Redemption [h.s]

three

I stopped walking and considered turning around, acting like I had never seen him. It could've actually worked, since his back was turned to me and he seemed to be looking out of the window, but I decided against it right after realising how stupid it sounded.

I got myself together and walked to my door. As soon as I surpassed him, I knew he was looking at me.

I fumbled with my keys, not daring to look up. I didn't even know why I was acting like that, I knew I had done nothing wrong. But under his seemingly cold stare, I just felt like a child caught eating cookies she shouldn't have touched. I put the keys into the lock and stilled. We stayed there for a few seconds, not moving, not speaking, the only sound being our even breathing. Then, I slowly looked up, and my eyes met his. Niall was right, he had green eyes. But not a boring, plain green, more like a deep, forest green shade, with some kind of dullness to it.

He cleared his throat. "I saw you looking at me this morning" he said. His face was plain, not showing any kind of emotion. I couldn't understand if he was mad or not.

"Is there a problem with that?" I decided to reply.

He diverted his gaze to the window for a brief second before replying. "I'd prefer you didn't." After saying that he went back into his apartment, closing his door behind himself.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the door, then went into my house as well. I leaned against the wall, shocked and confused by what had just happened. I took my phone with every intention to call Niall and tell him about it, but then I realised that it was truly none of his business, and ended up checking if there were any eventual notifications instead. I sighed and took my wallet from my bag and put it into the pocket of my coat, and went out for a walk. I was almost out of the door when I thought of something. I rushed back into the kitchen and took two sugar packets, before exiting again and putting them in front of his door. Hopefully it would've been enough to make amends.

As soon as I was on the streets I decided to see if Niall was up for doing something, and we met at my favourite coffee place down the street of my house. I had discovered it a few months after I had moved in, and I had loved it right away. It was quite small, and it had a really cozy and homey feeling. Not to say that I was friends with almost all the people who worked there by now.

"You seem quite distracted lately" Niall said while blowing on his hot tea.

"I just had a lot of things to think about" I replied shrugging.

"Oh, I see" he said. "Is there a boy?"

I almost facepalmed. "Of course not, Niall."

"A girl, then?" He asked again, starting to sip his tea and burning his tongue. He hissed, putting the cup down.

I suppressed a laugh. "We've already talked about this, it's a no" I replied, handing him my glass of water. He took it looking at me thankfully.

"I never know! I mean, you haven't had a boyfriend in ages" he defended himself, before drinking the cold water.

"I'm not interested at the moment" I replied, looking at him as he finished the whole glass.

"Damn, this shit is too hot" he said, glaring at the cup of tea that was still on the table right in front of him, almost mockingly. "I was just saying, it must get quite lonely into that house of yours."

My mind went to Harry and the little thing we'd had going on for some time. "Not really."

After a while Niall changed the topic, and we ended up talking about Liam. Apparently he'd recently got a promotion, and both him and Niall were very thrilled about it.

When I went back home it was dark outside. As soon as I opened my front door, I realised that someone had slipped a little piece of paper under it. I picked it up. "It's okay." Nothing else was written on it, but the somewhat messy handwriting gave away who was it from. I closed the door and went into the kitchen, deciding to cook something fast.

After dinner I stayed up reading until midnight, when I decided to go to sleep early - for once.

But I didn't manage to get the eight hours of sleep I was hoping in, because I was woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of a TV commercial going off.

I got up and slowly walked down the hallway to check my living room, but everything was in order. I realised it was coming from another flat. The walls were thin and, paired with the complete silence of the building during the night, they all made sure every small sound could be heard all over. I opened my front door and peeked outside. One of the flats, the one next to mine, was not inhabited. The one in front of me was empty, since the old couple who lived there was on a holiday in Mexico. I looked at the remaining door. It was bound to be Harry.

I covered myself with a sweatshirt, put my slippers on and walked outside, leaving the door wide open behind me to lighten the floor. When I was in front of his door, I hesitated a little, before knocking.

The noise stopped right away, and after a few seconds the door was opened. Harry looked at me with tired eyes, leaning on the side of the door. He was wearing sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt, of an unidentifiable colour in the darkness. His hair was disheveled, and he looked distraught. My face softened.

"You have to make less noise, people need to sleep" I explained to him gently.

He nodded and sighed, and went to close the door.

I couldn't help myself, and I stopped it with a hand.

He looked at me questioningly, rising a brow.

"Are you okay?" I asked him, hoping that he wouldn't tell me to fuck off. I knew that I didn't know him at all and that it was none of my business, but I couldn't help it.

He looked down at his feet, and breathed in slowly. "Yeah. I just couldn't sleep." With that, the door was closed, and I didn't stop it.

And even if no sound was heard for the rest of the night, I found myself unable to go back to sleep, because I couldn't get out of my head the look on his face. And for the first time, I started to realise that there was way more to him than he let on.

That's why on the next morning, as soon as I saw the sunlight peeking through the curtains of my bedroom window, I got dressed fast, tied my hair and went out, giving a fast glance to his door. I walked as fast as I could to my favourite cafe and I ordered a coffee and two chocolate cupcakes in two separate bags. Everyone likes chocolate, right? I'd always liked chocolate. It did a marvellous work in cheering me up when I was little. I just hoped it would have the same effect on other people than me as well.

I went back to my building and took the lift. When I reached my floor, I was happy to see that everything was where I had left it.

As I put one of the bags in front of his door, I considered knocking, but I changed idea quite fast when I remembered that he hadn't slept much during the night. I didn't want to wake him up in case he was sleeping. I hoped he was, at least.

I went into my kitchen, ate my cupcake and finished drinking my coffee. Maybe I should've got coffee for him as well, I thought. But then I realised that I didn't know when he would've come out of his door, so no coffee was way better than a cold coffee. Also because I really didn't know how he liked his coffee. If he even liked coffee at all.

I looked at the clock, and found out that it was barely 7am and, since I had work at 10am, that I had a lot of free time. Pushing the thoughts regarding Harry to the back of my mind, I had a shower and picked up a book to kill some time.

When I got out of my house, talking to Liam on the phone - because apparently he'd thought it would've been a good idea to phone me to rant about the fact that he couldn't get a dog because he was afraid it would've eaten Berry, I noticed that the little white bag was no longer there. I smiled to myself and said my goodbyes to Liam while I waited for the lift to come up.