Sparrows | HS |

Patterns

When I woke up the next day (incredibly later than usual, I might add), it was to the sound of a knock followed by my front door opening. I groaned as I realized that I told Vanessa I would be by her place in the morning and it was likely nearing noon already. I also realized that I didn't really have a good excuse as to why I was up so late besides the tipsy boy next door and all of his lingering effects. It wasn't particularly easy getting to sleep the night before knowing that the person I shared a wall with and the cause of many of my neighborly insecurities was an attractive but normal occupant. I found myself questioning every shift and bump that I heard in the night. Was it him next door? Was it Buckets? Would he be mad if it was Buckets? Eventually the latter crawled into bed with me and I realized that all of my internal interrogation was useless. Harry was a stranger and one that I wasn't planning on crossing paths with any time soon. He seemed exactly like the kind of trouble that Vanessa would want me to become involved with.

"Are you kidding me? Are you still sleeping? You never sleep in this late! I had assumed that you had just gotten sidetracked or something but I never got my promised good morning text." I couldn't see her, curtesy of the pillow my face was currently stuffed into, but I could feel her looming over me. I could feel her incoming attack like a lion and its prey, or ya know, a girl and her unusually flakey best friend.

"I was up really late okay? Essay and all that." I flipped over quickly, before she could grab me or pull my serenely warm duvet off of my body. The face that my best friend was giving me was one of inquiry but not of satisfaction.

"Your essay was due at midnight, that's why you were so crammed after I left. What were you doing after that which made you get up at," she paused, checking her phone before continuing her allegations, "1:23 in the afternoon?"

1:23? Shit.

"If I didn't know better," she accused, jumping onto my bed and curling up to face me, "I would think that you had a boy in your apartment or something." She laughed at the thought while I grimaced a little, knowing that she wasn't wrong in her thought but definitely wrong in assumed intention. "But that would be crazy, right Angelina?" She laughed again. "Right?"

I must have looked like a fish out of water, the way I was trying to think of a quick but even remotely plausible reason as to why I was up so late that did not involve a certain swaying tattoo artist. However it was 1 in the afternoon and I had just woken up and my brain was the working consistency of mush. "Okay so the thing is-"

"There was a boy in here!" She grabbed my sleeve, the left one attached to my sweater which just so happened to be the same one I was wearing the night before when Harry had come in to pester me. "I can smell him on you. It's faint but it's there. Oh Angelina! Who is he? Is he that guy from the gym? Ugh, is it Stephen? He hangs around you too much but I already-"

I grabbed her, wrapping my arms around her back and pulling her into my chest. "Sh. No more talking. I'm still sleeping and I don't have class today so I'm soaking it up before my four o'clock shift." She muffled under my arms, I could feel her trying to blow hair out of her face while simultaneously attempting to knock herself lose.

"Okay calm down and I'll tell you a little story of last night." She froze instantly. She's such a gossip. "So I'm in my living room, sleeping and minding my own business when I hear footsteps nearing the door." Her eyes got wide at that, shifting her head up so she could see me but not speaking. "The guy slipping notes under my door was stopping by to drop one off and I caught him. The half- drunk weirdo let himself into my apartment at 2 am and I had to show him a couple tattoos on my arm to get him to leave. Boom. Bam. End of story. Satisfied?"

Her eyes got comically wider at my final question as she raised up her hand waving wildly around her own head, "Satisfied? Are you kidding me? Who was it? Was he hot? That doesn't explain why you smell like him! What did the new note say? How long was he here? Did you get his number? Did you want it? Wh-"