God damn it! I got lost again!

I couldn't get out of that kitchen fast enough and in that moment of haste, I somehow managed to wound up in the dining room.

In my defense-

Actually, I'm not even going to attempt to justify how much of an idiot I am...

That being said, it took me about ten minutes to find the staircase leading up to the bedrooms. Yes, I was too chicken to call out to Harry, let me be!

Anyway, I'm now back in my room and I just can't help but feel like I'm suffocating. I said to myself that I wasn't going to study today but it's proven to be a bit more difficult than I thought. The sight of the books I left on the unmade bed mocked me to the point where I had to move them away from my sight. Did 'away from my sight' mean under the bed? Sure, why not.

But it still wasn't enough. I resorted to pacing around the room, keeping myself preoccupied so that I don't dive under the bed and retrieve the books. Then I stopped and thought about it.

This is stupid! I can control my urges!

I am determined. I am strong. I am intelligent enough to know my limits.

I think...

Either way, I walk over to my suitcase and take out a tank top and a pair of gym tights. It's similar to the one I wore to the last dance class I remember teaching...when I had the whole Georgie bundle of One Direction at the house.

Seems like such a lifetime ago.

When I'm done slipping into the clothes, I look at myself in the full-length mirror against the wall and inhale deeply then exhaled. It felt so strange. I haven't worn these clothes in months. Since the beginning of the tour really. I went from wearing them every Saturday and Sunday and the occasional extra day in the week to not at all.

This is good. This is what I need right now.

Dancing has always been an escape for me. Harry would know. Like I've said before, Harry and I would only actually see each other, face to face, once a year. For the Christmas holidays. My family and I usually traveled to Holmes Chapel around the same time every year. After the annual dance competition my team and I would participate in every year. Harry would be so bummed about missing it so he would always beg me to teach him the 3-minute competition routine whenever we reunited. He would say that learning the routine with me would make him feel like he was actually there in the stands, cheering for me and my team.

But what he didn't know is why I relied on this 'hobby' of mine so much. Of course, he wouldn't have known because of the many things that I kept from him. My whole life I've always felt like I was destined for certain things and my parents never let me forget it. They expected me to choose. My mother was very fixed on academics; she believed me to become a doctor, more specifically a highly trained renowned surgeon. My dad, on the other hand, was a musician who reveled in the fact that his child was a musical prodigy and was very adamant about me developing my skills. They never understood that these things were both a part of me. They never entertained the thought that I could do both.

And that's where dance stepped in and whisked me away from the constant nagging and identity struggles.

I never intended to be a dance teacher. I never planned to make a career out of it. But it gives me the extra cash to pay the bills so really, out of all the other options of a second job I could have chosen, this might as well be the best.

But I digress. A mirror can bring up so many memories with just one look.

Now...on to the next problem.

...where is the gym?

I know, I know. I should have paid attention to Harry's personalized house tour but you know what? The past is the past. I've learned from my mistakes.

I open the bedroom door and step out into the hallway. It's quiet...a little too quiet.

"Harry?" I call out. No answer. I walk towards the staircase and stop at the top, "Mari?" No answer.

My voice echoed through this part of the house for sure so which means they were probably on the other side of the house. I could go back to my room and use my phone to call Harry and ask him to show me where the gym is...but am I going to do that? The answer, my friend, is no.

I'd hurt my pride too much.

So I subject myself to the humiliation of walking around the entire ground floor, checking every room to find the gym. And it's fine because no one else will know of this besides me.

After maybe ten minutes of a one-sided game of hide and seek, I found Harry's in-house gym. Am I proud of myself? I think my victory dance break in the middle of the corridor is evidence enough of that.

I shut the door behind me when I walk in and take a moment to look around the space. First of all...Ow. My eyes burn from the brightness of the room illuminated by the sun. It's almost like the sun was facing directly at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. But besides that, it's a nice sized room with a treadmill, elliptical, and a few other machines I couldn't tell you the purpose of even if you paid me.

I'm a dance coach, not a gym coach. Don't be fooled by the bodies you see dancers sporting these days and think that they actually got it from the gym. Or at least with me and my team, we had our own workout regimes that took place in the farthest place from the gym.

We were broke teenagers. Who the hell had the money for a gym membership?

There's a wall of various weights, most of which I could never lift in my wildest dreams. But what catches my attention is the wall opposite the weights which is a mirror taking up the entire wall with a balancing bar attached to the middle and running along its length. I feel like I've been transported back to ballet class when I was six.

Don't ask. It was a phase...a very short one.

I stood in the middle of the mirror and warmed up for about fifteen minutes. When I was finished, I spotted a speaker with an iPod attached to it in the corner of the room. Scrolling through the playlist, I smiled because I could instantly tell even if it wasn't in his gym that this was Harry's. His music taste is so distinct and so similar to mine that I didn't even need to question if the iPod was his.

But I also had to keep in mind that this was a dance competition I was trying to choreograph for and for kids who are just around the same age as me when I had dance competitions. There were also different categories of the competition, for different age groups. So I decided to start with the one I figured most important. Not that all the categories for all of my kids aren't important but the oldest age group, 17-18, the duet category, needed to be show-stopping. The reason for this is because there's talk of college scouts being in the audience. Specifically, Julliard.

There are only two of my kids who fall into the category and they're my most experienced. Giving them the best duet they've ever done, especially as this will be their last year competing, may set them up for an amazing opportunity.

Which is why I need to nail them a bomb-ass routine.

I decided on Ed Sheeran's "Give Me Love." It's the perfect couple's duet song.

I walk back to the mirror as the music starts. I take in the words of the lyrics and their meanings and just let my body move with the beat. The piece is meant to be contemporary, to evoke emotion from the judges and the audience, so the moves are delicate and soft. Very ballet style, if you will.

It's only halfway through getting the steps right for the girl's part that I realize I'm not in the dance studio and I don't have Nathan with me to practice the guy's part. But I was in the zone and I didn't want to break it so I kept going. I'll find a way to figure it out later. I closed my eyes so that I could focus and memorize every movement of my hands and torso and steps of my feet. Just as the song was about to finish, I realized that I didn't like the way I envisioned the routine to end. It wasn't big and bold enough. So I opened my eyes to look at myself in the mirror only to find another pair of eyes staring at me. Harry was leaning against the door frame and I stood straighter and turned to him.

"Don't stop on my account," He says, but his voice sounds so much deeper than usual, almost filled with emotion. Feeling skeptical, I walk closer to him, enough to catch a close glimpse of his eyes before he tries to hide them.

"Are you crying?" I asked with a laugh.

"No!" He huffs, turning his back to me so I can't see him wiping his eyes with his t-shirt, "I just got something in my eye, that's all."

"Yeah, tears," I joked.

"It was really sad, okay?" He defends leaning against the door frame again.

"How long were you standing there?" I hadn't even heard the door open.

"Long enough to know that you spent way too long wandering the house looking for this place," He smirks at me, and oh my God the urge to whack it off increases by the second.

"You mean to tell me that you saw me, followed me, and didn't see a word?"

"To be fair, you did call me," He says coolly. And he couldn't respond? "And I would have answered but Mari fell asleep on me and I didn't want to wake her." Naptime, I see. Then asks, "Why did you stop? It was so beautiful."

"You think? I just started working on it. Nothing is set or anything," I say shyly, now starting to feel the embarrassment coming on which is strange because no matter what the circumstance, dancing is the one thing I never get nervous about.

"Well, I'm sure whatever you do to it will be great. It already looks so good!" He gushes and I smile to myself at the compliment.

And then like a lightbulb, an idea pops into my head.

"Mia? Are you good? You've got that crazy lady look on your face."

I grin excitedly, "Would you mind helping me with something?"

"Okay!" Without a second thought, he pushes off the door frame and clasps his hands together excitedly, walking further into the space toward me.

"Nothing much, " I downplayed, "Just a basic stunt. You know, for logistics and stuff..."

He stops in his tracks with a skeptical look. "Define basic"

I let out a nervous chuckle. He's going to kill me. "You like Dirty Dancing, yeah?"

Before I even got the chance to elaborate, a horrified expression makes its face across his face when he instantly knew what I was going to say.

Of course he did. Dirty Dancing is one of, if not his most, favourite movie...at least it was when we were growing up. He knew exactly what I needed him to do by just putting the words Dirty Dancing and stunt in the same context.

"Are you fucking crazy?!" His deep voice went up a few octaves then lowers as he apologizes, "Excuse my French"

"Oh c'mon! 'Mr. I get up at 5 in the morning to gym,' I swear, it's not as hard as it looks."

"Mia, I can't do that!" He whines, looking nervous.

"Sure you can! I'll guide you," I promised.

"From the sky?" He deadpanned and I just nodded enthusiastically with a big grin. He lets out a long sigh of defeat and walks closer, "Tell me what to do then." I squeal in victory. However, that soon deflated when I realized the next step that I forgot to anticipate.

Once again, Harry and I have ended up way too close... and I ignored it. I needed him to see me ignore it so that it'll help him too. We're both trying to fight these feelings and it's better if we work together to not cross the line. So yes, his hands clasping either side of my waist does make me squirm and feel all tingly but he can't exactly help me with this stunt if he doesn't touch me. I try to envision him as Nathan, someone I have no romantic attachments to whatsoever and who has much experience touching me this way. I've practiced stunts with Nathan many times so if I need to imagine Harry as him so that I don't cave and kiss him again, then so be it.

So his hands rest on my waist and I actually feel them shaking, the sudden pulsing movement drumming against my skin. I watch his cheeks go crimson when he realizes that I noticed and I have to resist the urge to smile at him. So, I step closer and reach my arms up to rest my hands on his shoulders while he watches my every move.

"This okay?" I ask because of his nervousness. I'm not sure if it's because of our close proximity or if he's imagining a scenario where this goes horribly wrong and he drops me. All he does is nod, so I have no inclination about which it really was. Maybe it was both, who knows?

But he gives me the go-ahead so I press on and start explaining what he needs to do.

"So we're going to try the lift, okay? All you have to do is lift me above your head and hold me there while I sprawl out like Patrick mid-air...can you do that?"

"Just tell me when," He says, not even looking at me but rather to the space behind me.

"Okay so, my hands are on your shoulder to take some of the weight off," I press down on his shoulder a little for demonstration, "and on 3, you're gonna lift from where your hands are on my waist, all the way up into the air until your arms straighten...Got it?" He gulps but nods anyway.

"Alright then. Ready, 1, 2-" I press down on his shoulders again, "3!"

I hear him grunt as my feet start to leave the floor and I am being lifted higher and higher off the ground until my body becomes parallel to the floor.

"Jesus Christ, you got long arms!" I joke, watching the distance of my body from the floor.

"Slender-man and Patrick Star, who would have thought?" He responds through a small laugh from below me and then asks, "Um Mia?"

"Yeah?" I respond distractedly, trying to center my body in his hold to stabilize myself.

"I don't know but this lift thing seems kind of hard, " He grunts through his teeth, "Isn't this for kids? You think they can do it?" I feel his arms holding me up start shaking and my body propels forward a little.

"They have to. We have to step it up for this competition and they want to go all in," I explain while extending both of my arms away from my body like Rose in Titanic, "They're more capable than you think. Besides, it's a duet. A contemporary style. It has to be powerful."

I start to feel my body propelling forward again. Then backward. Then forward again.

I was going to fall. "Harry, tighten your core!" I instruct as we start rocking back and forth. I breathed a sigh of relief at not falling over 6 feet from the air to the ground when we stop moving and his arms go still, holding me in place up in the air.

"Okay, good. We're good, " I reassured him, "Now just lock out your elbows...and please make sure that you-"

I didn't get to finish as a distinct, "Uh oh!" is heard and I feel my body begin to comply with gravity as the floor gets closer and closer to my face followed by a "Shit!" accompanied by the sound of a loud oof. Mere seconds after, I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing for impact when I realized how close my face was getting to the floor. Only, I did make impact...just not with the floor.

When I open my eyes, I found them looking right into piercing green eyes, so close that I could see golden flecks of colour where the sun hit. I fell directly on top of him.

Chest to chest.

Nose to nose.

His arms are circled tightly around my back, probably in an attempt to catch me.

"Fancy seeing you here," He grunts out with a cheeky smile and it's only then that I realize that I'm crushing him into the wooden floors.

"Sorry..." I make a move to raise off of him but he stops me midway with his arms still around my back, keeping me in place, "Are you not hurt? I'm pretty sure I just crushed some of your bones."

"Nah my bones are like rubber, it'll only bend a little" He jokes and I smile, completely forgetting the compromising situation that we're in. Instead, my attention goes to the curls that have fallen forward onto his forehead. You know, you would think that since he's on his back, his hair would also fall backward but there are just a few curls that just do their own thing.

Stubborn. Like Harry.

Without thinking, my fingers run through them, enjoying their soft texture and then brush them away from his face. The thing is, I knew that I was mesmerized, playing with his hair, yet I could still tell that he was watching me and the feeling of his eyes burning into my face was magnified since we were practically up top of each other.

Out of nowhere, he just says, "Is this all part of your plan? Getting me to fall for you?"

The way he said it was likely to come off as a lighthearted joke because like I've said before, anything Harry says with a smirk should never be taken seriously. He likes to be cheeky and get people flustered. So, yes I did know this but considering what has happened between us, it just doesn't have the same effect anymore. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say he was being very serious in his asking.

A million things must have crossed my face because he then says quickly, "Mia, hey. It was just joke. You know? Because we fell?"

Do not let this get to you. Self-control, remember?

"Yeah, I know," I said, rolling off of him to lie in the space adjacent, staring up at the ceiling, "A really, really bad one. You've lost your touch."

A moment of silence passes by before he laughs from beside me, "You don't actually mean that!"

I start laughing as well, "Your jokes have always been terrible!"

"Give me a break, okay? I've already been bruised enough for one day."

We lay there on the floor for a while beside each other. No words were said. And they didn't need to. This is something that I've always enjoyed when being around Harry. He makes comfortable silences seem fun. We can be in the same room not saying anything yet knowing exactly what the other is thinking. I'm not so sure how much that has changed since we've been apart but one thing I do know is that right here at this moment, I know exactly what he's thinking and I'm confident that he knows as well.

This bubble that we've managed to create has just become our safe space and we never want to leave. In this space, our feelings are out in the open and we don't have to hide it. We may not act on it but there is a mutual understanding. And that is far better than if we make any motion to leave, this will all go away.

So we stay.

We enjoy as much of this as we can.

A/N
Alrighty readers! Things are heating up for our main characters.

Stayed tuned, there's still so much more to come!

Love y'all x