Until Now (Harry Styles)

Chapter 1

From Nicks: HEY!!! You here?

I quickly text my best friend, Nicole Dante, back. She must have just gotten into town after being in a car for nearly ten hours. I never understood why she chose a school so far away from her home in Cleveland. I, on the other hand, chose Eastern because it was still close to home, but the hour drive back to New Haven was still a hassle so I wouldn’t feel the urge to go home every weekend. I went home a lot last year, but that was because of Jake, and well, that didn’t turn out too well.

From Nicks: Good, I’m coming over. Village Heights, right?

 

About ten minutes of unpacking later, I heard a honk from outside. I made my way over to the window and looked outside for Nicks’ yellow, Volkswagen Beatle. There she was, waving like a lunatic. “I’ll buzz you in!” I called out to her. She nodded enthusiastically and hopped away from her car, her long dark brown hair tangling behind her. Moments later she was in my apartment, ogling at the amount of space I acquired for a minimal amount a month.

“Where’s your hot brother?” Nicks licked the tips of her fingers and smoothed her straight fringe that swept across her forehead. “Darn, he’s not here, is he?” She pouted. Her obsession with my brother, and several other guys that I am pretty sure she has never spoken to, was a little weird, but that’s just how Nicole “Nicks” Dante was.

We stood there and stared at each other before bursting out in a fit of happiness. “I haven’t seen you in so long! How was your summer?”

“You know, the usual. Slaving away with food service.” She shrugged. “How was your trip to AZ?” She peered over to my fridge and saw the picture I placed on its surface. A grin spread across her face as she took a few steps towards it and looked at it up close. “Oh yeah, looking good, Mitchel White. Looking good.”

“Oh my god, Nicks. Stop. That’s weird.”

“Hey, I can appreciate your good looking family members. Not just your brother. Your dad is a fine mother fu-“

“STOP.” I plugged my ears, refusing to hear another word of her weird affection. When I knew she had stopped she stuck her tongue out at me and winked. “Why am I friends with you?” I groaned, picking up another box and emptying its contents onto the kitchen table to see where they needed to go.

“Because I help you unpack.” She grabbed a bunch of cooking spoons and spatulas and stuck them in a drawer. Having Nicks there made unpacking much easier. Mostly everything was unpacked by the time eight o’ clock came around. My stomach gurgled and I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything all day, not since stopping and grabbing coffee and a pastry from the cafe back home in New Haven.

“Pizza?” I questioned.

“You read my mind.”

While waiting for the pizza to arrive I went over my schedule for the next day. I was pretty sure about where all my classes were. Eastern’s campus was small and easy to navigate and there was enough time in between my classes to get from first place to the next even if I got lost.