Quarter-Life

Harry spots a braided Danny taking a picture of Layla over Niall’s head; he’s leading him through the surprisingly cramped restaurant.

“Toilets,” is all he tells him.

Niall motions for him to grab his hand, and Harry does so despite wanting to head for the bar before the table. He’s about to bolt (thankfully Harry asked Niall for half of the cash even though he shouldn’t have to) when Danny’s notices them approaching.

He shouts something indistinct, and Layla turns her head just as the flash goes off. Niall bypasses her and walks around the table to kiss Danny’s cheek.

“You don’t even like chicken salad!” Layla gripes, quickly turning back to smile at Harry. Harry smiles at her, too, but doesn’t kiss her cheek or anything the way he does with Danny after he’s done with Niall.

They don’t greet each other like that in the morning, and a bar’s not going to change that. He barely hears the end of Danny’s short “Hi, H,” before walking off to the bar.

Liam kept them—Niall, really, because Harry was too busy staring at a woman across the aisle pick at the bloody scabs on her chest—on the phone for the duration of the bus ride. He hadn’t expected meth scabs to come with an odor, and the nausea he was feeling only intensified from there on out.

On the walk over to Felipe’s, he managed to forego a cigarette so he could breathe through his mouth. He’s doing the same as he waits on drinks for Niall and himself, but the bar itself is so packed that a few long minutes pass by until Harry realizes she’s attending everyone on her own.

Harry looks at the people around him; some are in their work suits, some are caught up in small talk, one girl is smiling right at him. Harry returns it kind of awkwardly, breathing through his teeth in the same rhythm he’s developed.

“Christ,” he blows out before he hastily looks down to his boots. He’s thankful that his phone vibrates so he doesn’t seem like a weird dick; he wonders when he became the awkward guy at a bar.

Rather than entertain his sister’s I can’t wait to see you text or Anna’s How goes ur lesson plan? :3 message, he sends himself a reminder to collect homework in the morning. Done avoiding it, he settles on Instagram to distract himself.

He nearly deleted the app on his way home this afternoon; seeing 68,000 likes on a picture of Diana—gym bird Diana—on a Stairmaster, made him crack up hard enough for the nurse standing beside him to give him a funny look. Harry apologized as soon as he realized he had pretty much shouted in her ear.

“I didn’t take you for a Marnie the Shih Tzu fan,” he hears beside him after a while; it disrupts his count. The stench stuck in his nose hairs rises up to his head and a chill goes up his spine in a way that can only be followed by vomit.

“She’s adorable,” Harry says, hoping that wasn’t visible, keeping his eyes on his screen. “You don’t like her?”

“No, I’m a big fan. I just thought you weren’t a dog person after you mutilated Marcel.”

Another wave of nausea rushes to his temples when he laughs through his nose involuntarily, and he burps in the worst way. Before he’s through tasting the barf he’s just swallowed, he stretches upward to look for the bartender.

She’s serving the guys who ordered before Harry did, so he sits back down, trying his hardest to forget the taste. He’s thinking this is too much, that if it’s his funk’s fault, he’ll go crazy soon. He’s not strong enough to deal with constant sickness like this.

“I love dogs,” he confirms rather dryly because his mouth doesn’t taste good.

Thankfully the bartender shows up; Layla asks her for another margarita as Harry leaves a ten-dollar bill and some odd ones on the countertop with one hand and takes a big gulp of his drink with the other.

“Not to pry, but are you okay?” Layla wonders.

She turns her back, edging Harry away from the bar where Niall’s pint is situated next to his fourteen dollars. He nods, feeling relieved that there’s a load of tequila in his drink; he’s hyperaware of the way it feels as it spreads through his chest.

“What happened? Did the cat pee on your pillow, or something?”

“Yeah,” he starts, but her question registers after he tries to gauge whether the stench of rotting flesh is still stuck in his nose. “Oh, no. No.”

“Which is it?”

“No, just—there was a woman on the bus, yeah?” He starts, pausing to take smell the margarita for good measure. “I thought she was sick or something ‘cause she had, like, these lesions all over her and she kept poking at them.”

Harry stops to breathe through his nose again—it’s bearable—just as he notices that Layla’s face is scrunched up in disgust. “I feel like this is the time to warn you that I have a weak stomach.”

“No, she didn’t eat them or anything like that-”

“Weak stomach,” Layla repeats, waving a finger at him. He takes another gulp and laughs when she shakes like she’s caught a chill.

“I googled it.” Harry stops himself from fully re-living the twenty minutes spent across from her. “I didn’t know the side effects of meth were a scratch-and-sniff type of thing.”

“Noted,” Layla says in a way that suggests she wants Harry to stop talking about it just as badly as he wants to forget it happened; he feels bad for the woman, too. “Is Liam the one with the pregnant girlfriend?”

Harry motions for her to turn around with his chin; her drinks are waiting behind her. “That’s Louis; Liam’s the one on the radio.”

Layla clinks her glass with his before they walk back toward their table.

When they arrive, Danny and Niall both ask where their drinks are, leaving Harry to realize, audibly along with Layla, that they’ve left them behind at the bar. Layla tells Danny she’ll get his drink, so Niall looks to Harry like he’s expecting him to offer the same.

“You have hands,” Harry laughs.

“No—I’m ignoring the lunch thief.”

“The what?”

Niall waves a hand in Layla’s direction from his seat. “You heard me! You’re a lunch thief,” he repeats. He ends up launching into an elaborate (and typical) explanation, griping about the fact that Harry’s all of a sudden stopped consulting him about the next day’s lunch over dinner.

“That sounds like a personal problem,” Layla simply tells him before she walks off. Harry doesn’t budge when Niall asks him, in a weird polite tone, to get his drink for him.

“Personal problem,” Harry smirks, finally getting out of the way when Niall opts to get his drink himself.

He sits in the spot Niall stole from Layla, beside Danny in a rather stiff blue velvet booth seat, and wipes his hands The music in the restaurant changes from a lively song to a softer one with more trumpets while Harry wonders if it was sweat or condensation.

“So...” Danny looks expectantly at Harry, cupping his hand under his chin with a smile Harry has come to hate. Harry hasn’t seen much of Danny this week; all of Danny’s facial expressions have specific meanings.

Harry shakes his head and takes another gulp of his drink in hopes of getting out of the conversation he’s been avoiding. He regrets not getting Niall’s drink from the bar now.

“How’s Anna?"

“Nah,” Harry pats him on the shoulder (and slyly checks for wet finger marks) as he moves to stand. He starts to mumble something about getting another drink, but Danny pulls him down.

“Chill, H,” Danny chuckles, tugging on one of his braids. “I just need to know how you’re feeling as you head into the third week of the relationship.”

Harry can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes; it’s been a week since he last saw Anna and nearly two since he met her. “’S not a relationship.”

“You talk every day,” Danny says, reminding Harry about the message he won’t be answering until he gets home. “You’ve been tagged in an Instagram picture together, you told your mom—"

“You don’t talk to my mum,” Harry interrupts, waving his hand. 

Even if Danny did talk to his mum, he’d know all he’s told his mother is that he’s willing to see where it goes (meaning only willing to go so far). He didn’t mention anything about a “relationship”, however, because he’s turning his back the idea of being in a relationship.

“Listen, I talk to Niall, okay? Niall talks to your bartender pal, and that one <i>does</i> talk to your mom. Can I continue now?”

Niall and Layla return while Danny’s talking about the essence of free will, which Harry has apparently got all wrong.

Harry thinks that Danny’s the one who’s got it all wrong; he did date a certain philosophy nerd for about two years. He may care more about dog shit than philosophy, but he knows what he’s talking about.

“What did we miss?”

“Glad to see you two all chummy,” Harry notes, actively ignoring Danny by turning to face Niall and Layla.

“I’m catering Niall’s Friday lunches now,” Layla says, sitting across from Harry. “Is it cool if we work at Danny’s office tomorrow? I still need to show you this Byzantine thing.”

Harry snorts with his lips pressed into a smile; he regrets forgetting about the silent treatment he’d begun when Danny finally catches his attention.

“So, what do you mean by ‘willing’? Are you actively following a pattern deterministically, or are you impulsively pursuing this—"

“—not a relationship, friend."

“But it is!” Danny exclaims, mindlessly reaching for his new drink. He turns to Niall, who’s exchanging a look of confusion for Harry’s one of frustration, and Layla for help.

“You two talking about Anna, then?”

Harry tries his best to peek under the table, wanting to kick Niall in his bad knee for even bringing it up when he has a chance to change the subject, but he settles for a pointed look. Niall winks at Harry just as Layla’s brows relax.

“Who?” She asks.

“Someone H is getting to know,” Danny tells her with fingers in air quotes.

Harry now feels rather naïve for thinking he’d be able to keep this from Danny and his meddlesome hands. He doesn’t know why he thought Niall would keep this kind of gossip to himself. As forward as Niall is, he usually brings it up to Harry before telling the lads—or Danny, in this case.

“Oh, wait a minute,” Layla sets her glass down. “Is that the girl everyone’s talking about?”

“Who’s everyone?” Harry asks, looking into his own glass for the fifth consecutive time despite knowing it’s fucking empty. He wants to know why everyone knows his business now.

“Some of the girls in my third period art class won’t stop talking about this girl you’re dating. They think you’re ‘very cute’ together, but she has a ‘fish face’,” she explains.

Niall starts laughing beside her, clutching his free hand to his stomach. He only stops when Harry nicks his shin with the tip of his boot.

“She’s a friend of Niall’s girlfriend.”

“How was the jazz night?” Danny presses.

Harry starts to feel like this is punishment for keeping it from him. He’ll gladly share with Danny, but ever since his break-up with some guy from his Gaymer Club, he’s been trying to play matchmaker in attempt to prove he’s over it.

Harry thinks he isn’t, clearly.

“C’mon, H, let me enjoy the beautiful parts of your life! I spend most of my nights watching tv with my avô, okay? I need something real, not Brazilian soaps.”

Harry quits chewing on the recently blistered part of his cheek tissue, a slight warmth creeping onto his cheeks. “It was good,” he starts. “It was a good time.”

“They snogged on top of an Uber,” Niall smirks.

“Snogged, Harry?”

Instead of answering Layla’s sarcastic remark, Danny simply groans. His fingers shoot up to press on his temples and he ducks his head to sip on his drink.

“It wasn’t a snog—Niall’s exaggerating, right?”

Niall shakes his head, and Harry knows that what he’s heard came from Daisy; he heard them gossiping about it in the kitchen over the weekend. “I’ve been told it was a full-on snog.”

“That doesn’t mean he has to define anything,” Layla offers, waving at Niall and Danny. Harry appreciates her neutrality, especially when Niall and Danny are exposing a side of him he feels shitty for.

He hasn’t lost interest in Anna, at all. He’s very much interested in the romantic stuff that floats around in her brain, but not enough to warrant more than what he wants—certainly not enough to call what he wants a relationship.

Harry thinks of it as a one-time thing, but with someone he’s gotten comfortable with.

It’s not so much about baggage or the envy that inspired the late-night “revelation”, but more like a nagging desire to be alone. He likes talking to Anna, but he wouldn’t be able to deal with whatever he’s got going on and whatever Anna’s got going on if she were his girlfriend.

Harry reckons he’d like to be in a better place, in general, before he lets someone into his muck of a life.

His palms won’t stop sweating, his thoughts are constantly shooting off in different directions, his mouth is covered in blisters, and as of lately, his sleep schedule’s starting to go to hell. If it weren’t for Rhiannon depending on him or his sensible attitude toward responsibilities, Harry would be like the guy that lives across the hall.

Business guy (though he’s kind of bald) always in a suit, only ever seen when either leaving or arriving home, total stoner hermit. Harry stopped smoking weed when he brought Rhiannon home because he doesn’t want to expose her to that.

“Anyone can kiss,” Layla says with a small smirk that reminds Harry she has dimples, too.

“A snog is not just kissing,” Danny says through a sigh, leaning his head on Harry’s shoulder.

“What are you, kids?” Harry asks. He feels his pocket for his pack, narrowing his eyes at Niall. “We were drunk, anyway! It was just a couple of kisses.”

Niall sips on his pint. “I.e. snogging.”

“Kisses for which she just so happened to be leaning on a car. It wasn’t a fucking snog, and it also doesn’t mean it’s a relationship,” Harry pauses just as he manages to get his pack out. “I’m just getting to know her.”

“I bet you are,” Niall laughs, and much to Harry’s chagrin, Layla joins in with a raise of her glass.

“Are you going to see her again?” Danny asks in a calmer tone, finally straightening up, though he still sounds way too keen on the whole Anna thing. “Please tell me you’re going to see her again.”

Harry gestures to Niall considering his girlfriend introduced them. “Obviously.”

“You should bring her to the carnival,” Danny says. His eyes are practically twinkling, bright and mildly terrifying.

“No,” Harry tells him flatly.

“What carnival?”

“Dan, he hasn’t even giver her his fuckin’ number,” Niall manages to choke out before Harry begins to wonder when this will end.

Danny’s eyes go from mildly terrifying to moderately terrifying; Harry thinks he’d get on really well with Gemma, the only other person this involved in Harry’s personal life. “What?” He shrieks over the trumpets.

“What—”

“Why not?”

As Danny and Niall launch into modern dating “politics” (mostly how Facebook is quickly becoming the internet’s favorite dating service), Harry does his best to tune them out while he plucks a cigarette out of his pack and tucks it behind his ear.

He stands to get another drink, but he never gets to because he’s roped into another scolding.

“If you talk through Messenger constantly, and you have limited data, don’t you think you’re better off with her phone number?” Danny asks.

Harry finally purses his lips—he hadn’t thought about that.

“I’ll sleep on it.”

“Why, though?” Layla asks, looking up at him.

She takes to staring at the center of Harry’s AC/DC shirt while he pulls another tenner out of his pocket.

“Why what?” He asks.

“I mean, I have no idea what these two are talking about, but giving someone your phone number isn’t a big deal, either. You can kiss someone and give them your phone number and still have it mean absolutely nothing.”

“Just give her your number, and bring her to the carnival! I want to meet the potential love of your life,” Danny says, finally smiling.

Harry has no choice to smile back because he does like having Danny as a friend, despite his brown-noser attributes. Niall chuckles while Harry explains that he’s not looking for love.

“Forgive me because I’m new,” Layla thankfully interrupts Danny’s question about growing old alone. “What fucking carnival are you talking about? Is it a myth?”

Danny huffs and faces Layla. “Every year, the school sets up a carnival to give the kids somewhere safe and fun to be on Halloween and raise money for a random charity.”

“Monique’s really big on the whole ‘respect and responsibility’ shit,” Niall inserts.

“Mrs. Tomkins from the office oversees it and because I’m good at math and not a teacher, I’m tasked with helping her.”

“She’s got a schoolgirl crush on him,” Niall finishes telling Layla like it matters. “She’s married, though—big fat man, too, like Fat Bastard or somethin’ from the Austin Powers movies.”

“You’re gay,” Layla says, and Harry, Niall, and Danny all nod. “Okay, so... the carnival?”

“Me helping her means all the bozos we hang out with help out, too. Except for Steph, but she still comes by with her kids.”

Layla nods her head with another sip of her margarita, and Harry sits back down because his desire for a cigarette and another drink require too much effort on his behalf. During a tangent about last year’s carnival (Niall somehow convinced Harry to be his twin—like The Shining—and they scared a loose tooth out of poor Dylan), Harry decides he’ll go for a cigarette anyway.

“You want company?” Layla asks him over Danny’s question, and Harry watches her realize so before que turns her head. “Sorry.”

“Is that a pass on putting yourself through my annual misery?”

Niall chuckles lazily. “I thought you hated the projection system.”

Harry reckons he’s already tipsy because neither of the had dinner, and he himself is feeling a little numbness in his chest. At least the weird hole between his lungs seems to have disappeared, though thinking about it makes Harry wonder why he was fighting a night out.

“That’s my daily source of misery,” Danny smiles.

“I’ll do it,” Layla says, standing to get her cigarettes out of her huge purse. “Do I have to be in costume?”



Harry’s got a new drink and is halfway through a cigarette with Layla when she brings up the student gossip again; Harry wants to know who they are. “I thought it was a little weird because they’re too young to be out at a bar.”

Harry nods. “I feel like you have low expectations of Date Harry,” he jokes.

“Please, I know nothing about Date Harry,” Layla rolls her eyes with a drag. “This is a job well done on Fuckboy Harry’s part, though. Zero interest, limited affection... You’re obviously trying to...”

“What?”

“I don’t know, I’m not good at this stuff,” Layla laughs. “Get it on—you’re obviously trying to get it on with this girl.”

Harry starts coughing after he snorts. “Very funny, Miss Snobinson.”

Layla grimaces at the nickname; he promised her during lunch that he would find a comeback to the dead “Mr. Punctual”.

“For someone who’s not good at this stuff, you’re good at telling it like it is.”

She smiles. “Thanks.”

“What do I do if I really am just getting to know her—getting it on aside?”

He asks for her advice because there’s no point in hiding it if there’s nothing wrong with it like Layla says. Harry hasn’t brought it up to Niall, though now he knows he could have, and Danny’s going to advise him to pursue something deeper.

“Ulterior motives are the ultimate fuckboy move,” Layla says with some genuine contempt in her voice. “If you wanna do nothing more than getting it on, you should tell her.”

“I want to get it on, but I’m...” Harry trails off to find a proper way to put it that isn’t going to make him sound like a fuckboy. “I’m not exactly opposed to some intimacy.”

“So, you wanna date her.”

“Is that what that is, then?” Harry asks after a drag. “That’s dating?”

“I haven’t dated in a while, if you couldn’t tell by the way I referred to sex as ‘getting it on’,” Layla tells him. It interests Harry because she seems very sure of herself in the same plain black jumper and jeans she was wearing at work.

Layla seems like the type of person who does what she wants to do at that moment in time. Harry hasn’t heard much about her life prior to Greene East, nor much about her life in general. He’d thought about it this morning during his conversation with Angelo, and it stayed there as he made a timeline of the Agricultural revolution in his notebook during lunch.

She worked some fancy job as an undergrad, though—that much he really knows about her. He reckons you don’t get that kind of deal if you aren’t ambitious.

“Neither have I,” Harry admits. “Feels like too much to just date, yeah?”

Layla nods. “I don’t envy you.”

“Why did you stop dating?”

“I think we both know that sometimes you don’t need a reason,” she tells him, taking one last drag of her cigarette before crushing it with her loafers. Harry’s slightly jealous that she’s got on what looks like a brand-new pair of loafers he can’t find at any thrift shop nearby.

“Good to know you’re sane.” he smiles, a weird pit at the base of his throat. He doesn’t feel nauseous anymore, but he doesn’t feel the scarring on the inside of his cheek anymore, either. “This is my first time.”

Layla palms her back pockets quickly, and holds a finger to her nose rather than holding one out to his face. “Can I bum one?”

“’Course,” Harry says, offering his pack to her; he even lights it for her. He’s feeling more relaxed right now than he’s been in a while. “I’ve always been that guy, the one that always has a girlfriend.”

“Unbelievable,” Layla says, some sarcasm in her tone.

“I’m serious,” he says after he takes a drag. He leans against the wall a bit so he can drink and smoke comfortably—if he ever comes back, he hopes they’ve invested in outside seating. “Always had girlfriend, and when I didn’t, I was just fucking around.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” Layla leans her shoulder against the wall; Harry notices that the jumper’s rather big on her.

“It’s kind of weird, just fucking around. So...” He trails off for a drag. “Why don’t you date?”

Layla nods her head slowly with a drag, “I’ve never been a dating person, and I once was, and then I wasn’t.”

“Really? After I bared my heart to you?”

“It’s not my thing,” she tells him, her laugh merging with his. “It seems to be your thing, though. Those girls in my class are real confident about you and Anna, so maybe you’ll end up getting-”

“It on?”

Layla looks at him, dark eyes narrowing. “Maybe you’ll end up getting what you want,” she says, some smoke drifting from her mouth toward Harry; she waves it off before he takes another sip of his margarita.

He reckons he’ll send Anna his number when he gets home, and that with all the money he’s saving, he can afford a third. “Where’s your drink?”

“I have to buy it,” she replies. “Wanna come with?”

“Only if you tell me who the girls are,” Harry tells Layla, taking a long drag with his head tilted up; this is what art dealers are like, right?

“Nice try. See you inside, Harry,” Layla chucks her cigarette out, sighing when it doesn’t go into the sewer drain.

Harry does the same (his cigarette does make it in). “I’ll tell you what my students say about you,” he offers. Layla gives in and holds the door open for him.