Blowing Smoke (Harry Styles)

Chapter 87

Sleeping alone in the bed that Harry and I usually shared was much easier said than done. It was strange that I had slept alone in my bed for nearly nineteen years, but the second that I was sharing a bed with the man I loved, sleeping alone seemed mad. The feeling of an empty bed was cold and lonely. The lack of warmth next to me made me desperate and feeble. I couldn’t complain that I had the whole bed to myself, but I couldn’t help but complain. I grew up in this bed, sleeping in it every night, and not one night was I lonely, until the nights I slept in it while Harry was in prison. How could a bed that I once craved to lie in become a nightmare?

I was lonely and bored most of the days alone considering I spent the majority of the time with Harry. When I noticed my complete lack of underwear, I decided that today would be laundry day. I needed a pair of undies to substitute, however, so I used Harry’s boxers as a replacement. It was sad to say that they weren’t as baggy as I’d thought they’d be. I then slid on my basketball shorts and a plain tank top over my sports bra.

I gathered all of the dirty clothes from my room, Harry’s and mine, into a woven laundry basket and brought it downstairs to the laundry room. I hadn’t ever done laundry before, because Claudia always did it for us, but I assumed that it wouldn’t be hard to figure out.

I stared at the two machines, my hopes high. I recalled watching on the tele people sorting the clothes from the dark to the lights. Lucky for me, the majority of my clothes were grey or black. I got on my knees in front of the washer and organized the big pile of clothes from darks and lights. Harry’s coloured shirts and boxers made me wonder which pile to put them in, so I settled on putting the cold colours with the darks and the warm colours with the lights. Satisfied with my work, I placed the dark pile into the washing machine, shutting the window that allowed me to look inside the machine.

What next?

Above the washer and dryer were instructions on how to work the fancy machine, but they were in Spanish. My father had thought that it would make sense to write out the instructions in Spanish for Claudia, since she could only read Spanish, rather than actually showing her and explaining it to her.

I didn’t speak a word of Spanish. I sighed and pulled out my phone. I typed what my dad wrote into an online translator and smiled when I saw that it had translated near perfectly.

Step one: Fill the bins in the machine with detergent and soft.

I assumed that it meant softener. I pulled the detergent and softener from the shelf adjacent to the machine. Where is the bin? And what bin? I pulled opened a small compartment on the machine that had ‘Pull’ written on it. Two sections were in the compartment, one that read softener/bleach and the other that read detergent. I smiled and poured the liquids in their designated spots until the MAX line, which was clearly labeled.

Step two: turn on machine

I pushed the button that read ‘Control On’.

Step three: set machine to time

I turned the dial on the front of the machine until it read thirty minutes, which seemed reasonable to me.

Step four: hold down the start button.

I held down the start button until the machine buzzed and clicked. I watched in awe as water filled the machine, soaking all of the clothes. Seconds later, the machine began to spin and suds.

It was strange to feel such a feeling of accomplishment. I had just started the laundry. I was proud. But I still had half an hour to kill before I could do something, so I lay across the two machines, the washer bumping and vibrating against my head, and grabbed the book I brought. I figured that this would take a while.