The Story of us

Chapter:3 Motels are never a good idea

Miami, Florida - 1495 miles

Before I had offered to give a ride from Miami to Boston to a guy with a name straight out of the 1800s who got more irritating by the second–I'm sure that after that, you could get a clear understanding of how I felt about Harry–I had always believed myself to be the epitome of a mature, intelligent adult who was able to make the right decisions. Okay, so I lived off of Chinese takeout half the time and sure, I didn't always study as hard as I should for my courses and, alright fine, I was still deathly afraid of needles even though I was twenty years old. But for the most apart, I was still able to make decisions on my own fairly well. I rarely jumped into things without thinking them through.

But, just like every great heroine has her downfall, unfortunately, I had mine too. And that was the crashing of Harry Styles into my life. Literally.

I honestly had no idea why I had ever once thought that it would be a good idea to go along with his messed up idea of a road trip. It couldn't have been sympathy, since I wasn't exactly the nicest person around. And now that we were traveling together, we had to think about all of the logistics–food, gas money, how I was going to deal with being seen in public with somebody like Harry, and, possibly the scariest one of them all: where we were going to sleep at night.

I had made it extremely clear from the moment that Harry had rejoined me that we were definitely not going to be crashing in my car. "Maybe you're used to that sort of thing, being homeless and all," I had informed him, "but that's one thing that I am not going to stand for."

To which Harry had sarcastically responded, "Oh, you're standing? Huh. You're so short, I must have thought otherwise."

I raised my eyebrows in distaste and snapped, "Must I remind you who is hauling your sorry ass up from Florida all the way to Boston?"

"All right, go ahead."

I chose to ignore that cheeky comment and instead, I asked, "So do you know any places that we could possibly sleep in?" It had already gotten dark outside and we were now sitting in the Burger King parking lot on an empty bench. The only other people outside were three boys a few feet away, who were passing around something that looked a lot like a joint. They seemed to be keeping their distance, except for one of them, a tall guy with shaggy, white-blonde hair. He kept on staring back at me, and I was beginning to get a little bit creeped out. Could you really blame me, though? It was pitch black outside and all I had was Harry's scrawny ass to defend me.

All right, so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. If anything, Harry was the opposite of scrawny, with his enormous build and muscles bulging out of his ugly patterned shirt. But he didn't need to know that.

"I know that there's this motel a few miles away from here," Harry offered after a minute, drumming his fingers mindlessly on his fedora, which I had finally gotten him to take off. "We could crash there."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Of course you would suggest a fucking motel. Why am I not surprised?" He didn't say anything, so I continued, "Harry, are you trying to get in my pants?"

He snorted as if even the mere possibility of us sleeping together was hilarious. "I'm pretty sure sleeping with you would be a felony," he scoffed at me. "You're, like, fourteen. I don't want to be known as a pedophile for the rest of my life."

"Hey! I already told you a million times, I'm twenty! Besides, I'm not even that short. You're just a giant. It's weird."

He chuckled and bumped his knee against mine. "I don't think I'll ever believe that. And besides, with how many times you've brought it up in less than twenty four hours, I'd say that you're the one who's trying to sleep with me."