Labels || H.S. [#Wattys2020]

E I G H T Y - F O U R

With only a few minutes remaining until the boys were to begin their concert, Reagan was frantically searching for Hailey. Her responsibility, of course, was to make sure that Hailey was front and center that night in the crowd, and that she was photographed and plastered overall social media. But how could she possibly do that if she couldn't even find her?

She looked at her watched and sighed loudly. In a fit of desperation, she ran to Hailey's dressing room, even though she should have already been ready. To her relief, and then surprise she found not only Hailey but her sister as well.

"Reagan." Hailey said with a smug smile, "How nice of you to join us."

Reagan still stood there at the door, her hand gripping the handle, "Kennedy?"

Kennedy smiled wearily, she knew Reagan was going to be pissed, "Hey, Rae."

Hailey, sensing Reagan's discomfort, wrapped her slender arm around Kennedy's shoulders and smiled widely, "Your sister is a complete and total delight, Reagan. Why didn't you ever mention you had a sister?"

"You never asked."

Hailey laughed loudly, almost too forcefully, "Kennedy, your sister is so secretive."

Kennedy joined in as well but refrained from saying anything about the matter.

Before Reagan could even start freaking out about this new development though, she figured that the best course of action would be to ignore this blossoming friendship for now. Mostly because Hailey had to be out in her seat in about four minutes.

"Hailey?" Reagan asked.

"Yes?"

"Have you looked at the time?"

Hailey dramatically lifted her wrist and looked at her large gold wristwatch, "Oh, oops. Time must've gotten away from me."

"Hmm. I'm sure." Reagan said, an irritated look growing upon her face by the second.

Hailey got up, fluffed up her hair, smoothed out her skirt, and smirked at Reagan, "Come on then, we'll be late, won't we?" And with that Hailey strutted out of the room, heels clacking on the hard, cold concrete.

Kennedy attempted to walk past Reagan without getting an earful, but was unsuccessful. Reagan stopped her in her tracks before her hand even touched the handle of the door, "Kenz, quit it."

"Quit what?"

"I know what you're doing." Reagan said, knowing better than to believe Kennedy genuinely liked Hailey. No one genuinely liked Hailey, except unfortunately Harry, "I'm going to fix this myself."

"Fix what? You won't even tell me what she did!?"

"I can't have people fighting my battles for me anymore, Kennedy!"

"I'm not trying to fight it for you!" Kennedy argued, "I want to help you win!"

Reagan turned to walk out the door, "Kennedy, I'm not going to tell you this again. I need to do this on my own, just stay out of it."

"But-"

Reagan turned to look at her younger sister, "But nothing. Now get out, the boys are going on stage in like two minutes."

"You're being unreason-" But before she could even finish Reagan had already walked out and slammed the door. She wasn't going to make it easy to help her, not by a long shot.

—✴—

By about noon the next day, as the boys were off to a top secret photoshoot, Reagan found herself glued to her computer screen. The top trending topic on Twitter was "Harry's Summer Girlfriend", and of course it was all her doing. Picture after picture on her screen was of Hailey, front row, with Harry quite obviously staring at her on stage. Then there were the great, blurry, "behind the scene" paparazzi shots she had taken of Harry and Hailey laughing together backstage after the show. He had his hand on her arm and his face was stupidly fond, typical lovey dovey Harry. He was playing his part far too well.