Evening the Score // Book One

Chapter 29

Lately being in interviews had become a lot more tedious. Harry had started to dread them now that he was the sole target of annoying, intrusive, ridiculous questions while there was no one there to laugh or make fun of them with. Harry was a good sport though. They needed their sound bite and Harry gave it to them.

This interviewer seemed especially nosy though. She made a crack about Elena being his "flavor of the month" when he sat down and then launched into questions about how his mother felt about the fact that he'd dated so many high profile women. To say Harry was annoyed would be putting it lightly.

When she looked up at him this time, she had a certain sparkle in her eye that instilled fear into Harry. She smirked,

"Harry, we looked up the final numbers and your solo CD outsold Niall's by 30,000 units, outsold Louis' by 50,000 units, outsold Liam's by 70,000 units and outsold Zayn double...how do you feel about that?"

Harry stopped, what was he supposed to say to that? He hadn't released a solo CD in order to outsell his brothers. The last thing he wanted to know was how much he'd outsold them. He owned all of their CDs. Even Zayn's. And he thought they were all phenomenal. As strong as they were individually when they came together they were unstoppable. And the successes of all their solo ventures only evidenced one thing...that's why they were so successful as a group.

He gathered himself,

"I didn't know that but...I don't think it matters."

"How could it not matter? You mean you never cared about your success?"

"I cared." Harry answered, "Just not in conjunction with the other boys." Harry leaned forward, "Look, all of our CDs are good, strong, quality music. Whether it's pop, acoustic, rock, indie, house, dance, rap or anything else we tried our hand at. We put out music that people enjoyed. And at the end of the day that's all we wanted."

"You all don't have any healthy competition going on?"

"No. Although what you were just describing isn't exactly healthy."

"How so?"

Harry took a sip of his water while he crafted his answer in his head. This girl was clearly going to go home and write some bullshit about how they all hated each other based on his answer to this question. He set the water down and looked her straight in the eye,

"The boys and I aren't trying to outsell each other. There's no scoreboard. We support each other. As we always have."

She smirked again, causing Harry to throw his "get me the hell out of here" look to Jeff. Jeff quickly hopped into action as he walked towards them,

"Excuse me, Harry? Your mother is on the phone, we'll have to cut this interview short." He said as he guided the girl out of the room, "Thank you for coming."

Jeff quickly turned back to Harry once the door was closed,

"She was somethin' huh?"

Harry rolled his eyes,

"Somethin'...yeah, she was somethin'."

"At least she didn't ask you about your love life."

"No, but I'm sure she's going to run back to her office and write some headline about how we all hate each other."

"By the way, Louis will be at tonight's gig. He's bringing Freddie and Eleanor."

"I know. He texted earlier." Harry pulled his phone out of his pocket, a smile creeping up on his face when he saw a few notifications from Elena, "When is my next interview?"