Early Morning Glory | Harry Styles AU

/09/ andy

*edited 2020

Lucy and I walked through the halls of the seventh floor of the building looking for the door that belonged to apartment 7J.

"With all that marble in the lobby you'd think they could at least afford some air conditioning in the goddamn hallway!" Lucy pulled off her baseball cap and wiped the sweat off her forehead.

It was extraordinarily hot outside today—not that it didn't get hellishly hot in New York during the summer because it did, but it was only July and the city had been encased by an August heat.

Last night when Lucy and I saw that it was going to hit the nineties today, we called Harry and asked if he wanted to join us for a beach day on Long Island. When he agreed, we told him that we would be at his place at exactly 8am because it took a little more than an hour to get to the beach from here. But of course, in proper Harry fashion, we called him three times from downstairs and he never answered.

So here we were, searching for his apartment after only maybe hearing him mention which apartment it was once.

"Oh, look! There it is!" Lucy sped up after locating 7J at the end of the hall. Once she reached the door she knocked with more force than necessary, "Harry, you fuck, we've been waiting for you for thirty minutes! Open up!"

The door swung open and standing there, hand on the doorknob, was a girl with long brown hair.

Lucy furrowed her eyebrows, "You're not Harry."

She laughed uncomfortably, "Uh, no, he's in the shower actually. I'm Katherine."

Lucy's eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she looked at me, "She's Katherine."

"Yeah, I know, we've met."

Katherine looked at me, "Have we?"

"Yeah, I was the girl at the desk when you came into the shop that night."

"I'm sorry," She ran her fingers through her hair, "I don't remember you."

I forced a smile and told her it was fine while Lucy waltzed right in. "Where's the bathroom?" After Katherine pointed to the door to the left of the kitchen space, Lucy started to bang on it and repeated what she yelled when we first got to the apartment door.

While Lucy kept yelling at Harry to hurry up, Katherine turned to me, "So, how do you two know Harry?"

"We're friends."

She nodded, "Right."

I gave her a polite smile.

Our uncomfortable conversation was disrupted by Lucy's loud laugh and Harry's half-baked anger. He was yelling at her for, what sounded like, barging into the bathroom while he was changing. She just laughed and told him he should've locked the door.

Katherine asked Harry what we were doing here and he began to explain our plans for today.

While he was talking to her I looked her up and down. She was only in a t-shirt (presumably his) and her comfort in his apartment was a sign that this probably wasn't her first time spending the night. Weirdly, Harry hadn't mentioned her to me once since the cookie baking in my kitchen and, honestly, it annoyed me a little.

My head snapped to Harry after he said my name several times.

"Auden, do you think we could drop Katherine off at her apartment on our way to the beach? She lives down here so it's not far."