Walls Of Hearts

Chapter 119

A dramatic sigh escaped my lips as I ceremoniously deposited my phone onto the sofa, scanning the room where the boys were sprawled about like deflated balloons. It was one of those moments when swiping through your phone felt like squeezing a dry sponge – all the fun had been wrung out already. It appeared we were all stuck in the same sinking ship, drowning in the ocean of boredom.

Harry had his headphones on, fully engrossed in some true-crime series that he'd tried to watch with me, but I'd told him it simply wasn't my cup of tea, so he was left watching it alone. Liam was typing away like a sloth on a caffeine crash, probably in a conversation less thrilling than watching grass grow. Louis was snoring away, providing the room's soundtrack with what sounded like a chainsaw trying to start. That mixed with Liam's rhythmic drumming of his fingers on the screen was the only noise aside from the clock ticking. As for Niall, I couldn't quite decipher what he was doing to keep himself busy. One moment, he was dutifully scrolling through Instagram, and the next, tiredness would wash over him like a rogue wave, causing his head to bob in a battle against the Sandman. A true spectacle we were. It was a mesmerising display of profound lethargy, but I was getting rather sick of it.

Sure, they may have been waiting for their stylists to get into the venue, having just finished their rehearsals, but surely they couldn't be this done, could they? Not when they were supposed to be full of energy.

My gaze shifted to Harry, who was sprawled at the far end of the sofa, like a contented sloth, with my feet commandeering his lap as their personal resting ground. When I finally decided to liberate myself from his cuddly clutches and sit up, he tore his attention away from the riveting TV show he'd been engrossed in. His brows, initially knitted with concern, smoothed out as he asked, "You okay?"

My gaze shifted to Harry, who was seated at the end of the sofa with my feet resting on his lap. When I finally sat up and withdrew from his comfortable lap, he turned his attention away from the show he'd been watching. Concern furrowed his brow as he asked, "You okay?"

I shot him a reassuring smile, aware that his natural instinct was always to worry. He didn't have to worry about me in that instance though, it was his friends. With a sigh, I voiced my exasperation, "Harry, everyone's behaving as if they've downed a bottle of sedatives in a library, instead of being buzzed for the show to rock in just over an hour." Maybe I was stretching the truth just a bit, but it was frustrating to witness the sluggishness settling in. "We're turning into certified couch potatoes here!" My dramatic tone hinted at the absurdity of the situation, and I couldn't help but grin at Harry's bemused expression. "We need to do something, all of us."

He sighed, and his eyes roamed briefly across the room, landing on our less-than-enthusiastic companions. His response was a deadpan delivery that made it clear he had no intention of being the energy conductor to jump-start this particular train. He reinforced it by saying, "If you can convince them, sure." It was a moment that left me utterly befuddled. His expression seemed to say, 'They're not my monkeys, and this isn't my circus,' which was shocking from Harry - who was always the first to attempt to solve any issues between the boys. Now, it was clear he wasn't about to stir the pot. What had gotten into Harry? Especially when the rest of the guys had been so supportive to us both, particularly in the wake of our recent accident. My curiosity was now sparked, and I felt an itch to uncover the source of this unexpected animosity.

His mouth broke into a small smile, as he sat up and leaned in closer to me to whisper, "But if you can't, don't you worry. We can go and have some fun ourselves."

His sentence should have excited me. On a normal day, I might have even given up attempting to get the boys on board with something, but not then. All I wanted was for Harry to feel comfortable with the others, and that had to be through doing something with everyone, rather than alone, just us two. No matter how tempting that sounded.