Quarter-Life

"Oh, Christ!"

"Shit!"

"I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm sorry."

"Really, it's all my fault. I should've been paying more attention."

Harry bends down to pick up the now empty cup and moves away from the puddle his morning coffee has become. He looks at the woman in front of him, feeling the heaviness of the wet spots against his torso and thighs. "I guess I'll concede then, accept your apology and all that."

Her black eyebrows knit together as she hastily opens her giant purse to pull out a bright, orange pen. She holds it out for Harry, but he raises an eyebrow at her instead of grabbing it.

"It's one of those detergent pens— you know, to get the coffee out. Feel free to keep it."

"Ah, cheers." He tucks his worn, leather briefcase under his arm and takes the pen, examining the directions.

"It's not gonna get it all out. Like, it's gonna leave a weird mustard colored stain, so you should wash it as soon as you get home. Unless you like that kind of thing," she rambles while he pockets the pen.

He can feel the mortification oozing out of her pores, especially when he plucks at the damp lot of his button up in an attempt to make himself comfortable.

“I guess white shirts need a little character sometimes,” he tries to make a joke knowing that onlookers are giggling about the spill.

“Sometimes,” she slowly bobs her head with a chuckle.

"I'm sorry, too, though. I was kind of in my head, and my route to class is pretty much muscle memory," Harry sighs as he scratches the back of his neck.

"You work here?" Her eyes gleam.

"I'm a little old to be in secondary school, aren't I?"

"Can you tell me where to find A011?"

Harry wonders why she needs to find Principal Douglas' office, if she’s someone's mother (though she seems far too young to have a teenaged child of her own), and why she’s wandering on the other side of the school grounds if she isn’t an employee or a student’s relative.

He would have asked if the first warning bell hadn't rung. The surrounding students in the courtyard begin to make their way to their respective classes, and Harry starts to feel nervous as he’s already later than preferred but feels bad leaving her without help.

"We're in building D, and that's in building A, so..." He turns with an arm outstretched, the sensation of the wet fabric dragging against his skin making him feel gross. "So, you're going to walk to the end of this garden— where you see that outdated tiger mural— and enter the hallway on the left, yeah?"

"Okay," she nods.

"Then walk all the way to the door at the right end, and make sure it's the right because the door at the left end leads you to the car lot."

The raven-haired woman nods again and flashes a brief smile. Harry returns it to be polite.

"Right, so at the end of that hallway's the auditorium. If you walk past it, like, all the way past it, there's an opening to the other garden. The building behind that is building A, and someone at the office on the bottom floor should be able to help you."

"Thank you," she breathes out with another smile. "And I'm sorry about the coffee."

"At least it was iced, yeah?"

The woman laughs before thanking him again, and Harry watches her walk off as the second and final morning bell rang. He adjusts his wide-brimmed hat and hurries into the nearby hall, making it through the door with the last of the kids entering the room.

"Good morning, angels," he sings, dropping the briefcase on to the front portion of his L-shaped desk. He takes his hat off and tosses it over by the computer, then dumps the empty coffee cup into the bin under his desk. He places his hands on his hips as he tries to remember where he left off last lecture.

A few snickers in the room cause him to look out, furrowing his brow. “What?”

“You’re wet,” a brunette girl named Madison in the front row covers her mouth with the sleeve of her jumper as she laughs.

Harry looks down at the wet spot he’s forgotten about in his rush to class, and looks back up at the kids with a shrug. A boy with a blond bowl-cut raises his hand, and Harry waves so he can speak.

“Is that a butterfly or a bee?” Harry instinctively palms at the tattoo he knows the boy is referring to, realizing it's visible through the soaked shirt.

“A butterfly,” he coolly answers as he points to the pink-haired girl behind him. He's always happy to indulge their questions.

“Did it hurt?”

“Very much,” he laughs.

“What does it mean?” Someone shouts from the back of the room.

“It’s a prison tattoo. Anyone else?”

A boy with a big afro sat by the door raises his hand, wiggling his fingers in the air.

“Angelo?”

“Are you collecting the homework?”

Everyone else in the class groans, including Harry because he's forgotten that he assigned a series of questions to accompany the week's reading. Angelo, though quite tall, slumps down in his seat out of embarrassment.

Harry lowers his gaze to stare at his pink converse, weighing the decision: if he does, he'll have to grade papers all weekend, but if he doesn't, he'll have a heavier workload next week. He figures that a little extra time won't hurt considering his first period class has the best grades in comparison to the other five.

When he looks up to meet the roomful of expectant eyes, he pretends to be cross about the reaction— lips pressing into a thin line, brows knitting in the middle. "Monday," he says rather seriously, though his lips quickly curl into a grin.

The kids erupt into cheers, and Harry feels a deep satisfaction in his gut. Almost like a little reminder that he's where he's supposed to be, where he wants to be.

"Consider this a Friday blessing, yeah?” He clasps his hands and turns to grab the chalk; he'd purposely waited until the end of room assignments so he could get a classroom with an old chalkboard. He scrawls the date on the top right corner of the board just above the day's topic.

“I'm expecting you to keep up with next week's reading, too,” he says as he opens his briefcase to retrieve the outline he’d written for today’s lecture while the classroom buzzes with excitement. “Alright, what d'you lot know about The Enlightenment?"



Harry's thankful for lunchtime when it comes around. Each individual lecture period is on schedule, and 'Enlightenment' is starting to sound fake considering he's said it countless times over the last five hours.

Though he never eats more than half his homemade lunch, he finds himself particularly hungry this afternoon since his morning coffee usually staves off his hunger. He thinks about the woman that knocked it right out of his hand, then remembers the portable detergent pen she gifted him and takes it out of his pocket after setting the nearly-destroyed sandwich down.

"Rub the tip gently across the stain..." he mumbles to himself as he draws his knees up to the round table and presses the pen to the white fabric. He starts to grow irritated after a few minutes, when the stain doesn't budge, and gradually becomes more aggressive with his movements.

"Styles!" A muffled voice startles Harry out of his frustration. He jerks and turns his head to see Niall Horan, his colleague and roommate (and close friend), with his hands cupped over the glass on the lounge’s door. "I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What the hell are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Harry asks.

"Getting off in the teacher’s lounge," Niall's mouth inches closer to the window. "You're not, right?"

"I have a stain," he says and holds the stupid pen up in the air.

"What?"

"I've got a stain!"

"Mate, I can't hear a-"

"Open the door, then!" Harry rolls his eyes as Niall nods, evidently forgetting that one doesn't talk through closed doors.

“Good thing there’s never anyone in here,” he says as he struts in, knowing that the teacher’s lounge is an abandoned relic of the 50s in the otherwise modern school. He sits beside Harry and lets out a hearty laugh upon seeing his coffee-stained shirt and the pen in his hand. “Is that what you were jerking?”

"Some bird knocked my coffee out of my hand this morning, like, stupid lost. She gave me this to, I guess, apologize but it hasn't done a fucking thing."

"You're supposed to press down on it so the liquid can come out and then rub it in," he chuckles. Harry follows Niall's instructions and feels relieved when the stain begins to fade into a phlegm-looking color.

"Now I feel bad for tarnishing her name."

"To be fair, you never said her name."

"Well, I wasn't going to ask for it. All she needed was directions to Douglas' office."

"Cute?"

"Didn't notice," Harry sighs. "I was so spaced out that I didn't even notice her in my way."

"Are you still feeling weird?"

Harry nods, rubbing out the last of the stain on his shirt.

"That's shite," Niall says as he runs a hand through his hair. He points to the sandwich on the table with a frown. "That's really shite, mate."

"Sorry, I was running on empty," he slides what's left of the sandwich over to Niall, who was usually around to eat half of Harry's lunch. They tend to share his meal and a cigarette (if there's time) during their mutual lunch hours, or Harry drops it off for Niall in the music room if their hours don't coincide.

The two have been friends since university, when they shared a dormitory for the first two years before moving out with three other friends who lived across the hall. When university was over and Towne, the band Niall was a part of back then, made a unanimous decision to move to New York City to focus on their act and "make it big", Harry jumped at the chance to tag along. That was three years ago.

He'd spent the first year rooming with an elderly widow named Frank who rented out his old office, and waiting tables like he had during university while completing his education certificate until he found a job as a history teacher at a nearby public school. The band broke up after two of the guys joined a commune whilst they were at Bonnaroo, and Niall and his vocalist Silas had an argument so heated that Silas packed up his clothes and moved out the very same night.

After Harry put in a good word in for Niall at Greene East High School, considering he was left without income and had a Film Studies degree, Niall became his coworker and Harry became Niall's roommate.

"What are you doing tonight?"

"I think I'm just going to watch a movie with Rhiannon and catch up with my lesson plan," Harry shrugs.

"Again?" Niall asks with a mouthful of lettuce, tomato, and bacon.

"It's my job, innit?"

"Y'did that last weekend," Niall groans. "Daisy and I are going to get some pints tonight. You should come."

"Nah, I'm just going to be a downer," Harry shakes his head and takes the paper bag his sandwich had been in, tossing it into the bin behind Niall. "Besides, I don't want to bail on Rhiannon."

Niall laughs. "She's a cat, mate."

"She has feelings, too!" Harry crosses his arms and tries to remain serious, but the look on Niall's face confirms the fact that he's just making up excuses to stay home and wallow in the anxiety he's been feeling for a few days.

"One pint," Niall stands up and sits on the tabletop before Harry. "I'm sure your missus won't be too upset if you go out for one pint."

"Fine, I'll go for one, but I'm going straight home afterwards."

Niall claps Harry on the shoulder with a big smile. "I'll tell Daisy to bring a friend for you."

"You said one-" the bell rings, interrupting him and signaling the end of lunchtime. "You said one pint, not one pint and a set up."

"You need something to shake you out this weird thing you're going through. I'd be a bad friend if I just sat watching you lesson plan your life away, crying over the telly with a cat on your shoulder."

Harry rolls his eyes at Niall's description of his nightly routine as they make their way out of the lounge and back into the hallway and tightens his grip on his briefcase.

“I’m not crying over the telly, I’m crying over the story on the telly.”

“You’re still crying.”

“What am I supposed to do when Macaulay Culkin dies in My Girl? Laugh, like a fucking-”

“Harry, Niall,” an elderly black woman with a quiff calls out to them, holding the door to the front garden open for a few students to trickle through. “I was hoping I’d see you today.”

Harry pushes on the door so she can let go with a polite smile. “Lovely to see you, too, Monique,” he nods at his boss, starting to walk away when she asks if she can have a word with them.

“Two things: there’s a faculty meeting on Monday morning at seven— sharp, Horan,” she looks at Niall with a disapproving tone in her voice. He was perpetually late despite living with Mr. Punctual Styles, and even in this moment he’s neglecting the fact that his classroom is on the opposite side of school grounds.

“Understood,” Harry nods again, waiting for her to continue as two students pass by and greet the three.

“Angelo Williams is the other thing I had to talk to you about,” Monique begins, but pauses to look at Niall again as the second bell rings.

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to be late?”

“I’m giving them ample time to use the toilet,” Niall says with a proud smirk and Harry shakes his head as he readjusts his hat.

“Well, not that it really concerns you, but Angelo’s brother got time in jail for a petty misdemeanor and I know you allow him to skip in your class…”

Harry hesitates to confirm what Principal Douglas has said because it’s technically against the rules.

Angelo Williams had stuck to Harry the year prior, falling in love with World History, and asking him before summer vacation if he could take the European History class that’s usually reserved for students in the honors program. He frequently visits him during other classes to pick Harry’s brain or bury his nose in the History encyclopedias Harry keeps in a bookshelf at the back of the room. Harry doesn’t mind this because he firmly believes that teaching isn’t limited to designated class or school hours, and Angelo offers to help him grade papers sometimes.

“I do,” he nods.

“His mother, bless her heart, isn’t home much because she picked up extra shifts at the diner to pay Leo’s fine. I wanted to know if you mind keeping an eye on him— not just as his teacher, but more like a guardian, if you will.”

“Does that mean he has to move in with us?” Niall asks, and Harry swats at his shoulder with his briefcase.

“It’s no problem,” he says with a small pang of pity in his stomach. He likes Angelo, and he wishes he’d have told him about his home-life sooner. Harry realizes that this is most likely why he’s become quite the History buff; he took to teaching to give kids a healthy escape, like the one Angelo was apparently looking for.

“Thank you,” Monique sighs, pulling the much taller man in for a hug. “That’s all. Have a good weekend, y’all.”

“Bye, Monique!” Niall shouts as he and Harry continue to make their way to Harry’s classroom.

“Seven sharp!” She shouts in return.



Harry is sitting in a booth alone, waiting for Niall to come back with his beer. Daisy, Niall’s girlfriend, is going to be late, so Harry’s taken to distracting himself from his thoughts with an Instagram profile full of chubby animals. He doesn’t follow the account, but that hasn’t stopped him from liking every picture and video he looks at.

He isn’t the type to be so withdrawn, especially at a bar— a crowded bar on a Friday night, at that— but he’s been feeling somewhat off for the past week beginning with Sunday night, when he only got three hours of sleep after Rhiannon spent most of the night coughing up a monstrous hairball.

His sister Gemma had called him on Monday and relayed the news of his ex-girlfriend Ginny’s engagement, and his friend Liam’s radio show had won an award for ‘Best Late-Night DJ’ so he called with the news of his pay raise on Tuesday morning.

Wednesday, Rhiannon turned six and he burned the kitty cake he’d tried to bake her while his friend Louis described the details of his and his girlfriend Cara’s sex life over the phone, believing there to be a slump in their relationship.

Thursday was relatively chill aside from his friend Zayn’s text-message-based rant about a particularly difficult patient during his Psychiatry clerkship for medical school. Then today, Friday, some scatterbrained woman had knocked his coffee on to his favorite white shirt.

The last one is the only one he could have prevented had he not been caught up with thoughts of his adolescence and how everything was simpler when he wasn’t three-thousand miles away from his mother’s comfort, or paying his own bills, or drawing up lesson plans for fifteen year olds who didn’t give a fuck about the wonders of the past, or having to listen to his best friend dog his girlfriend late at night, or cleaning cat vomit out of his bathroom rug. The list obviously goes on.

“Is this seat taken?” A doll-faced woman holding a pint glass asks Harry, and it takes him a while to register that she’s talking to him. She’s very pretty, with big lips and blue eyes, and her body’s done justice in the tight jeans she’s wearing.

Harry stretches to check on Niall’s whereabouts, and when he sees him chatting with the beefy bartender across the room, he returns his gaze to the blonde girl before him. He figures she’ll be a better distraction than the puppies on his screen, but he has to cover his bases first.

“That depends; are you here with anyone?”

“No, but does it matter if I am?”

“It would be unfair of me to take someone else’s date,” he says, running a hand through his hair.

“That’s true,” she smiles and takes a sip of her beer. “Then again, I wouldn’t have come up to a cute stranger if I were.”

Harry feels himself smirking as he moves his legs, which were stretched out over his side of the booth, and helps her up into the seat.

“What are you drinking?” She asks, sliding in closer. 

“I’m waiting on my friend to bring me a pint, but at this rate, I reckon I’ll be drinking it for my birthday,” he laughs.

“When’s that?”

“February.”

“That’s… four months away. You don’t think he’ll make it the whole year before you get it?”

“He’s my best mate. I want to give him a little credit, y’know?”

“That’s kind of you. I’m Anna, by the way,” she extends a manicured hand for him to shake, and he does.

“I’m Harry,” he grins.

“You would be named Harry.” 

“Sorry?”

“You’re British, right? Very British name,” she says, taking another sip of her beer.

Harry laughs again, thinking she’s definitely a better distraction than the puppies. She’s obviously trying to flirt with him, and while he’s still trying to adjust to the inexplicable dread that has made itself at home in his being, he doesn’t think anything bad is going to come from a little pulling. In fact, he concludes that maybe his two-month dry spell is to blame for his current mood.

“What if I’m South African? I could be South African,” he muses.

“I guess that’s true. Though, technically, we’re all African,” Anna smiles as she fiddles with the silver chain around her neck. Harry had been staring at her chest until the last sentence left her mouth and his balls relaxed simultaneously. 

“We’re not ‘all African’,” he holds up lazy quotation marks and his voice is suddenly void of all flirtation.

“We are— haven’t you ever read a history book?”

“Loads, which is why I teach History, and I’m telling you that we’re not ‘all African’. Our species, maybe, but we’re not all African. I’m British, you’re American, that bloke over there is probably from somewhere else, but-”

“Okay, shit,” her eyes widen, and they roll ever so slightly. “You don’t have to be a snob about it,” she takes another sip of her beer, this one more hurried than the last.

“I’m going to go out for a cigarette. It was lovely to meet you, Anna,” he says through a slightly forced smile and stands up; he’s hoping his manners help him thaw the awkward vibe he was responsible for creating in the first place. When he realizes that she’s still sitting, and he’s blocked in, he stretches a long leg over the table and hops over to the other side of the booth so he can exit.

“Don’t forget your phone,” Anna grumbles. 

This funk is starting to piss him off.

“All you had to do was bite your stupid, fat tongue, and she would’ve fucked you,” Harry mutters to himself before taking a drag of his shrunken cigarette. He’s posted up next to the front door of Birdy’s, the bar, feeling uncharacteristically jittery, and bothered, and empty.

What Harry’s at a loss for, what he desperately wants to know, is why.

He has a job he’s madly in love with, a best friend he wouldn’t trade for the world, a family he adores more than anything, and a cinnamon-colored British shorthair with kissable plump cheeks and a round belly he could rub for hours. Yeah, he hasn’t had sex since late July— the last woman he slept with was some ginger-haired Russian girl he met at the restaurant he worked at in the summertime— but he hasn’t had the time considering he fell behind on his lesson planning and still hadn’t caught up when summer vacation came to an end.

Harry doesn’t know how to cope with anxiety, though he suspects that he’s always had some form of it. That’s probably why he’s ‘mildly impulsive’, as his mother said when he left to New York, or when he showed her his (literally) thirtieth tattoo, and why he can’t quit smoking cigarettes, even when he wants to rip out his lungs halfway through a workout.

He’s been nervous before and he’s dealt with bouts of unbelievable sadness, but he’s never felt like he wants to go back in time and live as a teenager for the rest of eternity. Quite the opposite, Harry has always been the type of person to dream in the moment. He doesn’t believe in regret, and he’s never cared about his family’s expectations or planning for any future more than a year away.

The exception to that is his job; he decided to major in History three years before applying to university, wanting to get caught up in dramatic stories without having to re-watch his favorite movies repeatedly. He then fell into teaching after a fascinating (albeit poorly-paying) stint as a Teaching Assistant. He didn’t mind the labor involved because, like his mentor Dr. Thurmond told him after he asked why he felt so satisfied after a lesson: “if people are more informed, they’re more likely to do good in the world— and helping kids do that feels good, Harry.”

He also didn’t mind that Ginny Olsen had cheated on him with her Ethics professor and was now engaged to him (people named Michael still piss him off, even though it was four years ago and he’s forgiven Ginny) because it only made the move to New York that much more exhilarating. He didn’t mind that he didn’t make as much money as his three friends back home because he loved what he was doing. He didn’t mind paying his own bills, or drawing up lesson plans for fifteen year olds who could give a fuck about the wonders of the past, or having to listen to his best friend dog the girlfriend he’s madly in love with late at night, or cleaning his precious baby’s vomit out of his bathroom rug. The list obviously goes on.

Being an adult is hard, but it’s not like Harry isn’t capable of handling what life throws at him— actually, he finds himself remarkably flexible for someone who come from a family of over-planners— he’s just feeling weird, is all.

Just feeling weird.

He just wants to know why, for the love of all that is holy, he feels like everything is… like everything is… 

“Harry!" 

His head snaps up in the direction of his name, and he sees Daisy jogging toward him with a big smile. Harry notices that she’s wearing a long, black dress, frumpier than her usual work outfits, and he gathers that she was off on a Friday night for the first time in a long time.

“What are you doing alone out here?” She asks as he kisses her cheek.

“Smoke break,” he smiles softly and raises his occupied hand to display the filter of his extinguished cigarette. “Where’s your friend?”

“She’s inside already,” Daisy says, holding the door open for him. Harry tosses the butt of his cigarette into a puddle and follows her in, shoving his hands into his jean’s pockets and feeling like he may go home to Rhiannon after half a pint instead of the one he promised Niall.

“How’s your day been?” She asks as they wade through the crowded floor.

“Fine, nothing too wild— though, some girl spilt my coffee all over me this morning and I reckon I gained cool points for showing my stomach piece off in front of my first two periods.” He does his best to fake his mood for Daisy, feeling like she doesn’t deserve to get roped into his ‘situation’. She’s only been with Niall for five months, anyway.

“I bet all the little girls in love with you went straight home and-" 

“Don’t. Don’t finish that sentence, for the love of god,” Harry says with a laugh as he stops trailing Daisy, the two of them arriving to the same booth Harry had occupied fifteen minutes prior with-

“Anna, this is Harry. Harry, this is Anna,” Daisy gushes and moves out of their way to kiss Niall on the other side.

“Hi, my love,” Niall sighs, pulling her into the booth by the waist and kissing her again. 

Harry looks to Anna, then to the kissing fools across her, and back to Anna. He meets her hard gaze with a civil smile and wordlessly frees his hand from his pocket, only to have her shake it limply. Harry grabs the pint waiting for him in front of her and impatiently gulps a good amount of it down. 

“Thanks for the drink, mate.”

He reaches back into his pocket to pull a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet, and places it in front of Niall, who abruptly pulls away from Daisy with a confused look on his face. 

“Where are you going?”

“Home." 

“He’s a snob, if you didn’t know,” Anna chuckles, sipping on what had to be her second beer considering she’d drank most of the first when she spoke to Harry.

Harry smiles through the discomfort and nods. Niall refutes that as Daisy asks what’s wrong, and Harry shrugs, about to walk away when Anna begins to speak.

“While I was waiting for you, I came up to him thinking he’d be a good fuck, and he got pissy because I said we’re all African,” she says as if she can’t believe that topic doesn’t make Harry want to drop to his knees and kiss her where it’s pink.

“Well…” Daisy cocks her head to the side and shifts from Niall’s lap. 

“Not you, too, D,” Anna scoffs. Harry feels a smug expression creep on to his face as he turns to look at her. He grabs the unfinished beer and practically pushes her into the far end of the booth to sit as he guzzles down the rest of it.

“He’s a fuckin’ History nerd,” Niall says with a laugh. “You can’t just say things like that without expecting something in return, y’know?"

“I didn’t expect an argument, that’s for sure.”

“See, the thing about that ‘argument’ is: it’s stupid.” Harry says after swallowing the last of the beer and turns to face her. “For starters, saying ‘we’re all African’ refers to the idea that our species’, and our species’ ancestors’ remains have been found in Africa, but that’s about as African as the lot of us get— except for, like, black people.”

“I get it, thank you,” Anna says and rolls her eyes. The sight of her blue irises getting clipped by her droopy eyelids only makes Harry want to push it further.

He may be feeling weird, but he can’t let people walk around with that kind of misinformation floating around in their heads.

“Then, you say we’re all African even though chances are that if I were to ask you about yourself on a random day, you’d tell me you’re American, or half-wherever-your-mum’s-from and half-wherever-your-dad’s-from, or whatever you want. You definitely wouldn’t tell me that you’re Afri-.”

“I got it!” Anna abruptly shouts, making Daisy and Niall jump from across Harry’s tirade. “I’m an idiot, and you’re a smartass. We good?”

“I never said you were an idiot. Though, did you really think you did a good job of showing off your liberal arts degree with that bogus argu-”

Daisy clears her throat and snaps Harry out of his indignation. He slowly slumps forward, cradling his head in his hands, hating himself for going off on a girl that just wanted to fuck.

“You said he was just ‘feeling weird’,” Daisy says with a poor imitation of Niall’s accent, which makes Niall laugh.

“Not funny, babe— he’s escalating,” she scolds him, and Harry pushes himself forward on to folded arms, tucking his head into them.

“If this is you ‘feeling weird’, I don’t want to know what you’re like when you’re happy,” Anna states, and he’s about to say something when she puts a hand on his back. He finds it weird that she’s comforting him, but it turns out that she’s just using her hand to support herself as she glides over behind him and out of the booth.

When Harry looks up from his forearms, he only sees a stern Niall.

“Is there any way to recover from this?”

Niall shrugs and reaches out to touch his hand. “You could buy her a drink,” he proposes, “but that means you have to stay."

Harry is quick to stand up and leave the bar, retrieving a cigarette, his wallet, and extending a hand out to say goodbye in a blur. He goes straight home, apologizes to Rhiannon, and jerks off in the shower before he goes to bed.