Hearts Like Ours

Harry groaned at the sound of his phone’s alarm. Blindly, he reached for it on the table and turned it off, checking the hotel clock for the time. It was 4:15 AM, and he had a 6 o’clock departing flight to catch.

His mouth felt dry. First order of business was wiping the sleep from his eyes as he moved in the direction of the bathroom. He filled a paper cup up with water and swallowed it back as quickly as possible. His limbs felt heavy, his head still buzzing from the whiskey and heartache.

As he turned on all the lights and began packing up all the things he’d left out the night before, he pushed thoughts of Charlie away as best as he could. It would work better that way; without her distracting him from the task at hand. Sooner, rather than later, he’d have to get over her.

She hadn’t even said goodbye.

He felt thankful that he’d had the foresight to call ahead for a car to shuttle him to the airport. It was idling outside as he checked out at the front desk, his duffle bag slung across his shoulders and another rolling suitcase on the floor beside him. He thanked the hotel manager for his helpfulness over the past few days, then turned and forced his way out of the lobby toward a waiting car, much like he had seven months earlier in New Orleans when he’d stumbled upon a journal laying in the road.

The driver helped him with his bags, quietly stuffing them in the trunk. Harry quietly muttered a thanks before climbing into the back seat. He slammed the door shut behind him and leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. His eyes fell shut as the car began crawling down the road toward the nearest highway exit.

His eyes remained closed throughout the duration of the drive. When the car did finally stop in front of the airport twenty minutes later, he forced himself up. Paying the driver, he pulled his bags from the trunk and began his slow journey through the lobby, toward his terminal.

This early on a Thursday morning, the airport wasn’t too busy. He printed off his ticket at a kiosk before dropping off the suitcase that was too large to be considered a carry-on. His next stop would have to be security, but he wasn’t feeling up to it yet. Instead, he started in that direction, remembering sighting a Starbucks upon his arriving flight.

The line was ridiculous, but he stepped into it, desperate for caffiene and a pastry to hold over his acidic stomach. The speakers overhead were playing a Coldplay song, which did nothing to lift is already tired mood. Outside, it was raining and foggy, the sun just beginning to rise behind the clouds. Instead of focusing on these things, he pulled out his mobile. It wasn’t until he opened it to a blank notification screen that he realized it was habit; he was checking for messages from Charlie.

In a last-ditch attempt to distract himself, he snapped a photo of the Starbucks line with the intent for a cheeky Instagram post. He opened the app, hit the blue button, and waited for his existing albums to load. His thumb hovered above the one he’d just taken, but his eyes strayed to the others from his two-week stay in Seattle. He hadn’t realized just how many there were, especially those with Charlie in them. One was a group shot from laser tag, another the one of her falling asleep on the monorail. Beside that was the one he’d snapped of their shadows at the museum, and even one of her laughing at him, her hand trying to block the lens as she shoved a cinnamon roll in her mouth, sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Sir?”

Harry hadn’t realized how far he’d progressed in the line. He looked up to meet the eyes of an exhausted-looking barista. She was watching him expectantly.

“What can I get for you?”

Harry cleared his throat as he locked his phone, shoving it in his pocket. He ordered the first thing his eyes fell upon, a hazelnut macchiato. Swiftly, he handed over the bills and moved out of line to wait for his order. As he scanned the small area for a table, he realized it was to no avail. The tables were full of businessmen on laptops and single moms treating their children to shaked lemonades.

His eyes landed on the furthest wall, made up completely of glass. Beyond it, planes were coasting on the tarmac, arriving at their ports for passengers to board. He checked his watch, realizing he had a good thirty minutes before he’d have to worry about arriving at the correct terminal. For now, he wanted nothing more but to sink into his macchiato and watch passers by.

The barista called his order and he thanked her as he took it from the counter. She barely batted an eye, used to the early hours at the counter and the line that wrapped nearly around the room. Taking a sip, he turned on his heel to begin in the direction of a bench near the window. It was while he was walking in that direction, that his eyes fell upon it, and he stopped in his tracks.

It wasn’t on the bench that he had originally started for. It was a good fifteen feet away to his right, and if he hadn’t been so attuned to it, he would have completely missed the appearance of the book that had become his constant companion for nearly six months.

He slowly approached it, unsure whether or not it was really there or if he’d willed it into existing. He sat down slowly beside it, as if it could be spooked away with sudden movement. The coffee was forgotten the moment he put it down near his feet. He was too busy reaching forward to pick up the purple leatherbound book. His fingers ran over the details of the flowered imprints, feathered over the spine, before moving to carefully unravel the strap around it.

It was exactly the same as before, filled with her looping cursive handwriting. Except now, when he flipped the pages at the end, where there had once been blank space, there were new entries. His eyes greedily swept over them, taking in every word, every intricately crafted letter that recounted the last two weeks.

The story ended before it was all told. She hadn’t found the time to write anything about Allison’s birthday, or their almost kiss at laser tag. She hadn’t written about Sunday dinner or the way he’d held her as she cried in Emmett’s room. A wave of disappointment washed over him, because these were the key events in their developing relationship, the only things he desperately needed to hear her opinion on. It was with a heart heavy with disappointment that he began to shut the book, only to have a piece of paper come floating out.

He reached out to grab it from where it had fluttered to the ground near his cooling coffee. It was covered in her handwriting and it looked messier than her other entries, as if done in a hurry. He carefully unfolded it and began to read.

I fucked up.

It’s so stupid for me to be doing this, and I know it, but I can’t say the words to you. There’s no way that they would ever be able to leave my mouth, and even if they did, they would fall from me like a joke. They would be vague, and I’d still feel heavy and you would be disappointed, but forgiving nonetheless, and I can’t do that to you. Not after everything you’ve done for me.

So here it is. I fucked up.

I’ve been consistently fucking up since the moment you showed up at the library and I pushed you away. Or whenever you would try to push deeper to really get a glimpse into the person I am, and I’d shut you out.

I haven’t slept since you left because I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m laying here and I’m thinking about everything I did wrong with you and how you’re still here, still trying. You think I see you differently, but the truth is that you see me in a way no one else ever has. For some reason, you took it upon yourself to actually care, something that’s been missing in my life since Emmett left, and something I thought I was starting to regain when he died. You see, every time anyone has ever attempted to give a damn about me, it’s been taken out from beneath my feet. It’s easier for everyone involved if I don’t let it happen again. Not with Emmett, not with my parents, not with Allison or Cam.

But it’s different with you. No one has ever been so persistent with me, and I’m not sure if it’s a testament to a stubborn aspect of your personality or a true want that you have, but either way I can’t fight you on it. I don’t want to. No one has ever made me feel so worth something.

That sentence was awful, I’m not sure about grammar on that one, but I think you know what I mean.

It’s in my nature to over-think things, but I’m tired of doing that. I’m so exhausted from all the running my mind has been doing when it comes to you. It’s constantly calculating, trying to figure out the approximate amount of time I have before you forget me or move on to something more exciting. My brain’s doing its best to find the perfect algorithm to figure in the amount of miles that will be between us, the amount of girls out there dying to be with you, and the probability that you would ever choose me.

But then you do that thing where you look at me so intently, like everything I say matters to you, and all that goes out the window. And I try so hard to regain some semblance of composure, to remember all that logic, and I can’t. There’s something about being around you that makes me forget that you have all this power to hurt me. And it’s not that I don’t trust you, because there’s nothing I do more whenever I’m with you. It’s that I cannot fathom a reason as to why I’d ever hold any ounce of interest to someone like you.

I never meant to hurt you, because I didn’t think things would ever get this far. I thought I was protecting myself, but that ended up hurting you in the long run, and there’s nothing I wanted less than that. I guess I just want you to know why I’ve done the things I’ve done and why I asked you to leave last night when I would have much rather given in to you.

I know you inevitably have to leave, but I need you to know before you go that I want to try. All this thinking about it has got me tangled up and hurting and I just wish I had more time with you so I could work on changing that about myself. I want more moments dancing with you on a balcony or fighting with you over laser tag, because those are the moments when I don’t care about whether or not I get hurt in the long run. I’m not thinking about that, because it’s all worth it.

I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to realize it.

Harry let his eyes linger on the page a moment longer before folding it again. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but his eyes immediately fell upon her when he looked up. She hadn’t been sitting there when he first sat down, but sometime throughout the duration of his read, he had become aware of her presence on a subconscious level. Of course she would be there; how else would the journal have found its way to him?

She was pointedly watching the planes in the distance, taking a sip of her tea. He couldn’t be sure from the distance, but it seemed she was keeping a grip on her hands in order to keep them steady. That letter had revealed so much in comparison to what she’d been shutting out. It was new for her, this oppenness, and her apparent nerves were understandable.

He was moving in her direction before he had even made a conscious decision to do so. She looked tired and highly caffienated. Her eyes didn’t move to his until he was sitting in the chair opposite her, across a table.

“My flight leaves in an hour,” he said, running a hand over his face. Charlie made no response but to drop her eyes to her Starbucks cup as she picked at one of her nails. He cleared his throat before finishing. “I should probably call Gemma to tell her I won’t be on it.”

A smile graced her lips, soft but warm. From her mouth, a soft windchime of a laugh escaped her.

“I don’t want you to do that. You have to go home sometime, Harry.”

“You’re thinking again,” he murmered playfully. She rolled her eyes before letting them come to a rest on him.

“You have other obligations.”

“They can wait.”

“I don’t want to make you do that.”

“I’ve been doing it for the last two weeks. One more day won’t kill anybody.”

Charlie made no response but to tuck a fallen piece of hair behind her ear as she smiled to herself. A moment later, she lifted her tea back to her lips.

“You look tired,” he told her after a moment.

“There’s that Styles charm I love so much,” she replied, heavy on sarcasm. He laughed.

“Let’s go. We could both use a kip.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” she mumbled as she stood. He laughed, waiting for her to join him. When she did, he easily moved his hand to entwine with hers. It was a simple gesture, but one that spoke volumes.

“Nap,” he clarified after a moment.

“You cancel your flight home so you can spend another day with me and you want to nap?”

He smiled, walking in time beside her as they made their way through Sea-Tac airport.

“Maybe not the ideal first date, but at least it’s practical.”

“I’m sorry, I must have missed the part where you asked me on this date,” she retorted, looking over at him with bright eyes. Harry smirked.

“That’s weird. I distinctly remember you agreeing to it.”

“Do you?”

“It wasn’t in so many words,” he told her. She laughed.

“Yeah? How did I do it then?”

He paused, tilting his head to one side as he thought of this. They were at a customer service desk, waiting in line to be helped. He’d have to request his luggage back or to be otherwise re-located to whatever flight he’d take the next day. It was sure to be a hastle, but with Charlie’s warm hand in his, he was feeling up to the challenge.

“You kissed me,” he finally responded, pulling her into him. She let out a particularly enthused round of laughter.

“That was smooth,” she commented between giggles, tilting her head back to look up at him. He shrugged nonchalantly, all dimples as he watched her.

She lifted her weight on her tip toes, her left hand on his shoulder for support. He leaned down to meet her half-way, their lips meeting a moment later for a brief, satisfying kiss. When she broke away a few seconds later, he rested his head against hers, taking a mental note to remember how this felt.

In his jacket pocket, the weight of a leather journal rested assuringly against his body.