*･ﾟﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*ﾟ:*:✼✿✿✼:*ﾟ:.｡..｡.:*･ﾟﾟ･*
"All of my other colors exploded on the plane during the move, so you only have these to choose from," I bite down into my lip to suppress my giggle as Harry mulls over the bright nail polishes I just handed him. His eyebrows furrow and his tongue peeks out of the corner of his lips as his green eyes slowly search the bottles that look even smaller in the palms of his massive hands.
"What if we do yellow and put little smiley faces with the black?" He questions, face brightening at the giddiness his own idea brings.
I stare at him with mouth hanging open in disbelief, smile slightly curving up the corners of my lips as a small laugh leaves my throat. Reaching forward with a shake of my head, I take the colors from his hands and set them out on the table before us. "The fact that you think I'm talented enough to do that is flattering, but I can barely file my toe nails down without leaving sharp edges, so you're going to have to take what you can get."
This earns a laugh from the boy who adds, "Then why am I letting you paint my nails if you're just going to end up painting my entire finger?"
"Became it will be fun, and your hands are just so pretty, why not add a pop of color?" I shrug. "Plus, I'm just bored and painting my own nails just doesn't cut it anymore. I need to take my extraordinary skills elsewhere."
I shove my freshly painted white nails in his face that are extremely messy with bits of paint all around the nail bed and even dotted across the skin of my fingers. He grabs hold of one of my hands and inspects it with narrowed eyes, and I can tell he's fighting the urge to grin, instead holding a serious face and pretending to think about it when I know he's going to cave and let me tarnish his own nails just like I've done to my own.
"Fine," he groans with a sly dimple eliciting smirk. "Since you wanna be boring let's do black."
"Woah! I may be untalented and get bored easily, but I am not boring!" I exclaim with a raised brow as an idea sparks and I grab two polishes and start shaking them to mix up the paint.
"That doesn't look like black to me," Harry quickly points out and pulls his hands away when I take the brush dripping with blue paint from the bottle and bring it towards his fingers.
"No shit. Now give me your finger before this drips everywhere."
Finally, after struggling to get Harry to cooperate, fixing every smudge and dent in the polish from when he would move too much, and having to take acetone on a tiny brush to clean up the edges, I'm finally able to marvel at my work. Every other nail is either pink or blue, and even though it's not Picasso level work, in fact it's quite elementary, Harry still can't stop smiling at them.
"Your turn," Harry says while grabbing for my hand.
"What?" I grin. "They're already done."
"And I'm fixing them," he declares with slightly widened eyes, their gleam letting me know that he thinks my nails badly need it, and to be fair, he would be right.
I can't help but smile when he takes the yellow nail polish and begins painting over the white, delicately trying to avoid the skin of my finger around the nail. He does a few coats before following in my footsteps and taking acetone to the accidental spots before reaching for the black paint and attempting his smiley face idea from earlier.
His brows are furrowed in concentration and his lips are pressed tightly together so that the pink is muted to something more blush colored from the pressure. Everything about his body shows of concentration as he struggles to keep the thin brush coated in black paint steady, and before I know it, while I was so caught up watching Harry, he's pulling away and resealing the lid back on the clear polish, a smug grin lighting up his structured face as he looks at his handiwork.
"If you're this good at nail art, Harry, then why didn't you just do your own?" I guffaw as I hold my hands out to admire my bright yellow nails.
"You were so excited, so I just figured I'd let you."
"Well, I hate to tell you this, but I'm about to ruin all of your hard work," I shrug playfully, grin spreading across my cheeks.
"No you're not," he smiles with a small laugh, already reaching forward to grab my wrists, completely immobilizing me.
"Then you're not allowed to fight me! You have to sit here like a good boy and let me do it," I deadpan, eyes and smile making me look more lively than ever.
"Do what?" Harry asks suspiciously, green eyes narrowing and lips pressing together. His hands release their grip on my wrists, allowing me to get up and run freely to the corner of his living room where a small bag sits that hardly ever zips because of all the random products overflowing from within it.
The dingy lilac fabric is rough in my hands, all the brushes and products poking out sharply from the sides. Stains of various colors tarnish the entire bag and slightly rub off on my hands, leaving small patches of glitter dotting around my palms.
When I scurry with a pep in my step back over to where Harry sits on the couch, I hold the bag close to my chest and smile like a child down at him.
"I'm gonna beat your face," I grin.
"What?" He guffaws and nearly jumps from the couch.
"I'm gonna do your makeup. C'mon, baby, please," I pout my bottom lip out and slink over to Harry before throwing my leg over his lap and plopping down on top of him. From this position, I'm slightly taller than him so his bright emeralds have to look up to meet the golden sunrise of my eyes. A smile spreads across his lips that are so full of color that they appear to always have been freshly kissed, and his dimples appear deeper than ever. His long lashes flutter when his eyes close and he starts to shake his curly head.
"Please," I beg while reaching forward and gently tucking his long hair behind his ears before cupping his cheeks. I rest my forehead against his while still holding his cheeks and begin to plead, "Please! You'll look so pretty, Harry! Please, please, please-"
"Okay, fine," he laughs defeatedly which makes me pull away triumphantly, still staying in his lap and unzipping my makeup bag to take out some primer that I put a dollop of on my fingers and start to rub into his skin. "What is that?" He asks nervously and tries to pull away.
"Don't worry about it. Now let me work," I shush him.
I don't have to do much to Harry's already perfect face, because his skin is all one shade of tan without a single sign of purple, blue, or pink underneath his eyes. Besides, anything I apply regarding foundation or concealer will just wash the boy out since my summer tan and freckles faded long ago while his seem to always be permanent.
Bronzer makes his cheek bones sharper and rose colored blush adds a glow to his already bright cheeks. I gently run a brush over a compact of pearly highlighter before applying it to the highest points of his face, making him giggle when the soft bristles tickle his nose and he scrunches it up.
My mouth twists over to one side as I search through different eye shadow palettes to find the right colors that will bring out the beautiful green shades in his eyes while also accentuating the subtle ocean blues and bright golds. I smile when I finally find a light shade of magenta and motion for him to close his eyes so I can continue painting on the canvas that is his face.
"Belle?" Harry says suddenly just as the eye shadow covered brush nearly reaches his eyelid.
"Hmm?" I simply hum in response, too distracted by the task at hand.
"Are you okay? And please don't lie to me."
At his words, I instantly pull the brush away before it's even had a chance to grace the skin of his eye and sit frozen in his lap as his eyes slowly open.
"You've been very happy lately which is good, but I feel like last time I saw you things were so different, and I know it's been awhile, but every time we try to talk about Jane you clam up and try to act like it never happened- like she never existed and maybe that's how you want to cope with it, but it isn't healthy. Georgia Rose, I need you to talk to me," he pleads with desperation brimming in his eyes, shoulders tensing up with nerves at how I'll react, but the truth is, I don't even know how to.
Simply sliding from his lap, I sit on the cushion next to him and rigidly put the makeup back in the small bag before zipping it up and setting it on the coffee table across from us. I pull my knees into my chest and take in a deep breath as Harry's green gaze just watches, chest tight as if he's holding his breath in fear of me lashing out at him, but he's right.
"What?" He falters, deep accented voice full of shock.
My head whips around to face him, eyes slightly widened as I realize that I must have said it out loud, so I sigh and sag my shoulders as I repeat myself, "You're right, Harry."
His eyes stay strong, refusing to fall from mine as he angles his body to face mine a little more, face bleeding with graveness from the furrow of his brows to the frown lines by his lips. "I didn't want to be right."
"The thing is that I really am happier than I was, so you can breathe, Harry. I'm not hiding some deep dark depression or anything," I reach forward and run my hand reassuringly up and down the length of his arm before he removes it from his skin and holds it within his own hand. He starts to run his thumb in soothing circles around my hand, his actions almost suggesting that he feels as though I'm the one that needs comforting and not him.
"I miss my mom, and part of me still feels so guilty about what happened, but at the end of the day, I can't change what she did. She did what she thought was best for me, which is what a mother is supposed to do I guess. It's what she's always done, and that's what's made her so perfect, but remember how I told you about the note she left me- the night I gave you that," I point to the ring that's on his right ring finger.
"Of course," he nods, lines forming between his eyebrows from the intense look of concentration he's been holding.
"Well," I hesitate, suddenly nervous. "I left a part out."
Harry's expression never falters which pushes me to keep going instead of stopping dead in my tracks to apologize. The last thing I want is for him to get offended by what I'm about to tell him- thinking that my mother secretly hated him or blamed him for me not following my dreams when she didn't understand that Harry is the dream I want to follow. Books and travel can come later.
At least I think that's how I feel.
"She isn't the only person to tell me this. In fact, she wasn't the first," I continue. "According to Zayn, right before he left he told me that he confided in me, because he saw himself in me. He said that we both put our own lives aside for others, because we both like being the source of happiness for those we love. Even Niall told me that I've put my life on hold for everyone in the band."
I keep waiting for Harry to interrupt and dispel what I'm saying, but he never does. He simply sits and watches intensely, one hand balancing by his mouth while the other continues to caress my own hand. For some reason I feel the need to shy away under his gaze, because something about the way his eyes go from bright sea green to the dark color of a forest on a cold night almost scares me.
"My mom wrote to tell me that she doesn't want me to make the same mistakes she did by throwing my life away to follow a man. She said that she was watching me do that with you and the boys," my eyes falter, landing on the ground and unable to look at Harry any longer as a ball the size of a large rock forms in my throat.
"Do you believe that? Do you believe that you've been throwing your life away in favor of mine?" Harry questions cooly, voice laced with something that could be mistaken for dark anger instead of saddened disbelief.
"Do you?" I blurt without even taking time to think about what he asked. "I don't believe what Zayn, Niall, or my mother said, but you can't deny it, Harry. The fact that three people have all basically said the same thing is kind of concerning and it's just been on my mind a lot lately that's all. I don't believe it."
He sits there silently for a moment, unmoving and eyes slowly blinking, but then he releases his comforting hold on my hand, chills instantly racing up my spine at the loss of contact. The furrow of his brows no longer shows signs of concentration but of an anger that he's trying incredibly hard to kill before it kills me.
"No," he pouts.
"I don't know, Belle. I just don't know," he states somberly.
That's the moment I knew.
Harry believes it too and fears that if he's honest about it I'll run away screaming and never come back. And if my green eyed boy sees it, then maybe there is some truth to it.
In fact, over the past few months, I've come to realize there definitely is.
I may be lucky to have given my heart to someone as beautiful inside and out as Harry, but I'm still on the same path as my mother, and now that I've realized that, I don't know what to do about it.
But deep down, I've known for much longer than this.
For much too long, we've been just swimming around in our glasses and talking out of our asses.