Echo Of Us • Zarry

G 1

"Shite."

Harry cackles gleefully, doing a little dance as he walks back to Niall with his golf club. "Told ya," he says. "I'm winning."

"You're a cunt, is what you are, Styles," Niall huffs but a smile follows it. He sits down halfway on their golf cart and pulls out a beer from the cooler. Harry settles himself on the picnic bench next to it, a beer promptly in his hand too.

"Sore loser," Harry grins after he takes a sip. "So, give me some of that good Irish gossip. Haven't seen you in ages."

Niall sighs, looking over the golf course. "I'm getting married."

He says it so casually Harry nearly chokes on his beer. "What? When? To whom? Also, can I be your best man?"

"A wedding," Niall makes a playful face at Harry. "Probably sometime next year, we don't have a date yet. There's no rush. And to Claire, my girlfriend, well fiancée that I've been with for like three years now. And no, I was my brother's best man, he's gonna be mine. You can be the godfather when we have kids."

"Thank you," Harry raises his beer bottle. "I haven't seen Claire in ages. Genuinely nearly forgot you two were together."

"I don't date famous people," Niall shrugs. "You and Luc have been in the paper plenty."

Harry rolls his eyes. "Don't even start," he sighs. His eyes pan over the golf course, which looks stunning bathed in the early evening light. He's missed golfing with Niall, truly. It's been too hard to find themselves in the same place in the last few years. He needs to work on that. Too many friends he keeps missing.

"Any of it true?" Niall wonders.

Harry shakes his head silently. After a long pause, he says, "They won't leave us alone. It's like... a fucking race..." Harry sighs again and rubs his hand over half his face.

"With Zayn and Gigi," Niall finishes for him, his voice low.

"Yeah," Harry breathes out heavily. He swings the beer bottle between his legs a few times, the bottom rim hitting the bench musically. "It's like I can't escape them. They're everywhere"

A heavy silence falls over them. Harry finishes his beer, so does Niall. Only Niall reaches for another.

"So," Niall asks after a long break disrupted only by chirping birds and the distant, barely-there sounds of golf carts moving people all over the course. "Have you talked to him since the breakup? I've genuinely been afraid to ask you. It's been what, two years?"

"No," Harry shakes his head again. "We don't have anything to talk about anymore, do we?"

"That depends on who you'd ask," Niall offers wisely.

Harry waits a long while before he speaks again. "He sent me a text."

Niall coughs, "What? Bloody hell, when?" When Harry turns Niall's way, he has his huge blue eyes searching him, trying to decipher Harry's demeanour.

"January," Harry replies. He sighs again, chuckling bitterly. "I was trying to piece it together like, why is he texting me? It was too long after his birthday, not soon enough for mine. What made him think of me?"

"What did he say?" Niall inquires. He's biting his cuticles now. Harry sometimes feels sorry for making Niall deal with their crap all these years. Especially after Zayn had left the band, Niall was the only person Harry even felt like talking to, looking at really. He's one of the only true friends Harry made thanks to that band.

"Just two words," Harry replies quietly, "I'm sorry. That's all he said. I'm sorry. Nothing more, nothing less." When Niall is silent, Harry continues. "It was the middle of the night. Like four in the morning. I had an overnight shoot. We were on break, I went to check my phone because Luc was still in New York with Dario, so I wanted to see if she'd texted me after Dario went to bed. But there was only that one text, a simple I'm sorry, from a number that wasn't saved. It looked familiar but I wasn't sure. Then I opened it and I thought I had died. You see, I only deleted Zayn's contact from my phone, not the texts. So when I opened that new one, it automatically showed our message thread. Yeah," Harry sighs deeply. "That's the story."