Dealing With Absence » h. styles au

22ᴺᴰ CHAPTER

                                                   22ᴺᴰ CHAPTER               

     “Running away was easy; not knowing what to do next was the hard part”

 

What pisses him off the most is maybe the fact that everyone around him always seems to be right. Not only that, but everyone around him also seems to have their lives under control; seem to have all issues solved or at least to have a hint of solution to work on. 

Harry has never been blessed with the latter. Solutions seem to slip between his fingers and out of his reach so quickly he barely realises he had one in the first place. His whole life is based off on things he can’t have or things he had and crashed down to dust and a mess of what’s left of it so fast that he can’t even find a way to reconstruct it, fix what’s broken without having to start it all over again. 

And to most of the people it might sound like a refreshing thing, but it simply requires so much patience – probably all of the patience he has left – and time; God, so much time. Though he seems to have a lot of  that, he hates this natural uncertainty of life that makes you wonder daily whether you’ll still be alive by the end of the day. And he wants to leave something to be reminded for the day he dies. He wants something, anything. 

What he had won’t make up for it. 

But. But. But he has Zayn, and Zayn must be some sort of angel heaven has sent him thanks to pity or whatever else, because besides being his best friend, the engaged one is also who deals with Harry’s issues the best. Zayn’s the one to be always annoyingly right, so rational and well-planned that no matter what he says, usually can’t go wrong. 

The party had been a bit of a pain in the arse, if Harry’s being honest here, because he’s reached the age where people are already longing for a longstanding relationship, and obviously Zayn seems to have all the friends that have already settled down because that’s just the type of people he attracts, and Harry felt completely excluded, if anything, amongst so many couples. 

However, something good came out of it all. 

Zayn has told him about this guy who’s in need of photographing services, and the first person Zayn told him about was obviously Harry. No second thoughts wasted on the idea, Harry grasped it with all the left strength he had within himself, and now he has a few weekends of extra-work besides the carwash. He’s talked to Luke about it and they managed a deal where Harry will take most of his shifts on Mondays and Fridays just so he can have the weekends to himself. 

The thought of travelling again itself to do what he loves the most is enough to make a smile blossom coyly on his lips, his muscles stretching almost unnoticeably where his head is plopped on Elisha’s shoulder, his gaze focused on the pictures on the wall as she quietly makes questions about them. 

She seems to feel his smile, though, because she turns her head to the side and starts analysing Harry’s features instead, her lips bitten and a smile of her own hidden underneath the pressure of her teeth. She’s adorable in so many ways, so seemingly breakable he can’t quite understand how she’s even supporting the weight of his whole head and his bent body posture. 

“What’s this smile for?” she asks, her voice low because there’s no need to talk any louder, anyway. As usual, the café is empty. Bridgit is no longer in the kitchen, gone about an hour ago to her classes, and Dora rarely shows up here either way, Harry’s come to notice. Only when it’s her turn to buy the supplies for the café, or when she longs her “tiny piece of heaven” too much.