I had no way of contacting him. It was a difficulty I had to find a solution to, which may have gotten me in some trouble, but it didn't exactly matter.

"You're going to get into so much trouble. You can't just waltz in here and steal information on one solider, what's the matter with you?" Zayn scolded, as he followed me around the office rooms.

"I'm just looking for one person. That's all, it doesn't even matter. I'm just, you know."

Zayn stopped in the doorway of the office room I had entered, "You like him. That's why you're doing all of this. You like him and you want to see if he has already been deployed. What happened? Did you two fuck or something?"

I gave Zayn a disgusted look and continued to look through the files in the desk files, "we didn't, thank you very much. I just have to see if he's...he's," I came across his file and started looking through the paperwork, "shit."

"He's already gone, huh?"

I nodded, not wanting to verbally answer Zayn. This couldn't be. He had to be here. He had to. He couldn't already be over seas. Damn, I was too late, "he'll be back."

"Not soon enough."

And fuck was that the truth. War is hell. It's all blood and guts and nothing resembles happiness, except your brothers and sisters around you. They are the reason you keep fighting. You keep going not to protect yourself, but them. You have each other's back no matter what. You keep fighting your hardest to make sure they live. If you die on the way, it doesn't matter. As long as they live you've completed your mission. You've saved your brother. You don't die in vain. You die doing your duty, doing what you set out to do. You remember why you signed up. You remember the enemy and you fight to destroy them, not matter how bad it gets. That, that is what makes you a good soldier, a brother, a friend.

"He'll be back."

.

On the papers it said he had been sent to Iraq just a week after the party. I found it depressing that I saw him that night and just in the next few weeks I would probably never see him again.

I checked in daily, asking Zayn to log me on to all the information in the database. Nothing changed. It still said that he was deployed. Not dead. Not back. But we could never really know for sure. Many men die and there is no record of their death. It gets hard to keep track of all of the soliders out there. Hard to count their deaths on one hand. Hard to stop yourself from crying by thinking about them.

It had been around six months before something changed on his record. Zayn called me right away and told me to get my "pretty little ass" to the office as soon as possible. I, of course, was worried since that's normally how I react to things.

When I got to the office, Zayn greeted me at the door and rushed me to his small cubicle, "look, look, look!" he repeated, more excited than myself.

"Holy shit," I remember myself saying. I was in utter shock and surprise.

"Just got back today. That's pretty remarkable. Six months deployed and he lived, that's rare."

I frowned, but nodded, "yeah." 

Zayn 's eyes softened and he looked at me, "I'm sorry that was my bad. I didn't mean to--"

"It's alright," I said, a fake smile plastered to my face, "he's back. That's what matters."

"And, by my predictions he should be arriving shortly for check ins and any reports," Zayn explained. He had this look which I had become extremely familiar with.

"What's your plan?"

Zayn only smirked and sat me in his office chair to start explaining his idea in full detail. It seemed silly, but also effective. So I went with it and spent the whole morning waiting for Styles to show up.

He never showed up right after lunch.

.

I'm not sure if there was any way to describe the way he looked. Dirty wasn't the word. He was clean, just beat from a good few months of war. He wasn't wounded. He was in good condition with a few scratches here and there on his arms. His face was covered in stubble from not being able to shave for a few weeks. But he looked good that way. He looked good anyway.

He walked into the office like a confused puppy, not sure where exactly to go. Zayn popped up and said a hello, shaking his hand. Zayn then lead him around the cubicles to get to the one I was sitting in, pretending I was actually doing work.

I looked up to find green eyes looking down on me. I said the only thing that came to mind, "Louis Tomlinson party coordinator number twenty-six."

"Harry Styles," he had greeted, "army pilot. Recently deployed to Iraq. And so goddamn happy to see you again." Before I could even say anything else, Harry had me in a hug and was whispering in my ear, "I couldn't stop thinking about you." 

Most people would find Harry's words strange. He had hardly known me at the time and we only shared a few words at a dinner party. We hadn't even known each other's favorite color. It was clear to me that, unlike a majority of people I have come across in my life, Harry was kind. It wasn't the sense that he would always give someone a compliment. He was kind in the fact that he hadn't judged me when he easily could have.

He could have judged me by the ring I wore on my finger when I first met him. Or my whole attire: black slacks, black blazer with a white polka-dotted shirt underneath. It was easy to judge me based off my voice, my personality, everything. But Harry didn't.

I hate to talk about my favorite poet, but according to e.e. cummings, life should begin without judgment. We should be open to people, accpeting of who they are. "If strangers meet, life begins" and with Harry, life had begun the moment I laid eyes on him.