Dead Flowers | H.S.

Chapter Sixteen

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The wind whipped through Harry and I's hair as we sped down the highway, the only lights on the road from either our headlights or from the white rice moon. His hand had been on my knee since he had told me.

"Twins?"

Harry's eyes, watery and green, closed.

"Yeah. Fraternal. I was the better looking one, he was the smarter one."

The diner around us liquified and we were left in a booth alone amid the wreckage, melting ice cream before us. I held his hands for a long time and when he opened his eyes, he smiled.

"We're going to have a good time where we're going."

The simple, sweet smile that always graced my lips when Harry talked made him smile bigger, harder. He blinked and cleared his throat.

"I wouldn't know," I teased with a shrug, "you've not told me where we're staying."

Bowie flooded the car methodically and Harry tapped his fingers on the wheel to the beat, occasionally chiming in. A warm feeling of complacency devoured my heart and flooded my veins-I was out of Astoria, I was away from Ryder, I was away from my parents. Overcome with the urge to laugh and cry and scream at the same time, I covered my mouth and closed my eyes.

"What's going on in that pretty head of yours?"

"I'm finally getting away. Nobody has ever taken me away before."

He reached over and grabbed my knee, pulling me closer to him as the dark world raced past us.

"You know, I could take you away forever. If that's what you wanted."

"I don't know what I want yet." 

- -

It was nearly midnight whenever we settled into our motel room. It was every color that I loved-orange, yellow, brown. The carpet was an inviting, freshly vacuumed shag and the walls were a soft yellowed color that warmed my cheeks.

"I like these blankets," Harry commented, settling our luggage over the California King bed in the middle of the room. The quilts were pleated and stitched seemingly handmade, a hodgepodge of squares and stripes and dots of color.

I settled quietly down onto the bed and looked at the mostly bare room-just a table with a lamp on the side of the bed, a tiny desk before the big window, and a bathroom hardly big enough for the both of us. With wind blown hair, we sat and stared at the blank, tiny TV. We stared at nothing for a long time, and I only holding hands with him whenever he asked me to.

"We're in Portland."

"Yes, we are in Portland."

"And we're away from..."

"Everything," Harry pressed his face against mine, put his hand on my thigh.