Dead Flowers | H.S.

Chapter Seventeen

"Have I ever told you about my grandparents?"

Looking at Harry's reflection behind me in the mirror, I shook my head. Harry smiled a small, dainty smile. His curly hair tickled my skin as he pressed his open mouth to my collarbone, eyes untrained on my busy hands in the bathroom sink.

"My grandmother was much younger than my grandfather. He was twenty-five when she was seventeen. He was madly in love with her. Wrote her letters, left her flowers at her door. Kissed her whenever nobody was looking. Her parent's weren't fond of him because they wanted her with somebody younger, somebody with more ambition than my grandfather because he had chosen to be a chemistry teacher. They didn't allow them to spend time together, but it never stopped them. She snuck out to see him, he snuck in to see her."

I flushed and leaned into Harry's chest, turning my head to kiss his ears.

"Her parents put her on lockdown finally. They painted her windows shut, put a lock on her room. They went in the next morning and there was broken glass everywhere. My grandfather had taken her away. They were well on their way to another state by the time her parent's found out. She took the clothes on her back and a few items she couldn't live without-her journal, her varsity sweater, her rings, and her favorite book-The Enchanted April. Her parents and her eventually rekindled their relationship after she had my aunt, but she never collected her previous belongings," Harry paused, smiled at the feeling of my lips on his cheeks, ""That's my past," she used to say."

"Then what?"

"Then they had nine kids."

A funny feeling beginning at my scalp trickled down my body and ended in my toes, making me flush. Harry pulled me closer to him, resting his chin in the curve of my neck. He watched me in the mirror while I bit back a smile. I let him breathe me in and rested against him.

"What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about Wayne," Harry said gently, mouth hidden in my hair, "I'm thinking about the way he would look at you and the way he would tease me because I love you so much that it hurts. You make me miss him," Harry said it slowly, eyebrows pulled together, "you make me miss him because I know that he would have loved to know you. He would've loved you. He would've wanted you."

I had never lost anybody the way Harry had lost his brother. Harry was quiet while I reflected on his words. I wanted to know Wayne, too, more than Harry understood. I wanted to see his eyes and touch his skin and press a kiss to his cheek whenever we saw each other. I wanted him to visit Harry and I in our new house and meet his new lovers and spend late nights drinking at our kitchen table.

It was five in the morning and it was our last full day in Portland-the next day we were going to pile into his car at noon and drive back to town. I would stay at his apartment another night and then we would part.

"What was he like?"

"He was smart. He knew a little something about everything. Girls liked that about him and they also liked his blue eyes and his well-kept hair. He dressed nice everyday-I swear he had a closet full of ties and pressed shirts."

I stayed quiet, listening, watching Harry's dark eyes.

"He was a better brother than I was. He always had my back. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a total asshole to him, but he was never unkind to me. He did not have a mean bone in his body. He caught butterflies in jars and let them go after an hour after he drew them. He never let me fight anybody. He always kept me cool."