Heavy Heart

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Daria’s phone was ringing. Again, she was faced with two options: it was her mother, or it was Harry. Saying a silent prayer that for once, it would be her mother, she checked the caller ID. Her hopes were dashed when she saw Harry’s face, the photo identifier he’d taken of himself – his tongue stuck on the couch at his parents house one weekend after dinner.

“Hey,” she answered with a sigh, paging through her Populations textbook.

“Daria,” she heard him say through the receiver. “Can you come downstairs and let me in? The doors are locked for some reason and there’s a lot of people.”

She grumbled, flipping her textbook closed and jumping down from her bed. “Didn’t you think of calling?” she reprimanded teasingly. “I have a test tomorrow that I need to study for, I can’t go and do anything.”

“I was in the neighborhood!” he argued. “Can’t I stop by to say hello?”

“You weren’t in the neighborhood,” Daria insisted, rolling her eyes as she trotted down the stairs to the main lobby. She heard him chuckle on the other end of the line, the sound crackling in the receiver.

“Fine, you’ve caught me,” he admitted. “I have some time off and I thought I’d come see you. My mum’s been planning on visiting for a while but work’s been hectic, so I thought I’d step in. You’re part of the family and what-not, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Daria responded as she caught a glimpse of him through the front window. He was standing in a hooded sweatshirt, sunglasses covering his eyes, cell phone still pressed to his ear. “I see you. Stay right there.”

Daria and Harry had spent a fair amount of time talking over the weeks prior, mostly at meals with his parents. But they talked most every day, whether it was a couple texts or a phone call at the end of the day to catch each other up on what was going on. He was in Britain for a while, working on promotional things at home and working on some holiday material with the band. Slowly but surely, he was becoming a steady source of stability in her hectic new life in Birmingham.

“Come on,” she harassed him as she opened the door. “In you go. You look rather inconspicuous today.”

He shrugged and gave her a meager smile, following her up the stairs to her room. “Figured I’d not want to cause a ruckus on campus,” he explained, his hands shoved into the front pocket of his jumper. “Which is beautiful, by the way. This place is even nicer on the inside than it is on the outside.”

“My room’s pretty messy, so don’t get your expectations too high,” Daria confessed as she lead him down the hallway. “Olivia’s working on some projects so it’s gotten pretty hectic. But then again, you didn’t give me a heads up, so I’m really not that sorry.”

Harry scoffed. “I’m sorry I tried to do something nice!”

Daria put her key into the lock of her bedroom and turned the knob, revealing the interior of her room. “Maybe this is will finally be enough to get you to leave me the hell alone.” She and Olivia had made significant progress on their room – mostly by Olivia’s hand. She brought back art projects, hers and those that had been discarded, worked with Daria on projects of her own, and they’d gone to the store together and got Daria her own set of twinkle lights to string around the head of her bed. The room was littered with canvases and paintbrushes, as well as crumpled pages of her notebook from failed attempts at writing.

“It’s not so bad,” Harry chimed. “I’ve seen worse. Niall has leaves his wrappers and empty bags of crisps all over his house. He’s always eating, I swear.”

Daria nodded quietly, suddenly very self-aware. She’d never had a guy in her room before, not even at home. She had a knack for pushing away every guy who showed interest in her before they made it to the stage of ease with each other, to the point where she would be okay with welcoming them into her place. Granted, the room was now her and Olivia’s place, but Daria still felt like she was showing Harry a piece of her she hadn’t shown anyone. She battled the urge to run around the rom and hide everything important to her to keep personal questions at bay, instead jumping up onto her bed and patting the spot next to her.

“Where’s Olivia?” Harry asked, looking around the room as though he’d missed her.

“Class,” Daria answered as she tucked her knees up underneath her chin. “And then doing some club stuff. I think today is printmaking and photography. I’m not really sure though, she’ll be back later.”

“Okay,” Harry responded. He took a long, slow survey of the room, glancing at everything from Olivia’s band posters, the sparse state of Daria’s closet, the artwork in progress on the floor, the various textbooks on Daria’s bookshelf. As he removed his sunglasses, Daria saw his eyes had landed on something she had sincerely hoped he wouldn’t see. The Japanese puzzle box.

His hands were on it before she could tell him to stop. “What’s this?” he asked with a chuckle, holding up the box. The glossy design glared under the glow from the string lights, highlighting the faces of the workers in the field and casting a shadow across the tiny pyramid pattern.

“Can you put that down, please?” Daria hummed quietly, pressing her face onto her knees. “I’ll explain, but just… please put it down.”

“Okay,” Harry said cautiously, handing her the box and climbing up onto the bed next to her. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Heaving a deep sigh, Daria nodded into her kneecaps. Subconsciously, her fingers went to the box, sliding the slats in the pattern she had so far. One right, flip, one left, slide the top, repeat. It was muscle memory to her now, the ebb and flow of the box. But something about that muscle memory wasn’t quite right, always leading her to a dead end.

“I just am really messed up sometimes, Harry,” she mumbled. She raised her head to see him watching her intently, his olive eyes concerned. “That box makes me really messed up. It shouldn’t, but it does.”

“What about the box? What is it?” he pressed, his gaze shifting to the box as she fiddled with it, eyes anywhere but the box itself.

“My dad,” Daria answered, a light, sad chuckle escaping her lips. “Isn’t it always? It’s not his fault, it’s really not. I don’t mean to blame him, but everything seems to lead back in his direction. This box was a gift from him.”

Harry ran a hand through his messy hair, flicking it out of his eyes with that masterful slight jerk of his head. “Why does it do that?” he asked, watching her slide the slats back and forth in a pattern she wasn’t even paying attention to anymore. “Is it like a puzzle?”

“That’s exactly what it is,” she replied while tugging at the lid to see if she made any progress. “A few weeks before he died, he was on a business trip in Japan. He traveled a lot, almost every other weekend, and he always brought me back something from his trips.”

“My dad traveled a lot too,” he commented softly, like he was trying to show he was paying attention. Harry had a tendency of doing that, nodding along to the beat of the voice and adding in relations along the way.

“He was the one that always encouraged me to pursue school, to try my hardest to be my brightest,” Daria reminisced quietly. “My mom always wanted me to do more ladylike things, like baking. So that’s where that comes from. But not my dad – we used to do the crossword in the Times together.”

He was silent, respectfully listening to Daria’s story while she droned on. “Anyway, this box,” she continued, getting back on track. “It’s a Japanese puzzle box. You slide the slats around in a specific pattern until the top is able to slide out, and then there’s a compartment inside. After he died, I kind of set it aside for a while because I missed him too much to try. But one day I found it again and realized that there’s something inside.”

Daria held up the box between their heads and shook it gently, allowing the contents of the box to slide around. Multiple types of noise came from inside, completely confusing any attempts either of them had at guessing the innards. Harry raised his eyebrows, his mauve lips pressed together in a tight line.

“Can you not figure it out?” he asked softly, scooting a little closer to her on the bed, She felt his breath just lightly on her neck as he peered over her shoulder to watch her toy with the box.

“No,” she sighed. “I can’t. I’ve tried everything, and I can’t seem to figure out the pattern to get it open. It’s driving me crazy, Harry. There’s something in there from my father and I can’t get to it.”

“Why don’t you just break it open? Smash it with a hammer?”

Daria looked at him with a pointed, horrified look. Harry’s expression turned embarrassed and he again ran his hands through his hair, a nervous tick. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t very funny. Not something to joke about,” he corrected. “What do you think is in there?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied, pressing her forehead to the box in frustration. “It could be anything. It could be nothing but the receipt and some Yen. Or it could be something important. Either way, he wanted it to be hard for me to get to, he loved challenging me.”

“Do you mind?” Harry asked suddenly, withdrawing from her. “I promise I won’t move anything, I just want to look at it.”

Daria handed him the box, his large hands outstretched to gingerly take it into his possession. There was a quietness between them, Daria’s gaze on Harry and Harry’s gaze on the box. She bit her lips between her teeth, watching Harry stare at the wooden object in his hands. It seemed like his focus was elsewhere, somewhere far away from the box itself. The twinkle lights around them glinted against the pristinely polished surface.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Harry murmured, running his thumbs absently around the edges.

Daria cast her gaze to the cluttered ground below them, uncomfortable. She didn’t really know why she had spilled her soul to Harry, telling him the intimate details of her relationship with her father.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for your visit to go this way,” she apologized in a near whisper. “I’m just a little stressed about my Populations exam or something, I don’t know.”

“Daria, I didn’t come here today to just visit for no reason.”

“Yeah? Well then, why are you here?”

Harry laughed a little incredulously, shaking his head. “You’re great, you know that?” he asked, continuing straight away as to avoid any protest from Daria’s side. “You’re funny without even trying and absolutely beautiful in the same way. So you have some things in your past, but that’s part of what makes you you. And I like you.”

Daria braced herself in an indiscernible combination of fear and curiosity, glancing over her shoulder to Harry. He was sitting quietly, his legs dangling off the side of the bed in a way that matched hers perfectly, though his legs were several inches longer than hers.

“I’m here because I can’t get you out of my head.”

The air caught up in her lungs, unable to escape out of astonishment. She swallowed down the lump in her throat, struggling to maintain her quiet composure. His lips had curved up in that half-smirk he got when he was thinking, the wheels turning in his head to find just the right thing to say. Though she hated to admit it to herself, her heart gave a little jump when Harry opened his mouth to speak again.

“With you, I’m just Harry,” he continued. “You understand me for me, not for my money or my fame or whatever. I drive you insane but you still put up with me anyway. I can’t fix everything that’s going on with you. But I’ll be damned, Daria, if I don’t make you smile every once and a while.”

And before Daria could take another breath, his lips were on hers.

She didn’t realize what was happening until several seconds later, when Harry’s hands went to her cheeks and caressed them gently, the touch truly awakening her senses. She was hyperaware of her impossibly fast heartbeat, the smooth gliding of his lips against hers, the brush of his curly fringe on her skin, his short gasps of breath between kisses.

Even after he pulled away, she questioned if the moment was even real. Everything seemed to have been plugged into an amplifier - the colors of his eyes brighter than ever, the glisten of the kiss still on his lips – to the point where the hair on Daria’s arms stood on end. The feeling that settled into her heart was a feeling she hadn’t felt before, a mixture of a million emotions she couldn’t identify. It wasn’t until Harry spoke again that she realized the kiss was as real as reality could be.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” he murmured, his breathing shallow. Her heart turned like an engine fighting to restart, sending a spark to her every nerve ending.

“I’m not sure you really want to Harry,” she protested quietly. “I’m not sure you know what you’re getting yourself into with me.”

“I’m not sure I much care,” he whispered back, pressing his forehead to hers. “I like you Daria. I’ll get into anything if it means being able to kiss you like that again.”

She felt the hot rush of blush come to her face, the feeling in her gut developing into something of panic. She had kissed guys before, but never like that, never with that electricity. And here she was, with a boy she could hardly stand, wishing she could kiss him again.

“Okay,” she hummed. “Okay.”

And she let him kiss her once more.