The sound of laughter and chatting that verged on screaming as I entered my apartment sent the lump in my throat further down my chest, but it easily started to dissipate as I took my shoes off and accepted the fact—Violet had people over. It's not that I had anything against it nor was I having a particularly rough day, I just wasn't too thrilled about coming home to noise at 8 PM after a three-hour lecture.

For over two years I'd been having a phase where I would ideally get the day over with by sunset, and spend the evening in, with my bass or my paintbrushes. It became my most treasured time of day, even if it meant that men were now required to spawn in my living room if I wanted to go on another date in this lifetime. It was a price I was willing to pay.

Although, with the third roommate situation, I hadn't had time to think let alone be creative, so I might as well pop an Aspirin, lay down for fifteen minutes, and come out of my mole burrow to have a beer with the group.

The J. Cole song was semi-loud, but my roommate was louder. "Evie!" Came from her mouth when I appeared in the doorway of the dimly lit living room, her voice reminiscent of screeching tires, "No- I fucked up- Marco!"

"Polo."

"Guess what!"

"You have tomorrow off?"

"I have tomorrow off!" Her friends joined her screaming, cheering, hollering, one guy drumming his palms against the coffee table; I couldn't help but laugh, finding it genuinely endearing that these 26-year-olds seemed to have figured life out and were truly happy about the little things.

Nine times out of ten, four of her high school friends, a guy she went to college with, and a girl she worked with would be at our apartment to celebrate her upcoming day off—the fact that she would, also nine times out of ten, get to share it with a hangover, did not matter whatsoever. A day off was a day off, spent in bed or elsewhere.

The fond smile as I watched them melted into a panicked expression, without warning, as I felt arms wrapping around me from behind. My eyes darted to Violet, "Who the hell is behind me?"

"You don't recognize your own husband?"

I didn't recognize who was answering my question—though I did note that Violet had informed her friends that we were married—but I recognized Harry as he slowly slid from behind me to beside me, one arm still pulling me close to him. "Welcome home, baby," he said, voice sweet and a little slurred, and his beer breath attested to the fact that there was underage drinking going on. "Beer?"

The confusion was still too strong to react to his face being three inches from mine, so when he raised his hand, I easily redirected my gaze from his face to the beer can he was holding. "Uh, sure," I said, looking back at him as he detached himself from me to open the beer. "What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

A smile tugged at my lips, "Are you hanging out with them?"

"Yeah, is that a problem?"

"No, just..." But I bit my bottom lip, deciding not to mention how it was odd since he'd been quiet and keeping to himself up until that afternoon, like a secluded bat; seeing him without tense shoulders and with a lazy smile on his face was a nice change. Then I remembered the reason he was so relaxed. "Should you be having alcohol before chemo?"

"Oh yeah, Violet gave me the green light to exactly one beer. And she's a nurse."

"I'm familiar," I said, taking the one he opened for me from his hand, giving him a once-over; sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, a classic Harry outfit. But the pink in his cheeks and the twinkle in his eyes, those were a lot more amusing. "This is you after one beer?"

"Hey, don't judge." He flattened his palms against his chest, scandalized, and there was no stopping my eyes from looking down at the motion. "At least I'm low-cost now. Perks of getting life-saving treatment."

"You don't think it's from trauma?"

"What trauma could I possibly have?"

While I found his retort rich, I responded to the question, "Something involving a bicycle?"

My grin hurt my cheeks as his face fell at the reminder of that one time he drank too much, and I took a sip of my beer under his deadpanned stare. I spoke again when his eyes stayed on my lips as I licked off the liquid that stuck to them, the bicycle thing now obliterated from his mind. "I'm gonna go wash up, would you hold this for me?"

"Will guard it with my life."

I nodded slowly. "You're weird today," I declared, but then smiled, "Keep it up."

I wasn't completely out of earshot when he announced to the group of people, "I think she likes me," so the shutting of the bathroom door behind me was accompanied by an eye roll. I couldn't deny the weird excitement that was bubbling, though—there were people and music and booze, he was in a good mood, and we were about to spend time together again after being each other's company for three consecutive days. Just like that, I didn't even feel the need to have an Aspirin anymore.

However, the fact that six of the people we'd be hanging out with believed we were a real couple sure was creating a need for Pepto-Bismol.

Thankful that no one could see how I was doing a speedrun of refreshing, I finished everything in under a minute and decided to call my mom. The bathroom was the quietest room, and I wasn't tipsy, drunk, or at risk of sharing too much that would then stretch into the next day and revive my Aspirin craving.

But then my phone showed me a weird notification. Which led me to an even weirder string of messages.

And before I knew it, my body was walking out of the bathroom with zero commands from my brain, my phone clutched in one hand and my tinnitus stronger than it had been in five years.

"It's not really pulling..." Harry was sitting with Violet and her friends when I walked in, and all of the girls had different variations of curiosity on their faces. "It's more like... holding onto it. You know? Like a horse."

One of the girls, Grace, did a double take at me. "There's your mare."

As others laughed, Violet tried to give me a rundown of the conversation that was happening—someone was ranting about their failed date, and somehow it led to Harry being questioned about why men pull on women's hair during a blowjob, to which he gave his two cents and then proceeded to describe what he does.

Would've been a fun discovery if I hadn't found myself in an equally fun predicament. I barely got a forced laugh out before gripping Harry's shoulder, "Do you have a minute?"

He looked at me from the couch all of two seconds before getting up and following me out of the room; the comments as we walked out and went to my bedroom were creative, and I was almost sad that my brain was not retaining information at the moment. Opting not to lock the door I turned to Harry, who took a sharp breath through his nose when we were face to face. "D'you need me to do the dishes again?"

If he wanted me to shut my mouth before I'd even spoken, he got his wish. He'd baffled me enough to forget what I was going to say. "What?" I blinked, "Do the d–?"

"I saw how hard your nipples got the other day." He gave a firm nod, and I was the one with the deadpan face. "Women like a man who cleans. I respect that. I'll do it."

"Harry."

"I'll even pretend to find out you have a dishwasher again if you take your shirt off."

"Come on, be serious for one s- hey! Stop it!" I snapped my fingers in front of his face, "Stop staring at my boobs!"

"You'll have to do better than that."

"I'm wearing a padded bra and a sweatshirt. You can't see shit."

"Mhm, what else are you wearing?"

I rolled my eyes and my hand fell limp to my side; the battle was not worth fighting. Hands on his hips, his eyes were fixated on my chest with such a mesmerized gaze that he could've easily been looking through me. Not a horny look, not like he wanted to get his hands on me either. More of a vacant stare, whatever that meant. Maybe he thought if he concentrated hard enough, he'd gain X-ray vision.

"Do you..." I trailed off as I unlocked my phone, figuring he'd come out of his daze sooner or later so I may as well get to my point, "recognize this type of texting?"

Shoving my phone in his face so he'd break the eye contact he had going on with my gray sweatshirt worked—Harry blinked a few times and brought his focus to my phone. He took it from my hand and furrowed his brows at the screen, holding it lower than I originally did, and even upside down I could exactly make out the string of messages that gave me brain-freeze in the bathroom.

i hope you make him happier than i ever could.

lol

whore

be fucking happy i don't know where you live

"You get these today?" Harry asked.

"Yep."

My eyes moved up from the screen to his face when he took a deep breath, still frowning. "Yeah, Cece would turn off capital letters," he said through a sigh.

"It's a screenshot," I said when he tried clicking on the picture, "I took a screenshot before she could delete them or something."

"Do you still have the messages?"

I took my phone from him and he stood beside me while I checked; the messages were still there, but the profile they were sent from was obviously a fake one, with no picture and a keyboard smash of a username. Probably made to serve this one purpose. Harry sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, mumbling against his palms, "God. This is so fucking stupid."

"Do you... I don't wanna pry, but do you two... still have something going on?"

"Not in the slightest." He shook his head, hands still on his cheeks, "Do you have anything going on with another guy who has a pissed-off ex?"

The fact that he would say another, implying he believed himself to be one... was a sign he should have gotten all the red lights in the world when he asked Violet about having a beer. "I don't have anything going on with anyone."

His lips were pursed, the way they'd be when he was thinking, but he wasn't in thought. In fact, as he looked at me his newly sober expression suggested he'd actually realized something. "We were supposed to meet up today," he said, "but I... canceled."

I was mid-nod when I realized—the constant look of frustration whenever he checked his phone this morning. He was texting her. She was probably going to meet him on his way to–

There was no class.

There was only Cece.

"Right," I mumbled, remembering how he made a last-minute decision to stay and watch football with me. She was probably already on her way, maybe even at their agreed destination, and he just didn't show up. The overwhelming feeling I got in the bathroom was returning at the idea that I truly was in the middle of them and it wasn't just some random assumption she made.

"She made the fake account to message you and found you by first name in my followers." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Should've deleted my shit for her own good."

"So... there still is something."

"What do you mean?"

"If you were going out to meet her, there's still something to talk about."

"Yeah, no." He looked away while choosing his words, "I... changed my mind."

I blinked at him. He blinked at me.

"I mean, I just went back to what I originally thought. That after everything she put me through, I don't really care about what she has to say. I don't want that relationship and I don't want her."

I looked away first this time, drumming my fingers against my thighs, feeling my palms slowly but surely become sweatier. September still wasn't cold enough for a sweatshirt. "Does she know you're here? I mean, that you're staying with me?"

"No one knows. No one in Aspen even knows I got married, other than my family."

I started nodding, but soon switched to shaking my head, "I'm sorry, I'm... just trying to figure out why she'd have a problem with me."

"She doesn't, not with you, anyway. You were just in the wrong place at–"

"All I wanted to do was help you," I rambled, "Not get caught up in any kind of drama. I mean, getting messages like these– it's kind of stressful."

"And you have no idea how sorry I am," he said, shaking his head, "It's all my fault. I should've ended all contact with her, but..."

I took a breath to clear my head as he trailed off, so I'd hear more than just every other word he said. "You think it'll end when she goes back to Colorado? She'll... find a distraction or something? Didn't school already start?"

Harry scratched his head, the single hum of laughter he let out completely humorless. "She... graduated this year and was already accepted to college here." I blinked at the new information, and he merely glanced at me before looking away. "She moved here about two weeks ago."

"Oh." I nodded, embracing this unbelievably natural progression of my life, "Of course. That's great."

"Evie, I'm so sorry."

"That's why she showed up at your place out of nowhere." I nodded again, at this point pacing the room; everything was falling into place and making me dizzy, starting from that February night when he clarified that his girlfriend was a senior and was going to move to New York for college in the summer. "She had time to waste and wait for a light in your window because she lives here now. How did I not figure this out?"

"I promise I'll take care of everything. I swear I will. Just give me until Monday."

"And if she doesn't know where I live now, she can easily follow me home since we go to the same school. Also amazing."

"...Okay, she doesn't go exactly where you go. We're all in three separate buildings, she's studying Forensic Science."

"Oh. Oh! Well, now I feel better!" I squeaked, teeth gritted so I wouldn't be heard beyond my bedroom door, "When she completes her cardio by taking a fifteen-minute walk to here, she can kill me and take care of the evidence! How convenient!"

I wasn't sure how long he'd had his hands on his hips, but they really put an emphasis on the deliberately blank face he was giving me. He looked like he was struggling between responding with a sarcastic comment and being compassionate, ultimately choosing, "No one's killing you, Evie."

"What, a little birdie told you? Was it God?"

"I wouldn't let anything happen to you."

And I stopped my pacing to stand and look at him. My light-headedness and rise in heart rate messed with my head enough so that I didn't have the vocabulary or mental capacity to explain how I (mostly) didn't fear for my life nor was I (for the most part) expecting someone to end my life over a boy. I was just overwhelmed, first with the messages, now with the new information that we were going to be on the same campus three to four days a week.

Maybe she wasn't as crazy as I was to take evening lectures. Maybe switching to evening lectures altogether was the answer. Maybe it was dropping out and hauling ass back to Manhattan.

"I'm serious," Harry said, and I took a breath, focusing on his voice rather than my impulsive thoughts. "I'll follow you to class if I need to. If you need me to."

"I need you to fix this. Whatever 'fixing it' means."

"And I will."

"Seriously, Harry. I don't need this shit in my life."

He swallowed, lips pushed against each other in a thin line as he nodded curtly, "I'll fix it."

"Okay." I straightened out my shirt, looking at my feet. My heart and body temperature were returning to normal. "You... wanna keep me company while I finish my beer or...?"

The fact that I might've been too harsh didn't escape me. While I offered a small, shy smile, he only replied with another tight-lipped expression that was otherwise impassive—not even a tight-lipped smile—as he followed me out of the room.

Falling easily back into conversation with the others and convincing Violet there was nothing to worry about came as a relief, and proof that whatever was happening wasn't the end of the world—our brains and emotions just needed to catch up with the fact of the matter. Everything would work itself out sooner or later.

But we didn't really talk to each other for the rest of the night.

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my beautiful peeps it's another chapter that needed to be split in two so it wouldn't be too long :') votes and comments are appreciated! ♡