Broken Misery (H.Styles Fanfic)

Chapter 4

"So you're saying you've been staying here all this time?" Harry asks me once were sat comfortably on our respective end of the sofa.

At this precise moment, I realize that sofas were created to avoid having to sit right next to the other person in situations like this. Harry and I leave one full seat between the two of us, and just to make it less awkward, I place the pillow in the middle and pretend to shift to a more comfortable position. His expression doesn't change and I decide that he doesn't suspect anything.

After he arrived with his companion of the night and noticed me in the darkness of the house, I politely told them that they could take the guest room that used to be mine to do whatever they were about to do. Obviously if they insisted on taking my newly acquired bedroom, which used to be Harry's, I would sleep in the guest and just soak the sheets in strong bleach afterwards. Twice. However, Harry declined my offer and called a taxi for the poor, horny girl who looked extremely and utterly upset at me for being a disturbance. He was extremely polite and nervous the entire time; I could see it by the way his bottom lip kept quivering. He walked the girl out and, with the door left opened, I witnessed his nervous habit of rubbing the back of his neck as he fished for a few bills in his pocket to pay for the cab.

Once the car drove away and the girl was now gone, he stood in front of me for about two minutes, none of us really knowing what to say or what to do. Describing the situation as awkward is an understatement but deep inside, my heart fluttered at the happiness of seeing him. His hair has gotten longer and he looks a lot taller, even though this is just my imagination for hanging out with Alfie too often, who's barely two inches taller than I am.

While we tried to find something to say to each other, I asked him if he was hungry and when he nodded, I offered him lasagna. He said it was his favorite, so I let him eat quietly while I brought his suitcase upstairs and put his clothes away, the dirty ones in the wash and the clean ones in the drawers. I piled up some of mine together to create more space for his, but his single pair of jeans - the other one being the one he's currently wearing - didn't take much place in the bottom drawer. When I returned to the living room, he was sitting on one end of the sofa and thanked me, insisting that I didn't have to do what id id. It was a pleasure for me to do so, though.

"I have," I reply to his previous question about living here for a while. "I hope you don't mind. I just didn't see the point in renting a place or a dorm at uni when I could simply live here."

"Uni?" he asks, completely confused. "You go here, now? And how did you get a key?"

He isn't angry. No, angry Harry has a completely different tone. He's just genuinely confused and interested in what I have to say, which makes my heart beat faster. "When I..." I trail off, knowing by the sudden flash of pain in his eyes that he understands I'm taking about the day I left, "I took one of your spare keys. I know it's stealing and I shouldn't have but... I had to."

"Hey, hey," he whispers, wriggling his butt to scoot closer to me, not crossing the pillow gate. He pushes my hair back with one hand, as far as he can reach from where he sits. The touch is so foreign but so familiar at the same time, but I push the goose bumps growing on my skin away. "My house is your house, you know that."

I grin at him, watching his dimples appear as he smiles at me. "I transferred here after I got back home. I didn't want to go back to LA, and Boston was out of the question. So now I'm a student at London Met."

"You enjoy it?"

"I love it. It's great and they have an amazing communication program." I go on a rant about my professors and all the good things that my previous college didn't offer. "I fell in love with the city over the summer, I wasn't ready to let it go," I admit later on. From the glossiness in his eyes, I assume he likes my answer. "How have you been?"