Plant New Seeds | H.S.| AU

Chapter Five - 1,2,3

N I A

Harry: What's your apartment number? Need it to ring the bell.

Nia: What happened to saying please? 309.

Harry: Please stop being a fucking baby. All better now?

I let out a strange laugh-gasp combo at Harry's crass text message. He had never talked to me that way. And surprisingly, I was turned the fuck on. But the night wasn't about sex, just simply two adults enjoying each other's company. No sex and no emotional bullshit meant no worries. Not that I thought Harry was after sex. I didn't know what he was after, honestly.

I had spent the last hour making sure my apartment was spotless, getting rid of any signs that showed my inability to function as a normal fucking human. My apartment usually represented my mind: disheveled, unkempt, and neglected.

The realization that Harry would actually be inside of my apartment kicked in, leading to one of the most non-sensible attacks I had ever had. The raging sound of the vacuum cleaner as it consistently roared through my usually silent living room echoed louder and louder in my head. Eventually, it muffled out the screams spewing out of my mouth that I wasn't aware of until my neighbor from next door banged on my door to check on me, slowly guiding me back into reality with each knock.

"Miss! Is everything okay?" The person called out. I wasn't able to tell if it was a man or woman on the other side of the door, my sense of hearing had hardly returned. I unintentionally ignored the person's incessant banging until they eventually gave up and resumed our usual routine of ignoring each other.

I meant to pick myself up off the floor, run to the door, and tick off the person's Be a Good Samaritan today box but my legs were spent. My lungs burned as though I had sprinted a mile with no water breaks. My chest heaved up and down, my heart formulating a new rhythm of its own that made me feel it would pop out at any second. All the while, the damned vacuum was still running tauntingly.

Cleaning my apartment meant that someone would be entering my own little fucked up corner of the world. And the thought of that alone triggered me. I once attempted to keep a list of all my triggers, wrote it down on a fucking piece of paper and everything. Pretty soon I realized that it was impossible to keep track of that when it seemed like anything triggered me. I gave up on my pathetic attempt to fix myself, as if the Gods would have ever allowed that anyways. It was easier to convince myself that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me.

The fact that I was completely mortified of my apartment didn't help in the slightest. I worked for the state, which meant that my annual salary wasn't worth nearly as much as the work I did. My attempts to mask the shitty conditions did little to nothing.

The pipes in my bathroom would burst at least every two weeks, making the toilet leak water from the bottom. Waking up, dragging myself out of bed to take my morning piss and feeling a puddle of cold water under my feet wasn't the best way to start off my day. The beige sofa in my living room matched the love seat in my office—thankfully IKEA had a special sale on furniture sets. It wasn't like my living room was big enough to hold both anyways. The tables were luckily left behind by the previous owners. My wooden floors had scuff marks as a result from moving furniture around; my rug could only cover so much. I decided to put the one TV I could afford in my bedroom—the only bedroom of the house. I never had any company over to entertain, there was no point in setting it up out here.

But that was changing tonight—Harry was only five minutes away. I prayed to God he wouldn't be able to tell what I had been through the previous hour.

I slicked my hair up into a big puff on top of my head, making sure my baby hairs were smoothed down with gel; my curls had mainly sweated out from the long day and my insecure over-cleaning. Had to make sure I didn't look like a troll. I usually never let anyone see me without any makeup but I didn't understand why I didn't give a fuck this time, wiping off every drop as soon as I got home.