Art | Harry Styles

13

His hand is in hers.

He's pretty sure his hand isn't shaking, but there's a high chance it is. Her thumb is resting upon his knuckles, as she drags the tiny brush over the slightly bigger surface area of his thumb's nail. Her bottom lip is taken between her teeth in concentration, as she paints over the nail a second time, before moving onto his index finger.

Initially, he looks around the room - the white walls pretty pristine, disregarding the corner of the room, where several swatches of different colours.

"Testing paints," she explains, "I've been trying to convince my mom to let me paint that wall forever, so I'm just slowly building up until she has to let me paint it." She laughs lightly, as Harry sends her a playful, disapproving roll of his eyes.

Harry watches her closely, more specifically her mouth as her lips twitch a little as she concentrates, taking great care with the painting of his nails. The metallic paint is only on two of his nails thus far, but he's certain he already prefers it to his typical black.

"My dad always hated it when I painted my nails," Harry thinks out loud, and Sophie's eyebrows furrow, as she glances up to meet his eyes briefly.

"Why?" She looks back down, continuing with the painting of his nails.

"Dunno," he shrugs, "always said it was too feminine."

"And what's wrong with being feminine?" A soft frown dares to form between her brows, as she stands up, walking over to pick up a bottle of clear nail polish, before sitting back on the bed an inch or two away from Harry.

"Nothing, a'suppose," he shrugs again, eyes following her movements as she takes his other hand, bringing the metallic paint to it, "but he was ill an' I didn't want to argue."

Sophie nods slowly, "So you stopped doing it for a while?"

"When he died, yeah."

There's a momentary silence in the room, Harry's hand still resting on Sophie's knee as she holds it there, dipping the brush back into the pot of nail polish.

"I'm sorry," she tells him, and he furrows his eyebrows.

"Why?" he asks quietly, furrowing his eyebrows, "I've never understood why everybody apologises."

"Because we can't fix it," she tells him, finishing off his ring finger, "we apologise because we can't make it better."

"It's okay, though - m'happy with Mum and Gem."

"Gemma's your little sister?"

"Yeah, she is."

"Are you two close?"

"Have to be, really. But, yes - we are. And Mum. 'Think of them as my best friends more than anything."

"That's cute, I like that," she smiles softly, closing the bottle of nail polish and opening the clear one.

"What about you? Your family, your friends," he asks, still watching her face in some kind of awe.

"Hm," she hums in thought, "it's just my mom, Skylar and I. My dad left on my thirteenth birthday."

"I'm sorry," the words fall out of his mouth before he'd planned them to, and she raises an eyebrow, a smile on her lips.

"See?" she laughs a short laugh, "we can't fix it."

"Keep talking," he tells her, resting his chin in the hand that she'd finished with.

"Friends.." she trails off, pursing her lips in thought, "my best friend, Alice - she moved to California for college, and she couldn't get a flight back for Thanksgiving break. But she'll be back for Christmas this year, so there's something to look forward to. I'm really excited to see her." Her hair falls over her face as she concentrates, and he subconsciously