A premonition of Love

Hinode

"You can't just drop a story like that and not preface it with, 'this one time I was at Mick Jagger's baby shower.'" Ada's face was open as morning windows on the first sunny day after rough weather. Harry loved it. "I need a warning that your aged doppelgänger is the feature of the story." He watched her throat work over a sip of her first glass of the new bottle.

"Mick doesn't like it when you mention his age." He picked up his, second? third? Glass of wine and inclined it at her. "Bit of a Peter Pan syndrome." He leaned in close to the lips he hadn't had the pleasure of since 10 am, 15 hours, not that he was counting, and stage whispered so she could feel it, "but don't tell him that."

"Yeah, next time I'm hanging with old Mick I'll be sure to mention his boyband protege thinks he has Peter Pan syndrome!" She laughed and he could feel that and taste the Pinot Noir on her breath. Right, now, her love of red wine made sense. But he'd had her pegged for Sauvignon Blanc. Something refreshing and that went down easy. He supposed now though it made sense she drank something with much more body. "But I think Peter Pan Syndrome gets handed out with spandex pants to would be rockstars.  Though you seem to have missed the all call."

"I don't wear spandex!" He gave her a face fit for Liam, could feel the offense in his sneer. Well, he did to box, but under baggy shorts.

"Yet!" She poked his big huge dimple. "And don't knock it, Bowie and Mercury wore spandex."  She cocked her raven head. "But you don't seem to want a neverland zip code..." She left it open.

"What do you mean?" He had a feeling he knew, but felt reluctant to answer. He liked the flirty conversation they'd been having, rambling from her making fun of his grandad socks and him asking her worst LA traffic story to him sharing about how he just caught himself from pushing Mick into the cake at his baby shower. He wondered when his legs would stop feeling too long for his body. He had no trouble sharing embarrassing stories, but, he liked white wine conversation. He shouldn't have been too surprised she wanted to talk about something deeper. He maybe just wasn't ready. At least when he was the subject. He wouldn't mind a view of her depths.

"I mean, you seem, shockingly mature for a quarter century old. I know you started young, but Jagger wasn't much older, and he's certainly still trying to grow oats to sow. You could definitely still be running wild, and excused for it I bet. With the dimples and the rambly speeches....."

"Um," he looked around. He needed to get into this, if all those fields he felt when she touched him were ever gonna he real. Harry never went to college, but this felt like the conversations his friends would talk about, the all night ones where people got vulnerable. So, the words stacked up like lemmings ready to jump, the slow ramble of an explanation. He'd want reciprocity. He hoped that this was a foundation, not just an amazing experience he would remember long past their expiration date. Like those conversations often were, he was given to understand. He gathered his courage around him like a baggy coat; he'd done way scarier things than talked, really talked, to a woman he could love. Harry, admittedly, sucked at communication, sometimes conversation. He was gonna do it anyway. "God, this will sound pretentious as fuck, but like, my mum always said I was an old soul with a young spirit." He sighed and leaned back with his glass. "When the band started we had a smorgasbord of bad choices all of a sudden. Maybe not, like, bad choices, but like too much too soon. Liam said it was like college on steroids, and it was. Girls everywhere, offering everything- even if they didn't know what it meant. And um, not that alcohol was brand new to any of us, but the party drugs around were."

He looked down from the wallpaper in her room he'd been focusing on, they'd been lounging in her living area, and he was sorry he'd given her the couch. He wanted to lie down. She nodded at him with a sympathetic brow, and reached out for his hand. That was better.