Getaway Car [HS]

Chapter Fourteen

Something isn't right.

A sudden wave of anxiety smacked into her with the force of a train the second their lips were about to connect in a kiss. The uneasy feeling in her stomach is easily compared to the same one she gets at the onset of a panic attack. It starts with that, the sudden anxiety forcing her body into a state of survival mode and ramping up her heart rate to a rapid pace, but it doesn't stop there. Everything around her has started to overwhelm her senses. Perhaps it's because the nerves are urging her to find somewhere safe and quiet to seek refuge in.

"What's wrong?" Tate asks.

He reaches a hand out to rest on her shoulder, but she doesn't let him do it. Her body shifts out of his reach without her realizing she's doing it, acting to protect herself from an invisible threat. A threat coming from inside of her mind.

"Um," she shakes her head as if that'll do anything to clear it and starts to back away from him. The lights are blinding her, the music is invading her body, and she can't escape any of it. "I think—I'm just gonna go to the bathroom real quick. Sorry. I'll be right back."

Her back is turned from him by the time he responds with a polite offer to come with her if she wants. An offer she promptly declines, yelling at him over her shoulder not to go anywhere.

She weaves in and out of the bodies jumping, dancing, and walking like intersecting cars in every direction.

Neither Tate nor Zayn told her where the bathroom was when they first arrived, but she figures it can't be too difficult to find. Most places have signs indicating their location, and she keeps a watchful eye out for one on her hurried trip around the club.

The anxiety pushing her body into a state of disarray has now shifted from a creeping worry in the pit of her stomach to an all-out panic, complete with a tight chest and persistent nausea. This change pushes her attention away from the task of finding the bathrooms to what's going on with her. Is she sick? Was her lunch spoiled and now the symptoms have finally hit her? Or, she thinks with an increase in dread, is she dying? Is this what a heart attack feels like?

Her footsteps are clumsy on the grand staircase she follows down to the basement of the club in hopes that it'll lead her to a bathroom. Downstairs, the lights aren't flashing how they were in the main room, but it doesn't do anything to subdue the blurring vision that throws her movements off. And though she has distanced herself from the speakers blasting music, she can feel the base of it rattling the hallway she's stepping off of the stairs into.

She asks a passing girl, "Excuse me, where's the bathroom?"

If she doesn't find one soon, she's afraid she'll throw up down the front of her dress. The nausea is worse than any she has experienced before.

The random girl points down at the end of the long hallway. Her mouth moves to form a verbal response too, but Harley can't focus enough on anything but the perfect storm of anxiety, nausea, and overstimulation to process the words being said to her. She can't even say thank you without risking vomiting right here and now. All of her energy and attention must stay on keeping the contents of her stomach where they're supposed to be until she reaches a toilet.

Her heels hit the ground in rushed steps as she speed-walks as fast as her body will allow down the seemingly never-ending hallway. No matter how many steps she thinks she takes, it stretches out infinitely in either direction to prevent her from reaching the twin doors labeled "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" at the end.

Finally, she slams into the swinging door and bursts into the ladies' room, probably looking like a mad woman to anyone inside. She's prepared to rush into the nearest stall to throw her guts up, gagging already, but something halts her in her tracks. It brushes aside her nausea in a moment of pure fear and shock that brings her back to life from a year ago. Back when she spent her days hiding in her room. Back when she found Peter in the bathroom of their childhood home.