If You Told Me To

Harry and Sarah had been sitting side by side in the barn for over an hour, Harry typing away on his laptop because he hadn’t been able to escape Antonia long enough to blog the day before, Sarah doodling really sloppy stars and flowers in her sketchbook. She had expected him to make a comment on her makeup the second he saw her, but he hadn’t even seemed to notice. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but she was certainly leaning toward bad.

She was so incredibly tempted to bite her bottom lip, but she didn’t want to end up eating the liberal layer of gloss she’d applied over an hour earlier. As it was, she could tell she was smudging it terribly whenever she wiped the accumulating sweat off her top lip, no matter how gingerly she tried to do it.

Was she supposed to point it out? Would that be awkward? Would he feel like he was being put on the spot? She tried to weigh the options in her head, but the constant sound of Harry’s keys clicking every tenth of a second made it difficult to concentrate. And since she couldn’t think through the option clearly, she finally blurted, “Why haven’t you said anything about my face?”

Her whole body burned from her wording, which was probably the worst in the history of the world, and her embarrassment only increased when Harry looked up at her with amusement coloring his features. “Um, what about your face did you want me to comment on?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sarah insisted, brushing a lock of hair out of her face to occupy her mind on something other than her humiliation. “I just meant…um, I’m wearing makeup. And you, uh, haven’t said anything about it.”

Harry squinted at her. “Oh, yeah, I guess I can notice. Your eyelashes are darker. But other than that, it’s not really that noticeable.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Neither? I don’t know. Why, are you wearing the makeup to impress me or something?” His tone was sharp, edgy like words that he would have said to her in his first week in the country, and she felt herself start to get teary-eyed, which was totally irrational, and she couldn’t help betraying her emotions in her retort.

“No, I just thought I’d try it out. And if I don’t get any opinions on it, then I won’t know whether to change it or not.” She couldn’t help but feel like her fears were entirely ironic, since she was the one who was feeling seriously on-the-spot, when she had been worried that Harry would feel backed into a corner if she asked for his opinion.

“Well, it looks fine.”

There was a short, awkward silence, and Sarah folded her hands in her lap and finally succumbed to her urge to bite her lip. It wasn’t like Harry had noticed it, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Harry sighed, finally closing his laptop and putting it next to him. “Did I hurt your feelings? I feel like I was kind of harsh.”

Sarah shrugged and breathed deeply to keep from admitting the truth. She hadn’t want to admit it to herself, but she knew she really thought that wearing the makeup to make herself look prettier so maybe, Harry would remember her more when he went back to New York. She consciously knew her reasoning was wrong and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it was too late to go back then.

“I really am sorry.” He scooted over on his butt, the back buttons on his shorts scraping loudly against the ground, and put an arm around her shoulders. “Now that I’m up closer, the makeup actually does look nice. Is your eye shadow purple? That’s really nice.”

Sarah let out a little burst of laughter, which dissolved the unshed tears immediately. She couldn’t help but find amusement in Harry’s desperate attempts at fixing the spat, since his eyes were wide and sparkling, almost begging her to forgive him. “Thanks, Harry.”

He grinned at her, showing off his dimples, before pressing his lips against hers. It was a short, sweet kiss, and Sarah pulled away before it got too serious or deep. “Not to sound cheesy, but you know that you don’t have to wear makeup for me, right?”

“I know.” Which was the truth to Sarah, especially at that moment. If Harry hadn’t even noticed her makeup until she pointed it out, there was no way she was going to be able to convince herself that Harry wanted her to wear makeup so she could look more sophisticated or anything like it. “But now I feel a little silly.”

“Don’t feel silly. You just wanted to look nice. I understand that. I actually wondered if I should start wearing makeup for you. Maybe just a bit of foundation to cover the acne on my chin?”

Sarah dissolved into giggles and threw her hand over her mouth, shaking her head. “Oh, please don’t. It wouldn’t be very becoming of you.”

He shrugged and got to his feet. “Good thing I mentioned it before I tried it. So did you want to go to the lake or something? I’ve written so much today that I think my brain is going to melt out of my ears, if it hasn’t started already.”

“I don’t really feel like swimming,” Sarah responded, feeling her cheekbones flush with color. “But you can go swimming, and I’ll watch you. I’m not against walking there.”

Harry looked for a second like he was going to ask her something, and Sarah prayed that he’d keep the question inside, since she wasn’t about to tell Harry that she had her period and she was afraid of 1) him somehow sensing that she had her period or 2) her tampon falling out in the water and bleeding everywhere. She knew the second part was pretty impossible, but she could remember reading about that happening to a girl on the internet somewhere, and whenever she read something, she knew it was going to happen to her eventually.

“Okay, that’s fine. Do you mind waiting for me to go change?” Harry questioned, picking down to pick up his laptop off the dusty floor before bringing his eyes back up to hers.

“Of course I don’t. Go ahead. Take your time.”

While he was gone, Sarah shifted her position to make herself more comfortable and pulled her sketchbook back into her lap, even though she knew she was in no drawing mood. There were just some days where her mind was completely dead, void of inspiration, and no amount of coaxing could get anything worth keeping onto the blank page. The worst was when this drainage of creativity, lasted for days, where Sarah would just stare at the blank page and have nothing flow through her fingers to draw, so she would do anything she could to avoid sitting down to draw. Which was incredibly hard in the summer, when all she consciously wanted to do was catch up on the drawing she hadn’t been able to fit in between schoolwork during her eighth grade year. But there was nothing she could do but go along with the ride and hope the rut passed soon.

“Sarah!”

The blonde girl looked up and blinked at Harry’s shadowy face, her eyes squinting to block out the sun that radiated from his curls, making him look like the paintings of Jesus in all those religions pictures that hang around the church.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked. “I called your name, like, five times, and you didn’t answer me.”

“Oh, sorry.” She felt her face fill with heat as she climbed to her feet. “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s go.”