SIX YEARS LATER || HS ✔️

one

Any day of my teenage years I would be excited to party and get drunk, especially with my ex-lover. The thrill of having fun while having alcohol pumping through my veins seemed like the idea of rebellion as the idea of making memories and 'having the time of my life.' But now, at the age of twenty-nine-years old and with an important editing job at the nearby office from my small home. Currently, I am surrounded with my slightly drunken friends, while I am holding onto one beer tightly in my grip, deciding on if I should really take a drink from the chaos happening around me.

The slight drama going on is one of my closest friends, Nicky Pierce, is grinding on another friend of mine from work. They, of course, are both under the influence, while the man Nick is grinding on, Michael is his name, does not feel the need to get very intimate with her in that way. Michael is not as crazily wasted as Nicky is, and she can get very clingy on a person quickly.

My eyes glance over to the bartender, who keeps winking at me in a flirtatious way, and my body tells itself it is time to go dance. Setting the beer down, I avoid the strange bartender's look as well as my grinding friend and get caught in the midst of the crowd. There is no way that I will continue to let the stranger wink at me and think I want him, and I am hoping that he does not think I want him to meet me in the middle of the damned place of the floor.

Throughout the grinding as well as sweaty bodies, my nose hits a stench that I automatically recognize the smell of puke. It honestly makes me want to gag when I breathe the rubbish, but my worried eyes try to find where the smell is coming from so I do not have a little meeting with it. After a few moments of searching, I finally find the noise of gagging as well of the site of the stench.

A large, older man is sitting in a small chair with a trashcan pushed up to his face in the corner, near the bar. The sight would be hilarious to me if I did not feel sorrow for the elder man, and he must have had a long night, considering that it is around the New Year's holidays. That's what Nicky brought me here for; to get wasted and bring someone home or have some sexual activity with another. Countless times she has told me to loosen up, but she already has the idea that I have a boyfriend, Bryan.

Bryan has been another love of mine for roughly around a year. We met through Nicky, which is strangely enough her brother, and then we connected. Not magically, no, but our personalities were different, and still are, which made it unique. It seemed as if we had met at the right time, when everything was falling into place such as my house finally getting repaired as well as my job.

A body brings me out of my trance as I feel another bump into my hip. The people are getting out of hand, well some are, and this is when I decide on leaving, walking back over to the bar to see Nicky sitting on the bar stool, breathless. Thank God for her being done with her grinding as well as the flirty bartender disappearing. A smile appears on her face as she sees me, her eyes scanning down the loose white dress I am wearing as well as the blonde locks framing my face.

"There you are," she slurs in a mumble, her glazed, green irises looking into mine. "I want to meet you to some friends, well, yeah," she seems to question herself after pausing at the mention of friends, but quickly regains herself and grabs the base of my wrist.

"What? I thought we were leaving, Nicky," I complain and try to speak loudly over the blaring music.

"Yeah, you just have to meet some friends. Michael knows them too. He is over there talking to them now," the words fumbled out of her mouth are still blurred for her, but she tries to cooperate with her composure.

And as Nicky brings me more out of the dancing crowd and into the couched-in area, I cannot help but stifle a gasp.

This can't be right. I must be having a hallucination or something from my drink, if that is even possible, because I know Harry Styles is not fucking standing in front of me. And I know that before I can possibly move and leave this damn building so he doesn't see me, his dark eyes land on me and he copies my actions.