Bad Friend

2- Best Friends

I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache and my roommate staring at me with cartoon-wide eyes. Wincing at the sunlight coming through my dorm's weak curtains, I blinked, hoping my roommate and her close proximity to my face would disappear. When she didn't, I pressed my face back into my pillow.

"Keira, you are entirely too close," I grumbled, my voice scratchy and deep from tiredness.

"Oop, sorry," Keira whispered sheepishly, taking a couple steps back and nearly knocking over the stack of books on my desk.

I met Keira last year in my school's library. I was taking—and failing—a chemistry class and she was my assigned tutor, and we had been friends ever since. On the outside, Keira might come across as a stereotypical "dumb blonde," with her curly blonde hair, gentle voice, inherent clumsiness, and knack for getting her heart broken more times than I could count, but she was one of the most intelligent people I knew, top of her class and studying to become a neuroscientist.

Keira also happened to be a very big fan of One Direction. I never really talked to anyone about my friendship with a famous boyband member, and Keira was no different. Harry and I had a strange friendship, one that I often had a hard time putting into words, so it was easier to not think or talk about him until the next time he found me wherever I was.

And she wouldn't have seen me in pictures with Harry or anything like that. I was always somewhere paparazzi or other prying eyes weren't, which I think was something Harry found enticing about our friendship. Except now, of course. I knew if people saw Harry leaving my dorm at some point today, our small bubble we'd managed to keep intact over the years would pop. I wondered if that would make him stop coming to see me. I didn't want to know the answer to that thought, though, so I focused my attention back to my roommate.

"What's up, Keira?" I asked.

Her face was flooded with a plethora of emotions. Surprise, excitement, disbelief, and maybe a little anger, but she managed to keep her voice a whisper. "Is that who I think it is in your bed and clinging to you like very cute moss on a limb?"

I looked down to where Harry's arms were wrapped around my waist, his hair and mine mixed together in a messy heap of brown and black as his face was hidden somewhere in the crook of my neck. Despite the title of "womanizer" he seemed to have earned over the years, the Harry I knew wasn't that at all. He actually spent a lot of time on his own, never wanting to commit to a romantic relationship because the strain of his job never really allowed for one. He often came to me claiming he was trying to forget an ex, or because the tour he was on was getting to be too much, or his bandmates were getting on his nerves, but I knew that while there was some truth to his claims, most of the time it was because he felt lonely. He wanted the reassurance that wherever he was, I would always welcome him with open arms and a good cuddle at the end of the night, even if he did have to force his way through my door most of the time.

"Depends on who you think it is," I said to Keira, slipping out of bed. Harry's hands tightened around the fabric of my tank top, but I managed to unfurl them and slide off my bed so I could stand beside Keira. There was a slight furrow in Harry's brow, but it was gone almost as soon as it came. He was a heavy sleeper, he would barely even realize I was gone.

I left Keira to her own devices, which was mainly ogling Harry at a safe distance, while I brushed my teeth and washed my face. Grabbing a jacket, a pair of shoes, and my school ID, I gestured for my roommate to follow me out the door, but not before I wrote a note on a post-it and stuck it to Harry's forehead.

Went to get breakfast. Be back soon. Extra toothbrush in cabinet under the sink. G.

"Where are we going?" Keira asked, visibly upset that we were no longer in the same room as Harry.