Aerial

The Thirty-Sixth Chapter

"Fuckin' bogue."

Since Harry doesn't own a watch, he's gotten into the habit of using discarded cigarette butts as a means to tell time. One cigarette takes about six minutes to smoke, so judging by the small pile of twisted-off heart-shaped filters sitting beside him on the curb, Harry can deduce that he must have been waiting outside of your duplex for you to return for about twenty to thirty minutes now. Nettie's jerky, snide comment about now you're wearing her shoes, imagine how she felt earlier buzzes through his head like a hive of wasps, his lip curling into a sneer as he quietly mumbles her remark out loud to himself in an overstated, peeved grimace. He rubs his eye, leaning forward on his knees as he searches up and down the street for the sound of eight small red wheels carrying through the sea breeze.

If you get murdered tonight because Harry wanted some fucking waffles, he's going to lose his fucking mind.

Fortunately for him, you're not the type to let him stew very long in his lonely misery. Because loneliness only becomes miserable when oppressively imposed by external circumstances and less so when it's voluntary. Being alone versus feeling lonely are two completely different experiences; a state of solitude as opposed to the emotional hell of abandonment and isolation. Harry doesn't mind being alone at all when he chooses to be, but when he's in dire need of having his love buttons pushed, loneliness is akin to solitary confinement. The Iron Maiden. Thumbscrews. A cattle prod. A far cry from slippery silk sheets brushing his feet and lovelorn French on his tongue and the arch of your back below his palm.

Fortunately for him, those couple drags of Wedding Cake are still coursing through his bloodstream. Which at least makes the ocean sound exceptionally melodic and makes the gravel appear particularly interesting. Although time does seem to move at a different pace. Maybe he just smoked his cigarettes faster than usual?

And you look beautiful, absolutely beautiful underneath the soft spotlight of a million laughing stars above you; your legs smooth as velvet as you effortlessly skate around the corner upon the dotted line painted onto the street. Your hair billowing off of your shoulders and Cherry red electricity buzzing from your skin.

And Harry looks beautiful, absolutely beautiful underneath the soft spotlight of the streetlamp above him; his arms wrapped around his knees and his fingers cinching his wrist. A swirl of frozen custard with ribbons of hot fudge, his hair pushed off of his face and a pacified smile pulling at the corners of his heart-shaped lips.

"What are ya, rollin' up with some grease bombs right now? Lookin' like that?" Harry whistles with his fingers in his cheeks when he sees you cruising towards your duplex on your roller skates, carrying a heap of pink boxes tied up with baker's twine that produce many delicious smells. He leans back and kicks one leg out in front of him on the pavement to tuck his book of matches into his trouser pocket, "the view from my office is tight. By the way, that was way more than thirty minutes, Big Ben. You got your panties on?"

You're not surprised to hear this question. He's been asking you every single day since the revelation on the Ferris wheel, after all. And just like every other time he's asked; you choose to ignore it.

Approaching his perch on the sidewalk, you take notice of the small heap of cigarette butts that he's burned through as he waited for you to return home and immediately understand that his mood is likely leaning towards mild irritation with a dash of rawness. So, you act upon your first instinct, which is to needle him further, "think fast!"

You pretend to throw the boxes at his face and he ducks and grips his chest when he realizes you've effectively nailed him with a jump scare. Something that doesn't happen to him too often, but he blames it on the trauma of suffering a headshot earlier today, "solid fake out, fuckin' dizzy bitch." He laughs loudly, but it's mostly to release the fear balled up in his chest, "right, let's throw some more shit at this guy's sore face. I'm a mess and a half and you're over here declarin' war. A little class, please."