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Chapter XVIII

Author's notes: Hello! Happy almost-Valentine's Day! Harry will be re-entering the story next chapter, so brace yourselves! This chapter is another fluffy one, I love Gemma and Jess' relationship, hopefully you guys do, too. Thank you (as always) for reading, x!

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A few weeks had flown by with me settling into my new apartment. A lot of the job offers that I received weren't what I wanted, so I was still unemployed. But I was using my time somewhat wisely, I was helping out a non-profit with minor legal things.

I was expecting Gemma to ring the doorbell any minute, so I was straightening out my apartment.

When she arrived, she gave me the biggest hug ever with a bag full of homemade food, courtesy of Anne.

"You don't know how hard it was for me to lie to H," Gemma complained as she looked at me with a frown. "He wanted to know where you moved to, so badly."

I returned her frown with a smile of my own, "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," she grunted. "He just wants to know that you're ok from you."

"I know," I said slowly but I wasn't quite ready to immerse myself into that part of my life again.

The One Direction boys were a huge part of my life for several years, that was for sure. And although I was the closest to Zayn, I had always found myself caring a lot about Harry. I didn't know what that meant and I still don't know what it means now, but I cared about him. I cared about him more than I cared about anyone else. When he was hurting, it hurt me, too, to some degree. I didn't like knowing that he was miserable, and that I was ultimately the reason, so that's why I got him out of that contract. And that's the reason why I disappeared, so he could be happy. So when Gemma was insistent that her brother wanted to know about my well-being, it made me feel things that I wasn't used to. It made me feel cared for, and that made me feel something for Harry Styles.

"So want to go?" Gemma asked breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Hm?" I asked because I realized that I had no idea what she was talking about.

"There's a wedding at the end of month, and my boyfriend can't go, wanna go?" she patiently asked again.

I nodded in agreement as she gave me more details about the wedding. Turns out the drummer that played for One Direction was getting hitched, which meant that I would run into Harry.

"How is he?" I asked Gemma nervously.

"Oh, he's wonderful. I'm so happy that we're dating," she gushed mistaking my question about Harry for her new boyfriend.

"I'm glad Michal is wonderful," I smiled at her.

"You were asking about H, weren't you?" Gemma laughed once she realized. "He's good. He's happy. He's at home writing a lot. But he wants to see you."

Then we seized all conversations about Harry and moved on to more important topics such as jobs, Donald Trump and feminism.

"Can we please talk about the huge elephant in the room?" she darted her eyes at me.

I tried to laugh it off and joke, "What elephant?"

Gemma groaned and rolled her eyes and murmured something about how I was behaving just like Harry.

"What do you want to know?" I gave up because I knew she wouldn't drop it until she heard what she wanted to hear.

"I'm grateful that you helped him out of his contract, but why did you?" she asked.