Quarter-Life

Harry’s left the flat at the same time he usually does, but because he doesn’t stop at Bene for a coffee, he’s at school a full twenty minutes earlier than normal—and he’s usually only twenty minutes early. With forty minutes to kill, a sick caffeine-withdrawal headache, and a new pack of cigarettes, he settles down on a bench at the corner of the school entrance where he told Layla he’d wait for her last night.

He reckons he could use the time to go over his lesson plan, anyway, and make sure it’s concise enough for everyone to understand. He spent the duration of his evening finishing it, but Anna’s desire to have a full-blown conversation over Facebook kept him up past eleven and cut into his revision. He is trying to get to know her, after all, so he indulged her despite the fatigue in his bones.

“The Wars of Austrian Succession in the mid-sixteenth century pretty much made Prussia seem like it was stupid powerful, and therefore, Frederick like he was stupid powerful because Prussia was now— arguably— the most powerful German state in...” he practices aloud, pausing to take a drag, but realizing the cigarette’s extinguished on its own.

His loopy handwriting is fairly legible, but the thought of being on schedule with his students instead of ahead of them is what’s contributing to his exhaustion. He feels it in his throat, dry and heavy when he lights up the cigarette again, pushing the white lighter back into his briefcase.

It isn’t the craziest thing he’s ever bought, nor the most expensive despite it being genuine leather, but the worn briefcase is quite possibly one of his favorite personal items besides his pink converse and the black jeans he’s had since uni. How he can stuff an entire school year’s worth of lecture notes, lunch, his wallet, and two packs of cigarettes inside it without its buckle giving up is beyond him, and he certainly wasn’t expecting it when he bought it at a musky thrift shop for six dollars the night before his first day at Greene East.

He’d probably be lost without it, and the thought makes him move it from beside his jean-clad thigh to his lap, under the paper that’s on his bouncing leg.

“You got one?”

The scent of stale sweat smacks Harry in the face as he whips up his head to see a stout, barefoot homeless man in a stained jumper that he recognizes as Dior (only because he’d stalked an internet secondhand store for a budget-friendly one and failed) and dirty cargo shorts. His forehead is tense until he realizes the guy’s asking for a cigarette, so he digs back into the briefcase for his black pack and extends one out to the man.

He lights it with a transparent lighter in his wobbly hand, his glassy eyes visibly relieved when he takes a drag. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Harry says before returning his attention to the outline on his lap, starting at the top of the page where he’d written ‘Enlightened Despotism, a.k.a. Tyrants Being Manipulative’ but unable to continue because he’s shit at ignoring people. Plus, the prospect of talking to himself in front of others is weird.

“College student.”

“Uh, no,” Harry starts, but when he looks back up, the man is walking off without another word, so his gaze comes back to the top of the outline. He’s chewed a stinging hole in his cheek by the time he’s returned to the paragraph on the Wars of Austrian Succession.

“Even though he switched sides more than I switch lines at Bravo on a busy day, the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle validated Frederick the Great’s conquest of Silesia, and his ego. It’s important to remember that just because a treaty is signed, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t pissed off— treaties are like political Band-Aids,” he pauses to take a drag and continues, “so it makes sense that Maria Theresa, the rest of Austria, and France were piss-”

“Good morning!”

Harry flinches so hard that his cigarette falls to his lap, on to the paper. “Christ!”

Pinching the filter in a hurry, he looks up at Layla, who’s startled him by shoving an iced coffee in his face, and her lips are stretched in a proud dimpled smile. She’s in an orange jumper and black pants today, and Harry believes this is the first time all week that she’s worn something other than a plain, neutral colored t-shirt and jeans.

She looks nice, nonetheless. Orange is a good color on her.

“Sorry to scare you,” she tells him, and he’s still pressing a hand to chest to calm himself down when he takes the coffee. Crossing her legs, Layla surprises Harry by taking a cigarette out of her purse. She lets out a little grunt as she quickly lights it, as if she’s impatient to continue. “In my defense, I did text you that I was on my way.”

“I didn’t see it,” he admits, and takes a long sip of the coffee she’s brought him. It’s immediately relieving, hydrating his mouth with a prickle on the patch of chewed skin by his top lip, and he feels his headache start to pulse off when he sighs with content. “Thanks for this, by the way.”

“No sweat,” Layla smiles, but when she abruptly pulls the paper from his lap, swiftly bringing them to her own, a grimace replaces her it. “Uh, just kidding. Sweat.”

“What?”

She waves the paper in the air. “You left sweaty fingerprints on this, um... what is this, a thesis?”

“It’s my...” he starts to say, but his suddenly-holey stomach mucks up his words because he’s not only unaware that his fingers were so sweaty, but he’s embarrassed that Layla’s commented on it. The idea of Daisy knowing about his funk is unpleasant, but it’s far better than someone he barely knows making note of it. “It’s my lesson plan.”

“Oh, perfect,” she turns to face him instead of the street, her lips puckering over the filtered end of her cigarette while he takes his own drag. He quirks an eyebrow up and she hands him back his lecture outline, which he promptly shoves back into his briefcase. “Alright, so, you’re probably wondering why I insisted on buying you coffee.”

Harry cranes his top half to look at her properly, eyes on her swinging ponytail, not particularly wondering about it but interested in hearing the true purpose of her charity. Even though he’s only had brief one-to-one interactions with her, two accidental and the rest amid chatty colleagues, they’re not exactly friendly enough to do that for one another.

“I thought it was a millennial olive branch,” he says.

“Well, that too, but I actually need a favor,” to which Harry nods and waves for her to get on with it. “I went out with Danny yesterday, right? For that happy hour— which is really great, by the way. They have four dollar margaritas. You should’ve gone,” she starts, and goes on to tell him about a breakdown she had after too many of those margaritas.

It turns out she’s having a hard time sorting through and using Jodie's lesson plans: two list documents in a single computer folder. Monique had told her that Jodie left everything detailed for her prospective substitutes, but she’d failed to mention (probably because she didn’t know) that all Jodie had left was a post-it that said “links to exam keys in bookmark folder” and “art history projector slides in cabinet” below a big, fat “good luck”.

“Why are you smiling? I’m serious,” Layla huffs, smoke fluttering out through her lips as Harry, who’s been listening intently, shakes his head and flicks his cigarette away.

“I’m not surprised. She's not the best,” he tells her. He’s certain his face is enough to communicate his disdain for Jodie because his wrinkled nose makes it hard to sip on his coffee.

“The best what?”

“The best, at all. Proper bitch.”

Layla’s dimples peek out again as she chuckles. “So I’ve heard.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What does Jodie have to do with the coffee?” He asks, but he tenses as she takes another drag when he sees the first horde of students making their way down the block. “Can you actually hold that thought? I see, literally, busloads of kids coming through.”

She turns to look behind her for a moment and then nods, tossing her cigarette and taking his hand when he offers it; he’s already standing with his briefcase under his arm. They make their way in, and he’s pleased that she’s keeping up with his long strides (though it’s probably because she’s quite tall herself) while they make their way through the open corridors and gardens by building B.

“It was pretty embarrassing, honestly. I mean, I was crying in a bar at 6 PM over a fucking lesson plan. I don’t even know what they’re supposed to look like, but I know it’s not supposed to be like that, so that’s when Danny told me to talk to you.”

“Danny told you to talk to me about...” He waits for her to continue as he holds the hallway door open for her with his shoulder.

“About lesson planning. He’s not a teacher, and I need help, and he said that you’re— and I quote— ‘an impeccably organized menace’ when it comes to this, and I mean, it’s not just Danny that thinks you’re good at what you do. You’re pretty obvious about how seriously you take your job.”

Harry feels his lips curve upward, sheepishly so because he prides himself on his work ethic. Proper recognition feels good, he thinks, and the jitters he’s attributing to exhaustion rather than anxiety seem to melt off for a moment. He feels as if his work ethic is the only thing keeping him from going over the edge with this cryptic bout of whatever it is— that, and the possibility that he’ll actually get laid soon.

“So, here I am.”

“This is bribery,” he says, half-shocked and half-impressed, holding up the iced coffee. Layla lets out a laugh as she holds the door to their building’s corridor open.

She doesn’t deny it, though. “Will you help me, then?”

He hasn’t answered her by the time they stop at the stairwell door, and Harry knows that despite her smile, she's serious. He thinks about the energy he puts into his own lesson planning, and how it’s going to double because Layla has to start from scratch. This is going to cut into his free time more than the annoying phone calls he gets from friends and family at all times of the day, into his gym time, into his weekend movie marathons with Rhiannon...

But then he thinks that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. He already likes her loads more than he liked Jodie, and if the problem’s bad enough for her to cry over it, he should do the right thing and give her a hand. If not for her sake, then for the kids’ sake.

His briefcase threatens to slip through his fingers while Layla waits for an answer with her brows knit in the middle, and Harry decides he’ll help. “What do I get out of it, though?” He asks her, leaning against the wall. There are students starting to stroll through the passageway from the garden and the hallway behind them.

She mirrors his actions, but the look on her face is passive as she strokes her ear, probably expecting a loose strand to be where her hair’s pulled back. “That’s what the coffee’s for.”

“Right,” he nods, “and I’ll help you, but how will you help me?”

“Well, I'm not going to date you, or anything.”

Harry’s eyes widen slightly, and the peskiness in his gut throbs. Why she’d jump to that conclusion is beyond him, though he knows he gives off that vibe because he’s overbearingly polite (even he’s tired of his own charm).

“Jesus, no, I'm not thinking about that. Like, I help you and you help me how? Caffeinating me?”

Ironically, she takes a sip of her coffee. “Well, yeah. Is that not enough?”

“I guess that's all right,” he says, and Layla finally cracks another smile as the corridor starts to fill in; the bell should be ringing in about ten minutes. Harry pushes himself off the wall when she opens the stairwell door, but he lets her walk in through it alone because he wants to revise his Euro lecture a little more. “I'll figure something out.”

“Sweet. Do we start at lunch, or are you planning on skipping out again?” Layla asks in a playful tone, referring to his decision to hole up in the teacher’s lounge on Tuesday and Wednesday. Harry had wanted time alone to deal with a particularly heavy, gaping hole in his stomach, trying to figure out where it had come from, but failing and dwelling as he tossed an apple core around.

“Shut up,” he shakes his head at her. “I’ll see you there— let you go through my notes and everything.”

“Have a good day,” she tells him. Her voice echoing in the empty stairwell makes it sound much louder than it actually is as Harry watches her start up the stairs. She stops at the top of the first flight before he can turn around. “I like your outfit today, by the way, though I didn’t take you for a chest piece kind of guy.”

He’s confused until he looks down at his tattered, blue flannel to see the edges of his chest tattoo peeking out from under the collar. Best to button that up before his first period makes a big deal out of it, he thinks, and thanks her with a chuckle. “Bye, Layla.”

“See you around, Harry.”



The nerve endings on his slick fingertips are buzzing as he taps them against the table; he’s enjoying the soft hum of the stand-up bass at the other end of the vine-filled garden (where Bibliofilo sits in-between a tea shop and a bank) staring at the teenage boy behind it. Harry’s waiting for the gaping space between his lungs to shut with every slow drag of his cigarette while he waits for Anna to come back with wine.

She’d shown up in a black jumper and shorts, trainers and all, and much more underdressed than Harry in his black jeans, collared shirt, and suede boots. She looks nice tonight, cheery and much more relaxed now that she’s done with work for the day, and Harry doesn’t even think twice about wondering if she looks just as nice naked despite still feeling guilty for his attitude last week.

He'd practically been born transparent, naturally unable to mask his feelings like the rest of his neurotic family, and it usually works in his favor unless his mouth gets ahead of his brain the way it did last Friday. So, while he doesn't necessarily find his feelings that night were wrong, he's still a bit ashamed even though the Pinot Noir they shared at the park washed his trespasses away.

He’s relieved that the work week is over, though, especially after a day full of winded lessons and hyper students who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to him now that they know his moon is in Libra. He’s free to zone in on his current nerves for the night, though thinking of Madison’s morning horoscope only amplifies the hole in his chest. “It's possible you took a chance on someone who has disappointed you, Aquarius. You were especially tolerant and patient, but now it's time to finally settle things and put your cards on the table.”

It doesn’t help that Niall made a big to-do about tonight, shoving a condom into his pocket as conspicuously as possible while he cradled Rhiannon in the doorway. He’d been in the middle of telling her to ‘be good for Uncle Niall’ when he felt the aforementioned dig into his jeans. “Safety first, lad.”

“Harvey’s literally the sweetest person—he gave me these for free,” Anna flashes a manic grin as she sits down, sliding a massive glass of red wine over to him. “Where were we?”

“You were telling me about your undergrad-”

“Right, right!” She sips her wine, and Harry doesn’t miss the way she scrunches her nose when smoke trickles through his mouth. “I’ve just always felt such a connection to Shakespeare, you know? He’s so good at capturing raw emotion and putting it into words, and I’ve always been obsessed with that.”

Harry doesn’t care for Shakespeare, so he simply nods. They’ve been here for an hour, but he’s mildly desperate to go home and lay on the couch with Rhiannon on his chest. He can see Anna’s lips moving, rambling about empathy and magnitude, and that’s very nice, but he can’t help to think about everything he has to do this week, not to mention finding a way to squeeze Layla into the mundane schedule his life has become.

The thought of moving things along with Anna is only making his already-bouncing leg go faster. His black jeans keep bobbing up into his peripheral vision, and it’s bugging the shit out of him.

“Harry?”

He blinks at her, and her big eyes narrow as he forces his leg to slow. “Sorry.”

“Am I boring you?”

“What?”

“Am I boring you?”

“No,” he stubs his cigarette out in favor of the wine, and takes a hearty gulp to the tune of ‘put your cards on the table’. “No, I think passion’s a beautiful thing, and I like Shakespeare. I think he was a miserable prat, and that’s always fun, yeah?”

“What’s a prat?”

“It’s, like, a douche?”

“Oh,” she merely says, pausing to clap for the band along with the others surrounding them. “So, what about you?”

Harry cocks his head to the side, unsure. “What about me?”

“I mean, did you always want to be a teacher? My mom’s a teacher, too, but that’s only because she didn’t go to school. Back then you didn’t need a degree, I guess.”

“Actually, I only decided on it after working under my World Civilizations prof. Though the price of a certificate made me feel like I was going to be a waiter for the rest of my life,” he tells her, and he’s already itching for another cigarette but decides against it. She’s already soldiered on through three of them, and American Spirits last a while, so he just takes another sip of the wine.

“You were a waiter?” Her mouth puckers into a small ‘o’.

“Yeah, is that hard to believe?”

“Kind of,” Anna laughs. “I just can’t picture you in a suit and tie, serving drinks and stuff—or getting good tips. You don’t really look approachable.” Her big lips press into a thin line while Harry’s crack with a smile.

“I’ll have you know I made very good tips—still do, in the summers.”

“Do you like it better than teaching?”

“No,” Harry admits, and he feels his lips flick up into a smile over the rim of his glass. “It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, to be honest. Like, yeah, I barely make rent and sometimes I can’t afford to take Rhiannon to the vet or see my mum for the holidays, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s, like, a constant headache and a blessing all at once. I’m a miserable prat, too, but when I’m in my classroom, I feel so...”

He lets himself trail off when Anna rests her chin on her knuckles. The sleepiness of her eyes makes him feel a bit self-conscious.

“Sorry.”

“No,” she shakes her head and laughs. “This is the most you’ve ever talked! I was beginning to think you didn’t have a heart under there,” she tells him, and reaches over to nudge his necklace. He sees the orange-toned varnish on her nails and feels the tiny thump of his pulse tick in the emptiness of his chest. He’s thankful for whoever Harvey is, and his kindness.

“I think I’m already getting a buzz,” he admits. “I didn’t have any dinner, and Niall ate all of my lunch today. Sorry to kill the ‘sober’ thing.”

“It’s okay. I only suggested it because I wasn’t at my best the last time I was drunk. It was more to spare you than to make me comfortable, but I’m already feeling comfier than I thought I would.” Her tone softens as the trumpet starts to croon again, and suddenly, putting his cards on the table doesn’t seem as hard as he thought it was going to be.

“To be fair, I wasn’t at my best the last time I was sober, so maybe this is a good in-between.”

"You were sober at the park," she says. 

"I wasn't, actually."

Anna's eyes shut as she laughs, and they open to reveal a glimmer. "You got drunk?"

"Tipsy, at least. I dropped the first bag of popcorn..." Anna's expression is somewhat pleasantly shocked when he trails off. "I wasn't going to tell you that. Shit," he palms at his face. 

"That's why you took so fucking long! I was scared you'd left, or something, like, maybe you weren't into me like I thought."

"No, no, I dropped the bag and had to get back in line for a second. I didn't want to tell you because I was eating it when it fell and I didn't want to upset you after you were gracious enough to give me a second chance."

Anna feigns a pout as she slaps Harry's shoulder. He rubs at the bone with his own frown, but he feels confident because she’s touching him and that works in his selfish favor. He can’t keep doing this mopey runaround with himself any longer.

"What was that for?"

"I can't believe you had popcorn without me," she sighs. "Now I know why you're single."

He can’t help but laugh, genuinely, because although he knows her reasoning is childish, it’s still funny to hear her confirm it aloud. "You think I'm single because I eat popcorn without people?"

Anna picks up the black pack of cigarettes on the table and starts to toy with it. "That has to be it. There's no other reason for a cute, educated, British asshole like you to be single. Literally, none."

"I can think of a few; a stupid row with a pretty, drunk girl over a dumb comment sounds like a decent one," he says, and Anna raises an eyebrow. Harry notices she's wearing brown eyeliner, and it looks nice. He thinks to how Ginny never wore makeup—he likes color on a pretty face—but quickly shuts that down.

He decides on another glass of wine instead, and polishes off the glass in front of him so he can light up a cigarette before he goes in for another round. He thinks this will be the one to stop his leg from bouncing absentmindedly, so he carefully plucks one out from the box that’s still in her hands.

He’s been unaware that his palms are clammy until his fingers brush against her cold ones.

"It's all water under the bridge, I promise. Though I would like to know why you were such a prat." Anna returns her chin to its previous spot as she drops the box, her nose wrinkling when Harry takes a drag, but he’s more thankful that she doesn’t comment on the sweat like Layla did this morning.

"I just haven't been feeling... like... myself. At all."

"So you let it out on me?" He knows she’s not happy about it despite her smirk, and he’s not happy about the bassline he’s keeping up with, either.

"I think you triggered it. It was a long time coming after, like, a really terrible week.”

" I had a terrible week, too," Anna chuckles. “Mine was full of annoying customers and an even more annoying man named Fausto.”

“Who’s that?”

“My uncle,” she says, finishing her wine. “He’s not here tonight, though, which is why I thought this would be a good idea at first, but I don’t even like jazz. I think I just wanted to get to know you in an environment that was more...”

Harry snorts softly. “Casual?”

The last two times they hung out were orchestrated by their friends, and he knows that Daisy and Niall are desperate to play matchmaker because they’re sickeningly in love. He’s ashing his cigarette blindly because he’s caught up the way she’s looking up at the fairy lights hung above them when she turns her head back to look at him.

“Intimate.”

His leg stops bouncing. He should go get more wine, he thinks, but Anna’s quick to pretend as if she doesn’t mean anything with her word choice, and asks him to tell her about his ‘terrible week’. So, he does. He tells her about the stupid hairball that started it all, about Gemma’s inopportune calls, about being his friends’ shoulder to lean on, and about the coffee spill that led to his favorite Saint Laurent shirt being thrown away.

He doesn’t, however, tell her about the constant ache in his gut, the way the sound of her chewing replayed in his head for a good three hours on Monday morning, the fucking sweat on his hands that’s making everything much harder than it needs to be, or the sad midnight wanks he’s downgraded to because he rather finish his lesson plan than go out and pull.

“In a way,” Anna starts as Harry grabs the two empty glasses between them, “I’m kind of glad you acted like an asshole. You’re, like, intimidatingly cute, and I don’t know if I would’ve been able to ask you to hookup again.”

“Not enough confidence in your game to think I’d ask you for anothe-” He stops midway through a last drag with a grunt at the hard flick she’s given his calm thigh.

“Get real! I just meant that I’d probably fall hopelessly in love with you if I didn’t know you weren’t perfect. You know how sex does that,” she nods to the glasses. “Is this round on you?”

Harry eyes Anna as he puts the cigarette out and stands up, feeling a smirk on his face. He's feeling better now, and though it could be the wine, he's leaning toward the fact that Anna’s actually rather comforting to be around, and she’s heading down the flirtier path, making him hopeful that everything will be alright as far this sick dry spell is concerned.

She’s gorgeous, and chatty, but not too chatty (he dislikes that more than he dislikes holding grudges). She’s impulsive, too, apparently, and she’s always dressed casually enough to make Harry feel like nothing special is happening (though every time she bats her lashes, Harry feels the edges of the condom he won’t use tonight jabbing him in the hip).

“What’s this Harvey guy look like?”

“Jealous, much?”

He winks at her. “You think he’ll refill ‘em for free?”

Anna throws her head back as she laughs. “You can try, but I don’t know if he’ll find you as cute as he finds me.”

“I’m intimidatingly cute, yeah? I think I’ve got the upper hand here,” he tells her, and makes his way into the café inside Bibliofilo.

Harvey doesn’t give Harry any free wine, so he buys a bottle. For that, Anna gives him a few languid, wine-numbed kisses before she leaves in her uber two hours later, and Harry tucks Niall’s condom into his wallet when he gets on the bus.