The Guest [harry styles]

2

It's been four days and thirty-five phone calls from Isaac since I sat opposite Tom and agreed to taking in the friend that I am yet to meet—and now there are merely ten minutes until there's officially no going back.

I've spent far too much of my week choosing between paisley or satin sheets, whether to buy new pillowcases or what cereal he might prefer. I've changed my mind about the whole ordeal at least three times a day and sent numerous essay-length, interrogative-filled text messages to my best friend, but their ETA is the only additional piece of information I've received back. No name, no age. I don't even know what kind of "work" is going to be conducted here, and quite frankly, the jury is still out over whether or not this friend actually is a fugitive. On more than one occasion, I've woken up in a cold sweat having dreamt about police officers hammering down my door and arresting me for concealing a known criminal.

It's been a long four days.

Preparing the rooms had always been my mother's favourite part of her business, and doing it without her has felt almost unnatural. I would generally watch on; leant against the door frames and unable to fathom how she could enjoy such a task when I could barely change my own bedding without feeling as though I'd run a marathon.

"If you were staying somewhere unfamiliar, you'd want it to feel like your own bedroom, would you not?" she'd say; crow's feet lining the corners of her eyes. "If you were leaving me for the night, I'd take comfort in knowing you were comfortable." And she was right, of course, in the way that mother's always are.

There wasn't a lot that my mother was wrong about. Jenna Kim had been a fiercely optimistic and positive woman, and despite this whole ordeal being Tom's idea and one I'm teetering on strongly opposed to—I know for a fact it's also one my mother would have been in support of.

"That boy brings you out of your shell, aein." she'd tell me with a twist of her Korean mother-tongue. "I like him very much." I never had the heart to tell her that Tom was simply a manipulative bitch—he just happened to be my best friend anyway.

Feeling peculiarly sentimental, I cast one final glance at the room I'm loaning to Tom's friend and back out of the doorway. The worn floorboards creak beneath my feet—floorboards my mother tore the carpet from and sanded down with her bare hands. It was her project, this house, this B&B, brought back to life with the inheritance money from her own parents. It was supposed to be mine now—it's what she'd instructed before she'd forgotten about it entirely. Before she'd forgotten about me. But how could I be expected to do it without her when she did it so well? Even now, months later, I can't help but yearn for her approval. Did I prop the pillows up enough? Should I have moved—

Doorbell.

"Fuck." I say out loud to absolutely nobody other than myself. Is it definitely too late to back out?

I abandon the landing and propel myself down the stairs—my slippers hitting the runner hard enough to be mistaken for steel toe-capped boots. I'm barely off the bottom step when my phone begins to vibrate against the check-in desk. It's been left untouched for nearly a year now; gathering dust and acting only as a large and imposing place to ditch my mobile when my brother is blowing it up. And why should today be any different?

Isaac calling

I flip it face down without hesitation. If Isaac were here, he would laugh at all this. He never expressed any interest in the B&B - citing the guests as regular nuisances - and he never liked Tom. "Tom Fox?" he'd say whenever my mother asked after him, and then he'd sneer. I'd always put it down to the fact that Tom was one of the few people who Isaac couldn't intimidate, and if Tom hung out with me, then I couldn't be intimidated either.