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It feels strange to do it, but George asks Harry up to his study once all the guests leave. Ruth and Ma Bailey are sat upon the couch, giggling to each other and becoming acquainted. Really, it’s good for the two of them to get some time alone together, so Harry agrees rather easily and the two brothers dismiss themselves from the ladies’ company and head to the study.
“Say, Mother told me you went and saw Mary Hatch tonight,” says Harry as they ascend the stairs and traipse down the hallway.
George is still buzzing over it, feeling giddy and more than immature, but he finds it in himself to give his brother an irritated look over his shoulder. “Don’t see how that’s your business.”
He grins boyishly, all teeth and freckles he never grew out of. “Isn’t it my business to see my kid brother happy?”
“Haha,” George says sarcastically and holds open the door.
There’s a desk at the side of the room with one chair on either side of it, but he decides that it would feel too much like an interview to sit across from Harry like that, so he gestures to the comfy leather chairs on the other side of the room. It may be business they have to discuss, but they’re still brothers.
They used to stand on the other side of that old desk from their father to get scolded, anyway. Little menaces they were.
Harry sits and George pours them both a glass of bourbon before joining him. Then— “Alright, tell me everything that wouldn’t fit in all those letters.”
Harry’s face breaks open with excitement and pride and he spends the next half hour telling stories of school and friends and dormitory adventures and football.
There’s a twinge of jealousy in George’s heart, he’s not too proud to admit it, but it seems Harry’s thought of all that already, because he tempers his glee just enough to not gloat, and spends every second breath thanking George for all that money in the first place. But George reasons that it’s okay for him to be a little bit jealous, especially when he’s really, truly overjoyed for Harry and proud beyond pride of all he’s accomplished and experienced in four years.
He really is a wonderful kid grown into a wonderful man.
“But I know we’ve more important things to talk about,” Harry says at last when all his most pressing stories are told. He sips on his bourbon with a serious tilt to his brow.
George hums. “Sure, sure.”
Harry has clearly thought all of this over. Planned it out in his head. So, unfortunately, has George. “I’ll need two months, maybe three, just to get settled at the Building & Loan, find a place for Ruth and me, all things like that, but after that, you’re free as a bird, George. September at latest—“
George holds up his hand and his brother falls quiet. “I wanna hear about the glass factory first.”
His face shifts and he leans forward, this side of desperately apologetic. “I— I meant it when I said Ruth spoke out of turn,” he explains, gesturing with his glass. “We were still discussing it, but— well, I’m not sure if she entirely understands the situation with the Building & Loan here. How it’s my responsibility now, y’know.”
“Here, just— why don’t we forget about that a minute. Ruth says you’re some sort of research, well, god, I guess. Any truth to that?”
Harry sips again from his glass, face tight. “It’s, well— It’s true I enjoy it, but that’s hardly the point anyway. What I want doesn’t really matter.”
George’s heart clenches painfully and if there was any doubt in his mind going into this conversation, it certainly isn’t there any more. “What is it that you want, Harry?” He asks very slowly.
He gives him a guilty look. “George—“
“I mean it, if there wasn’t anything else to think of— what do you want? To go into research at the glass factory, am I right?”
He nods sheepishly. “If there was nothing— I mean nothing, but there isn’t nothing, is there? It matters more that you’ve been here working the Building & Loan for eight years—“
“Then you go on and take that job at the glass factory,” George tells him decisively.
Harry’s knuckles whiten around his glass. “George—“
“Now Harry, I won’t budge on this, so don’t you make it a fight, alright? You’ll go up to Buffalo with Ruth and have your job and you’ll come back to Bedford Falls for Christmas to visit me.”
They’re both very quiet for a moment, then Harry, in a very nervous voice, asks, “Why?”
George balances his bourbon on the arm of his chair and laces his fingers together. “Harry Bailey, you’re made for something amazing and I refuse to stand in the way of that.”
And they don’t discuss it any further.
George finds his way back to Mary Hatch, properly this time, and promises her a life together. When their wedding rolls around, she knows full well she’s marrying him and the Building & Loan. Somehow, amazingly, that’s exactly what she wants.