A Falling Sky

Chapter 20

Today is Thanksgiving, and I wake up with a head-pounding, dry-mouthed, stomach-upside-down, don’t-even-fucking-talk-to-me-right-now HANGOVER. Last night was Black(out) Wednesday and Harry performed onstage to the biggest crowd I had ever seen at our work. He absolutely rocked the place ever since he hired a backing band. I admit, I drank heavily and I don’t remember a thing past him singing “Wonderwall,” which was when he called me out saying, “You see that girl right there who sounds like a dying cat when she sings? That’s my best friend, Skylar Reed, and she loves shots.” Normally, I would glare up at him onstage, but I wholeheartedly accepted any shots that were bought for me by friendly strangers last night. Harry had to carry me home while I drunkenly sang in his ear the whole time.

Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table throwing the glare that I saved from last night at him.

“How’re you feeling?” he smirks around a bite of the chocolate chip pancakes that he made for us. I look down at my plate and almost puke. I’m sure they’re delicious like any other meal that Harry has been cooking for me all week, but I know I won’t be able to keep anything down right now.

“This is all your fault.” I spit at him and push my plate away.

“Why is it my fault?” he asks, offended, but I can see the smile trying to make its way to the surface.

“You know why.”

“You didn’t have to accept those shots. I was just trying to help you out.”

“Well, look at all the help it did me.” I groan and let my head fall on my folded arms. Harry merely chuckles and pulls my plate towards him to eat the untouched pancakes.

“So what are we doing today?” he asks after a few minutes, making me jump. Oh shit. I almost fell asleep around him, again, when I promised myself that I wasn’t going to do that anymore.

“Huh, what?”

“I said, what are we doing today?”

“Oh. I really don’t care. Nothing, probably.”

“But, it’s Thanksgiving!”

“So?”

“So…it’s my first Thanksgiving in the States.” Harry says. “I wanna do it right. I wanna do what the ‘Mericans do.” He tries to imitate our accent and I can’t fight the giggle bubbling up. I forget that I’m trying to be mad at him, but he should really stick to his charming British accent.

“Well, if you wanna do what we do, then ‘nothing’ is your best bet. ‘Mericans are really good at doing nothing…sitting around, watching TV all day…beer and sports… and then we gorge ourselves later tonight. That’s the American way.”

“Then let’s do that! We’ll watch the parade or movies or Netflix. I assume you don’t want to watch sports? Anyway, we’ll drink beer—I mean, I’ll drink beer—you probably won’t be consuming much alcohol right now.” he jeers and I give him the middle finger.