Curly and Me ✣Narry✣ *COMPLETED*

Chapter 10

“You’re awfully quiet.”

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

I must have zoned out because Harry was looking worriedly at me. “Does it bother you that I got a job? You don’t have to come with me you know.”

It took me a moment to realize what we were talking about. “Oh. No, no of course not. It doesn’t bother me at all. Heck, I think it’s a great thing even if all you’re doing is stacking stuff.”

“I am not just stacking stuff,” Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m a cashier’s assistant. Which means I help the cashier.”

“Yeah right,” I chuckled. “And what does the cashier’s assistant do in this place? Oh right. He stacks stuff.”

Harry smiled. Title or not, even he knew that the job would involve a lot of stacking. “I just wanted to help Mr. Donovan. He’s getting too old to be doing all the lifting in that place.”

“Yeah, but he certainly could have gotten someone else. Like someone from another high school, those actually needed it.”

Harry gave me a reproving look before he continued adjusting the polo he’d be wearing to work. It was Saturday and we were over at his house. He’d gotten a weekend job (well, a Saturday job) helping out at a “second hand store” where people left their old junk for free or extremely low prices. The owner, old Mr. Donovan, tried to resell them. To be honest, I thought the place looked like a dump and I didn’t think it was a sustainable business. Eventually you’d have more useless non-liquid assets than cash. And yes, we did have accounting in fourth year. It was part of the Oakridge curriculum.

I promised to bring Harry to work and back every Saturday. I mean what were best friends with cars for, right? Besides, it was near enough to Tiffany’s anyway where Emily worked on weekends (oh, just about seven or eight blocks). I figured it was a perfectly good excuse to stop by.

“So what were you thinking about?”

“What do you mean?”

He moved over to the closet and looked for a bag to put a change of clothes in. “You had this lost look on your face, like you were thinking of something serious that was bothering you.”

“Why? Can’t I meditate upon serious and contemplative issues?”’

Harry chuckled. “No offense, Niall, but you don’t think deep.”

Ouch!

From my lack of reaction, Harry stopped what he was doing and moved over to sit on my bed. “Hey, I’m just kidding. You know that right?” When I still kept quiet, he sighed. “So tell me. Is there something wrong? You’re not worried about your date tonight are you?”

“Of course not,” I said with a wave. The dating realm was certainly something I was perfectly comfortable with. Nothing could make me nervous, even a date with a girl I might for the first time consider special.

He gave me a searching look before nodding. “So if it’s not that, then what is it?”

I thought about it for a moment trying to figure out how to best explain it. “You know when someone is trying to tell you something… yet doesn’t because he can’t or won’t… and he’s purposely evasive, yet you know something’s there that he’s trying to say… and you feel that it might be important…?”

Slowly, a small smile broke through his worried lips. “You mean like what you’re doing now?”

I had to laugh at that. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I think it would help if you gave more details,” he grinned mischievously.

I thought about it. Part of me wanted to share with Harry the details of my conversation with Travis. Yet, somehow I knew that whatever that dickhead was trying to say was somehow inexorably tied to Harry. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Different topics of conversation were mixing up in my head and I wasn’t sure what meant what. It was as if the message was right there in my head yet every time I came even close to grasping it, it would slither away. My mind almost seemed like it was purposely avoiding thinking about it, as if someone was in my head saying don’t think about that, think about this instead, insert picture of sexy and gorgeous women.