Dirty Dishes (A Harry Styles Fanfic)

Chapter 15: I'll Be There For You

(I'll Be There For You is by The Rembrandts)

Harry's POV:

         I headed to the weight room that night only to find the door locked. I knocked annoyed that Louis was so vague before. I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to come as Robert, but I thought someone would eventually tell me.

            “Hi Robert,” Nigel opened the door with a huge smile across his face. He was in a white tank top that had sweats stains under his armpits and fake man boobs. I laughed unable to contain myself. “I don’t know what you’re laughing about, young man,” he said completely straight faced. He let me in then locked the door behind him. “Louis is waiting for you up stairs.” I stared at him for a while then quickly took my chance to ruffle his red wig. He swatted my hand away, obviously not ready for my ninja quick reflexes. I ran away not ready to take on Nigel’s wrath. “Kids these days. No respect, no respect I tell you,” he yelled as he slicked back his hair and then fixed his shirt.

            I walked over to the treadmill Louis was running on. He pushed the button to slow it down to a walking speed then threw a towel at me. “An employee comes in to check on us every 15 minutes to make sure were not trashing the place. Wouldn’t want them to think I know you, so you are now the towel boy I hired to wipe my sweat.”

            “Louis did you want me to come here so you could make fun of me? I have better things to do with my time,” I stated turning around to leave.

            “Apparently not,” he threw another towel at my head, “Or they wouldn’t have called me in to shake things up.”

            “What?” I turned around.

            “You’re boring Harry. I’m not surprised, I knew you’d be. You need us to be interesting.” Clearly he was still upset. “Mark and Steve aren’t happy, and they’re thinking about cutting your show if things don’t turn around. I’m only here for tonight, but I’m still going to try and help you because I’m a good friend. Unlike some people,” he said looking straight at me.

            I rolled my eyes, because I still didn’t understand why he was so angry with me taking this opportunity. I listened to his long spiel about what I could do to make the experience audience worthy. Every time the worker on the shift came in I would dab his sweat and squirt water into his mouth, even though the guy was just coming in to inspect the equipment and could care less what we were up to. I could tell Louis was soaking up every moment he got to treat me like his slave.

            He wrapped up his speech within an hour. “There’s something I still don’t get. Why’s Niall here,” I asked.

            “Shits and giggles,” he said quickly but I wasn’t buying it. “No I’m serious, he just wanted to come for fun, and I let him because I’m a good friend,” he reminded me again how awful I was.

            We sat there in silence for only a second when he asked a question I wasn’t ready for, “So what’s the deal with the girl?”

            “What girl,” I asked not sure what he was getting at.

            “Don’t be smart with me. The waitress, who do you think?”

            “Her name’s Erin, she’s just about my only friend at this place.”

            “Friend,” he huffed.

             “What’s that suppose to mean?”

            “I’m just saying I've never seen you so defensive over a “friend”.” He said analyzing me.

            I never thought about her that way before. I liked being her friend. She was the only person I’d met in a long time who was single and not throwing herself at me. I didn’t want to change that, did I? “We’re friends,” I assured him.

            “Just keep telling yourself that,” he joked.

            “Yeah, yeah,” I said ending that conversation. “Well, it was nice seeing you, sort of.”

            “Ditto, buddy. Well looks like my trainer is here, so you need to GET so I can mess with this guy. That is unless of course he’s your “friend”,” he pointed downstairs to Allen who was watching Nigel on the elliptical machine running like a crazy person considering his size.

            I laughed at the sight of both of them, “Nope, barely know the guy. You can do whatever you want with him,” I smiled.