After The End: Book 1

39. All Aboard the Risk Train

Harry's POV

"He's going to lose it," Lux said ominously. The empty room before us looked terrible. The walls were painted in old yellowing paint that peeled and chipped everywhere. The carpet was dusty and dry. The windows looked thin and the window sills held the stains of water leakage. The rest of the flat was in similar disrepair. Both bathrooms smelled like mildew and the kitchen floor tiles were currently the only thing that made this entire place appealing. Even those probably still had to go. I could see the familiarity in it. There was potential... somewhere.

"Yeah," I agreed. It wasn't like I'd not given Louis warning. I had told him my intentions, although if i was being truthful, I hadn't actually been super communicative on the topic. Telling him I was going to move out wasn't the same as actually intending to move out. I told him things all the time that I didn't mean.

I ducked through the doorway into the hallway and gazed down the empty path. Cobwebs trailed their way across the ceiling. The hallway was familiar too. This flat was designed exactly identical to Louis flat, which was sitting one stop in the elevator above us.

"When exactly do you plan on telling him?" She asked, following me.

"Not until we're closer to actually doing it," I muttered with a frown. I peered into the room that matched my own bedroom upstairs. I wouldn't be sleeping there anymore. I'd get the bigger master bedroom down the hall. Lux was going to do "art things" in there instead apparently. I was going to miss the view out that window, but she'd put it to good use. Her urban paintings were unmatched.

"And when exactly is that?" Lux pressed.

I chuckled and gestured to the flickering light fixture. This floor had been abandoned almost the entire time I'd lived up at Louis. I was a hard person to live downstairs from. I made it virtually impossible to rent, which explains why the building owners had apparently not bothered to check on it anymore. Even now, the landlord would never rent to me on my own. Lux was the person on this lease with my wallet funding the adventure. "Maybe when the place starts to look less like an abandoned warehouse and more like a flat."

"I think it's charming," she said half heartedly. "Plus it's getting cleaned tomorrow."

She said it as if cleaning was the only thing needed to liven up the space. I was thinking more like a complete remodel. I'd actually started a list before feeling intensely overwhelmed by the number of tasks I was stupidly assigning to myself. I didn't even know the first thing about remodeling. The decision to take on the flat at all had been an overwhelming process of acceptance. Telling Louis about it would be overwhelming. This entire thing was the definition of what overwhelming looked like.

"What have we done?" I asked in an awestruck tone.

Lux grabbed my hand, noticing the change in demeanor. "We don't have to tell him yet," she decided for us. "We can wait until it's ready."

Moving into this charming shit hole was still several months away with the work that would need to be done. On the bright side, I was 4 months and 11 days clean and sober that morning. I had spent the past several months doing everything in my power to stay that way and by all measurements I was thriving. I had never been sober this long. I was officially past the threshold of 4 months and 10 days which was the duration of my previous sobriety attempt. So much was different this time around.

I had done things differently. I'd managed myself in ways I'd never even tried the last time. I'd followed most of the rules, with the exception of Lux. Last time I'd waited less than two weeks to start a relationship, but I'd let myself become putty to her. She managed everything, controlled all the boundaries, babied my emotions and then she'd given me the ultimate "fuck you" by leaving heroin in my closet for me to find and subsequently OD on. It had been erotic and thrilling and disastrous.