Status: Completed, being posted one chapter at a time.

Hearts Like Ours

Seventeen

“I’m sorry about all that,” Charlie apologized.

Her voice shook Harry from the trance-like state he’d found himself in. They’d only been walking for a few minutes, but in that short amount of time he’d been unable to take his eyes from her. The wind softly blew in from the nearby Puget Sound, playing with the stray strands of hair that had fallen from her braid. Goosebumps were apparent on her arms and Harry wordlessly took his jacket off, offering it to her. She furrowed her brows, looking up at him in surprise, but took it from him with a whisper of thanks.

“It’s not a big deal,” he dismissed with a shrug of his shoulders. Charlie frowned.

“Does it happen a lot?”

“The crowd thing? Yeah. It doesn’t bother me much anymore,” he responded.

“That’s not true.”

Harry looked over to her, unsure of whether or not she meant for him to hear her, the words spoken so quietly. They were approaching Pike’s Place Market, closed for the day, but he slowed his pace nonetheless as they approached a railing that overlooked a highway immediately adjacent, and the Sound just beyond that. Charlie halted beside him and he stopped, too. She leaned forward against the metal rail, her eyes trained on the Cascade mountains across the water.

“You’re far too good of a person to admit that it bothers you, but I can tell it does,” she said, eyes turning to him. Harry couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips.

“What makes you say that?”

She laughed quietly, a nervous sound that he’d never heard from her before.

“You were different after Allison told you about it. It was subtle, but you stiffened. Your humor was gone. It was business.”

Harry nodded slightly beside her, training his eyes on the Sound. The waves crested as the wind blew, thousands of dimples and bumps moving in the fluid as he watched. The moonlight reflected from it, not just in one place, but all around in the water.

“You’re sad,” she decided. He inclined his head in her direction as he considered how to respond to that. She was leaning forward slightly on her forearms, her head poking out to watch the cars as they passed below them on the highway. The uniform lines of red and white light on either side of the road division was somewhat comforting to him, though he couldn’t put his finger on why. She followed his gaze.

“When I was a kid, I used to get so confused when people referred to where I lived as the ‘heart’ of the city. I never understood it until my parents brought me here one Saturday night for dinner. I think it was Emmett’s birthday or something, and we came here because he loved the water, but I just watched the cars come and go, fascinated by the headlights and taillights. It reminded me of the red and white blood cells they told us about in science, and I finally understood what they meant when they said the city was alive.”

He wasn’t sure whether or not she was changing the subject from his discomfort in admitting a level of sadness in his life or due to a simple lack of response on his side. Regardless, he was taken aback by her admission. He’d never met anyone like her, so taken by the simple things in life. It had been something that captivated him about her from the beginning, apparent even in the words she wrote in a notebook, but watching it happen was an experience all its own. She looked thoughtful as her eyes reflected the lights below, chewing on the inside of her cheek. It was startling how observant she could be, yet a quality he appreciated in her. She hugged his jacket closer to her body as a particularly strong gust of wind blew across the water and he laughed.

“You’re cold. Where’s your apartment?”

She pushed herself from the railing and turned, beginning to walk again. He easily kept pace beside her, pushing his hands deep into his pockets to restrain himself from reaching out to her as she strode up a hill that led deeper into the city. Her mouth was pressed into a line as she silently continued beside him. He felt guilty for avoiding the subject she brought up and cleared his throat before speaking.

“You already knew I was sad, remember?” he asked, bumping playfully into her side. She snapped her head in his direction in reply and he continued. “It’s why I read your journal.”

“That was different. You were telling me you had once felt depressed. I didn’t realize you still are.”

“I haven’t been lately,” he replied. It was something he said casually, but it felt much heavier than that. Maybe it was the skyline set before him, lit brightly in the dark night, that gave him the courage to tell her how strong she made him feel, even if it was just vaguely implied. Blood rushed to his face, though there was no way of telling whether she understood the undertones of what he said or if she simply took his words at face value.

She made no reply as she led them further into the city. Harry chewed on his cheek as he walked beside her, training his eyes ahead. A few more moments passed before she grabbed his arm, tugging him toward a building he was about to pass right by. His feet stopped abruptly on the pavement as she took out a key and inserted it into the lock beside a glass door. He held it for her once it clicked open and she mumbled a quiet thanks, leading him into the lobby. She pushed a button on the elevator and tapped her foot impatiently.

“Nervous about something?”

The moment the words left his mouth, he instantly regretted them. It was second nature for him to make a sarcastic, suggestive comment, but now wasn’t the time. Charlie looked up to him, somewhat taken aback before she let out a quiet chuckle.

“A little, I guess,” she admitted truthfully. “I don’t bring a lot of people to my apartment.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged, the elevator doors sliding open. She stepped in first and he followed a heartbeat later, watching as she pressed the button for the eighth floor.

“You can tell a lot about a person by taking a look around their home. It’s a really personal thing, when you think about it.”

Harry pressed his lips into a line as he considered this. These days, he didn’t spend enough time in one place for it to really become a reflection of himself, but he could see how it might be that for others.

“We can do something else if you’re uncomfortable with me being in your apartment. I’m sure there’s somewhere else we could go.”

Charlie rolled her eyes at him, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

“I wouldn’t have offered it up if I was uncomfortable with it. You know me pretty well to begin with. It’s just new for me, is all.”

The elevator chimed their arrival. He stepped off after her, shoving his hands into his pockets as he looked around. She led him down a hallway to the left and he followed. A garish red and gold carpet was flattened with age to the floors. There were no adornments in the hallways, just fresh painted walls. She paused in front of a heavy wooden door, poking her key into it and turning.

“It’s an old building, but they’re trying to fix it up,” she explained quietly just before pushing open the door. She reached to her left to flick a switch and light entered the room.

Hardwood floors stretched across the expanse of the main room where a bed without a frame was situated in the corner. Closer to the entryway was a lone couch, a TV set across from it, separated by a squat black coffee table where a few magazines were spread out with post-it flags tucked between the pages. The walls were covered in various shaped frames and mirrors, different photos spaced throughout.

Charlie took a few steps into the room, sliding his jacket from her slight frame and opening a nearby closet, where she hung it while he wordlessly took in the space before him. She closed the door quietly when she was finished, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Do you want anything to drink? I have water, orange juice, mint tea, diet Dr. Pepper...”

She trailed the words quietly and he reminded himself of how sacred this place was to her, an escape from her parents her brother helped her make. He cleared his throat.

“Tea, please.”

She nodded and headed in the direction of the kitchen, just to his left, hidden from view by a small lip in the walls. She paused in the doorway, pressing her body against the frame as she looked at him. It took him a moment to notice, but when he did he met her gaze timidly.

“You can look around. I don’t mind.”

He opened his mouth to ask if she was certain and she rolled her eyes, holding a hand up to stop him.

“Spare me,” she laughed before pushing herself up and into the kitchen. He smiled and slipped off his shoes, just as she had when she first entered. His boots looked so large there, situated beside her fallen over heels. He stood up and walked tentatively into the room, drawn first to the collection of magazines that had been fanned out on her table.

They were mostly from music and entertainment magazines, though lesser known publications. A few local newspapers were tucked in there as well, and he picked one up and flipped through the pages to see what was marked. There seemed nothing extraordinary about the pages themselves, but on small post-it notes she had notes written in the sides. He squinted down to read her small cursive writing, something he’d become accustomed to reading in the last few months.

Photo placement, even margin spaces. Captions in lower corner with corresponding numbers rather than beside each one. Sideways text. Find headline font.

He closed the magazine as he tried to recall what her major was in. It must have been layout design of some sort if she was keeping tabs on things like that. He softly placed the magazine back in the pile, his eyes immediately drawn to a light blue color, another publication that had been hidden beneath the others. He pulled this one out, smiling despite himself. It was his Teen Vogue cover. His own eyes stared out at him from the front, his lower lip sucked between his teeth in a pout. He recalled rolling his eyes when he saw it for the first time, but he never really realized how ridiculous he looked until that moment.

A shuffling was heard from the kitchen and he shoved the magazine back under the others, deciding it would probably be less embarrassing for the both of them if he didn’t mention his discovery. Still, he couldn’t help the smile that stayed in place as he walked over to one of the walls beside her bed.

The first frame his eye was drawn to was a large poster that seemed to be set directly in the center of the others. It was in a glass frame and he squinted as he looked at, his eyes moving from the cream background to the black square in the middle, looking to made of bits of unwound casette tape and tied with a small white string. On the black box in a pink stamp was written The Postal Service. Beneath it, in the bottom corner, was details of the concert. He made mental note to look into the band before moving on.

The next frame was a collage of photos of her family. Most of them were clearly snapped in the 90’s and he smiled at the sight of her round baby face, grinning up at the disposable camera from beside a fair haired boy who appeared to be a few years older than her, his arm thrown around her shoulder. They were sat on a high peak at some national park, an expanse of evergreen trees prominent in the valley below them. Below that photo was one of her at the age of eleven, standing beside the same boy a few years older. He had his arm around her shoulder in much the same way, but his smile seemed more wary, reserved. Charlie looked the same as when she had been a child, her face full and round with baby fat, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail. They were at some sort of party, evident by the older people milling about in the background and various plates of food that were spaced out on the table behind them. Following that picture, he landed on one of Charlie standing between both her parents. They were dressed up and posing outside some restaurant. He realized this must have been taken sometime during Emmett’s eight year absence. Sadness welled in him and he turned to another wall.

He was facing his own reflection in an oval mirror with a gold frame. His eyes flickered away immediately to one of the many smaller frames on the wall. It was a collection of landscape photos, more artistic prints. He looked at each one in turn, in awe of the beauty that was captured in the two-dimensional photo.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked and his eyes returned to the mirror, seeing her reflection just behind his. He turned and took the black mug she offered him. His name was written in chalk on it and he looked at it, fascinated at the chalkboard paint. She laughed and lifted her own mug to her mouth, backing away from him to make her way to the couch, setting her matching cup beside a half-burned candle. He sat down on the couch, watching her as she plugged her Macbook into a cord attatched to the TV set. She pressed the power button to the television and the image mirrored that of her laptop. Pulling up Spotify, she looked over her shoulder at him.

“Any requests?”

He shook his head, smiling at her before bringing the tea to his lips.

“You have better taste than me,” he replied. She chuckled in response.

“You’re a musician, Harry.”

“So? I’m too busy to discover anything new to listen to,” he shrugged.

Charlie wrinkled her nose at him dismissively before turning back to her computer. She chose a playlist from the side bar called “Sunsets/ Nights” and hit the shuffle button. Immediately a song began playing, vaguely optimistic. She seemed satisfied and stood, crossing the room to sit inches away from him on the couch. He was reading the title of the song, “Kill The Light” by a band called Kitten. He raised his eyebrows at her and she laughed.

“I listen to a lot of smaller bands, most of it indie rock. Seattle’s an experimental city when it comes to music, so I guess it’s in my blood.”

“I saw your poster over there. The Postal Service?”

“Do you know the band Death Cab For Cutie?” she asked. He nodded, shifting his weight so he was facing her, one foot on the floor and the other crossing his knee.

“Gemma loves them. They’re your favorite band, right?”

At that her eyes lit up. She blushed slightly before nodding.

“It’s easy for me to forget that you know things like that,” she admitted. He made no response, encouraging her to continue with her story.

“Anyway, it’s the same singer and songwriter, just slightly different types of music. Emmett liked The Postal Service better than Death Cab, but I was the opposite. When they came to town when I was younger, he talked my parents into taking me. It was the first concert I ever went to. He tracked down the poster and bought it for me as a birthday present when he came back, before everything went down with my parents and we were still working on being siblings again,” she explained.

“Do you go to shows often?” he asked. She cocked her head, unsure of how to reply. He watched her as she considered this, lifting her legs to sit cross-legged, positioned sideways so she was directly facing him.

“I used to go a lot in high school, but even then it was mostly local bands. I saw the Jonas Brothers once, but mostly to humor Allison because she was obsessed with them.”

Harry began to laugh and she joined in. They fell into a comfortable silence and he took deep drink of the warm tea in his hand as his eyes shifted to the TV screen when the song changed. The XX sounded more familiar, he’d at least heard the name, though the song itself wasn’t something he’d heard before. He enjoyed it, though, sitting beside her on the couch while the music gave him something to focus on when they weren’t in conversation. It was nice to know she was getting used to him, relaxing into his presence.

A moment later, she stood beside him. He looked up at her as she moved toward a dresser in the corner.

“Sorry, this dress is annoying. Do you mind if I change really quick?” she asked, her eyes searching his as her hands felt around in the drawers.

“Not at all. It’s your apartment.”

She smiled, pulling out a pair of yoga pants and a tee shirt before crossing the room toward the bathroom, which was just off the kitchen. She shut the door behind her and he picked up his mug, enjoying the soft tingle of the mint as it slid down his throat. A heartbeat later, Charlie was emerging again, dress in hand.

“Don’t judge,” she warned in a low voice, yet a smile was playing on her lips. The yoga pants were capris, folded over at the top. Her shirt was white, the front of it a vintage font that encouraged some team called the Pirates to “Go, Fight, Win!” in red letters beside cartoonish depiction of a mascot. She lay the dress out flat on her bed before walking over to the mirror on her wall. Her fingers began to work at her hair, pulling bobby pins from it as her hair fell just past her shoulders, tangled up in an elaborate braid. She wove her fingers between each piece of hair, brushing it out in a cascade of waves. She reached for a ponytail.

“Leave it down.”

The words left his mouth before he could bite them back. She glanced at him through the mirror, her hand frozen in its action. He cleared his throat.

“It looks good right now. Don’t worry about it,” he elaborated, doing his best impression of nonchalance before looking down at his hands, folded on his stomach as he leaned back into the couch. He kept his eyes focused there, not sure what to do or say next. A moment later, she was back beside him, folding her knees beneath herself as she sunk into the seat. He kept his eyes trained ahead, scanning through some of the titles of songs in her playlist, but he could feel her eyes on him. A moment later he glanced over to her.

“What?” he asked.

She looked surprised, as if she hadn’t noticed how intently she’d been watching him. She certainly hadn’t expected to be called out on it. She shook her head slightly, taking a drink of tea, but keeping her eyes trained on him. He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her and she sighed, caught.

“You’re just… different than I thought you would be,” she finally said with a shrug.

A pause.

“How so?” he inquired, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he sat his cup back down on the table.

“You’re normal, I guess. Which is interesting, because your life is anything but.”

He didn’t look at her, but inclined his head in her direction as he listened to her response.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she confessed a moment later. He finally lifted his eyes to meet hers as she began to elaborate. “You’re just a naturally good person, I guess, but you don’t let it show even though it gets to you. You soldier on. You’re… brave.”

“I’m not brave,” he replied immediately, rejecting the idea. “I’m terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of just how far my good character will go. When I’ll break. What kind of person I’ll be once I’ve passed that limit.”

The silence stretched between them. Harry had never admitted to this fear, not to anyone. Somehow Charlie had managed to coax this one out of him without him having the faintest inkling of it. It was quick, painless, like ripping off a band aid, and he was beginning to feel the sting of the effects only afterward. He’d spent so much time pushing the thoughts away, but there they were, laid out in the open. He wondered if this would change Charlie’s opinion of him. He braced himself for her reaction.

“Who do you have, Harry?”

The question caught him off guard.

“What?”

“Outside this microcosm of a world you live in, besides your band and your family, who do you have?”

He took a moment to ponder this. Did other celebrities count? People he saw in passing all the time, those who lived lives similar to his, who understood him? Somehow he knew they didn’t, that she wasn’t talking about any of that. She was referring to his life before all this, the friends he could steadily count on no matter what. He came up short.

“You seem really solitary, but I also know how hard you’ve been trying to be a friend to me. Maybe you’ve reached that point where you could use one for yourself.”

Harry’s eyes searched Charlie’s as she sat mere inches away from him, leaning toward him as she spoke. He thought about what Gemma had told him, how she had persuaded him into coming to Seattle in the first place to find her. She told him that it seemed to her Charlie could use someone, but maybe it was the opposite. Perhaps Gemma had sensed that in him, knew before even he did that he could use someone like Charlie in his life and that letting her get away would have been a tremendous mistake.

As the urge to reach out and touch her built within him and he bit it back, he was becoming increasingly aware that maybe friendship with Charlie wasn’t really what he was after, but it was a start. Thinking about it, seeing Charlie only made him want more of her, left him longing for her moments after they departed from each other. The awareness of this made his insides burn and he looked away from her promptly, his eyes falling from her face just as her phone began to buzz on the table. She reached back, picking it up and opening the message she’d just recieved.

“Harry?”

At the sound of his name, he sat up and looked to her. She had a grin on her face and an eyebrow arched, a mischevious look he’d never seen before but immediately loved.

“Just how good are you at laser tag?”
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I remember really loving to write this chapter. I'm all about the little interactions between them and how that can build the story.
Anyway, comments, questions, concerns? Leave me a comment here or at socoolyouseem.tumblr.com! (: