Buttercup [H.S]

Chapter Nineteen

The panic that had jolted me from bed upstairs quickly consumes me again as I interrupt him in a flurry.

"I-I haven't baked anything. I'm two hours late, and I haven't even got anything to sell. What am I going to do?"

He pauses, eyes glancing over my frantic expression. He doesn't reflect my riddled state at all, just watches me, his eyes slightly narrowing before he sighs.

"I think it's best you took the day off, don't you?"

I stare back at him in bemusement.

"I can't just take the day off, Harry. I have bills, a business loan, the rent for the stall. I'm already behind, if I don't go in it'll just get worse and...and..."

During my rambling he paces across the kitchen to me, and places his hands on my shoulders.

"Hey. It'll be fine. We'll figure all of that out, okay? But you need to look after yourself first. You said it yourself, you haven't even baked anything to sell, so there's no point in going in today."

He peers down at me, eyebrows raised as he waits for a response. My thoughts are a scrambled mess, and I'm finding it hard to have him stare at me as flashes from the night before flit in and out of my memory like a light bulb bursting.

To distract myself, I glance around my immaculate kitchen again.

"You cleaned," I mutter.

Realising I would no longer argue about going into the market, Harry's shoulders relax.

He lets go of my shoulders and peers back at the room and the work he's done.

"I had to wash our clothes from last night. Couldn't stop once I got started," he says easily.

I feel my face warm at the fact I'd emptied my stomach likely over the both of us, then try to think up some sort of explanation for the way he'd found me.

"About last night," I begin, shutting my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose. "Look, I just-"

"We'll talk about it in a minute. Let me make us a cuppa and we'll sit down. Yeah?"

He's already filling my kettle, and I watch him move around the space as if it were his own. Harry carries himself as if he never has a second thought of what his next move will be; it's something I'd become extremely aware of since us reuniting all these years. He'd never been exactly awkward as a teenager, but he held so much confidence now that at times I found it intimidating.

How he opens my cupboards and instantly finds the tea bags and sugar, or how he pulls out my favourite mug; like he already knows. He leans down to grab the milk from the under counter fridge as if it were habitual. As if Harry Styles making me tea on a Wednesday morning was entirely normal.

"Go sit down," he tells me, peaking up at me from where he plops two sugars into my mug. "I'll bring these through."

Silently, I shuffle toward my living room where the scent of citrus cleaner becomes heavier. It's then that I see the rug that usually resides under my coffee table hung over the top of my clothes horse and I assume that he's scrubbed the vomit from it. I mutter a curse through sheer embarrassment.