Misadventure

25

Harry's POV

I sat shivering on the cold marble bench in the garden, watching as two red squirrels ran over the hill and up an oak tree together. I wondered if they were in love. I wondered if one of the squirrels loved the other squirrel, but was still waiting to see if it was requited.

I wondered how long that first squirrel had been waiting for the second squirrel to meet him in the garden. Not as long as I'd been waiting for Louis, that was for sure.

I bounced my leg and tapped my feet. I pulled out my phone, checked the screen, and put it back in my jacket pocket. Then I pulled it out once more, because my hands had nothing to do.

It was 12:43 in the afternoon. I'd been sitting out here for nearly an hour waiting for Louis. I debated texting him, but decided it was a bad idea. He was probably annoyed enough by my slew of pestering messages I'd already sent him this week.

Could he have forgotten? The thought tugged at something in my deepest of heart strings.

Suddenly, it was like I was eight years old again, waiting in the lobby of primary school for Mum to pick me up. She had either forgotten about me, or she had nodded off somewhere, oblivious to the fact that she'd even left me waiting.

It hurt worse in a way, sitting here now waiting for Louis. With Mum, drugs were the reason for her absence. At least I knew that she loved me.

Mum was always high. Louis was just avoiding me. That much was clear to me now, but I still had no idea why. Maybe he was embarrassed about getting sick in my car. Maybe I freaked him out by telling him that I loved him.

Maybe there was something far worse going on, and all of the evidence was there, but my heart refused to let my brain associate Louis with anything as dark as addiction, because when I met him he was like human-sunshine.

But at first, so was Mum.

I thought back to my conversation with Louis on the ski slopes. How he told me about using alcohol to cope. I'd assumed he was talking about a past problem, and that it wasn't an issue anymore, because that was what I wanted to believe.

But what sense would that make?

I knew firsthand how unforgivingly stubborn addiction of any kind could be. It wasn't something that could be "waited out," so to speak. It wasn't like a case of seasonal sniffles...

Or the " flu."

Alcoholism was an addiction, and addiction was a parasite. It burrowed under the skin of the sad and vulnerable, then ate away at their real self. There was no "curing" it by accident. It required aggressive, complex treatment from so many different angles, and sometimes it still wasn't enough.

I tried to picture a scenario in which Louis would ever sit down with his parents and tell them he was struggling, and that he needed help. It just wasn't fathomable. He cared way too much what they thought of him, and they were such harsh critics.

It was hard to think about him being in Eastbourne without me, hurting and alone. It was even harder to think of him here at university, still hurting, but instead of turning to me, lying to me.

Unless I was wrong. Maybe he was fine. Maybe he had the flu. Maybe that was why he didn't meet me like he said he would, and maybe he was too poorly to text me, and maybe, maybe, maybe.

"Harry?"

It was him.

Louis stood in front of me, pale and disheveled. "I'm so sorry. I tried to text you as soon as I could." His hair was a mess. He was swimming in his too-big jumper that used to fit him fine. His vans were on the wrong feet.