Until Now (Harry Styles)

Chapter 23

It was a simple text.

From Harry: Hey ;)

 I blushed when I read the short text message and Nicks caught me. I quickly pocketed my phone without replying to Harry’s message. “What?” I asked Nicks with a chirp in my voice.

“I’ll confiscate it. I swear I will.” She threatened, though at the end of her sentence she laughed and shook her head. “I think you are the only person who can go through all that shit and still get giddy from a text message from some bad boy.” She rolled her eyes and messed around with the radio in her car. She landed on a station that started playing this new band from Australia. They were so good and I couldn’t help but sing along with the song.

Nicks had planned for me to just hang out in her down for the night and I was being forced to go to classes the following morning before I headed home for a few days. I had emailed my instructors about impending absences. A lot of them understood and gave me the assignments. The one instructor, the one Nicks and I had together, never emailed me back. Nicks just said that she would send me the assignments.

“We’re painting nails and doing hair and basically doing a bunch of girly things tonight. Understood?”

“Aye aye captain.” I saluted Nicks as she pulled into the student parking lot. We got out and walked into her dorm. “This place is nice.”

“It’s one of the new buildings on campus. It got taken up really quickly when they opened for housing, but I got in!” Nicks grinned widely. I thought about it for a moment and realized that I had never actually met Nicks’ roommate. She never really talked about her.

“Will your roommate be in?” I didn’t think I would be okay with someone I didn’t know being there when I spilled everything.

“She’s staying at her boyfriends’ place tonight. I asked her if she could leave for the night before I came to get you today.” Nicks shrugged. “It just makes things less awkward. She’s really weird. Weirder than us. And yet, we’re still single and she’s not. Not sure how that works.” She hooked arms with me and hit one of my large bruises accidentally. I cringed slightly, but I didn’t let her know that I was hurting. It was nothing I couldn’t handle. Nicks was seriously the best person though. I don’t think I could ask for a better friend.

When we got into Nicks room I was surprised to see less stuff than she usually had in her room. When we were roommates last year, her stuff was flowing into my area and vice versa. It was a cramped space, but this time around she had the essentials plus her closet full of ten million outfits and shoes.

“Futon is yours. Unless you want to snuggle on my bed.” Nicks winked at me and then wiggles her eyebrows. I doubled over and started to laugh. I plopped down on the futon and hugged one of the fluffy pillows that were there. “Futon it is.”

I fell over and sighed, snuggling into the pillow and pulling my legs onto the futon. “Thanks for this, Nicks.”

“Oh please, call me Nicole.” Nicks said extravagantly, flipping her long dark hair over her shoulder. “But no problem, chica.” She nudged me over and sat down, hooking an arm around my shoulder. She pulled me into an awkward side hug. “So, Harold….”

I groaned. “Harry…”

“Same difference. What’s going on with you and him? I thought you didn’t like him and never would.” She tried to quote me, but I’m pretty sure those weren’t my exact words. They were close, but still.

“I told you that he and Liam basically saved the day, right?”

“Yeah, but that still doesn’t explain the whole Harry thing. You could have easily gone for Liam too. I heard he broke up with Danielle. He’s open territory. Frankly, he’s probably a better choice.” She was right for the most part. I could have easily found safety in Liam and he was a better person to talk to about the things that I talked about with Harry, but Harry was something else entirely.