Contingency- [H.S]

VII

~H a r r y    S t y l e s~

Rainy New York City has always been so cathartic for me. I sit on the window seat of my apartment which overlooks the street below.

Large raindrops splatter down into puddles forming on the asphalt. The headlights from taxi cabs reflect and refract brightly from the puddles creating some sort of mirrorball effect.

I watch it, entranced by the splattering pattern as my phone speaker rumbles away with Luca's voice croaning through my apartment.

"Honestly, Dude, it was a fucking rager—"

I'm not really paying any mind to anything he is saying. Instead, I am watching the pattering of the rain that hammers into the window pane.

"Harry, are you even listening to me?"

I hum in reply, rarely paying attention.

My eyes trace over the crazy people sprinting through the torrential rain. Umbrellas roll inside out due to the strong winds that get stronger as they surge through the wind tunnel created by skyscrapers.

"Hey?" He pauses, his thick voice lowering as he gruffly growls out the word to capture my attention. "Have you seen my sister recently?"

"Sofia?" I croak her name out.

Luca laughs over the line, my phone resting on my bent knee as the loudspeaker causes it to rumble from the volume.

"She's the only sister I've got," Luca deadpans. "So..."

"So what?"

"Have you seen her?" He repeats, sternly. "She's not texted me back in a while,"

I hum, avoiding the question that bubbles guilt inside of my stomach. Knowing that Luca is so protective over Fia only makes me feel all the more heinous for deliberately going behind his back.

"You two are talking again?" I ask.

Sofia and I don't do much talking, not about things like this at least and so I wasn't aware that she and her brother were back on civil talking terms again.

"Yeah. She finally let me apologise,"

"Good," I grunt, looking and squinting out at the view of someone running through the rain. "You were a giant prick for what you said to her,"

Luca huffs, his petty stubbornness alluding through the phone line.

"Since when are you Sof's biggest supporter,"

I roll my eyes, listening to his patronising ring. "I'm not. But–"

"What?"

"You kind of treat her like a kid, Lu, and she's not a kid. She's a woman, she's twenty–"

Luca pauses, the line falling flat and dead as if he had cut off the call.

"-Nearly twenty-one, in fact,"

"You know her age?" Luca scoffs again. "What are you two like friends now?"

I still, every single muscle in my body grows rigid and stiff when I hear the accusatory tone that drips from his voice.

There is a knock at my door which I frown at. Looking over my shoulder at the door on the far side of the room, I pause as Luca hears the same interruption as me.

"Is someone at your door?"

I nod and then realise that he can't actually see me. "Y-yeah but no one buzzed to get in the building,"