Friendship Never Ends (One Direction)

Chapter 12

Harry’s P.O.V.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” I asked, not sure if I heard him correctly.

“I’m Stephanie’s brother, Elijah,” he repeated, introducing himself. Stephanie? My Stephanie? The one who moved to America? I wracked through my brain trying to put this together.

“But Stephanie never mentioned a brother,” I stated.

“That’s because she probably doesn’t know,” Elijah responded.

I stood up from the couch and began pacing. My best friend Stephanie who I haven’t seen in about 9 years has a brother, a brother that she obviously didn’t tell me about because she never knew she had one.

“So let me get this straight. My best friend Stephanie, who moved to America, has a bro-”

“She moved to America?!” he questioned, shocked.

“Yeah, almost 9 years ago…” I explained.

“That makes so much sense now!” Elijah exclaimed, tipping his head back and looking at the ceiling.

“What makes so much sense? Are we talking about the same Stephanie?” I asked.

The expression on his face gave me the answer. They look so much alike, I knew there was something familiar going on.

“It’s a really long story,” he began. “I don’t think your mum…”

“Hold on,” I replied.

I headed into the kitchen and told my mum and Gemma to start dinner without me. My mum hastily agreed and I padded back to the family room, making sure to close the door tightly behind me.

“Talk,” I delivered, sitting back on the couch. Elijah sat up and spilled everything he knew.

Stephanie’s P.O.V.

A few weeks later, we still hadn’t succeeded at my mum accepting Rachel and I to go. We tried simply talking to her again, but she knew we were bringing it up, so before we could even explain, she instantly said no. We told Rachel’s mom about it, and she was alright with the idea, but wanted to talk to my mum about it, which made things more complicated. I was becoming hopeless by this point.

Spring break arrived and that meant that the musical was over and I finally had time to relax. Since I had time, I felt like this was the perfect time to talk to Harry again. I hadn’t spoken to him since our videochat over Christmas and I needed to tell him that we’re not going to England. He’ll be devastated, but I don’t make the rules.

I messaged him asking if we could Skype sometime today and he replied almost instantly. His message asked if we could wait a little bit because he was apparently busy, so I reponded back, ‘Sure.’ He must be busy with the band, I thought.

My mum was cleaning upstairs, so I decided to watch some TV and hopefully she wouldn’t ask me to go clean something. It’s my spring break and I wanted to relax, not do some spring cleaning. I turned it on and found out one of my favorite shows was playing, so I kept the channel on.

About 15 minutes later, Harry messaged me back and said that he was ready to video chat. I opened up my laptop, got everything set up, and saw his face on the screen.

“Hey, Harry,” I greeted.

“Hey, Steph,” he replied, smiling and waving.

“How’s everything going?” I asked.

“Pretty good, we’ve got most of our songs planned out,” Harry responded. “I can’t wait for the album!”

“Me either!” I exclaimed, smiling.