Whatever Chains (Sequel to Where Your Heart is - A Harry Styles fanfiction)

Part Twenty-Six: Talking to the walls.

A month.

How can time fly by so quickly and yet make it seem as if it is not even coming to pass?

He is clearly shutting me and - since Louis has repeatedly failed in his attempts to reach out to him - everyone else out.

And so the master sadly becomes the student.

All I want to do is cry and scream, all of the damn time. And the only two people carrying me through this are Louis and Beth, who seem to be bonding quite well in their mission to keep me afloat.

"I never thought I would ever say this, but if I have to watch another episode of Friends, I'm going to smash your telly."

We are hanging at his apartment, as we do pretty much all the time when we are not working, and Beth is fixing us some nachos with cheese and sour cream dips.

Monica and Rachel are fighting over the hideous Gladys, and for the first time in all the million times I've seen this episode, it doesn't even make me crack a smile.

"Okay, what do you want to do then?" Louis asks, pressing the pause button on his remote control, freezing the screen just when Phoebe appears with the even more hideous Glynnis.

Again, not remotely funny to me at all. I must be dead inside.

I look at him, raising my eyebrows, as if my answer should be obvious to him by now.

I want to keep calling him. I want to keep texting him, sending him private messages in every single social network he uses, no matter how pointless I know that actually it is.

I want to get out there and scavenge the whole city; hell, the whole globe, searching for him. I want to leave no rock unturned a hundred times over until I find him, and I get to convince him to forgive me and take me back. Again.

In that moment my phone starts to buzz on the coffee table, buried under pizza boxes and used napkins. I find it just when the caller hangs up, and I notice a good few missed calls from Jasper.

He was probably calling when the TV was on, and I never even noticed that the ringer was off until now.

I haven't talked to him since Harry left. It wasn't that I wanted to keep it from him, but since I really didn't want to talk about it, I decided to avoid talking to him all together and all we've been doing is texting each other about lighter issues.

The missed calls, being so close to one another, clearly let me know that there's something going on so I decide that I should probably call him back.

But when I'm about to slide the screen unlocked to dial his number, another name flashes across it and my heart drops.

"Harry?" I mutter under my breath, which is picking up all of a sudden.

Louis and Beth are in the middle of a heated conversation about what we should binge watch next. I hear him saying that the best option would be The Inbetweeners, while Beth argues that said show is purely designed to appeal to boys and she is less than interested in it.

I only hear them like it's white noise, though. And my eyes are glued to his name, as my brain seems to be suddenly shut down.

"Shut up!" I blurt out of nowhere, and they both fall silent. "It's him... He's calling me."

I don't know which one is it, but I feel an elbow nudging me under the ribs, getting me to react. But I don't.

What the hell is wrong with me? Maybe I should see a doctor about this blackouts I'm seem to be having lately. There's got to be something wrong up in my head and its mechanics.

"Oh, for the love of God! Give me that!" Louis's reaction is as sharp as mine is non existent, and he is taking my phone away and picking up the call before I even get the chance to complain about it. "Hello, mate! How are you?"

He speaks so casually, as if it was his own phone, and I can only imagine Harry's expression at the other side of the line.

He hurries to say that he did not dialed the wrong number and that he is, in fact, talking to my phone and that I am seated right next to him.

"Oh..." I hear his voice when Louis puts him on speaker. "Okay... whatever. I don't want to know about it, to be honest."

The indifference of his tone makes my blood run cold through my veins, flooding me with sadness and humiliation.

The combination of both makes my body finally react, and I take the device, taking it off speaker and putting it against my ear.

I stand up and walk out of the room, finding a quieter place to have whatever conversation we are about to have.

"Hi." I say, and I surprise myself for sounding so curtly. "Where are you?"

There is a long silence at first, like he wasn't expecting to hear my voice although he did call me in the first place.

"New York." He responds in the same manner. "I have someone here who's been wanting to talk to you."

I frown and hug myself with the free arm, unable to stop the shaking chills his voice gives me.

"Wait, Harry, don't..."

Jasper's voice comes along and now the confusion turns into sheer curiosity. He quickly manages to get the salutations out of the way, as if we hadn't just spend weeks without talking or the fact that he is apparently hanging out with Harry is the most normal thing in the world.

"Jasper, why are you even with him right now? What's going on? Let me talk to him."

My mouth is running like crazy; spitting out words at an alarming pace, and maybe that's my brain trying to overcompensate its previous tardiness.

"He doesn't want to talk to you, sorry. And before you say something else, let me tell you how annoyed I am to be put in the middle of your guy's bullshit once again, so this stops now." He doesn't sound angry at all, more like he is stating his unmoving position. "We called you because something happened. Something huge."

New York. Jasper and Harry. My head begins to put two and two together with  a painfully slow speed, and when they all finally add up, I freak.

"Oh, God. It's about Andrew, isn't it? About that letter?" I grill him with evident unease. "What did Harry do? Is he okay?"

He chuckles and I let out a curse.

"He didn't rearrange his face, if that's what you're asking." He assures me. "But it is about Andrew and the letter."

I can barely make sense of what he says after that. Words like accepted, back, school, plane ticket, and now swirl inside my head as they try to put themselves together in a cohesive sentence.

"Jasper, what are you saying?"

My voice comes out desperate and incredulous, as I am sure I am definitely misunderstanding what he just said to me. But my heart is beating so fast at the possibility that I didn't, I think I might just past out at any given moment.

"I'm saying you have to get your ass back here, now."