happier."

"Come with me," he murmured, taking my hand and leading me through the crowd to the quiet corner by the stairs where we had sat last time. There was a laptop on a small table, next to the very same squishy sofa, and he tapped a button on the keyboard so the screen came to life.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I've got something for you," he said. "I hope I've done the right thing. I wasn't sure if this would be what you wanted, but I think you'll be happy."

I frowned in confusion as he looked over my shoulder briefly and seemed to make eye contact with someone behind my back, just as Uptown Funk came to a close and I heard the beginning of another familiar song.

Perfect.

I might never be your knight in shining armour....

"Is this coincidence, or..?" I began, turning to look at Harry, but the laptop screen caught my eye. A slideshow was starting, and I recognised the first picture of me and Harry lying on the sunloungers by his pool in LA on my first trip over there in April last year. It was the first picture I had ever taken of us, and I remembered hesitating before I took it; not wanting to appear like I was a fan asking for a selfie, but at the same time wanting to capture the moment. He had turned his head just as I had snapped the picture, and planted a kiss on my cheek, so in the shot I was beaming at the camera and he was kissing me.

"Did I send this to you?" I asked uncertainly. Before he could answer, the next shot came onto the screen: the one that I had taken immediately after, of us both smiling happily at the camera.

"Oh my God," I breathed. "I thought these were gone forever! I deleted everything when we broke up. How did you get them?"

I looked over at him and a look of uncertainty passed over his face, as he pinched his bottom lip between his thumb and middle finger.

"I know you deleted them," he said. "Callie told me. I know you regretted getting rid of everything associated to me. So I enlisted her help to get everything back for you."

"What do you mean?" I asked, staring at him in disbelief as the slideshow continued, this time with a screenshot of what looked like a text conversation.

Hey, it's Jess x

How do I know it's definitely you? You could be a crazy stalker ;) x

Ditto. You're the one who sneaked your number in my phone without telling me. Maybe you're a crazy stalker? x

"Oh my God - Harry - are these all our texts?!" I cried.

"Yeah," he said shyly. "This is going to sound a bit creepy now, but I asked Callie to get them from your iCloud. I hoped everything would be there, but I didn't want to invade your privacy. I asked her to do it for me, because I wanted to get it all back for you, if you wanted it."

I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks again as the slideshow continued and I caught glimpses of our flirty texts from last year in between photos of us; some of which I had taken and some of which I didn't recognise, that Harry or even Anne must have taken without my knowledge.

"This is just... This is just..," I stammered tearfully.

Baby I'm perfect, came the lyrics helpfully from the speakers in the lounge, and I half laughed, half sobbed.

"Perfect," I agreed.

"You're not completely scared off by my stalker-like tendencies?" he asked warily.

"Of course not," I wailed, throwing my arms around him. "I can't believe you managed to retrieve all of this stuff. I didn't even think of looking at iCloud. I just assumed it was gone forever when I deleted it. I regretted it so much once we sorted everything out."

"I know," he murmured into my hair, and I clung to him, completely overwhelmed by emotion that all our pictures and texts that I had regretted deleting had been salvaged.

"And there's something else I've got for you," he said softly after a moment.

"What?" I asked, pulling back to look up at him, and pushing my hair out of my eyes.

He released me, reached down the side of the sofa and picked up a large gift bag with silky rope handles. I wiped my eyes as he handed it to me, and my fingers trembled in nervous anticipation as I opened the top to peek inside, wondering what on earth it could possibly be.

I gave a soft cry as I caught sight of the contents, fresh tears springing to my eyes. I had no idea how he had managed this, and I was in no fit state to form coherent words.

Nestled on a bed of tissue were my One Direction tshirts, my One Direction mug, my concert tickets, wristbands, CDs, This Is Us DVD, and folded neatly on the top of everything was Harry's Green Bay Packers hoodie.

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This chapter was getting extremely long so I decided to break it here, BUT... the next part is almost finished, so there might just be a double update coming. Keep an eye out for it shortly!! xx

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