Artifice

Birthday

I don't feel like introducing new and irrelevant characters, cause it's not too important who's at this dinner.  Just know there's like a group of twenty people.

"Of course he's bloody late!" Louis yelled across the table seeing Harry's tall body stalking through rows of other occupied spaces in the restaurant.

Niall and another one of my friends from when I moved here, Zayn were sat beside Louis. Ever since Liam and Liz found their way to each other all of our friends seemed to have connected. They all hit it off the bat from the start, especially Zayn and Louis.

A few other friends that Lizzy insisted should come were sat around the large table.

Harry's eyes met mine and he took the seat next to me, that I purposively left empty.

"What took you so long?" Liam asked from across the table. His arm was draped around Lizzy's shoulder as her head leaned into his.

"Had something I needed to do." Harry sternly said and pulled back the chair to get in.

He swiftly leaned over to me, leaving a peck on my lips. For a few seconds I gawked at him, unfamiliar to this new found pda coming from him.

Chloe who was surprisingly not next to Niall since I've heard they have become pretty close the past few weeks, took notice and gave me a pleased look.

"Uh-" I was lost for words. "I'm glad you made it." I managed to find anything to say.

"Sorry I was late, the traffic was awful." He nonchalantly said, scanning over the menu.

"I thought you said it was because you were doing something?" He stopped looking over the menu.

"Well that and the traffic." He laughed, his voice sounding on edge.

"Are you all ready to order?" Our waiter stopped me from questioning his behavior.

The dinner so far was anything but tamed. Though I've grown to love Louis, he seemed to be the instigator of every joke and basically all the chaos.

Luckily we were mostly secluded from many people since our table was to the side of the restaurant.

Harry notably strayed away from any single conversation with me, and I tried my best to ignore it. He would take frequent sips of his water or join in a conversation randomly.

I knew something like this would happen eventually. I slumped back in my seat and downed my first glass of wine. Whatever Liam ordered, it was amazing.

"Slow down sugar." Harry finally spoke directly to me and I froze, the glass still tipped up. He grabbed the glass away from my grip and replaced it with his cup of water.

"Excuse me?" I whispered to not cause a scene amongst our friends.

"Trust me, you'll thank me later." He placed a kiss on my nose.

I was speechless by the affection he was showing me in front of everyone. We hardly ever hung around one another when we were with friends, so the amount of times anyone we knew seeing us kiss was at zero until now. I couldn't imagine how confused Lizzy would be, she hasn't been around for me to tell her anything really.