Rebel Rebel |harry styles| - ongoing

TWENTY-THREE

Eric Carmen: Hungry Eyes

Essie

"Okay, enough of dragging ourselves around this house. Here's our weekly plan,", I sat down on the sofa next to a disinterested Harry and shoved my A4 paper filled with activities straight into his hands.

"I don't want activities, Essie.", he pushed back.

"Well I'm not in a mood to be fun and perky either, Harry, but enough is enough. This isn't going away; we aren't going to wake up tomorrow in the world we used to know and there is no point in being depressive. I know it's not something that can change from one day to the next, but I am adamant on trying to turn our moods around.", I tried making a compelling case, and I noticed a guilty look on his face. Harry knew this was self-destructive behaviour as much as I did, he just wasn't planning on doing anything about it.

"Okay, tell me what we're doing this week.", a small smile played on his lips, but enough to make me sure of my success.

"Starting tonight, we are going to watch one hit film from the seventies. In the mornings we will do yoga for at least thirty minutes, then we will have breakfast and coffee. We will both force ourselves to be productive for an hour each day, whether that be by writing new music, working on old songs, editing photos, or improvising a shoot. We'll cook all our meals ourselves, only ordering in once a week, to help struggling restaurants cope with lockdown. That's a win-win situation because you know there have been recipes we've been wanting to test out. You can choose a wine each night, to complement our dinners, because we must start working through that wine cellar of yours. After dinner, we will do something fun – listen to good music, dance, draw, meditate – whatever fills our hearts with laughter and happiness. And then it's movie time. How does it sound?"

"It sounds like a plan to me. I do have to tweak it a bit, if you'll let me?", I nodded, happy that he was finally including himself, "We can shoot a home music video for each of the 12 songs from the record, if you'd be willing to. And, we must add walks in the nature. There are plenty of hiking areas around Los Angeles, if we're staying safe, wearing masks, and keeping away from strangers, we can get out a couple of times each week.".

"I like the way you're thinking, H. It's a deal. I'm happy you didn't say no to the whole idea.", he gave me that look, the one that tells me he appreciates me and couldn't say no to my efforts even if he tried really hard.

"I would never. Come on, let's go pick this week's movies."

And so, we started crossing things off our weekly activities list. We made seven Italian meals which Harry paired with amazing wines. We did a week of yoga. We went on three walks and one hike. We shot an acoustic version of To Be So Lonely in Harry's back yard. We watched American Graffiti, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry, The Godfather, Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Taxi Driver. We had two freestyle dance sessions to U2 and Fleetwood Mac. We were okay – not extremely happy, but not filled with desperation either.

"How about we get drunk tonight?", Harry's head popped through my bedroom door. I was still working on editing the music video, and I thought I heard him wrong at first.

"It's Monday night, Harry."

"So? Monday nights are the new Saturday nights, or so I hear. We're in quarantine, it's not like there is a set night for drinking. What do you say?", he tried convincing me.

"Okay. But it must be a cocktail night, then. You better work on your cocktail-master skills while I jump in the shower.", happy with my answer, Harry hurried downstairs to read up on all the different kinds of cocktails he could prepare tonight.