Pregnant Pause [H.S]

Chapter 6

Me

Two weeks passed and I kept an eye on Niall, who was still left unfairly in the dark. That bothered me, but Fitz and I were back on track, which balanced things out. She and I spent one lazy Sunday morning on the couch, both of us painfully hungover from going out the night before.

"I feel like I've been dragged through eight kilometres of shit and then beaten on the skull with a hammer," Fitz whined. She was curled into a ball on the couch, her head resting on my lap.

"Sheer poetry, baby," I murmured in response.

I was stretched out, my head resting on the back of the couch with my legs propped on the coffee table. The telly was on, but neither of us felt well enough to watch it and instead lounged with our eyes closed, every so often moaning to one another about our sorry states.

"I drank more than this in uni all the time," she continued. "Why can't I do it anymore?"

"Because our bodies hate us," I answered simply. "We're old and decrepit now."

"It's not fair. We're twenty-two."

"I'm twenty-three."

"God," she groaned, covering her face with her hand. "You're ancient."

"You'll be catching up this summer."

"Shut up."

"Are you in your mid-twenties when you're twenty-three?"

"Stop."

"Or is that reserved for between twenty four and twenty-seven?"

"You're making me throw up."

"If our bodies reject fun now, what's it going to be like then?"

"Idiot," she grumbled, and with that, she stood abruptly and raced to the loo. I sat up in confusion until my head began to throb, and then I flopped back against the couch and listened to the tap running as Fitz brushed her teeth.

My eyes fluttered open when she returned. Buried in my sweatshirt with the hood pulled over her hair, she wore a dry, unimpressed expression, her cheeks paled.

I grinned. "Did you actually vomit?"

She curled up on the other side of the couch, purposely away from me. Upper lip curled, she deigned to respond, "We're fighting."

I chuckled to myself and mumbled an apology. Folding my arms across my chest to retain warmth, I spent the next two hours dozing on and off.

But I was certainly awake when sex noises filtered into the common area through the walls. I knew Niall Horan's sexual patterns more than any man should, and one thing was certain: he enjoyed the 'on-again' periods with Claire mostly due to the opportunity for morning-after shags.

On cue, Fitz reached for the remote and increased the volume on the telly while I grabbed my laptop from the coffee table and opened my music folder. It was peculiar that we had this down to a science, but I considered it teamwork.

When Claire emerged from the bedroom several minutes later and Niall trailed behind, proudly running his fingers over the scruff on his chin, we were ready.

Fitz dulled the volume on the telly while I blared 'I Just Had Sex.' The both of us, less hungover than before, plastered shit-eating grins on our faces.

In good humour, Claire laughed, swatting me across the back of the head and chiding, "Oh, you."

Niall flipped me off as he passed, not at all amused.