A sudden boisterous voice boomed down the hall, drawing my attention in that direction. Much to my distaste, I saw my ex, Colt, throw his strong shoulder into a boy passing by and knock him into the locker. Colt sneered at him as his body bounced off the metal and continued on his path towards us, his ego almost visible as he neared. The boy turned around and rubbed his shoulder slightly, doing nothing more to defend himself before carrying on.
It was Harry Styles, a guy in our grade who'd been in the same school as me as long as my group of friends. With his big framed glasses, simple clothes, and brown hair that was always smoothed back from his forehead, he was definitely not in our circle of friends.
Nerdy, quiet, and shy, he was just about the exact opposite of my loud, cocky, party loving group. I felt a slight pang of guilt when I saw his hurt expression before he turned to continue down the hall. That type of thing happened to him a lot for no apparant reason other than not looking like the rest of us, but no one ever said anything about it.
I slammed my locker closed, trying to ignore what I had just witnessed. Putting on a grin, I turned around to face my group of friends. Lydia was in the middle of telling a story about getting caught by her mother, yet again, while hooking up with her boyfriend, Will. She smirked as she recounted her utter terror at being discovered in a very compromising position, something that should have embarrassed her but only made her laugh now as it happened so ofte
"I don't know why you don't just lock your door. I'm sure your own mother would be thankful at this point," I commented as Lydia wrapped up her story.
"You know that takes away from the fun. There's just something about the thrill of being caught that gets to me," she replied, nudging me conspiratorially in the shoulder.
"But is it still thrilling when you've been caught so often?" Haley replied sarcastically, too concerned with searching the crowd for her boyfriend, Jack, and not really looking at anyone. She ran her fingers through short blonde hair and huffed. "Joey have you seen Jack? He's usually here by now."
"His car was still in the street when I left home so who knows where he is," I replied, shrugging. Jack lived across the street from me, just as he had our entire lives, which meant that I was often responsible for telling Haley the whereabouts of her boyfriend.
"Where who is?" a male voice sounded from behind me. I turned around to see Jack himself, standing over us and grinning.
"You," Haley exclaimed before launching herself at him to hug him and press a kiss to his lips. He didn't hesitate to wrap his arms around her waist and lift her up, never disconnecting their mouths.
"Can you two keep it in your pants for two minutes? It's disgusting." Lydia groaned at the image.
"Lyd let them be. Besides I hardly think you have room to talk after that story," I chuckled. Lydia, Haley, Jack, Will, and I had all been best friends for as long as I could remember. We did everything together, so it didn't surprise me when everyone sort of coupled up. Lydia and Will. Haley and Jack. Me and Colt. Colt, who I had dated for nearly two years before he started to change. Before he decided he was somehow more important than everyone in school, and wasn't afraid to show it.
Now that it was our senior year, he was worse than ever. Mean, conceited, and entitled, he was nearly the exact opposite of how he had been when we started dating and I couldn't deal with it anymore. While everyone else in our group told me I was over reacting and that he'd always been that way, I was decided. I didn't like who he was anymore or who I was becoming when I was with him, so I broke things off with him, and he did not take it well. Being in the "popular" group of school, our friends were known by nearly everyone. It felt weird to consider myself popular, but I guess that's what I was. While I didn't really care one way or another, Colt sure did.
He didn't like the fact that I'd dumped him, so he took it upon himself to prove he could get any girl he wanted by literally getting every girl he wanted. While he utterly disgusted me now, our mutual friends seemed to think this was all a phase and that we'd get back together eventually. They would joke about it, acting as if it was just a matter of time until I took him back. I just didn't see that happening.
We had both changed, in very different ways. His presence, which used to be constant, was slightly spottier now. When he was around, it was awkward. Half the time he showed up with some random girl on his lap, usually someone younger than us as if to show he had moved on from me. Luckily this morning, he was apparently busy doing something else.
The buzzing of the first bell brought me out of my trance. Lydia and I said goodbye to our friends and headed to our first class that we had together down the hall. When we walked in, about half the class was already there. We made our way towards the back of the room to our usual seats and chatted until the second bell rang and our teacher walked in. He greeted the class and started collecting the homework from the weekend. I pulled mine out of my bag and sent it forward as Lydia swore.
"Shit I forgot all about that."
"Good one," I whispered back, chuckling. "Good thing it wasn't that much." I had already had my homework done by Friday. School was important to me, which was not something you could say about most of my friends. She just shrugged at me.
After our teacher finished collecting our homework, he stacked them into the corner of his desk and began to speak again.
"Well I know you guys are aware that it's midterm next week and that we haven't had much for homework so far this year. Now I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that was for a reason. Starting today, I will be pairing you up and assigning you a research topic in biology. It will be due in two weeks, and is worth half of your grade for the semester, so I encourage you to take it seriously."
Everybody, except for Lydia, groaned. Nobody like partner projects because they almost never came out fair. The good students would get frustrated with the slack ones for not trying and the slack ones would expect the good students to do everything. All around, partner projects were awful. I was secretly happy that our partners were assigned; that way I at least had a chance of getting a good partner to try and share the work with. Had we been able to choose, I undoubtedly would have been stuck with Lydia and had to do everything myself.
Our teacher started listing off pairs and I breathed a sigh of relief when Lydia was partnered with someone else. He'd gone through most of the class by the time he called my name. "Joey Sanders you'll be with Harry Styles."
"Ew," Lydia immediately said. "Have fun with that one."
I shot her a disapproving look but didn't say anything before glancing up toward the front of the classroom where Harry sat. He quickly whipped forward around in his seat, as if he had been looking at me but didn't want to be caught. I could see his neck growing red as he fidgeted in his seat. I frowned as I observed him.
Great. Should be fun getting two words out of him.
After reading off the rest of the pairs, our teacher instructed us to sit by our partners so we could begin work on the projects. Again, Harry snuck a glance back at me before catching my eye and jerking back around. He began fumbling with his things, trying to collect them but only managing to scatter them to the floor around his seat. I felt a pang of pity for him, unsure of why he appeared in such a state.
"I'll see you after class," I mentioned to Lydia before grabbing my bag and standing up. I walked to the front of the class and kneeled down next to Harry to help him grab his things off the floor.
"Here let me help," I said as I grabbed some pens. His eyes darted up to me over his glasses, mouth gaping open before looking back down to the floor before pursing his lips, nervously exhaling through his nose.
"Um... thanks," he shakily told the ground. I shot him a confused look that he didn't see before picking up more of his things. Once we had all his stuff off the floor, I came around the table and sat next to him.
"I'm Joey," I tried, looking at his profile as he stared at his desk and clamped his hands together in his lap.
"I know who you are," he mumbled without looking at me. I narrowed my eyes curiously at him, confused by his reaction. I didn't know him well enough to know if this was how he always was or if it was something I'd done.
"Oh," was all I said.
He chanced a quick look at me, looking almost scared before saying quietly in a deep voice, "I'm Harry."
"I know that, why else would I be up here?" I joked, trying to get him to relax a little bit. He simply swallowed, not saying anything. Strange. As I searched for something to say to relieve some of the awkwardness, our teacher walked up and placed a piece of paper in front of us. Our topic. Thank god. I glanced down at the paper to see "Anaerobic Cycles in Human Physiology" printed across the top. "Please tell me you're an expert on this stuff, 'cause I'm going to be useless."
"I know some..." his low voice replied. I was surprised by how deep it was. The only time I had ever heard him speak was in class when he would correctly answer a question. This voice sounded different from that one, much raspier and low, as if this were his natural voice rather than the tone he used in class.
"I was kidding," I clarified, smiling. "Of course I don't expect you to, we'll both research some stuff." I wanted to reassure him that I wasn't one of those people who would try to make him do all the work.
He just clenched his jaw and nodded awkwardly. I frowned again. "I'm serious. I'm not going to make you do everything, don't worry."
"Okay," he said shyly.
We spent the rest of class scouring our textbooks for information on our topic, not speaking, and jotting down notes here and there. Harry was completely engrossed in his research, writing down his findings in neat, tight handwriting. I spent my time partially researching and partially watching him, trying to figure out why he was so nervous and what I could do to make him relax a little. With a minute before the bell, our teacher stood up again to make an announcement.
"Alright guys, since this project is so important, I expect you to put a lot of work into it. However, I can't give you many days in class to work on it because we have a lot to cover, so I want you to get as much done on your own time as possible," he finished right as the bell rang.
Harry quickly started packing his things up in his book bag, eager to get to his next class. I hastily copied him, wanting to talk to him about when we'd work on our project next. He stood out of his chair and swung his backpack on, starting to hurry away before I called out to him.
"Hey, Harry wait. When did you want to work on this?" He anxiously turned around and looked down at me. Once again, I was surprised by him and how tall he actually was. He was a solid half foot taller than I was, if not more, and he towered over me.
"Um, when would you like to?" he asked, briefly making eye contact with me before skirting his eyes away.
I thought for a minute. "How about today after school? I have to work tomorrow."
He nodded at me before turning again and hurrying out the door, leaving me standing there staring after him still baffled by his anxious behavior. I jumped as Lydia came up behind me and said, "Wow, so glad I didn't get stuck with him. He's way too weird for me."
I turned around to face her and said, "I think he's just shy."
She snorted. "Please. He probably creamed his pants as soon as you sat down next to him."
My jaw dropped in temporary shock before I gently shoved her shoulder and shot her a disapproving look. "Don't be gross," I said, giggling a little bit at her comment anyway. "Let's go."
Huge thank you to @andallthatjaz1d for the trailer in the preview and the one in this chapter!! :)
I hope you liked it! Thank you for reading :) x