One Direction One Shots 2

Epilogue: Six Years Later... (Epilogue) (Harry)

Seeing her across the pub shouldn’t have done anything to me. It’d been six years for Christ’s sake. Six years since we’d given it a second chance. Looking at her now, her once long hair cut to her shoulders and constantly falling in her face causing her to brush it back behind her ear, it shouldn’t have caused my stomach to tighten and my hand to reach for my pint glass. 

I pushed back my hair, still feeling a phantom length even though it’d been years since I’d had it long. I kept it short and swept back from my forehead now. It would still curl around my ears in between cuts but I tried to keep it a little more tame. Taking a pull from the glass I rubbed my lips together watching her, feeling the foam against their wet surface as she laughed and buried her face in her hand. 

I could see her, but she couldn’t see me. When she got up from her table of friends and moved to the juke box, the entire draw of this specific pub, I killed off my pint and circled around the bar, taking my opportunity. She shifted her weight on her hip as he finger tapped the glass. I could smell her hair before I’d even gotten behind her. The same sweet scent she’d worn then. 

“You know you’re gonna pick Beach Boys,” my voice makes her spine straighten but she doesn’t turn. My palms are tingling, needing to touch her. Feel her skin beneath mine again. She sighed, relaxing but still not turning.

“Still like to pretend like you know me, Styles?” 

“Still like to pretend like anyone knows you better than I do?” I lean on the juke box, coming into her view and even though she’s freshly in her thirties now she’s still one of the most stunning creatures I’ve ever seen. 

“Shouldn’t you be lurking elsewhere by now?” 

“Creature of habit,” I smirk though I don’t know why and she catches it in the corner of her eye. She considers her decision again then huffs, pressing the buttons for her song choice. B19, God Only Knows. 

“You’re annoying,” she rolls her eyes but she’s trying not to smile and even though it’s been six years, there’s still something there. 

“Out with mates?” 

“Looking for my second husband,” she jokes, leaning on the box next to me but being careful not to touch me. 

“What was wrong with your first?” 

“He was just…way too hung up on himself,” her eyes travel to her bare wedding ring finger and it makes me absentmindedly run my thumb around my own. 

“Sure it wasn’t your fault?” 

She looks up at me and glares and I see it in her eyes. That same fire that used to infuriate me. The woman that knew all the right buttons and the wrong ones. The woman who could make me want to scream and rip her head off. 

“See that you’re still managing to put that massive foot of yours in your mouth.”

“I like to think of it as charm.”

“Really? I liked to think of it as stupidity.”

I smile at her and despite her best efforts she grins and her eyes move down to where my thumb is circling my ring finger and her smile fades. 

“Where’s the wife?” 

I push the band up to my knuckle and back down.

“Doing her own thing tonight.”

She nods and looks out over the pub and I resist the urge to lean forward and smell her. Brush my hand across her neck. Feel her pulse at my finger tips.