A Slide Into First ➵ narry

Chapter 10

“Hi, I’m Louis and I like to smack peoples’ asses and drink shitty beer. Have you quite finished? Har har har!” Harry mimed.

He threw his head back in laugher at his own joke, letting it rest on the sofa, and he realized that Louis was onto something. The party was dying down and most people had left and sleep sounded pretty good. Perrie had switched on a slow song and was dancing with hearts in her eyes, pressing her lips to Zayn’s chest. Right over where he had gotten that tattoo before and oh, that’s why it was so important. He saw Zayn’s hands drifting over her back, smoothing out her dress and pulling them closer together in the same strokes. It seemed intimate, it seemed comforting, it seemed relaxing. Harry rubbed his free arm onto the sofa next to him, imagining the cheap material was actually Niall and that he could be draped over him instead of Louis. So he drifted off to sleep, knowing that Niall could join him there. They could be Power Rangers together or fly amongst the clouds or travel back in time. Or they could go out to dinner and hold each other’s hands and not have to hide anything and not have to say goodbye.

**

Harry woke up the next day at an ungodly hour (seven, but it counted) to Louis kicking him. He swore that they fell asleep lying against each other, but then they were at separate ends of the couch and Louis was definitely fending him off in his sleep. Suddenly all of Liam’s jokes about Louis being feisty in bed made sense.

He quickly got off the sofa to avoid any further abuse from Louis’s sleeping mind and found his way into the kitchen to see that Zayn had done a fairly good job of cleaning up before going to sleep. Most of the food was put away, including a plate of leftover pizza which Harry graciously helped himself to. The apartment was quiet and he was pretty sure he was the only one awake (of course, not everyone was sleeping next to someone who apparently acted out soccer games in their sleep) but he rather liked it that way.

The balcony looked inviting so Harry grabbed his plate and a cup of iced tea and settled out there on one of the chairs. Braxton wasn’t exactly picturesque (ever) but Harry quite liked the view from Zayn’s balcony. It was one of the tallest buildings in town so when he looked out into the distance, everything was small. The clouds were billowing today and Harry could tell there would be storms due to both the wind and the humidity, but those wouldn’t come until the afternoon and that was a long way off. These were Harry’s favorite mornings, when it felt just sosummer. Sticky and quiet and like he still had the whole day ahead to do whatever he pleased.

He held his head against back of the chair, hoping that maybe the din of the discreet town below would lead itself to him falling asleep for a little while longer. Because, really, who the hell wakes up at seven in the morning on a Sunday after only five hours of sleep? But then he felt the phone in his pocket buzz and a sense of dread overtook him because that meant his phone was on all night which meant there was a 100%  more of a chance that a few drunk calls and texts made their way out. He usually tried to turn it off because in his drunken stupor he would always be too lazy to try and turn it back on just to send a stupid text, but he must have forgotten and he didn’t want to know what was waiting for him to read.

There were a lot of things that could have happened that would have not been good. He could have texted Carl something stupid like “Why won’t you talk to me, asshole?” Then there was the stunning prospect that he drunk dialed his dad, and that was horrific enough to warrant a shiver down his spine. Or possibly he called Niall and woke him up which would make him feel horrible. It wasn’t like he blacked out the night before or anything, but everything was running together in his mind, and although he remembered getting his phone out a few times he couldn’t remember what he had said. So he just told himself that whatever he did was in the past so he needed to suck it up and look at his phone.