#grvty

“Do you not like the pancakes?” Harry questioned. The scene before him was puzzling, if he honest. On any other given day, he was certain that Charlotte would have wolfed down the pancakes he made in two seconds flat. The fact that it laid untouched, and that Charlotte had barged into his room at ten at night, was enough to set off the alarms in his head. She had not said anything when she arrived at his family home. Charlotte simply looked exhausted, surely due to the long drive from the city, then mumbled a request for pancakes. Harry dropped the assignment he had been working on and started on the task whilst Charlotte trudged up silently to his bedroom. There they were now, him across from her on his study chair and her looking listlessly at the food she had requested.

“Lee and I had a fight,” she muttered, finally breaking her self-imposed silence. She looked up once more, mostly to gauge Harry’s reaction, but her best friend’s face remained neutral. “He said he was going to visit his parents in Leeds but,”

Charlotte did not have to finish the story for Harry to know that was not what happened.

“He was still in London with some mates. I asked him about it and suddenly, I’m the bad guy,” Charlotte concluded. As she informed Harry of the last bit, the brunette looked away. She was certain that her best friend would have retorted with an ‘I told you so” or “you should have given him up a long time ago” but those comments never came. Instead, the space next to her sank and seconds later, Harry looped an arm around her own, nudging her.

“Every relationship has its trials, no?” Harry reasoned. “Maybe he didn’t want to tell you no to hanging out or summat so he made up some excuse to avoid your wrath,”

Charlotte scoffed. “I would have understood,”

“Would you?” Harry let out an airy chuckle. “Tell me you wouldn’t have blown things out of proportion,”

“I-” Charlotte had begun to defend herself but stopped short when Harry offered her a pointed look. “Fine, I might have kicked up a fuss but…he still didn’t need to lie,”

Harry frowned in contemplation for a moment, then made a face. “I have no excuse for that so maybe you can ask him and tackle this in the morning when you’re not grouchy and hungry,”

To insist on his point, Harry picked up a fork, cut off a piece of pancake and offered it to Charlotte. She bit into it and nodded her head in approval.

“You make the best,” Charlotte took the fork from him afterwards and began devouring the pancakes quickly, her earlier annoyance dissipating with every bite into the fluffy bake. “Can we get a slurpy after this?”

At the mention of the concoction from hell, Harry looked aghast.

“There’s no convenience store for miles, Lottie,” Harry argued. “Besides, the sugar content in that-”

Harry’s statement was cut off when Charlotte raised a hand to stop his advances. She ate the last of the pancakes and uncrossed her legs, getting up to set the plate on the study table.

“I need it, Harold. Please? It rights all wrongs in the world,”

Harry opened his mouth, ready to retort, but one look at Charlotte’s pleading brown eyes, ones that were now laced with a hint of disappointment and sadness, and he felt himself slowly relent. Replacing his lecture on the downsides of sugar with a groan, he stood up and reached for a shirt that hung on the back of the chair. The grin on Charlotte’s face widened with every move.

“You love me as if I deserve you,” she teased, shrugging on a coat as Harry did the same. He ruffled her hair in response.

“Who says I love you?” Despite his statement, a ghost of a smile had slid onto his features. “And you definitely don’t deserve me,”

Charlotte snaked an arm around Harry and bumped her hips against his as they exited his room. “Ah, but look at you, getting the slurpy with me anyway. That’s love,”