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The Conclusion

June 2020

Reverse chronology is a plot device scriptwriters use in which the first scene of a film is set in the present day, typically around a major event or life-changing moment for the protagonist. The audience gets a glimpse at the conclusion of the story, but the lines aren't all connected. Instead, about a million questions are brought up in its place, thus allowing the writer to tell the story in reverse.

In the film of Nora Priestley's life, reverse chronology would be Harry Styles standing in front of her as she's wearing a wedding dress inside the master suite of a fancy hotel overlooking a plush Malibu golf course in the middle of summer. It's floor-length, an ivory satin silhouette that's tight around the waist with a beautiful train that falls effortlessly below. Nora's grateful that the dress hangs off her shoulders, because one look at the man in front of her causes her skin to begin to prickle, an uncomfortable amount of heat radiating off her small body.

She hasn't seen Harry in over a year, and even though he responded to her wedding invitation with a box ticked off under the yes category and another for the seafood dinner option, she did not think he'd be the first man to see her in her overly-expensive wedding dress she didn't even choose for herself.

"What are you doing up here, Harry?" Nora asks with trembling lips, her hands moving up to her hair to run her fingers through the dark tresses, her nervous tick, until she remembers that the hairdresser just styled it into a fancy low bun, clipping her wild fringe back and away from her face.

He's just standing there, overwhelmingly the same but oh, so different. When Nora looks at Harry, she sees fifteen years fly right past her eyes. She takes in his body that's much broader than she's ever seen before, all strong arms and thick chest and long legs. His hair has gone through more changes than her own—from fluffy quiffed curls to long coily strands that fell past his shoulders, from a messy knot at the back of his head to shorter spirals that grazed the tips of his ears. Now they fall just behind them, styled easily with a thick tendril curling just in front of his forehead that she's not sure is intentional or just fell effortlessly like that. His green eyes that once held so many secrets are now so obviously clear, and when Nora really looks at him, she can see how much has changed for him in fifteen months.

"You can't marry him, Nora," Harry says, taking a step forward.

Nora blinks, thinking for half a second that those words didn't just fall from Harry's mouth. Because even though she's known Harry for half of her life now, she hasn't known him to ever make unthinkable proclamations like this. Fifteen months is a long time, and they've gone longer without speaking in the past. But to just show up, on what's supposed to be the happiest day of Nora's life, to a room that he shouldn't have access to asking her not to marry the man that's waiting for her downstairs?

Absurd.

Nora shakes her head, tilting her neck backward in order to keep the tears from leaking down her face. She can hear the sound of Harry's leather shoes scuffling against the carpeted flooring, and it's only a matter of time until she feels his warm hands grasp her wrists, pushing them down against her sides carefully so that when she finally does open her eyes, she can see him clearly.

And when she does, the sight alone is enough to make the first tear fall.

"Harry, please." She's not quite sure what she's asking him to do—give her a reason to run away with him or a reason to keep her feet firmly planted on the floor.

Instinctively, he lifts his pointer finger and gently wipes away the tear that's working its way down the slopes of her cheek.

"Don't marry him," he whispers softly across her face, his green eyes begging her blue ones to believe him. To hear him. To understand him.

But understanding him is not that easy, because for fourteen years he's floated in and out of Nora's life with reckless abandon. And even though there was a time when Nora was convinced that she knew Harry Styles better than anybody else in the entire world, looking at him now, with tanned skin and bright eyes and steady hands—she's not quite sure if that's still true.

To understand him now, Nora must go back to the beginning.