Carry On {A Harry Styles Love Story}

8.0 ; Cough Syrup.

8.0 ; cough syrup.

❝ if i could find a way to see this straight,

i’d run away

to some fortune that i should have found by now.

i’m waiting for this cough syrup to come down, come down. ❞

☆ h a r r y ★

It took everything in me to contain the full extent of my excitement in front of Jersey.

No, I waited until I was safely in the hall to do a celebratory dance and fist-pump in the air. Unaware I had an audience, I hooted and cheered merrily, thrilled she had decided to accept our offer.

“Look at ’im go!” a particularly Irish voice hollered, a familiar bout of laughter ringing out through the hall. Immediately, I ceased my silly actions and straightened up with a semi-embarrassed cough, turning to glare at Niall. He wore his usual wide grin, looking rather amused by my behavior. So did the rest of the lads, who were all standing with him outside of Zayn’s hotel room.

“I’m guessing she said yes then?” Louis chimed in.

Unable to fully suppress my happiness, I nodded my head eagerly with a bright smile spanning my face. “She said yes,” I confirmed, quickly bounding over to my bandmates. When I reached them, Liam clapped me on the shoulder with a look of approval while Lou teasingly ruffled my curls, Zayn giving me a pleased smile from beside him. Niall was still too busy chuckling at me to really say anything meaningful.

“And now it’s time... To talk to management,” Louis announced in a dramatic tone as we all entered Zayn's room, childishly trying to push our way through the doorway all at the same time. Once we got inside after our brief struggle, all of us sobered up rather quickly, obviously dreading the moment we had to face management about this.

It was quiet for a while, everyone most likely deep in thought, before Liam suddenly suggested, “Maybe we could just go straight to Simon about it? You know, cut out the middleman?” We all slowly turned to stare at him blankly as if he were a genius.

Within five minutes, we were all squeezed onto the couch, huddled around the laptop that was positioned on the coffee table in front of us. Liam had just texted Simon to make sure he was available, then requested an impromptu video-chat meeting. To my surprise, Simon agreed easily; I hadn't expected him to have such a convenient gap of free time in his typically busy schedule, but he apparently had no pressing matters to deal with right now, so there was no putting this off.

“You ready, mate?” Louis asked, resting a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“No,” I answered honestly.

“Great!” he chirped anyway, a cheeky smile on his face as he threw his arm around my neck.

“Guys, shh,” Liam hushed us, pointing to the laptop where he appeared to already be calling Simon on Skype. We waited for several tense moments before he accepted the call, his face appearing on the screen.

“Hello, boys,” Simon greeted us with a polite smile. Contrary to popular belief, he was a very genuine, nice man and he always treated us quite well. As kind as he was to us, though, I was still feeling extremely apprehensive about this and couldn’t ease the slight trembling in my fingers as I fiddled with them nervously.

We responded with a chorus of our own anxious greetings, the rest of the lads clearly a bit agitated as well.

“So what is this all about? Liam, you said you boys needed to speak with me about something important?” Simon continued, getting straight to the point.