This Thing Upon Me [Order The eBook] [Harry Styles]

Chapter 7

(DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. It's important to remember this is all totally fabricated, embellished, and exaggerated for entertainment purposes.)

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Later I brushed my teeth because I had vomited again, managing to spew more than I remembered eating that day. Now there was a strip of blood along a tender spot in my tongue since I had brushed too hard. Listerine was out of the question, even though I despised going to bed without it. After rinsing my mouth until the bleeding slowed, I pressed a damp towel to my face and recalled the moments before I became sick.

Believe it or not, I wasn't drunk. I was...sick. Legitimately. "Gotta get better...gotta get better...gotta get better..." I kept saying it over and over again in my head, as if I didn't already know. And I can't quite explain how I felt; only to say that it wasn't right.

Half the lights over the mirror were out and my complexion looked grey. I avoided reflection as best I could, since I knew I looked like a corpse. "For fucks sake. Shut up already..." I breathed. The chill of the bathroom permeated the soles of my feet and shot goosebumps up my legs. I wished I was wearing those ugly little espadrilles my grandma had given me last fall. Mom always told me not to walk around barefoot in winter, and a small part of me always remembered this whenever my toes met icy tiles. They curled up away from the bathroom floor until they ached, and I eventually had to uncurl them before they became numb.

Later I lay in bed uncovered and sweated from every part of my body, even between my toes. That encounter had been like a jolt—as jarring as when I brushed my fingers against an exposed socket back home. Bone-deep and unbearable, down to the roots of my teeth.

I was grounded now, and that electric feeling re-surged. Everything I had suppressed and denied since March 2015 pulsated out around me in currents that rebounded against the walls. Shockwaves. My ears rang. 

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Hours later when I awoke, Joni Mitchell's "Case of You" was playing from the Bluetooth speaker. I had thirty missed calls and nearly as many voicemails and texts. I listened to each with a numbness that was slowly becoming bitterness and overhauling my perspective on things. I gave up on trying to respond to everyone about halfway through, because my hunger had become debilitating.

Moving downstairs to forage the fridge, I ran into the cleaning lady and listened to my mom laugh through a story she had called to tell me on voicemail. She was perpetually in a good mood, kind of like Niall.

"Love youuuu", she always sang at the end of her voicemails, and this time was no exception. I felt bad for missing her call, but was uplifted by the love that always sealed the end of her messages.

The vacuum cleaner was already pissing me off, grinding and droning on for what seemed forever. I wished I had stayed in bed until they were gone. Grimacing at Anna and her sister from behind the fridge door, it took all I had not to tell them to leave. After all, I had paid them to be there.

Cereal was the order of the day, as it required the least effort and I had no intentions of cooking anytime soon. There was barely enough oat milk left to make a meal of it, and I would need to tap the bottom of the carton to wring out every drop. I think I liked oat better than almond now, and soy was the least of any in my book. I always bought several cartons at once and it was definitely time to re-up.

My mornings since the band were unnervingly quiet, and the afternoons were no better. I sent myself an email every night with a to-do list for the following morning, just to maintain some semblance of order in my day-to-day; but the effort was meager and sometimes only served to make me feel more aimless. And it didn't help that I always felt alone in the new house, cleaning ladies present or not. I had been here officially a few weeks now, moving in my things bit by bit to see what suited me, but was always faced with a sense of solitude that seemed to cling to the walls.

I couldn't have realistically expected anything more in such a large place with no roommates and few visitors. I'm aware that I was a little more tame than most people of my generation, having aged a decade during the five years we toured. So by the time I got to LA when the band ended, I wanted a hideaway where I could feel removed from the craze that had consumed my life and threatened to do so again if I succumbed to the LA bustle.

The minute my estate agent presented this place as an option, I couldn't resist. A gorgeous three-story lair sprung straight from the 1940s, like something out of an old Hollywood film. There was something about it that made me feel like old money and a serious constituent of Hollywood; like I'd been around since the 50s. Truth be told, I was in love with it.

I keyed up "Life Is Strange" by T. Rex to drown out the vacuum and kept searching for a cereal selection. There were loads to choose from, thanks to Emma (my assistant). She dotted on me nearly as much as my mom and furnished the place with snacks and cereal for days when I first got the keys.

The minute I moved in, I noticed something lonesome about the place, which resonated with some forlorn thing in me. Come to think of it, this place was far more clinical and less homey than most hotels I'd known, despite how many pieces I had collected from friends and family, and shipped from London. For the time being, this house refused to be "warmed". Emma told me it was my own fault really, as I had yet to dedicate any real time to becoming acquainted, or furnish the place with the personal touches it both craved and deserved.

Having settled on some organic granola Grimshaw told me to try, I reached to put the box away in the cupboard and dropped a plate that shattered near my foot. Brushing fine shards from atop my toes, I stepped around the rest on my way to the stove. I ate standing over it, since the island was full of paperwork and my open laptop.

Within minutes of the plate shattering, Anna's sister (Reina, I think) came scurrying over to clean it up. Both women were my elders by many years and strictly professional. They were also Czechs and utterly unimpressed by my career; often snubbing my attempts to conversate.

"Hey there!" I sang. "Reina, right?" I gave her a thumbs up. She eyed me over the top of her wire-frame glasses and gave me a silent nod. She was pissed about the plate and I knew it.

"I'm sorry..." I pouted. "You forgive me? Huh? Huh?" I gave her a double thumbs up and an enthusiastic grin, hoping the dimples would work their magic. She nodded and muttered something about me being more careful the next time around.

The milk was so cold it hurt my teeth. I felt her watching me from the corner of her eye as I finished my cereal and drank the milk from the bowl. Too nervous to leave the bowl in the sink since they had already done the dishes, I made sure she saw me rinse it out and place it back in the cupboard precisely where I had taken it from. Later I left the kitchen and realized my heart was racing, all because of my Nazi cleaning ladies.

Halfway upstairs my phone rang, and I only picked up because it was Emma. She rattled off my schedule for the remainder of the day and chided me for sleeping in without warning her. Half the appointments I missed were already rescheduled, and she urged me to keep the more dire ones for that afternoon.

I found out we couldn't reschedule the doctor's again without paying, since I hadn't canceled within the allotted 24-hour window. But LA doctors were d--ks and always made a fuss over appointment times like they didn't have five people scheduled in the exact same slot anyway. 

She told me to just pay the man and call it a day. I agreed. Before she hung up, she remembered one last note. There had been an email this morning from Zayn's manager. He wanted to know if he could get in touch. 

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