Love and Fame (Harry Styles)

Chapter 3

I managed to pull off a decent performance, though I was nervous as hell with the boys in the audience. Whenever I looked in their direction and into their eyes, and they smiled at me, my heart skipped a beat and I had to look elsewhere not to mess up my lyrics.

When I was finished with the gig, the crowd dissolved and returned to chatting after a round of applause. I hopped off the bar stool to pack my dad's old guitar into its tattered case. While I packed up, Harry, Niall, Louis, Liam and Zayn pushed through the crowd to give me pats on the back.

They were incredibly excited about what they had just seen and it made me sort of proud. While Harry and Liam were mostly interested in my lyrics and Louis and Zayn were mostly interested in my voice, Niall was mostly interested in my guitar.

"What brand is it?" he asked while I buckled the leather belt that was holding the broken guitar case together. "I have never seen a guitar like it."

"That's because there are none like it," I admitted. "My dad bought it when he was in Japan about twenty-five years ago. It's handmade by a guy named K. Yairi."

"Can I look at it?" Niall said and I nodded.

"Yeah, but open the case yourself. It's a lot of hassle with the belt and broken hinges and everything," I said and the boys laughed as Niall bent down to struggle with the guitar case. "I should really get a new one, but this case feels sort of personal because it's plastered with all these stickers my dad and I have collected from concerts and such over the years. And the fact that it's this worn just reminds me that there's a story behind it."

Niall unbuckled the belt fastened around the worn case while I talked, and picked up the equally worn guitar.

It had a solid cedar top, rosewood back and sides, ebony fingerboard and a beginning hole under the sound hole because of the missing pick guard. My dad had sported long nails on his right hand for a pick effect, and the guitar's missing pick guard made the nail on his pinkie cause extreme abrasion to the wood.

"This is great craftsmanship," Niall commented as he strummed a few chords and I nodded.

"It really is. I love this guitar."

"It's a nice guitar," Louis said and looked longingly at the bar. "But could we go get some beers now?"

"Sure, Tommo," Liam said and patted Louis on the back as I frowned.

"What? Tommo?" I said confused.

"Louis is Tommo," Zayn explained and I nodded as he continued, "and Harry is Styles. People call me Malik, but Liam's just Liam and Niall's just Niall. What do they call you?"

"Who're 'they'?" I asked, momentarily confused as we pushed through the crowd to get to the bar, and Zayn shrugged.

"I don't know, people."

"Most people just say Talia or Tals. My brothers call me T. And I have this one friend who calls me Tali with a long and emphasized 'i' in the end, but that kind of annoys me."

"So you'd prefer if we stayed clear of Tali?" Harry said with the emphasized 'i' and with a wry smiled on his beautiful face.

"Definitely," I said dryly as we sat down on bar stools by the bar to get some drinks.

"The usual?" someone said from behind the counter and I nodded and flashed Nick, the bartender, a smile.

Nick placed a bottle of Stella Artois on the bar disk and I took a long sip of the cold drink. It was my favorite beer, that as well as the Japanese brand Kirin.

I was always in need of something cold to drink after my performances, and ever since I had become a regular at the bar, Nick had been serving me free beers. Which was lucky for me, considering both Stella and Kirin were imported brands of beer and cost a fortune opposed to others.

The boys ordered their own beers of each individual's favorite brand, and we started talking again. The conversation went by surprisingly easy and at times I completely forgot that I was chatting with five incredibly famous teenagers.

We talked about all and nothing, and I don't even know how we entered the nipple-topic, but suddenly I got some very interesting information from Harry.

"I've got four nipples," he said and I chocked on my beer and started couching. "I think I must have been a twin, but the other went away and left its nipples behind."

"You don't have four nipples!" I exclaimed and the guys laughed at my reaction.

"I do. I have four nipples," Harry insisted and I raised my eyebrows as he hurriedly added more. "But two of them are smaller than the others, so I don't look like a cow or anything."

"Well, thank God you don't look like a cow..."

"I thank Him every day," Harry said seriously and I giggled.

"How does that even work though?" I said and looked to Harry's torso, trying to picture what was going on underneath his t-shirt. "Show me."

"What, here?" he said uncomfortably while the others observed the situation with amusement.

"Yeah."

"No, I'm not about to flash you here."

"Okay, where would you feel comfortable flashing me then?" I said as the boys whistled and made a big deal of a non-sexual comment from my part.

"When we're alone somewhere," Harry said and the boys whistled again while I rolled my eyes.

"Okay, the restroom?" I said and Harry's eyes darted to the sign that read 'WC' in the back corner of the bar.

"Sure," he said with a shrug, and we slid down from our bar stools to lock ourselves in the bathroom. "If I flash you, it's only right that you flash me," Harry said when he started pulling his shirt up.

"In your dreams, Styles," I giggled and Harry laughed before he exposed his four nipples.

I could confirm that he didn't look particularly like a cow. The extra set of nipples just looked like freckles or something.

And when I was done studying them, I started looking at what was actually going on underneath Harry's t-shirt. And when I first started tracing my eyes along his defined muscles, various tattoos and tan skin, it was hard looking away or focus on anything else. His body was hot...

"So?" Harry said kind of nervously when I was quiet for too long. "Do I look like a cow?"

"No," I said and snapped back to reality when Harry interrupted my thoughts. "I guess not."

We laughed a little before we returned to the other boys, and I confirmed to them as well that Harry didn't look much like a cow.

"We know, we've seen him naked loads of times," Niall said with a shrug and I raised my eyebrows.

"What? Why?"

"Oh, Harry's a very naked person," Louis explained and I giggled. "He'll strip the minute we're in a non-public place. You'll just have to get used to it."

"I'm not so sure if I'll get used to that. The people in my life rarely strip whenever we're in a non-public place."

"His nudity is contagious," Niall said dryly. "You'll probably end up naked too."

"That I am very sure is not gonna happen," I stated with a crooked smile and Niall raised his eyebrows.

"I don't think you'll be able to resist."

"The naked contagiousness?" I said and everyone laughed. "We'll see."