Beating For Two

Chapter 33

Saturday, April 30th

Thirty-six weeks and five days

Needless to say, the rest of the night was, on my part, spent on altering between restless sleep and thoughtful wakefulness, and silently eyeing a passed-out Harry. He looked peaceful, like mostly everyone does while sleeping, but there was a small crease between his eyes that hadn't been there the last time I saw him sleep, and it unsettled me, made me feel like I'd forced out a whole bunch of things from him that he wouldn't have wanted me to know.

Truth to be told, though, none of what he'd said had surprised me all that much. Well, except for the part about only being with Lauren because he was scared of coming off as gay if he broke things off with her. But other than that part, everything he'd said had almost felt like a bunch of truths that I already knew. Not that I had actually known any of it, but it felt a bit like my subconsciousness had, and that Harry saying it all out loud had simply pulled it all out from my subconsciousness, forcing it out in the open.

That it was weird wasn't worth even trying to deny, though. It was weird. It was weird, it was wrong, it was confusing, it was unnerving, and it made my head spin with way too many thoughts and mental images. Some of them may have been hopeful ones.

He'd said that he wished for me to stick around when he'd broken up with Lauren and that he hoped I'd still want him when that day came. Maybe I was just getting ahead of myself, but it had sounded an awful lot like he actually wanted to be with me. Silly, perhaps, to get my hopes up when it came to Harry – all the hopes I'd ever had in that department seemed to be shot down as soon as they took off, but it was hard not to.

It was near impossible, actually.

*

When I woke up in the morning, it was alone, and judging by the cold spot where Harry had been lying, it seemed like it had been a while since he got up. I checked the clock and found it to be almost noon already, sighing in slight exasperation over the fact that I'd basically let half the day go to waste when I had a whole lot of school work I needed to get done.

I lay there for a while, staring at the wall and trying not to let my brain get too free reign over my mindset – I didn't quite feel like thinking too much about the events of the night just yet. Not until I'd spoken to Harry about it and figured out if what he'd said had been the truth of if it was just drunken bullshit that had come out of his mouth. I desperately hoped that it wasn't the latter, but what did I know? Some people spoke the truth when they were drunk, others came up with a pile of lies to be served. Last night had been the first time I saw Harry properly drunk – if you didn't count the night when this situation started –, so for all I knew, he could fall into either of the categories.

Eventually, after a lot of pointless thinking, I found my way out of the bed and went to the kitchen, where I found all five members of the Styles-family seated around the kitchen table with plates, glasses and cups in front of them, apparently in the midst of what was either a late breakfast or an early lunch.

Harry was sitting at the end of the table with half his face buried in his arms. I would have laughed at the sight if it wasn't for the fact that he looked downright miserable. Or, well, his eyes did anyway.

“You okay?” I asked as I walked over to the free chair between him and Adrian.

“Hungover,” was the gruff reply I got, before he slowly raised his head and looked at me with dull eyes.

“How come you slept in my bed tonight?” he then asked.

My cheeks heated up and I attempted a smile. The result was a strained grimace, though, and I knew that, because I was pretty sure this meant that he didn't remember last night. At all. Superb.