Operation Haylor

Chapter 5 (Written by me)

"All right, you ladies need to get out," said Lou Teasdale, One Direction's stylist. "The boys need to get ready for the concert." She was carrying her almost two year old baby, Lux, who the boys looked really excited to see. They all jumped up and fussed over baby Lux, giving her hugs and kisses. Harry eventually grabbed her and carried her over to me.

"This is Juliana," Harry cooed to her. "Say hi!"

"Aw! Hi, cutie!" I said, standing up.

Harry beamed at the two of us. "Wanna hold her?" he asked me.

"Yeah!" He passed her into my arms and watched me with the same puppy dog eyes I must have been giving back. "You are the luckiest girl in the world, do you know that?" I asked baby Lux.

"Harry! Take her back! You have to get ready!" Lou yelled.

Harry smiled sheepishly at me and then took Lux. "See you at the concert?" he asked me.

"Yep. See you." He gave me a kind of awkward, one armed hug with baby Lux resting on his hip. I stared into his eyes for a moment. I was so happy; it seemed like he didn't want me to go.

"Harry!" Lou yelled again.

"Coming!"

"Bye boys!" I yelled to the rest of the band.

"See you!" they all yelled back. Man, even their yelling sounding like perfect harmony to me.

"Bye! Thanks for having us!" my mom said.

We backed out of the room slowly.

"What about Taylor?" I heard Louis ask right before the door closed. If Harry answered, I didn't hear him.

"O my gosh, that was so amazing," I gushed to my mom.

"I know! They're so nice! And funny! I can't wait for the concert!" she squealed.

"And our date tomorrow," I chimed in.

"Well, of course. Harry seemed to really like you," she said.

I blushed. "I hope so. Did you hear what Louis said?"

"About what?" she asked.

"As the door closed he said 'What about Taylor?'. What do you think that means?" I asked. I was hoping she'd say what I was already thinking: Louis saw me and Harry's connection, too.

"I don't know."

"Will our J-14 winners come up here, please?" Harry asked during the concert.

My mom and I exchanged confused glances. We didn't know this was part of our winnings. From the looks on the other boys' faces, it wasn't.

What did I care? Harry Styles had just asked me to come up on stage with him! Who would say no to that? He had been watching me all night! We made eye contact and sang to each other. It felt like we were closely connected, like we shared something. Like even when we weren't watching each other we were both aware of the other person.

My mom and I climbed up on the stage and Harry motioned to someone backstage. A stage hand brought two stools out for my mom and I to sit on. The musicians started playing "One Thing." Harry patted one of the stools and smiled at me.

I sat down and he put his arm around me. I glanced at my mom on the stool next to me. I hoped I wasn't visibly shaking.

"I've tried playing it cool," Liam started to sing, looking out at the crowd. "But when I'm looking at you I can't ever be brave," Liam turned, pointed at me, and smiled. "'Cause you make my heart race."

I looked up at Harry, who smiled down at me as he sang, "Shot me out of the sky. You're my kryptonite. You keep making me weak, yeah, frozen and can't breathe."

The boys sang the rest, sometimes looking at the crowd, and sometimes looking at me and my mom. When the boys had finished, Harry pulled me to his side and kissed my cheek. "See you, beautiful," he whispered.

"Mmm, I'm so tired," I said, crashing into bed. My mom and I had decided we should get a hotel for the night so we wouldn't have to drive back the next day. We also had known it was going to be a late night and my mom doesn't like driving in the dark.

"Yeah, but today was so great," my mom said.

"Absolutely," I smiled tiredly at her.

"I'm gonna call Daddy and the boys before we go to bed," she said. We had left my dad and my brothers, Eli, who was thirteen, and Asher, who was three, at home, about an hour away.

"Okay." I listened to her talk for a while and then talked a little bit myself.

After I hung up I shifted up to the head of the bed and pulled the blankets around me. I grabbed my iPod from the nightstand and checked for messages from Josh.

Yeah...I think we can pull it off!

I had been a little nervous about tomorrow. It could make or break everything. I had one more day to get Harry to like me enough to give me some way to keep in touch. I also knew there must have been something up with Josh. He's such a pessimist. Either way, his reassurance gave me the strength I needed to absolutely smash this date tomorrow...to put it in British terms.

I didn't feel like getting up and changing or anything, so I didn't. I silently said my prayers. Then I tried to fall asleep as I listened to my mom getting ready for bed. She finally turned the light off and got in bed.

Fifteen minutes later I was still awake. I turned to my mom to see if she was sleeping yet. She was. She probably fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. That was something I envied of my family. Most of my family can fall asleep at the snap of a finger. Not me.

I flipped back over to face the wall again. I closed my eyes and instantly my day started replaying in my mind: Harry's eyes on me as we walked in late for their practice, the boys' hugs, sitting next to Harry as he played with my fingers, the concert. It was so exciting. The butterflies came back. I would never be able to fall asleep like this.

What if this was all just a dream? I sprung up in bed in a panic. Could I possibly have been dreaming all this? That would be awful. My thoughts were racing around. I grabbed at my head and tried to even my breathing. I laid back down and tried to gather my thoughts. Then I remembered how it had felt to hug Harry and I knew I couldn't have dreamed that feeling up.

I let myself revel in the memories for a while, but I was winding myself up more and more each second. I finally decided I needed to stop. I took deep, even breaths and tried to clear my mind. It was useless though because a smile darted across my lips as thoughts of Harry popped back into my head. I bit on my lip to try to stop it, but that only made the corners of my mouth turn up even farther. This was going to be a long night.