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Chapter Two

Charlotte

Harry didn't fuck off.

In fact, my adamant refusal to accept his company only seemed to make him crave mine more.

He followed me to my next hour, also my last, where he sat down right next to me and tapped his fingers the entire time to the beat of an Echosmith song, stopping only when I shot him an icy glare capable of freezing over Hell.

He followed me to the back of the school while I took another cigarette break, doing nothing but chastising me for “giving myself cancer” for the entirety of the trip.

And He followed me out to my car, a cherry-red Impala, whom I affectionately call Lady, begging and pleading for a ride to his apartment, yes his own apartment, which I forcefully turned down.

Damn, Harry Styles was persistent.

My car shuddered to a halt in the paved driveway, effectively cutting off Lana Del Rey’s melodic crooning. Swiftly I got out of the car and slammed the door behind me, peering up to the house before me.

Way back when, maybe forty years ago, my great-grandmother, Marie Thompson, decided that she was done conforming to the standards of suburban Minnesota. All of the houses in the neighborhood were the same cookie-cutter white paneled homes with navy blue doors, and she was sick and tired of it evidently. So Marie Thompson went out and bought two gallons of brick red paint, a single paint brush, and two and a half hours later the front door was a breed all its own.

All of her peppermint-smelling, bridge-playing friends were jealous of the brick red door, but none of them ever painted theirs for fear of being called unoriginal and nowadays everyone in the suburb had more pressing matters to deal with than a painted door.

Two doors down, the Jacobs’ father had stuffed a bulging wine-colored suitcase into the trunk of his car while Mrs. Jacobs was screaming apologies and promises as he drove away. Across the street, Janie Markonson had stumbled across the front lawn, trampling her mother’s petunias, stoned out of her mind for the sixth time that week. The suburb had rapidly been loosing its charm over the past year, no matter how much the adults tried to deny it.

I fitted the rusted key into my front door, and struggled to turn it for a few moments, then it clicked and the red door swung open. My frayed bag hit the floor with a loud bang as I shrugged it off my shoulders. Judge Judy could be heard chastising defendants from the living room, where my mother lounged in the oversized recliner, snoring. An open bottle of wine sat on the table with an empty wine glass perched next to it. Shivering, I grabbed them and placed them in the kitchen sink.

My favorite thing about my family used to be the atmosphere in our home. It smelt of baked goods due to Jacob, my younger brother’s, fetish for cookies and my mother’s need to spoil him, people were constantly over, milling about house, laughing about something, and there was just a feeling of warmth. I now know that that warmth was not due to an exceptional heating system, it was the warmth of a loving family.

Nowadays, the house smells of a mixture of fruity perfumes and men’s cologne due to the steady stream of people professing their empathy by bringing lasagna to the house. God I fucking hate lasagna. And the warmth that had once encompassed the home was gone, replaced with cold, unwelcoming air, causing me to shiver frequently.  

“Charlotte are you home?”

“I’m in the kitchen, Jake!”

Jacob padded into the kitchen, jumping onto one of the barstools lining the granite counter as he began to eat the pudding I had placed out for him. "Why aren’t you at cheerleading practice?” he questioned, mouth rimmed with chocolate.

“I quit, I told you when I got my nose pierced. Remember? You asked if I was going to have to take out the ring for competition and I told you I wasn’t on the team anymore.”

He seemed to ponder this for a few moments, "Nope,” he declared, “What’s for dinner?” That’s the thing about Jake, he can’t pay anything to attention for than two minutes and that’s even stretch. All of the other ten year-olds at his elementary idolize him because he’s able to get the teacher off task, delaying many homework assignments.

“Ramen?” I asked.

“No, Macaroni?’

“We had that yesterday, no. Peanut butter and jelly?”

“Cut into two triangles?”

“Sure.”

“Okay,” he said grinning from ear to ear.

I rummaged around in the cupboards for a few minutes, searching for the peanut butter before coming to the realization that we had none in the house. Sighing, I asked, “Jake we don’t have any peanut butter, do you want something else?”

“No, go buy some more, please,” he commanded, adding the “please” as an afterthought because he knew it would win me over.

“Fine, I’ll be back in half an hour, don’t do anything too stupid.”

This store should get more adequate lighting, it’s like The Blair Witch Project in here. Quickly, I grabbed the peanut butter off the shelf, not bothering to check the brand, and hurried down the aisle. My overactive imagination was having a field day with the eerie nature of the store and I was starting to freak out.

A hand clamped around my upper arm causing me to swing my bag around blindly, trying to hit the perpetrator.

“Whoa, slow down there Love, I don’t need a bruise,” a voice laughed after I hit something solid.

Opening my eyes, I was met with the sight of a certain Englishman. “Harry, I would say it’s lovely to see you, except it’s not so I’ll just be on my way,” I hissed, trying, and failing, to pull my arm free.

“Hello Lottie,” he smirked, clearly quite proud that he knew my former nickname.

“What the Hell did you just call me?”

“I believe I called you Lottie, Lottie.”

“Where did you get that name from,” I asked, still trying to get him to release my arm.

“Oh, I did a little research,” he smirked, “I know everything I need to know about Charlotte Marie Thompson; you used to be a cheerleader, quite the golden child actually, but after your-

The shrill tone emitted from my cellphone interrupted his taunting, and I was so grateful for it that I answered with checking the caller ID. “Thompson.”

“Yo Charlatte, haha, latte, get it? Anyways get your tight ass down to The Pointe tonight,” a voice slurred in my ear. Of course Dominick was drunk before the party even started. Dominic was a notorious stoner in Allensville, a fact I had already known when I had befriended him, and the parties at The Pointe, a rocky quarry known for drunken brawls and hookups, were always the best.

“Hey Dom, when’s it start?”

“Ten o’clock on the dot, my dear.”

“Cool,” I replied, then remembered the boy curiously looking at me, “Dom, can I bring a friend?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He hung up not even bothering with a goodbye.

I thought about my options, I mean Harry was hot and he looked like a hump-and-dump kind of guy. So I would bring him to the party, and, fueled with hate, we could fuck each others brains out. Afterwards he would leave because he didn’t want attachment and he would never bother me again. Perfect.

“Hey Styles, you up for a party?”