I put down my camera when I realised that someone was standing in front of me, trying my best to hide a little smile that threatened to form on my lips when I met a pair of green eyes.
"She liked the drawing" I said faintly just to say anything when he didn't, analysing the look on his face.
He just gave me a faint nod, the lack of excitement showing that he didn't really care about whether it had had success or not. "What are you doing?" He asked quietly instead.
I gave a fast glance around, discovering that the majority of the people had already gone home, and that the amount of the cars in the car park had considerably lowered. I could understand why he was asking that, considering that I usually was one of the first to leave at the end of the school day. "It's just..." I stopped for a second, trying to decide if I wanted to tell him or not. My art teacher had said that for the next assignment, the artist and the model should've worked together to create a different piece of art. I didn't know what she was trying to see with such a peculiar request, given that the people we were working with didn't even take art as a class, but I was glad she hadn't just created new couples instead. Even though I would've liked to think that Harry and I had become friends - or if not that, at least something - over the past few months, I was scared that he would've just exited my life once we were done with what we were supposed to do. It would've kind of made sense, after all. It wasn't like we had many things in common - quite the opposite of course, and, considering how great some times around him had been, it was obvious that everything between us could've turned sour just as fast. We were so different that it would've just taken for one of us to do or say the wrong thing once for everything to turn into dust. It would've made sense if he'd just left, once he was no longer forced to be there. I was starting to understand how right Zayn truly had been, that one time he'd talked to me. I didn't like to take risks and Harry was everything but predictable, things between us could only go in two different ways: very well, or very wrong.
"Just an assignment" I replied in the end. It was kind of obvious that he would've never taken part in that assignment with me, so I didn't see the point in telling him. Art meant opening up, and he would've never done such a thing. I would've just done it on my own, and save the both of us the embarrassment of him having to turn it down.
He hummed, taking in the words, his eyes focusing on mine so concentratedly that for one second I almost believed he'd read my mind. "What is it?" He asked, seeming to think that he should've had to take part in it as well just like in all the other ones. It wasn't so far away from the truth, but he didn't need to know that.
"Oh, it's just something different" I said, looking at him in the eyes to make sure it would've been believable enough. I sighed when I took in the glance he gave me. It wasn't exactly suspicious, but it still was as if he knew that there was more to it than what I was telling him. "Uh..." I stammered nervously, knowing in the second the sound left my mouth that I was going to tell him. I didn't know what it was about him, but it just felt so wrong to lie to him like that. "We should work together on something... that isn't you." I scratched my nail against the side of the camera, that I was gripping a bit harder that I should've. "I can do it just fine, I'm only having a bit of trouble finding the right subject" I added fast, wanting to let him know that he wasn't forced to do anything and that I would've just worked on my own on that one.
He pursed his lips, his gaze drifting off somewhere behind me, not saying anything as he seemed to be trying to make some kind of decision. When he spoke, it was almost unexpectedly. "Someone told me once that art is beautiful as it's meaningful" he said in the end, surprising me. "And that inspiration is simply discovering what is it that you want to say" he continued quietly, the concentrated look in his eyes making me realise he was trying to repeat at best something he'd heard a long time before. "What you should be wondering is, what is it that you want to say?"
I furrowed my eyebrows, not expecting him to ask me something like that, but I tried my best not to make my surprise too obvious, not wanting to put him down. I looked down at my fingers, that were still holding the camera, biting my lower lip concentratedly as I thought about his question. The thing was, I had no idea of what message I wanted to deliver with my art - not only that one time, but always. I'd never thought of what I did as a means to deliver something to other people, and it was certainly intriguing to realise that would've been a perfect way to make what I liked to do meaningful. I thought of all the things I'd drawn before, trying to find something in common with them all, but with no success. "I don't know" I said in the end, defeat in my voice, feeling a little less of an artist than I did before. What kind of artist was I, if I couldn't find one single reason for doing what I liked to do? If I could even consider myself an artist at all.
Harry nodded slowly, the fast silence that followed showing how out of his element he seemed to be in that moment. Whenever the situation was something he was used to, he was a mixture of sharp answers and confidence, but in that moment, when we weren't kissing, but just talking to each other, all he gave me was a combination of silences, hums and half-given answers. "Come with me" He said all of sudden, starting to walk towards his car without waiting for my reply.
I gave him a confused glance but followed him nonetheless, not really knowing what he had in mind, but also not wanting to ask him directly. I sat in the passenger seat when we reached the car, observing him through the windshield as he walked in front of the car to get to the driver's seat.
He opened his door, sitting down and turning on the engine, not even bothering to put his seatbelt on. He drove out of the car park quickly, leaving me to wonder what was going through his mind as I realised that we weren't seeming to be going to mine or his house, or the park where we'd been a couple of times before.
I looked at the street in front of us in silence, trying to understand where he was taking us, but with no success. How was it possible that I'd lived in that city for my entire life, and yet I still managed to get lost in it so tragically?
I side-glanced at him when I realised that we seemed to be going out of the city, sudden memories of the last time we'd done that starting to flood my mind. I wondered if he knew where he was taking us, or if he was just randomly driving instead.
I glanced out of the car window again, blinking a couple of times when the reflection of the sunlight on the glass almost blinded me. The silence between us still hadn't been broken but I didn't really mind. Being around Harry, I'd started to realise that more often than not the silence wasn't meant to be awkward, but comfortable. Sometimes there was just nothing to say, and it was fine.
I glanced down, discovering that the black camera was still on my lap. I lifted up up, checking if it was still on and discovering that I'd inadvertently turned it off at some point. I put it into my bag, that was on the ground between my feet. I closed the bag and secured it between my legs, not wanting to accidentally break what was inside, before straightening myself and going back to looking out of the window. I scrunched up my nose when the sunlight hit a strand of hair that had accidentally fallen out of the hair tie when I'd put my hair in a ponytail earlier that day, making it shine of a dark reddish highlight at the corner of my eye, disrupting my vision. I quietly tucked it behind my ear, deciding to redo my ponytail once we would've got out of the car since it would've been too hard to do it in the small space of the interior.
After a while the car stopped, and I looked up from the side of the seat I was analysing out of boredom, discovering that Harry had parked the car on the side of a street in the middle of nowhere.
"Where are we?" I asked confusedly, glancing around. Around us, there seemed to be just grass, of the green-yellowish colour it gets in autumn. On one side, I could see some trees, their foliage ranging from a yellow tone to a warmer orange-reddish shade. Overall, I was pretty sure I had no idea of where he'd taken us.
"Does it matter?" He replied, taking the keys out of the ignition and opening his door, shooting me half a glance before exiting the car in a swift move.
I opened the passenger door and stepped out of the car, a shiver running down my spine when the chill air enveloped me. I bent down to get my bag, but a hand stopped me. I straightened myself up again, discovering that Harry had already made his way towards my side of the car. He slid closer to me, reaching for my bag and taking it out before shutting the door. I gave him a confused glance as I watched him round the car and open the boot before carefully putting it inside and shutting it again.
"Let's go" he said calmly, locking the car before walking towards me again, his hand brushing against my arm as he walked past me.
I walked the couple of steps that separated us fast to reach him, furrowing my eyebrows when he started walking down a dirt road that seemed to bring even deeper into the nature.
"What do you like?" He asked quietly after a while, in which we were walking silently side by side.
It took me a couple of seconds too long to realise that he was continuing the conversation of before. "Pretty things" I replied with a little shrug, putting my hands in the pockets of my coat to warm them up, a little smile forming on my lips when I touched my small notebook and pencil. Had he brought me out there with nothing but paper sheets and pencil on purpose, or had he just forgot I always had them? I shook my head slightly, deciding to focus on what was going on rather than on the meaning behind his actions, and realising that the answer I'd given was a bit ambiguous. "I don't mean that things need to be pretty to be worthy of my attention" I specified, "that's not what I want to deliver."
He gave me a side-glance, pushing his dark hair back when a faint wind blew through it, messing it up. "Then don't."
I nodded slightly, looking down at my feet, discovering that there was a bit of the dirt from the path we were walking on on my brown boots. "And you?" I asked him all of sudden glancing at him, hitting him with the same question he'd asked some time before. "What do you want to deliver?"
He shrugged, looking down for a second before glancing up again, focusing his gaze on the street in front of us. "Nothing" he said faintly, making it clear that, just as I had supposed, he had no intention of opening up.
"That's a lie" I replied softly, looking at him from the corner of my eye. "Everybody wants to deliver something."
He said nothing, making me doubt that he'd even heard me in the first place.
I sighed, taking my hands out of my pockets to take the dark hair tie out of my auburn hair, letting it fall on my shoulders. I put the hair tie around my wrist and brushed my hair back with my fingers, before tying it up in a bun, that I was pretty sure was a bit too messy since I'd done it without looking at myself in the mirror.
We reached the trees, and Harry walked off path to get to one specifically. I followed him, still not understanding what his plans were, until he stopped walking, sitting down under the tree and waiting for me to reach him.
I walked closer to where he was standing, scrunching my nose up at the crinkling sound of the fallen leaves under my feet. I stopped a couple of feet in front of him, not sitting down not to get my jeans dirty. "What is it that you like?" I asked, bringing the conversation back to life just as he'd done before, making him look up at me, a mildly confused glance in his eyes.
He stared at me for a few seconds, not a word coming out of his mouth, before replying. "I like stars" he said enigmatically, a look I couldn't identify in his eyes.
I frowned, not having expected a similar answer at all. "Stars?" I repeated, hoping that he would clarify his words at least a little bit, wrapping my arms around my middle as I glanced around at the autumnal landscape.
He shrugged, leaning back against the trunk of the tree behind him, passing his fingers through his chocolate curls again. "They're so far away. For all we know, the star of which we're seeing the light could already be dead" he replied, a nonchalant look on his face, as if he was trying to downplay the depth of his words.
"That's intriguing" I replied, going against my previous decision and sitting down next to him, making sure my brown coat was covering my jeans. I would've never expected him to say something like that. I didn't know why exactly, but he didn't really seem the kind of person that would wonder about stars. To be honest, he didn't seem the kind of person to do pretty much anything, given how private he was about almost anything regarding himself. He'd managed to shut himself down in front of other people to the point that it seemed almost unreal to hear him talk like that. "You know what?" I said all of sudden as a sudden thought struck me, making him glance at me. "You're like Schrödinger's box, with the only difference that you make people already think the cat is dead for sure" I said fast before I had time to rethink it, wanting him to know the way I was feeling in that moment, but knowing that I could've never said it openly. "And then they discover it's actually alive and..." I continued, my voice starting to fade away towards the end, "nothing, it's just kind of unsettling." I silenced myself up, damning my mind for deciding to say something like that in the first place.
Harry cleared his throat, giving an attentive glance in my direction, that I caught with the corner of my eye. "Maybe the cat truly is dead" he said all of sudden.
I widened my eyes, not having expected him to go along with that at all. "It seems a bit too lively to be dead" I replied quickly, looking at him in the eyes.
"What makes you so sure you're talking to the cat, and not the box?" He asked me somewhat curiously, furrowing his eyebrows.
I shrugged, not truly knowing what to reply. It was clear to the both of us that the conversation - even though played so lightly - had taken a sudden turn towards a more serious side, and the risk of possibly saying the wrong thing had started to worry me. "Boxes can't talk" I said quietly in the end, deciding to go for a more literal approach to the whole thing not to risk messing it up with the wrong words.
"Neither can cats" he replied quickly, surprising me with his eagerness to keep the conversation going.
I bit my lower lip to hide the smile that threatened to show on my lips at his words, changing the position I was sitting in so that I was facing Harry. "Cats don't talk a lot, but they listen" I explained, wanting to continue the conversation like never before. There was something of so endearing in the way he looked at me as I spoke, and in the slight frown that took place over his features for just a couple of seconds before he answered. It was different from everything we'd ever done before, and it was entertaining. Weirdly enough, considering he rarely spoke, I liked to talk to Harry, maybe a little more than I should've. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm talking to the cat" I finished, hoping that he could read in my words the real meaning behind what I was saying. Considering the conversation we'd had a week or so before, in which he'd explained that he liked to do reckless things because they made him feel alive, it was clear that the one we were having in that moment was hitting home a little bit closer than it probably should've. I didn't want him to feel like that, I wanted him to know that, despite the way he felt... the cat surely wasn't dead.
"Did you just compare me to a cat?" He suddenly said disrupting my thoughts, a confused yet humoured look on his face.
I laughed at the words, the sound leaving my lips before I could stop it. I covered my mouth with my hand, widening my eyes as I realised it was the first time I ever truly laughed in Harry's presence. "Would you prefer to be a box?" I replied after a few seconds, after having got past a sudden wave of embarrassment, a little smile still on my lips.
He chuckled, thankfully finding the humour in the conversation we were having as well. "No, not really."
"Yeah" I whispered, looking away again. "Harry?" I asked as a sudden thought crossed my mind, turning to look at him again. "Why did you take me here?"
He shrugged, looking ahead. "I don't know" he answered honestly. "I figured you might find your inspiration here." He looked down, taking a brown leaf that had fallen on the ground next to him and holding it up between us. "Look, a leaf" he whispered, a hint of humour in his voice.
I let out a little laugh, shaking my head at his reference to all the times I'd drawn leaves in front of him during our free period, and looked in front of me again. The grass was yellow, in contrast with the dark brown and red of the multitude of leaves on it, coming from the trees. Maybe it was inspiration, after all. I sighed, realising that all I had was my notebook and pencil, and no way to remember the beautiful colours in front of me once I'd gone home. "I wish I'd brought my camera. Or anything, really" I said, bringing my knees up and putting my forearms on them to balance myself.
"You can take my phone" Harry replied, taking a black iPhone out of the pocket of his black coat and handing it to me.
I gave him a little smile. "Thank you" I said, taking it, feeling the sides rough against my fingers. It had no phone case and seemed to have multiple scratches behind - and pretty much anywhere there wasn't the screen, the black scraped off in some points, letting the silver that was under it show. I opened the camera, taking a single picture of what was in front of me, but making sure it was exactly what I wanted to remember it by. It wasn't perfect, taken from where I was sitting, but it was real, and that made it a thousand times better. "Send it later" I said, handing the phone back to him, a grateful look on my face.
He gave me a little nod, letting me know that he would've, putting it back where it belonged.
I shifted closer to him, hesitating a bit before giving him a fast kiss, going back to my previous position, sitting next to him, right after. "Thank you for taking me here" I said quietly in reply to the confused look he gave me. "It's breathtaking."
"It is" he replied faintly before slowly closing the small distance between us and pressing his lips on mine again.
Sorry for the delay! This chapter is one of my favourites, I hope you enjoyed it as well. x
Miki