habits of my heart (h.s.)

nine

"Aly." Niall ducked his head in my room and gestured me to come out. "C'mon, loft meeting in the TV room."

I glanced up from my laptop with a dubious expression on my face. "Loft meeting?" I repeated. "Is that a joke?"

He shook his head. "Nope, we have one at least once every two months. Harry's calling it this time, and he won't be happy if you're late."

My lips twitching, I asked, "What will he do, kick me out of the apartment?"

"Hey. We don't joke about loft meetings," Niall informed me, and I nodded my head promptly, trying not to laugh. "Come on."

I reluctantly got off my bed and followed him into the living room, where Harry and Natasha were arguing about something. Dani, who was supposedly still not her girlfriend, was standing off to the side awkwardly, and when she noticed us walking into the room, she held her hand up in a wave.

I waved back, expecting Niall to do the same, but to my surprise, he kept his hand down. "What is she doing here?" he hissed to me. "Loft meetings are for loftmates only."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding me with all of this, right?"

"No way, Aly. She has to leave."

That seemed to be similar to what Harry and Natasha were arguing about, because a moment later, Natasha huffed loudly, "Dani, will you please go wait in my room, because Harry's an idiot?"

"Hey, you would do the same if it was one of us!" Harry exclaimed. He turned to face Dani with an apologetic smile, which she didn't return as she stomped off to Natasha's room, clearly annoyed.

"Aly." Harry had just noticed me standing there, and he smiled. "You came."

"Well, I didn't have much of a choice."

"That's the spirit," he said. "Alright, I've called this loft meeting today for two reasons. Firstly, as you all know, Halloween is coming up this weekend."

Niall nodded, hanging on to his every word, and Natasha and I exchanged eye rolls, which thankfully, Harry didn't seem to have caught.

"Simon's hosting this year's party. The guest list is generally going to be the same as usual, but if you guys have anyone you want to plus one, let him know." He glanced at me before saying, "Also, Simon don't usually prefer having anyone under twenty-two at our parties. Sorry."

"Well, then I guess I won't be able to make it," I informed him. "I'm twenty-one, remember?"

"You're an exception," Harry frowned. "But fine, if you really want to bring a friends, you can. Just let them know this isn't some college keg party."

"What are you going to do, smoke cigars and drink wine and cheese?" I shot back. "Happy Halloween, Grandpa."

"Piss off," he muttered, but I could tell he was trying not to laugh. "Now, moving on to our second order of business. This is Alyson's first ever loft meeting, which means we have to introduce her to the loft rules."

"I'm sorry, loft rules?" I repeated, bursting into laughter. "This has to be a joke, right?"

"It's not a joke at all," Niall interjected, and Harry shot him a grateful look. "Here, I have the document on my phone right now. One second."

While he was trying to pull up the doc, I exchanged a dubious glance with Natasha. "Is this for real?" I whispered. "I mean, do we actually have a set of loft rules?"

She nodded her head miserably. "I know, it's so dumb. But after our last roommate moved out, Harry became super anal about setting boundaries."

I hesitated at the mention of Anna, and I was beginning to wonder if I should question it further, but before I had the chance to, Niall cleared his throat. "Here it is," he announced. "Rule number one: always respect shared spaces."