small world

chapter 32

HARRY

The combination of light streaming down on my face through the windowpane and the smell of tea rising from the kitchen below was enough to pry my dreary green eyes open. The sun was warm on my skin; nothing was quite like a sunny winters day. Out the window I noticed last nights snow had melted and the sun shine brightly, the white Christmas dissolved in the rearview mirror. I slipped out of the sheets and collected my clothes scattered abstractly on the floor, pulling on my pajama pants and a t-shirt that hadn’t lasted very long on my body last night. I looked over at Charlie, who was sound asleep, probably exhausted from the night before – I never ceased to wear her out. Leaving her to rest I snuck out the door, descending the stairs into the kitchen where my mother and sister sat sipping tea and chatting. My mother’s eyes lit up when I entered the room, always so happy to have me waking up under her roof.

“Good morning sweetheart! Where is Miss Charlie?” she sung cheerfully.

“She’s still sleeping, but I didn’t want to miss out on tea with two of my favorite people this morning seeing how we leave so soon!” her expression faded when I brought up the truth and I found myself wanting to take back the words. She spun on her heels and pulled me a mug out of the cupboard and I sat on a stool next to my sister who must have been three cups deep in Yorkshire tea by now.

“I must say Harry, I know you can’t remember much of Charlie from when you were little, but the way you two used to look at each other, your eyes were both so wide and sparkled when the other was around – the same way you two look at each other now,” she said with her head almost shaking in disbelief as she continued “her mum would have loved to see the two of you end up like this” my heart was smiling as she spoke, it was always so unreal to hear about the way we were as kids, as if we knew one day we would be together, our little hearts unaware of the love we would soon feel for one another.

“I remember you two were inseparable; nothings changed” Gemma chuckled lightly, smiling into her cuppa.

“I love her,” I said truthfully before sipping on my tea “I really think she’s the one for me.”

Gemma set her tea down and looked at me with squinting eyes as if she were questioning how true the feelings behind my words were. I felt my mothers eyes looking back and fourth between the two of us like a tennis observer during a match.

“You’re still so young, Harry,” she stressed and my head tilted in confusion, what did my age have to do with anything at all? “Do you really think you know what love is, enough to say that you love her? You two have only been together a few months now, remember.”

As if I could forget even a moment in the last few months. Barely struggling to remember even the finest of details, I’d lie awake at night replaying the memories, big and small. From the first moment I saw her in the kitchen, to the Ed Sheeran event when I sang down to her on stage. From chasing after her on the train to the hours we spent in the car with the windows down and the open road. Gemma was speaking such rubbish; her words irritated me like mosquito bites on your fingers.

“I don’t just love her, I’m in love with her. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

“But you’ve only lived eighteen years, who knows what will happen” she said finishing off her cup and sliding it across the grey speckled granite to my mother, who filled it back to the rim. My mother was saying nothing, knowing better not to take sides between her children. I searched her face for back up, she had just said how obvious our love was at such a young age, I needed her two cents but she wasn’t getting involved in this one.