Constant // Harry Styles

Chapter 11: I punched him again.

"Would you mind passing me another box?" Harry asked. 

I slipped a cardboard box into my fingers and dropped it onto the floor, sliding it across the hard slats of the wooden floor of the room to Harry. "Tape," I warned him as he caught the box under his foot and looked up for me to toss him the clear tape.  As I returned to picking things up off of his desk and placing them in a cardboard box of my own, I glanced his way and watched him extend all sides of the box and quickly slap some tape across the bottom of the box.  He was wearing a faded blue "Holbrooke" shirt and some jeans with his hair down.  He extended his long, inked arm across the expanse of his wooden dresser and slid it across the top so that everything fell into the box he'd just taped together.  He placed the now full box on the bare mattress of his bed with a few other boxes we'd filled and taped shut. 

Harry's phone was playing the Weekly Top Hits playlist on Spotify. The door to the room was shut so that we were secluded from the rest of the Kappa Sig house.  After Jackson left my apartment the day before, Harry stayed with me the rest of the afternoon.  He didn't speak much, but rather listened to me talk and finally suggested we watch a movie, probably since he didn't want to talk.  Much this morning and afternoon, he didn't speak either, but I didn't take it personally. I know when I got angry or upset, I more than often got into my own head as well.  I just hoped he wasn't thinking that I was a part of the reason that he was kicked out of the frat.  Cameron was never kicked out because he was friends with me.  But then again, he was never  into me the same way that Harry was.  

As I was running over this all in my head, Harry walked over to me, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me on the forehead.  Without saying anything, he picked up another cardboard box and went to his closet.  After putting the box together, he began tossing his clothes, still on the hangers, into the box in large clumps. 

I didn't so much mind not talking because while he was speeding through the packing, I was getting to know him a little better by the trinkets around his room.  He had a box of quarters from each of the states that he had visited or lived in - almost all 50.  Some were shiny and new, but others were old and I struggled to identify the state.  Harry also had concert ticket stubs from Drake, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Rascal Flatts. He had other tickets from baseball games and football games and even one from a ballet he told me he went to with his mother (when I asked him about it).  A wooden box on his desk held tickets from hundreds of movies that he had seen, from more recent movies like Suicide Squad and Fury to faded tickets for Finding Nemo from 2003.  It was distracting and incredibly interesting to me.  Harry caught me flipping through ticket after ticket and smiled.  "Pretty cool, hm?" 

I nodded and watched him pull his curls back into a bun, small ringlets falling down around his neck.  It was the first time he'd initiated conversation with me that day.  "It makes me wish I could go back and collect all of the movie tickets from the movies I've gone to," I admitted, pulling myself from the box and packing it away.  Maybe it wasn't too late to start.  I was trying to think of something I could do to cheer Harry up, but we'd only been unofficially dating for what?  Three days? Two?  "Do you want me to get you something to drink?" I asked, dipping my four fingers into the front pockets of my jeans and shoving them down as far as they could go.  It wasn't like I was making his entire day better by getting him a glass of water, but it was the very least I could do at that moment. 

Harry smiled softly at me again.  He walked over and bet his knees so he could wrap his arms around my lower back.  I laughed when he buried his face in my neck.  "That would be great.  The cups are gonna be-" 

"I know where everything is in this house," I laughed again.  

Harry kissed my cheek.  "I almost forgot how much you were in this house before we started talking."