Untouchable |h.s|

Four

Harry Styles

"How are you gonna handle all of Aubrey's family bombarding you at the same time if you can't even sit through this test run with me?"

I groan as Niall follows me into the living room after making me storm out of his bedroom upstairs, the invasiveness becoming too hard for me to tolerate. He suggested practicing how I'm going to answer any possible questions due to my nerves about seeing Aubrey's family in about ten minutes, and I don't know why in the hell I listened to him.

I'm just glad everyone else is too busy getting ready to make this practice run any more stressful than it already is. I'd rather have someone more peaceful like Elora asking me these things, though. She'd go easier on me. Niall doesn't hold back at all, and I should've expected that when we started.

"I don't think their first question is going to be about the hot ass best friend I have with me," I quote how he described himself, "And then just jump into kids right off the bat after that."

"Okay, you know I'm not lying about that first part. Come on."

"That's not the point," I roll my eyes, "They'll ease into it a little more, won't they?"

I sit down on the light blue leather sofa while waiting for his response, watching as he sits directly beside me and takes my lack of denial of his attractiveness as a compliment. He has a sly squint to his eye with the slightest smirk on his lips, making me stressfully run a hand through my hair over his lack of seriousness.

I really fucking hate him sometimes.

He sees how pressing this seems to be for me and wipes the smug look off of his face, genuinely trying to reassure me now and cutting the bullshit. He thinks over what to say for a moment while I watch him patiently, the bright lighting in here making wearing my colorblind sunglasses inside seem a little less weird.

"Her moms were pretty forward when we first met them, remember? You didn't talk to them much, but I did. Lani got my whole life story out of me within the time you spent flirting with Aubrey in the kitchen. I think kids could be a pretty tame start. It's a typical question for a fiancé, too."

"But what the fuck am I supposed to say?"

"Aren't you supposed to be an actor? I mean, I know you've kind of retired from that one, but still, you should be better at talking to the parents than most people," he points out, "And you have to have some kind of idea of what you want, don't you?"

"When I'm acting, the shit I say doesn't have any impact on my real life. We haven't had a whole long discussion about that kind of thing yet. Hell, we just talked about wedding locations for the first time a couple of nights ago."

He looks surprised by my words, realizing how we aren't exactly jumping into planning like most engaged couples do, "What's stopping you from at least taking some initiative to plan it out a little more?"

I have a genuine answer to that one that I don't really prefer thinking about. One that I'm sure has pushed both Aubrey and I to remain more in the now without thinking about what's ahead. After becoming accustomed to being let down in different ways while growing up and even when we got older, we learned that setting high expectations isn't something that always follows through seamlessly.

I sigh and look over at him in honesty, "Wouldn't our hopes be a little too high if we planned all of that out now?"

"What do you mean?" His brows furrow as he awaits a further explanation.

"We'd be putting a lot of faith in ourselves and Thomas if we mapped out the rest of our lives like there's a 100% guarantee that we'll actually get to live them."