Harry’s POV
I awoke to the drab grey skyline outside of my flat’s living room windows. Thankfully, it was typical London weather for New Year’s Day. I looked over at the clock on the fireplace mantle and saw that it was only 8:00am. If it wasn’t for the headache and the crick in my neck, I probably would have just rolled over and fallen back to sleep. However, I knew that in a few hours I would have to face my mother and my sister for our annual New Year’s Day brunch. I rolled to a sitting position on the sofa, stretched my out my lanky frame, rolling my neck and feeling my tight shoulder muscles as I stand up. I head towards the bathroom to locate the bottle of ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet.
Normally, I don’t like taking medicine and usually never get a headache; however, on my last trip to New York to meet with a client I caved and picked up some ibuprofen to quiet thudding tempo in my skull, before boarding my flight home. Sometimes, you can’t solve everything with a bottle of water, a cup of tea or some natural home remedy.
Heading through the hall, I walk in and tap the morning mode on the control panel, and open the medicine cabinet and pull out the bottle of ibuprofen. It was easy to find, as the only other items in the cabinet is my razor, a tube of shaving cream, a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and some plasters and antibiotic ointment. Needless to say the shaving cream and toothpaste are organic/naturally made products. Plus, my razor and toothbrush are made from recycled materials.
Being ecologically friendly was a lifestyle choice I made when I was heading into my mid-teen years. I had a teacher that made us think of how our purchasing and building choices impacted the environment and took a toll on third-world countries that are used as dumping grounds for various metal and chemical wastes or the population is used as cheap labor to produce the products that we think we need. This choice set me apart even more from my fellow classmates, as at the same time I also realized that I liked both girls and boys. I hid this part of me from my friends and my family until I graduated and received my GSECs.
As my mother likes to note, I am a ‘greenie to the core’. ‘Greenie to the core’ is my mother’s way of saying that I prefer to eat natural and organic produce versus canned and processed. Actually, my career is designing ecological friendly ‘green’ buildings that reduce their carbon foot print on the environment, while blending in amongst existing structures. As the owner and lead architect of Dominion Designs, along with the notoriety many of the firm’s recent projects have received , I was featured in last Sunday’s edition of the Mirror as one of the top ten eligible bachelor’s in the United Kingdom. This new society status will put my mother and sister into matchmaking overdrive today!
Just thinking back to when their matching making efforts began the week before I headed off to university, on a full scholarship. It was this week that I came out to my mother and to my sister, Gemma. I knew that if either rejected me, then I would at least have my dorm room as someplace to live away from the feelings of anger and hostility that I had expected as their reactions.
Was I so ever wrong, both my mother and Gemma took it into their heads that they had to expand the field of possible candidates and started setting me up with blind dates with people they thought would be a perfect match for me. However, many of these matches ended in embarrassment or a trip to the emergency clinic for medical treatment. Luckily some of the visits were for minor injuries, such as a couple of sprained ankles and wrists. Others were more painful including a dislocated shoulder, two cracked ribs and a cut that needed 20 stitches to close.
Arriving in the bathroom, I filled a glass with water, tossing back two capsules and place the bottle back in the medicine cabinet. As I take a look into the cabinet’s mirror, I just shake my head and think to myself. ‘Grow a pair of balls Styles, if you don’t they will be still trying to plan out your life for you!’ It was then, I decided to take Liam’s advice and create my imaginary boyfriend.
