If You Told Me To

Sarah was startled awake the next morning by the harsh sounds of knocking on the back door of the house. Normally, she would have been wary, maybe a little frightened, at the development, but she’d been torn from a deep, dream-inducing sleep, and her brain was too groggy to catch up to her common sense.

Stumbling out of bed and down the hallway, she tried to blink the bleariness out of her eyes, but her vision was still a little blurry when she yanked open the sliding door just as the visitor started to knock once more. Her eyes widened in surprise for just a second, although she wasn’t exactly sure why, considering Harry should have been her first guess.

“Hi…” he started slowly before clearing his throat, shoving his hands into his front pockets. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

She made an affirmative-sounding noise as she rubbed her eye and yawned. When she pulled her hand away, her vision was clearer. “Good morning.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Harry’s cheeks flushed gently as he chuckled. “I’m sorry. I just went out to the barn and saw you weren’t there, so I figured you were making lemonade or something.”

“Nope. Just sleeping in. What time is it?”

“Twelve thirty.”

Sarah groaned and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She’d never been more thankful that she usually woke up delicately, with her hair relatively neat and her breath only moderately offensive. “Oh no. I’ve never actually done that before.” Really, she had some difficulty falling asleep the night before, with her mind racing with incessant gratefulness, so it was only natural that her mind would want to overcompensate to make sure she still got a full night’s rest.

Harry opened his mouth, probably to inquire why she’d started then, but she quickly cut him off. “I’m going to go get dressed and ready. If you want to wait out in the barn, I’ll be out there in fifteen minutes with a glass of lemonade.”

He nodded and took a step back, adjusting his laptop under his arm, something Sarah hadn’t even noticed he’d brought with him until that moment. “See you in a bit.”

Sarah gave him a small smile before shutting the door gently. The second the latch clicked into place, she darted out of the kitchen and down the hallway, throwing herself around her bedroom to get some decent clothes, which ended up being a plain dark blue t-shirt and a pair of black cut-off denim shorts. After twisting her slightly dirty hair up into a fast bun, going to the bathroom, and brushing her teeth, she wandered back into the kitchen leisurely to pour the glasses of lemonade to take out to Harry. Then, having a second thought just before leaving the room, she settled the glasses back on the counter and pulled a granola bar out of the pantry to get something in her stomach for breakfast, since she tended to feel sick if she waited too long before eating in the morning.

“Not even fifteen minutes,” Harry commented with a smile when her shadow blocked his keyboard. He quickly shut his laptop and put it down on the floor next to him. “Impressive, I must say.”

Sarah did a fast curtsy before settling down across from him, folding her legs into a crisscross position. “Why, thank you. I try.”

There was a short silence while the two of them took sips from their lemonade. Harry quickly broke it by asking, “So, how was your dad last night? Was he pissed?” as he did everything he could to keep his gaze locked on the dusty barn floor.

“At first,” Sarah admitted. “But after he went and calmed down, we had an adult discussion about the situation, and he decided that I’m old enough and mature enough to make my own decisions on the subject. So he’s letting the relationship continue, as long as I don’t tell him intimate details about what we’re doing and don’t make him a grandfather.”

Harry’s cheeks colored at the last bit, but he shook his head in disbelief and laughed a little. “Wow. I didn’t actually take your dad as the Talk it Out kind. I figured he would be the stern type who’d tell you right away that you weren’t allowed to date ever and that you had to tell me to go away and never talk to me ever again.”

Sarah couldn’t help but chuckle. “My dad’s strict, but he’s not a tyrant. Since I don’t have a mom around, he tries his best to be logical and fair, no matter how difficult it is. He already thought you were a decent boy before, so he can’t say he doesn’t like you, and he knows me well enough to trust I won’t do anything stupid.”

Harry let out a breath and shook his head again. “Well, Sarah Richards, you’re one lucky girl.”

Sarah smiled to herself, taking another sip of her lemonade, and Harry started speaking again before she had the chance to get a word in.

“I just can’t believe Aunt Tony dropped that bomb at the dinner table. Just, like, what was she thinking?”

Sarah’s face fell. “Did you not talk to her last night to find out what happened on her end?”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, looking a bit flustered as he moved his glass from one thigh to the other, revealing a dark circle of condensation left behind. “We did talk a little, I guess. All she really told me was that she would have been blind and dumb not to realize how I was over here all the time and the way you looked when she answered the door and you thought it was me. I guess she’s just paying more attention than we’re giving her credit for.”

“I guess so,” Sarah murmured. “She does have a bit of a point. She may be sixty, but her mind hasn’t exactly left her yet.”

Harry nodded. “I wouldn’t mind so much if she hadn’t blurted it out at the dinner table like it was common knowledge, even though I’d never told her a thing. She should have talked to me about it first, kind of like your dad did with you. Maybe Aunt Tony just doesn’t see me as an adult as much as your dad does.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Sarah soothed, scooting closer to him so their hips were kissing against each other. “I’m sure she does, but she figured it wasn’t a secret. She probably just figured that you were being a typical teenage boy who didn’t want to tell his old aunt about his summer fling and that I was an innocent girl who told everything to my daddy, so she felt comfortable saying it at the table, not realizing that we were keeping it a secret from both of them.”

Harry let out a long sigh and took a gulp from his drink. “No, I guess you’re right. Doesn’t mean I’m not still a little angry, though.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“And this means one of our rules was broken.”

Sarah let out a long breath. “Yeah, I thought about that. What does it mean?”

“I guess we just pretend it didn’t exist?” Harry laughed. “It’s not like we can execute the poor woman for breaking one of our laws. She didn’t even know about them, so we can’t exactly blame her.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Sarah chuckled. “What even happens if we break one of the rules? Like, by accident?”

“We won’t break the rules.” Harry’s eyes were stern as he turned toward Sarah. “We made them for a reason, and we can’t turn our back on them now. So don’t ask that, even hypothetically.”

Sarah felt her stomach turn uncomfortably, but it didn’t take her long to realize that Harry had probably asked himself the same question and gotten scared by what his knee-jerk answer was. The truth was, if either of them broke the rules, it should have meant an automatic break-up, at least the way Sarah rationalized it. But seeing as how neither of them really wanted to break up, following the rules had to be mandatory. Or else.

“Okay,” Sarah agreed easily, finishing off her lemonade and finally opening her granola bar. Without a second thought, she broke off a piece and offered it to the boy sitting next to her. “It’s honey and oat.”