You Were a House on Fire | Harry Styles

fifteen

In the two full days of silence between Harry and Roe, she had never felt more nauseous. She rethought every word he said to her and why it seemed like she skipped a few chapters that he clearly read through. The feeling of Harry flinching away from her kiss echoed in her mind over and over again, and she wished she could have said something- anything to him before she left that day that might've changed his visceral reaction to her. If only her mind worked quickly enough in the moment.

Since then, she felt trapped in a cycle of anxious thoughts, eating away at her self-confidence with each passing second. Ironically, the emptiness that clenched at her insides kept her from eating; she picked hopelessly at meals eating only a few bites at a time before becoming overwhelmingly sick. She knew it had to all be in her head.

Times like these offered a singular cure- Roe texted a simple girls' night SOS text to Sara, and within the hour, she arrived on Roe's front porch with two bottles of wine and a large takeout bag from Mcdonald's. "Hug, conversation, or distraction?" she asked, raising the wine.

"Distraction, please." Roe accepted a bottle and lead them to the kitchen to open it. "How are you always so perfect to me?"

"Well, you deserve it." Sara shrugged her shoulders casually, but her tone remained earnest.

Roe poured heavily into mismatched plastic cups, and after handing one to Sara, she paused, letting her thoughts wander again as she stared into the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. It was her week to be in charge of dishes- she forgot. Maybe Lucas' spiteful words held more weight than she initially thought. She really had become engrossed in life with Harry, and maybe it was all too much.

Roe sipped the dry wine, keeping the cup in front of her mouth until it was almost entirely fogged up from her breath. She tried her best to ignore the pervading thoughts of Harry but it was almost as if he whispered each of them into her ear himself.

Sara allowed her to zone out for only a few moments before interrupting, "Let's pick a movie, yeah?"

Roe nodded, following Sara into the living room. Scrolling through the free movie channels, she tried her best to focus her attention on the moment. Sara picked an old Elvis movie, one they had seen before. It didn't take long before Roe lost herself in her thoughts again, even as she watched Elvis swing his hips and serenade Joan Blackman's character.

Sara must have been distracted too, as Roe could see her scrolling on her phone. "Did you hear Jane is pregnant again? This has to be her third, I swear to God it's like her only personality trait," Sara joked as she paused on a picture of their former classmate from Instagram.

Roe stiffened beside her, mentally counting back the days since her last period.

"What, I thought we hated Jane."

"We do, she was a bitch," Roe fumbled over her response quickly.

Sara lowered her phone and focused her gaze on Roe's tensed face. She studied her worried brow and chewed off bottom lip- almost to the degree that she felt scrutinized.

"Don't tell me you're pregnant right now."

"No. I'm not," Roe asserted, shaking her head, "I can't be."

"Because you're on birth control, right?"

Roe turned back to the movie and took another sip of wine. "No, actually. My insurance stopped covering it a while ago, and I was just too busy to talk to them and figure out a new prescription."

"So you wrap it every time?"

Roe hesitated, feeling the weight of Sara's serious glare on her. "Not every time," she explained simply.