Don't You Remember? ~Larry Stylinson

35. Not again...

When we were all ready in the music room, all five of us and Jordan, we began going over solos and harmonies to record They Don’t Know About Us acoustically. We sat ourselves on some of the stools in the room, situating microphones in front of us. I was sitting next to Louis, as expected, and on the other side of me sat Niall, Liam then Zayn.

I sat there nervously as Liam set up a camera to record us. Jordan was sitting to the side of Zayn, separated from the group, but still looking like he was part of the production.

Louis had said many times that it didn’t matter if any one of us messed up, we would have plenty of time to do another take; it wasn’t as if we were performing live. However, my pride getting in the way, I didn’t want to be the one to ruin it for the rest of the boys. They were all counting on me to come in at the right time, remember the right lyrics, and sing in tune, my mind was whirling with everything I had to remember.

Subtly, Louis let his hand fall down in between our seats and he gently grabbed mine. As Liam set up the professional looking camera and started recording, Louis settled for just interlocking our pinkie fingers, just a simple way of comforting me, as our hands hung loosely in between us.

Jordan, sitting with his acoustic guitar on his lap with a spare microphone for it, was looking longingly at Louis and me. I could tell that he wanted to be open about his relationship with Niall, but he also respected Niall’s decision enough not to argue about it.

Liam had returned to his seat, talking loudly so that the microphones would pick it up. “Alright lads,” he started, looking expectantly down the row of us; we hadn’t discussed what we were going to say in the ‘pre-singing’ part.

“Firstly, I’d like to say how wonderful it is to have Harry rejoining us,” Louis spoke up from beside me, smiling softly as he did so. “The band would definitely be missing something without him, and it’s great that he’s working his way down the road to recovery.”

I smiled at him, and he nodded, as if he knew I was going to speak and was encouraging me on. “These past few weeks have been hard on the boys, but I’m thankful that they’ve been there for me every step of the way. I still can’t remember everything from before, but if it involved these four lads, it must have been pretty spectacular.” I smirked at the camera.

“We’ve been rehearsing a little in the studio,” Niall explained. “And to ease Harry back into the life of One Direction, we re-taught him ‘They Don’t Know About Us’, and we’d now like to perform a little acoustic version for you all.”

“And here we’ve got a good friend of ours, Jordan, to play the guitar for us,” Zayn continued, patting Jordan’s knee a in a friendly manner as the brown-haired boy smiled a little awkwardly. I looked down the line of us, seeing Niall’s torn expression. He was biting his lip and I knew it had hurt him when Zayn had just regarded Jordan as ‘A friend’. Maybe Niall wanted to show he was Jordan’s as much as Jordan did. He was just too nervous to do so.

“Ok, I would just like to say how amazing all you fans are, you have been great giving us support and having our backs throughout this. So without further ado,” Liam said, imitating the voice of an over-dramatic presenter. “I present to you, They Don’t know about us.”

It only took a few moments for Jordan to stop drooling over Niall and start playing the opening chords…

“You were really good, don’t worry. They wont care, they only care that you’re back on your feet again,” Louis tried to convince me, but I wasn’t having it.

“It was easy to tell that I was off, my voice squeaked halfway through my solo and I was so quiet during the chorus my voice was practically drowned out by your harmonies,” I complained. I had been worrying about how well I did and how the fans would react ever since we had finished recording. It had only taken one take to get an averagely good performance, but I wasn’t satisfied. I had begged Louis and the others to let us record it again and I would do better, but they refused, saying that I sounded great.