Eternal [HS]

Chapter Thirteen

He hums it lowly, tapping the steering wheel to the slow beat of the song, "I only have eyes for you..."

It takes her breath away to hear him sing, even if he isn't trying.

From where she sits beside him with her legs curled up on the seat, he can feel her eyes burning into his skin whenever he appears too focused on the empty road ahead of them to notice.

"I love this song," she says, letting her head fall back against the seat in her exercise-induced exhaustion.

His head turns ever so slightly to steal a glimpse of her in response to what she said. He takes the sight of her sitting there with his sweatshirt hanging off her with sleeves so long, they cover her hands like gloves and allows a soft half-smile to appear on his face.

Somehow, even beneath the weight of his full attention being turned onto her, she notices the car start to slow down. They aren't stopping yet, but she knows they're coming up on their destination. He takes every turn much more carefully than before. For most of the ride here, he didn't chance a look at a map or his phone to see if they were on the right track, so she assumes that he comes here often.

He brings the arm he had dangling out of the window back in once the path turns to dirt and becomes narrower than the wide tarmac road they relied on for the majority of the drive. The hand rests on the steering wheel with his other one before it drifts away to fiddle with the top button of his shirt.

"This version of this song was released sixty-two years ago, probably a little while before your parents were born," he says, turning the wheel and directing the car down another small road, and she has never been so painfully aware of their difference in age until now, "S'one of my favorites. Niall was the one that turned me onto it."

She swallows back a lump in her throat at the sight of him popping the shirt button open in idle restlessness.

Ignoring her disobedient mind, she responds, "My parents were born in the mid-70s...is fifteen years 'a little while' to you?"

The car rolls to a stop at the dead-end of the dirt path they've spent the past few minutes traveling down. Those limestone mountains are so close now, they loom menacingly over where they sit in the car, and she looks up at the nearest one. It's the smallest of the one she's seen so far, only nine-hundred feet or so tall in comparison to the largest mountain's three-thousand, but the cliff's edge is a steep, near-vertical wall of rock on one side.

He shifts gears into park, switching the hand that rests on the top of the steering wheel to the one that was fiddling with the buttons of his shirt, and unbuckles his seatbelt.

"Fifteen years is to me what one year is to you."

With that, he's already leaving the car and shutting the door a little too harshly behind him.

Jo hastily unbuckles her seatbelt, not wanting to be left behind, and steps out of the car after him.

He's already walking up past the end of the dirt road with nothing but a blanket tucked under his arm and a bottle of wine grasped firmly in his hand. The gravel crunches beneath the soles of his shoes, and her eyes track every move he makes. From the quick strides that force her to jog to catch up to him to the gentle tilt of his head as he glances around the area to whatever it is he's seeking, she watches all of it.

The song from the car continues playing in her head during her pursuit of him, the classic late fifties sound refusing to leave her alone. It was the way he brought it to life that made it particularly infectious. The song itself is catchy and lovely, but it's the memory of Harry's voice singing it that haunts her thoughts and drowns out the sounds of nature surrounding them.