A Rhapsody Of Sorts

17- Mechanical Reactions

September 28, 2012.

"You've got two seconds to get your hand off me before I start breaking your fingers one at a time," I snarled, elbowing him in the chest and kicking my legs against the bed in frustration. "Trust me — I've done it before."

Like clockwork, I woke up at half past eight every Friday morning. It was one of the few days that I bothered to use my alarm. Dr. Liddle's office wasn't a far drive from my flat, but I liked to give myself enough time to mentally prepare for whatever emotional baggage she and I would pluck out of my head that day — it was easier to go over what I wanted to say beforehand, cherry-picking little things that I was comfortable talking to her about, than it was to go in blind and end up freezing up, stammering about things that left my Achilles' heel exposed.

But I didn't have my alarm clock this morning, and the ball of emotional yarn that I'd unfurled for Harry a few hours earlier had drained me so severely that I didn't even know what day it was when sleep finally dragged me under.

I'd woken slowly, blinking my eyes open for a few seconds before I'd given up and let them fall closed again, pressing my face into the pillow and pulling the sheet taut over my shoulders. Then I'd felt Harry's arm on my waist. His hand had snuck up the back of my t-shirt, and his fingers were pressed into the spaces between my ribs as he held me to him. At first, I'd tiredly grunted and tried to push him away, but when he latched back on, nuzzling his face into my shoulder blade and hooking his leg over the backs of my thighs, I lost my patience.

"Ow," he whined when I gave up on nudging him in the chest and pinched the back of his hand instead. He finally rolled off of me, pulling the comforter with him as he groaned in a strangled voice that was heavy with sleep, "Why'd you do that?"

As soon as I was free, I scrambled out of bed, getting tripped up by the sheets tangled around my legs and barreling towards the ground. I hit the floor hard, barely throwing my hands out to break my fall in time, but I was too concerned with the fact that it was Friday, and I had no idea what time it was, to stop and moan about the bruises sprouting on my kneecaps.

"Are you okay?" Harry's voice sounded scraggly, like his throat was coated in molasses even as he cleared it. He rested back on his elbows, looking over at me.

"No," I huffed, crawling around on the floor and moving aside the plastic tarps in my haste. "I can't find my mobile, and I really need to know what time it is right fucking now so—"

Harry's phone started to ring, piercing the air suddenly as a thunderbolt, and startling me so badly that I knocked over two of the empty beer bottles.

He sat up completely, first shooting me a concerned glance as I straightened the bottles, and then rolling over to grab his phone from the floor beside the mattress.

"It's Liam," he told me, looking in my eyes for a millisecond before he brought the phone to his ear. "Hi, Li—oh." He looked down at his lap, reaching back to rub the nape of his neck as he listened.

I sat back on my knees to watch him, his eyebrows pinching together and tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip. Liam spoke raucously enough for me to hear the panic in his voice but I couldn't make out what he was saying.

"Yeah, she—" Harry sighed, halting while Liam continued to speak over him. "She's—Liam, would you..."

Again, Liam interrupted him, and Harry pulled the phone away from his ear to glance over at me. "It's nearly one-thirty," he said to me, gulping.

"Fuck. I missed my appointment." Standing up, I threaded my fingers through my hair. "I'm an idiot."

"Liam!" Harry finally shouted down the line. "Would you stop talking for one second and let me get a word in? Rose is fine. She's—" He paused to meet my wide-eyed stare. "She's at mine. She's asleep."