If You Told Me To

Sarah bit her lip, staring at Harry out of the corner of her eye, watching him carefully. He was deep in concentration, hunched over his laptop. A curl had fallen into his face, not that he’d noticed, and every so often, his tongue would dart out from his mouth, wetting his lips, which was always followed by a small sigh. There was something beautiful about watching him while he was unaware of anything else in the world, and she figured she could have spent her entire day like that.

But after about twenty minutes, she started to feel guilty, so she faked a yawn and stretched, which was noisy enough to draw his attention away from the computer. “Hey, you know what I just thought of?” Sarah questioned, trying to play it cool, like she hadn’t been fighting with herself over making the suggestion for the past hour and a half.

“What?” His tone made it obvious that he wasn’t exactly up to much of anything, but Sarah worked hard to keep it from bothering her.

“Can I draw you?”

His expression softened as he cocked his head to the side. “Draw me? Like draw a picture of my face?”

“Yeah.” Sarah thought about asking what, exactly, he thought she meant, but she decided against it.

“But haven’t you already done that?”

She scoffed when she thought about the picture she drew at the beginning of her crush. She’d looked at it the night before, noticing flaws she had overlooked before, like the way his eyes were two dramatically different sizes and shapes, that his nose was too big, his lips were lopsided, his chin was too pointed, and his hair looked completely wrong altogether. Thinking about it made her stomach turn on itself, so she immediately shook her head. “That picture stunk because it was drawn out of memory, and I barely knew you at that point. I want to do it properly, if you’ll let me.”

“You barely knew me, and you still couldn’t stop thinking of me,” Harry teased before leaning over and pecking her cheek, sending her face up in flames. “Okay, I’ll let you draw my picture on one condition.” Sarah waited patiently for the second part of the statement. “You let me draw you afterward.”

“You draw?!” Sarah had no idea that Harry was artistic, too. She figured that his creativity didn’t expand beyond the written word, since he hadn’t said a word about it in all the time they’d spent together.

“No,” Harry laughed. “Not at all. But I want to try, anyway. Just something to remember me by.”

She felt her stomach pang, but she nodded anyway. “Deal. You can use my pencils and my sketchbook and everything.”

“Great. So what do you want me to do?”

She readied her materials, sitting in a cross-legged position and leaning the pad against her thigh so she’d have a relatively steady surface. She would have used the floor, but there was really no way to get into a comfortable enough position. “Um, I’m just drawing your face and neck, so just sit there.”

“Do you want me to smile?”

She grinned at him. “Do you want to smile for three hours straight?”

“Three hours?” Harry’s eyes looked like they were going to burst out of his head from shock. The expression was so dramatic that it took Sarah an incredible amount of willpower to keep from bursting into hysterical laughter.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “So let me just get the head and the basics down first, and then I might make you smile.”

“What if my head changes shape when I smile?”

She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re that deformed. Just sit still. And stop talking.”

Harry fidgeted for a minute before finally staying in one place, folding his hands in his lap and staring straight at her.

She wanted more than anything to pretend that she always sketched live models, always had them staring at her with the intensity Harry displayed in that moment. But he never seemed to blink, and the weight of his gaze made Sarah turn a consistent pink color, although she tried not to let it creep into her concentration. She didn’t want the picture to turn out as awful as before, so she had to focus.

Soon, the shyness faded, and Sarah entered her artist zone. Everything was turning out like she’d hoped, although she used her special artist eraser a little more often than her ideal. Finally, about a half an hour later, she called out, “Alright, smile.”

The second she did, she let out a relieved sigh that she’d waited to draw his eyes until after she’d given the order. His eyes got crinkles in the corners when he smiled, as she thought she remembered, and if she’d pre-drawn the eyes, there was no way she was going to be able to get that small detail right.

Thanking her attention to detail, she continued to sketch, getting lost in the moment and forgetting how long she was working and how much she messed up and re-did parts of his face and that she was working with a real, living, breathing model.

“Um, Sarah, hey,” he stated after what seemed like five seconds, but the state of the sun inferred otherwise. “I hate to ruin what you have going there, but I have to pee in a really serious way.”

Sarah blinked a couple of times before laughing. “Go ahead. I’m just putting on final details, anyway. You leaving won’t screw anything up.”

“Cool.” He quickly got to his feet and scampered away, rubbing his cheeks like smiling for what had probably been a solid couple of hours had been the most strenuous thing his body had ever done.

Although, the more she thought about that, it couldn’t have been an easy task. Just smiling for her school picture sometimes made her cheeks hurt, since they always took a few frames to make sure the students didn’t blink in the final product.

He returned a few minutes later, giving her a small smile. “Sorry about that.”

She shook her head. “No, you were great. I should have given you a break ages ago.”

He plopped down next to her and pecked her on the cheek before resting his head on her shoulder. “Wow. That looks incredible. I will never understand how you manage to have so much talent.”

Sarah laughed lightly before erasing a line on his lips and adjusting it just a smidge, turning it from pretty good to pretty great. “Thanks. I’m glad you like it.”

“Look at that. You even got my lower eye lashes.” He let out a small breath as he wrapped an arm around her middle, giving her a small squeeze.

She squeaked in surprise, and Harry’s face promptly warmed against her t-shirt sleeve. “Sorry. Are you okay with this? I know we’re not usually…” He trailed off, not knowing how to finish the statement.

Sarah nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m really okay with it, actually.” Her forwardness surprised the both of them, but instead of dwelling in it, Harry tilted his head back and planted a soft, short kiss against the side of her neck.

Without making it too obvious, Sarah steadied her breathing and her pulse, knowing that Harry could feel it, given his close proximity to her. But she thought she was going to melt, right then and there, with his arm still wrapped around her waist, his thumb rubbing a line against her back every few seconds.

“Okay, I think it’s done,” she mumbled, angling the sketchbook so Harry could see it a bit better.

He leaned forward, his cheeks almost touching hers, and grinned widely. “Sarah, that’s incredible. I didn’t think you could draw anything better than the last one you did, but this definitely is.”

She swelled with pride, looking down at her drawing. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But this one definitely encapsulated him better, captured more of his fun, mischievous spirit.

“Okay, my turn,” Harry insisted, pulling the sketchbook and pencil out of her hand before crawling about four feet away and plopping down. “This one won’t take as long, so feel free to smile the whole time.”

Sarah swallowed. Grinning would make her feel uncomfortable, since there was nothing really funny or amusing around. So instead, she gave a small, closed-lipped smile, something she hoped look sweet instead of demonic, which was what it kind of felt like.

Harry’s focus was pin-point, just like it was when he was writing, his tongue making an appearance every now and then. He didn’t seem as bothered by her constant stare as she had been with his, but maybe that she was because he wasn’t as easily embarrassed.

She expected him to take at least an hour, but she didn’t think even fifteen minutes had passed before Harry exclaimed, “And done!”

Sarah let her face drop back to a normal expression before walking on her knees, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling of stones digging into her flesh, over to Harry and staring at the picture.

Harry laughed loudly next to her while she took in the details: the deformed face, the crooked eyes, the misshapen nose, the stringy hair. Some girls may have been offended, but Sarah knew it was the best he could do, and she felt herself start to lose control, too.

“I’m sorry I’m not as talented as you,” Harry apologized through bouts of giggles.

She shook her head. “No, don’t. It’s perfect.” And she meant it.