strawberries and cigarettes (always taste like you)

Twenty Three

Harry's POV:

 The rest of the week was easily one of the best weeks of my life. Since I'd dropped so many unnecessary classes, I had less workload, less hours of classes and hence, more free time. Have I ever mentioned how much I love free time? I don't think I've ever had so much free time as much as I do now. Well, most people would say it's not too much of leisure time, but it's more than what I'm used to, alright?

Last Sunday, my mum decided to drop in for a surprise visit. I was seriously not expecting that. Apparently, she was in the area for her work, and decided to surprise me with a visit. Not that I'm complaining. I miss my mum, and of course, it was wonderful to see her.

The thing with Louis however was so awkward. My mum obviously knew him as my boyfriend, and she had no idea that our other flatmates didn't know about us. Damn, she almost gave us away. I swear, our flatmates were so confused? Suspicion level 100, really. I don't blame them, though. 

I don't think any of my friends/roommates have met my mother before. She Wait, no, that's not quite right. Liam and Zayn have met my mum before, but not Niall and Alaska. It was around some kind of break, actually. My mum had driven me back to college, and Zayn and Liam had already returned from their homes. Niall, Alaska and Louis were due to arrive sometime later that day. So, Alaska and Niall never really got to meet my mum, and Louis just met her because we're dating or whatever. Special privileges, really. 

Of course, nobody would expect Louis to be on such good terms with my mother. They are, though. They really are. They text each other every once in a while, and even facetime without me. How rude, really. If I didn't love them both so much, I'd feel left out. But it's okay, considering I'm super close to Louis' family as well. I talk to his mum sometimes, but I definitely talk to his oldest sisters  very often. 

Louis doesn't really like that Lottie and I text a lot; she does constantly flirt with me just to annoy Louis. And Louis is very easy to provoke. We have a group chat, actually. Louis, Lottie, Fizzy, Gemma and I. It's quite chaotic and absolutely so much fun. Sometimes, when I call Felicite, she lets me speak to the younger girls, as well. Ha, they love me. Probably more than Louis, but I'm not flexing or anything. Anyway, my point is... I don't quite now, actually. Just that Louis and I are close to each other's families.

Moving on, today is Saturday, and I did have a couple of classes, but they weren't too hectic. I however did had to stop by the library to work on an essay. Our professor made it very clear that we weren't allowed to copy any information from the internet. All information we use in our essay must be cited from real books. As in actual books which are found in real libraries. And the campus library is pretty real, so I spent a few hours there, gathering information from any books on my topic which I could find.

I finally got home around ten, which I know, is kind of late considering I was returning from the library. To be fair, my last class ended a little after six and I went to the campus cafe to get a tea and a cookie, before heading to the library. Seriously, nobody can study on an empty stomach. 

Anyway, I'm done with my essay for today. I can do the rest of it tomorrow. It's late and I'm tired and all I want to do is get home, eat something nice and then go to sleep. Obviously, that would be too much to ask. Everything went wrong as soon as I stepped through the door of the house, and I could tell that something was wrong because of the strange atmosphere. The air was practically charged with negative tension.

Alaska exhaled when she saw me, "Harry, finally. I called you so many times."

I pulled out my phone, which was obviously on silent because I was at the library, and checked my call log. Sure enough, there were four missed calls from Alaska, two from Niall and three from Liam. Fortunately, the calls were pretty recent; like within the past hour. On carefully looking at my call history, I noticed that I didn't get any texts or calls from Louis in the past hour or so. It wouldn't be usually unusual, but considering I had so many calls from the others...