old lovers hippie music

3. cross vs pearls

February 2011

Louis calls Harry for his sixteenth birthday and Harry doesn't answer.

Louis takes his gift he got for him and walks the thirty minutes in the cold February rain to Harry's house. He has only been there a couple of times, not more than twenty in the six years they have been best friends now, Harry is always at Louis.

Almost every day after school and before Louis' footie practice and sometimes in the evening again, eating dinner with his family. He is in Louis' house when Louis comes home from his dogsitter job and just hangs out in Louis' room while he has to study for his last exams of school.

Louis is eighteen and will graduate soon so he has to work hard in order to be able to get in a good university and make some money to support his mother and family. They are not exactly poor but ever since his father left them, they have been short on money. Louis doesn't remember it any different and he wants to give his own family more possibilities some day.

So Harry usually just lays on his bed and is on his phone or sometimes even cleans Louis' room while he studies. When everything bores him, he helps him and they work together.

Harry is incredibly smart and can do everything he wants academically. But he doesn't need to, he will have a bright future ahead of him no matter what he does or doesn't. With parents this rich and a brain this smart he will easily get his dream job without having to do anything.

Louis shakes his head at the unfairness while ringing the bell of Harry's parents' house again and again.

It's huge, way too big for three people and all the times Louis has been inside, he found it disturbingly quiet. That is, when you ignore the constant screaming and fighting of his parents.

That's the major difference between the two boys.

Louis has a huge family that can't give him everything but always tries and makes up for the lack of materialistic presents with the feeling of being loved, while Harry has a small family, only containing his mother and father and they both give Harry everything he asks for, except attention and memories or love.

Harry once said that he thinks Louis' house and family is more home than the cold house Louis stands in front of right now and he thinks that might be the reason Harry spends almost his whole time over at the farm yard. Sometimes, he stays two days in a row and in the holidays even a week, wearing Louis' clothes and sleeping in Louis' bed.

He faded into the family completely and Jay soon started to see him as the second son she always wanted, alongside of all the girls.

No one opens the door and Louis huffs, after ringing one last time and makes his way back home, the present still in hand. After the first meeting of the two, Louis had spent every one of his and Harry's birthdays with him and he doesn't know where Harry is right now. He didn't say anything about a party or a trip with his parents or something. For all Louis knows, Harry doesn't really want to spend his birthday with his parents but rather with him.

"No one there?" Jay asks, as she sees her son entering the house again with a confused expression and the present still in hand. Louis shakes his head and walks up to his room, trying to think about where Harry could possibly be.

Its eleven pm and Louis starts to accept the fact that he won't see Harry for his birthday, while he cleans his room a little and listens to music (through his headphones because family is already asleep) to distract himself from his mind that starts worrying. He does that until it's midnight and he bites his lip, checking his phone one last time before going to bed.