Moon Tower

6.

I woke up the next morning on the living room couch.

At first I was a little confused as to why I was sleeping on the couch when I had a perfectly good bed upstairs, but then the events of last night slowly crawled their way back to the surface of my memory.

That first shot that Harry and I shared was the first of many last night. Well, many for him. Knowing how I get after one too many shots of anything, I didn't have as much, not wanting to make a fool of myself in front of Harry with my brothers and Niall there to rub it in my face in the future.

But Harry. If someone had told me that not ten minutes before that first shot that he had been peacefully sleeping on my shoulder on the floor of my six year old brother's bedroom, I would've told them they were crazy. For the rest of the night, and well into the morning, Harry was dancing and cracking stupid jokes, a total life of the party. And the thing is, on anyone else, all that would've looked embarrassing. But even with all the shenanigans, Harry somehow remained extremely charismatic. Austin has brought home some of his football friends on different occasions, each being their own disaster. Harry, though, just seemed to loosen up just enough to expose the inhibitions and a carefreeness that was brimming just under the surface of his sober self. His smile was just a little bit bigger, a little bit brighter. His eyes twinkled with a little something extra. It wasn't like watching a car crash and being unable do anything about it or look away. It was like watching the sun break through the clouds on a particularly cloudy day.

Harry, it seemed, had been known to do this in the past. Utterly inebriated, Harry told my brothers, the twins and I that over the years his friends had developed a name for his so-called alter ego that made an appearance when he got "pissed out of his mind," as he called it. They dubbed this version of Harry, "Sparkly Harry." It sounded kind of dumb at first, and when I turned to Niall for confirmation, he shrugged and said that this wasn't during their One Direction days, but he'd heard stories. As odd as the name sounded, the longer we stayed up, the more it made sense. Sparkly Harry charmed the pants off my mother and my Tía Amalia, laughed at everything my dad said to him, which my dad loved, and danced like no one was watching to music I was pretty sure he'd never heard before, seeing as it was a playlist of salsa music and mostly artists only Mom and my aunt knew the names of.

As fun and entertaining as Sparkly Harry was, when it got to four a.m. and he was still reaching for the bottle of tequila—it should be noted that this was not the original bottle that our first shots had come from, that one had been left behind hours before—I decided it was best to get Harry (and Sparkly Harry) to bed. The party was winding down by that point as well, my cousins, aunt, and uncle long gone, the twins and Tico sleeping soundly (I'd hoped) in their rooms, leaving me, my parents, Austin, and Niall and Harry.

However, wanting to get Harry to go to sleep and actually achieving that goal turned out to be two very different things.

***

"Okay, that's enough of that," I said, wrapping my hand around the bottle. I tried to take it out of Harry's, or rather, Sparkly Harry's, hand, but he refused to let go. We stood there, staring at each other, a sort of silent challenge having erupted at my attempt to take the bottle away. When it became clear that he wasn't going to give it up, I let go, instead taking the shot glass, limes and salt shaker that had been his best friends all night. With everything in my hands, I looked up at him, quirking an eyebrow in a silent, your move.

I, however, overestimated Sparkly Harry's attachment to the limes, the salt, and the shot glass, because after giving me a look that was full of mischief, he raised the bottle to his lips, taking a swig.

My jaw slackened in shock, letting out a noise somewhere between a gasp and a choked laugh. It wasn't even that he took a drink straight from the bottle. In hindsight, I should've seen it coming, his taste buds probably having disappeared around shot three or four. It was the way he looked so smug doing it, like he did it just to see how I would react. Cheeky fucker.