If You Told Me To

“I have terrible news,” Harry stated as he ducked under the cover of the barn, stepping out of the pouring rain outside. A rumble of thunder sounded, sending a shudder up Harry’s back that Sarah could tell he struggled to suppress. So she pretended she didn’t notice.

“What’s the news?”

“As you can see, it’s raining.” He gestured outside to emphasize his point. “And Aunt Tony has baked about three dozen brownies for the occasion.”

“Sounds like a tragedy.”

Harry made a face at her sarcasm, but he couldn’t keep the corner of his mouth from turning up in amusement. “I haven’t gotten to the bad part. The bad part is that she insists we spend the day over there, eating the brownies, because she thinks we need to have at least one day this summer under the supervision of some kind of adult.”

Sarah blushed bright red, but she got to her feet, closing her sketchbook and tucking it under her shirt to keep it from getting wet. “Wow, she really doesn’t trust us, does she?”

“She trusts us fine. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have let us hang out in your barn all summer long. I think, really, she just wants to spend a little bit of time with me before I go, and she figures that the best way to do that is to make me drag you along, too.”

Suddenly, she felt incredibly guilty. “Oh. I never meant to keep you away from your aunt, Harry. Maybe you should go over there, and I should stay here. I wish she’d mentioned something earlier.”

Harry let out a slightly frustrated sigh. “She didn’t say anything about that. She told me to get you and bring you over, so are you really in any position to argue?”

“I guess not,” Sarah muttered, although she couldn’t completely get rid of the feeling that she was intruding in a serious way. She glanced down at the ground, adjusting the sketchbook under her thin dark gray t-shirt, not moving like Harry expected her to.

With a frustrated sigh, he moved forward and wrapped his hand around her arm, tugging her forward gently. “Come on. Aunt Tony’s going to get suspicious if it takes me a half hour to get you when you live right next door.”

Sarah stumbled along, not wanting to fight him, the toes of her sneakers scraping against the floor until they reached the edge of the sodden ground.

“Ready?” Harry asked with a dimpled grin, pulling the collar of his plaid shirt over his head to protect his soft-looking curls. “Sketchbook protected?”

Sarah wrapped her arm tighter around her middle, securing the book against her torso, before nodding again. “Ready.”

With that, the two teenagers, with intertwined hands, ran out into the storm. Loose pieces of hair that had escaped Sarah’s ponytail clung to her face, but she didn’t have a spare hand to wipe them away.

It wasn’t until Sarah reached Antonia’s porch that she looked down at herself and realized what a mistake she’d made when dressing that morning. The shirt had been a little too thin for running through the rain, as it was clinging uncomfortably to any free piece of skin it could find. Thanks to the heavy binding of the sketchbook, it had made it through unscathed, but she felt almost inappropriate, walking into Antonia’s house looking like she did.

Harry noticed her hesitation and laughed. “I’ll get you one of my shirts,” he promised, throwing open the front door. After they were safely in the foyer, Sarah pulled out her book and put it on the little side table reserved for Antonia’s keys and focused on pulling the material away from her body.

“Oh, would you look at you two?” Antonia sighed, coming out from the kitchen with a plate of brownies. They looked chocolatey and chewy, Sarah’s two favorite traits in deserts, and the sight made Sarah’s stomach growl in desire. “You look like a couple of drowned rats.”

Harry smiled sheepishly while Sarah blushed. “It was raining a little harder than I anticipated,” he explained before grabbing Sarah’s hands. “I have to get her a new shirt, but we’ll be back in a second.”

“Three minutes!” Antonia directed, heading into the next room, weaving around the couch to avoid hitting her hip. “I’m timing you.”

The two hurried down the hallway and into Harry’s bedroom, where he immediately released his girlfriend’s hand and started rummaging through one of the drawers in his dresser. “This will have to do,” he muttered a minute later, tossing a navy New York Yankees shirt at her without turning around to look at her. “Change quickly so we don’t look suspicious.”

Without thinking, Sarah peeled the slightly-dripping shirt off herself and pulled the new one over her head. She couldn’t help but wonder if Harry wanted to sneak a peek, but either way, when she looked back at him again, he hadn’t moved an inch. “Okay, I’m good.”

He smiled at her before taking the gray shirt out of her hands. “I’ll give it to Aunt Tony to put in the dryer or something.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

They walked out of the bedroom and into the living room, where Antonia was lounging on the couch with a grin on her face. “Two minutes and fifteen seconds,” she stated, her eyes still locked on the floral clock hanging on the wall. “I have to say, I’m impressed.”

“I told you, you had nothing to worry about,” Harry told her with narrowed eyes.

Antonia looked like she was going to laugh, but then she seemed to notice the fact that Sarah was wearing a new shirt. “Harry Edward, I sure hope you turned around when this girl was changing. You teenage boys are such perverts.”

Sarah turned bright red while Harry groaned in frustration. “Aunt Tony, stop embarrassing her. Of course I turned around.”

Antonia shrugged before getting up and sitting in the middle of the couch. “Alright, what movie do you two want to watch? I have this new thing with the cable that lets us pick any movie we want, so anything’s possible.”

Harry winced as he settled on one side of his aunt, the one closer to the brownies, so Sarah was forced to grab one as she walked by and sit against the wall. “Most of them cost money,” Harry explained as he reached forward and plucked up a fudgey square. “And not every movie ever made is on it.”

Antonia knit her brows together as she sighed. “That’s not what the cable guy told me when I said I’d pay the extra money for it. Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Just go to the free ones, and we’ll see what’s there.”

As the two of them bickered over what to watch, Sarah finally bit into her brownie and chewed silently, although she wanted to cry with delight. It had been far too long since she’d had any of Antonia’s baking, and she almost forgot how heavenly her desserts were.

“Sarah, which one do you want?” Antonia asked suddenly.

The blonde girl finally looked up at the two expectant faces, feeling somewhat like she was being ambushed. “Um, sorry, what are the options?” she asked in a small voice, trying to remember to be polite through her humiliation.

“The Breakfast Club or some old, lame chick flick that Aunt Tony likes,” Harry listed, letting the smallest of oofs escape his mouth when his great aunt smacked him across the back of the head.

Sarah hated making decisions under pressure, so she just said, “Whatever Antonia wants is fine.”

The older woman beamed with pride at Harry. “Have I mentioned how wonderful your girlfriend is?” she asked, using the remote to highlight the correct title and starting the movie. Sarah had never heard of it before. “She’s a keeper, for sure.”

The two teenagers squirmed uncomfortably as the starting credits appeared on the screen, a sweet-sounding song playing in the background.

Sarah sat quietly, her hands clasped in her lap, until she saw a bit of brown out of the corner of her eye and saw Harry leaning over the back of the couch, around his aunt. Traitor, he mouthed, but the look on his face was playful.

Sarah scrunched her nose at him before mumbling, “Excuse me, ma’am,” and leaning across Antonia to get another brownie. As she nibbled on it, she couldn’t help but pray that the old woman would let her bring some back to her house. She knew her father missed the desserts, too.