as it is || harry styles au

thirty-nine

i v o r y

     "Mom?" I called downstairs.

"I got it!" Jamie announced, his bare feet padding against the wood floor.

     "No!"

     "Jamie!"

     Harry and I ran down the stairs, Harry catching Jamie before he could unlock the door.

     "James, remember how we talked about answering doors?"

     The smile dropped from his face. "Oh, yeah. I forgot. I'm sorry."

     "It's alright, bub." Harry squeezed his shoulder. "Why don't you go start on your pancakes?"

     Jamie walked past Mom in the entry way and back into the kitchen. She waited there while Harry walked over to the door with me following close behind. Especially after Boston, we were both on high alert. My hand fisted the back of his t-shirt as he checked.

     "It's Lena." He flipped the lock and threw open the door.

"Do either of you know how to answer your phones?" She huffed, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.

     I looked to Harry, then over to where our phones lain abandoned on the floor beside the couch.

     "What's going on?" Harry asked, moving next to me, our shoulders brushing.

     She looked like she'd rolled straight out of bed to run over here. The sweatshirt she wore was so oversized, it covered any shorts she had on underneath, if any, and she had on the most un-Lena like choice of footwear—rainbow fur-lined crocs.

     "My sister found a lawyer. She can meet you this morning, if you have time. After that, she's leaving for Seattle the rest of the week to work a case."

     Zuri. I couldn't miss her appointment.

     "Great. We can meet her after we take Jamie to school," Harry answered for me when I didn't respond.

"You're talking to a lawyer?" Mom piped in, her voice laced with concern. The last she'd heard was back during Christmas when I refused to involve the law.

"I've had a change of heart." For the fortieth time.

Jamie came padding back into the entryway, ceasing all talk about a lawyer. He waved to Lena. "Hello. I was going to answer the door, but Harry said I can't."

"Not that you can't, but that you shouldn't," Harry amended. "Not without first checking to see who it is."

"But I was going to check first."

"And how were you going to do that?"

He had Jamie caught there. Mom's house didn't have windows directly beside the front door. Jamie wasn't tall enough to look through the peephole, and he most definitely hadn't been running to the windows in the living room which would give him a view of the front porch.

Jamie's eyes turned to me. I realized I needed to be the one to lay out these ground rules and not Harry. Even though he'd grown to become one of the most important people in our lives in such a short period of time, I was still his sole parent.