Wildfire ~ George Harrison

Chapter 21: Another goodbye

I wiped the sweat from my hands and touched up the last bit of my make-up. Why was I always this nervous to see George again? It was December, for crying out loud, we'd been living next to each other for three months. I was never nervous when I was with him, but just part right before would stress me out.

George had promised me we would talk tonight. No, he had promised me we would spend time together. Had he? No, he hadn't. My mind was playing tricks on me. He had only told me he couldn't wait to see me, whatever that was supposed to mean. Did he just want to see me? Did he want to spend time together? Would he spend the night with me? What on earth was going to happen tonight? I think I deserved to be nervous.

It was the promise he'd made me in the letter he had left in the mail slot this morning that made me the most nervous. It had been a short letter in his scrawly handwriting I already knew like the back of my hand. He had clearly been in a hurry, to much to even think about capitalising his letters.

dear cinderella, spear me a dance at midnight? love, your prince charming.

It didn't matter to me that he hadn't taken the time to write his capitals. He had used proper interpunction which showed me he cared about me, regardless. Everyone knew that interpunction was more important than capital letters anyways.

Had I micro-analysed his letter? Of course not, where did you get that stupid idea? Okay, maybe I had, but you couldn't tell anyone that. He'd asked for a dance, but he had called me Cinderella in the meantime. We all knew how that fairy tale ended, right? Of course, Cinderella left Prince Charming at midnight after the big dance. I had no intention of leaving George like that, but he had done it to me.

Maybe he was Cinderella in our own fairy tale story and I was Prince Charming, desperately trying to find out who the mysterious person was that stole my heart. I was the one frantically chasing after Cinderella to get her, or him in this case, to notice me.

And he had called himself "your prince charming". He had called himself mine. I didn't care about what he meant, only about what it meant to me. He saw himself as being my prince charming, as having that link to me. It was a link I definitely wanted to see, but I wasn't sure if it actually existed. Now that he saw that link too, we could call it official, right? We were linked together, in one way or another. There was something between us, whatever we labelled it. There had to be something!

'Let's go, Charlie. You can't keep your boyfriend waiting,' Kath shouted at me and she banged on the bathroom door.

I sighed and furrowed her eyebrows at her dig at George. No matter how often I told her the truth, she was still convinced of calling George my boyfriend. She knew as well as I did that he wasn't.

Nevertheless, I emerged from the bathroom. Whether I was ready or not didn't matter, I had to tackle tonight anyways. Whatever was going to happen tonight, I knew it couldn't go like the last party at his place. I couldn't sleep with George, only to get shunned by him for an entire month after. I needed answers and I was going to get them tonight, I would make sure of that.

Weaponed with a bottle of the French wine I knew George loved and a cheaper one we could offer as a parting present to Paul, Kathleen and I knocked on the door of the Beatles' flat.

I had a small flashback to the first time we knocked on their flat door, over three months ago now, when we didn't know who was living there and when I definitely had no clue what that one boy would go on to mean to me. Not even four months ago and I couldn't imagine life without him, now that was just pathetic.

The door flew open to reveal one Paul McCartney, smiling from ear to ear, with a young girl tucked under his arm. I hadn't ever met her, but I was pretty sure this was Jane Asher, his girlfriend. If I wasn't mistaken, it was her attic he was moving into.