“Callum, that is beautiful,” she exclaimed.
I stopped playing, a heat creeping into my face and up my neck.
“I-I didn’t realize I was even playing,” I said, attempting to shake the humiliation from my face.
“Don’t stop,” she begged quietly, sending my blood to an ultimate boil. She moved to sit in one of the other swivel chairs next to me.
I coughed into a fist. “Um, okay. Any requests?”
“Well, since you’re actually familiar with Barcelona. Could you play Please Don't Go? If you know it, that is?”
I smiled. I did know it and immediately start singing it to her, strumming the strings softly. The melody is simple but beautiful. It incited waves of intensity to roll off Harper and they hit me like a hydrogen bomb. My fingers almost stilled from the shock of it. She’s ridiculous extraordinary, I admitted to myself. She closed her eyes and grinned at the lyrics.
While most people act awkward and uncomfortable when others sing to them, Harper surprised me by letting it be what music was, natural and beautiful. She moved her eyes with mine and it seemed to be the most unfeigned, unpracticed thing in the world. She even sung harmony with me for the chorus and I was completely taken by her by the end of the song.
She leaned in closely with glinted eyes. “Play another,” she whispered.
And I did. Four more, actually and Harper Bailey made me feel like a freakin’ rock star instead of the nobody I really was. She wrinkled her nose adorably and sang along, scrunched her eyes closed and bit her lip to prevent herself from beaming a bright smile at her obviously favorite parts, and raised her hands, dancing and twirling around during songs with an accelerated beat, her hair fanning around her.
When my fingers could take no more, I set the guitar down and slumped into my chair. Realizing I was tired, Harper turned on a few tunes through the soundboard.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing me by my hands. A shot of pleasure that she reached for me sent me reeling with an unreasonable need to bring her close. “Dance with me?” She asked, giving me the out I would have paid a million dollars for at that moment.
We threw our arms out and shook our heads as we screamed the lyrics of three songs at the other, yet exhaustion never took me. Harper gave me energy enough to last for weeks. Despite the unusually dark room, I felt like I could decipher the smallest lines of her face. That’s how attuned to her I’d become in those few hours and I studied every expression, memorizing what notes made her happiest.
What are the odds? I thought, as Barcelona’s ‘Please Don’t Go’ suddenly played softly, magnifying our loud breaths caused by the effort of dancing around. I held out my hand to her, my face sobering quickly. She hesitated for only a second before sliding her hand into mine. I brought her body close and my breath sped up even more but not from the earlier exertion, no, this was from proximity.
Harper laid her head on my shoulder as we swayed back and forth to the resonating piano, the long, low strokes of the violins, and the soft, meaningful words. We sang the lyrics to each other, letting the impact of their words sink into our hearts.
And when the last note rung through our ears, and the music stopped altogether, a deafening silence filled the room. We stilled, neither of us wanting to remove one another from our embrace. It’s not you she wants, Callum, I chided myself for believing for even a moment that it was me she wanted. Me, a complete stranger. We’ve been neglected all our lives. Hugs are a rare commodity, I reminded myself.
“You’re warm,” she said gently, breaking my train of thought.
Not able to stop myself, I inhaled her hair again.
“Uh, Callum?” She giggled.
“Yes,” I said, a grin hitting my reddening cheeks. I purposely kept her cheek to my neck to avoid her stare. You’re the king of humiliation.
“Are you-Are you smelling me again?”
“No,” I said, before breaking out into laughter.
I felt her chest shake in amusement before I hear the chuckling. She tried to pull away and I hugged her tighter but instead of pushing harder against my chest to break free, she held tighter and my stomach dropped to my feet.
I have perfect timing because I decided to yawn embarrassingly loudly.
“Tired?” She teased into my chest.
“I might be,” I conceded. I cleared my throat. “Uh, Charlie keeps egg crate foam in here,” I said, pointing to a closet she couldn’t see. Doofus. She said nothing to that so I broke away from our hug, still avoiding eye contact. I reached into the closet and start pulling out clean sheets and the egg crate. “Sometimes Charlie stays so late he doesn’t feel like cabbing it home so...” I trailed off.
I unrolled the foam and it came spilling out in one large square, taking up most of the little studio booth. The studio is large but compartmentalized, leaving a series of medium to small rooms. The soundboard booth was the smallest besides the voice recording booth but it was the only one with an air conditioner to keep the expensive equipment cool. “So,” I continued, “he keeps all this junk here. I secretly think he keeps it here to help me more than to help himself. I called him on it,” I rambled, setting out the clean, folded sheets, “but he insists that he’s a selfish jerk who thinks only of himself and that I should watch my mouth because he has a reputation to uphold.”
“But why would he make sure the sheets are clean if it was only for him?” She stated.
“Exactly.”
“I think I like this Charlie,” she teases.
“He’s kind and I think he’s going to love you,” I said, without thinking, assuming she and I would know each other long enough for her to even get to know Charlie. She did commit to the concert in two weeks, Callum. Guess she’ll meet Charlie after all. Then a heavy stone of realization settled in my stomach. What if she meets Charlie and he takes to her?
Charlie had a knack for getting girls. I can’t tell you how many times I’d liked a girl and he’d gotten her instead. It’s not like he steals them or anything, he probably doesn’t even know I was interested in them, but girls just flock to the guy. Oh God, what if Harper likes Charlie? What if they hit it off and start dating? I’ll have to endure them together or fight Charlie. Either leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
“So,” she interrupted my rambling thoughts, forcing me to take note that I’d been standing over the egg crate just staring down at it like an idiot.
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “You can have the pallet and I can sleep in the chair.”
“Absolutely not,” she vehemently disagreed. “If you hadn’t helped me when you did, I would be sleeping on a sidewalk somewhere.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that’s, more than likely, where we’d both be sleeping the next night. “So, it’s only fitting that I sleep in the chair. Besides, you’re much taller than me. You take the pallet. I’ll be more than comfortable in the chair.”
“Well,” I said seriously, “if you made me sleep on that pallet, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep knowing you were in that chair. Then, finally, when my body couldn’t take it anymore, succumbing to sleep too late, I’d sleep through my alarm. I’d wake up late, miss my appointment with my advisor, and lose my scholarship.
“Then, I’d be forced to take a job waiting tables while going to a community college and as we both know, no one finishes community college. So after dropping out and enduring six years of working in the food industry, they’ll offer me a management position and I’ll be forced to take it to support the eight kids I had with the girl I met at ju-co in my theater electives class but left me to pursue her ‘acting career’. I’ll be bitter and grow a beer gut...”
“Okay! Okay!” She giggled. “I’ll take the pallet but only if you take the pallet with me.”
My throat instantly dried and the smirk that graced my stupid face fell.
“Wa-with you?”
“Yes,” she said turning her back toward me and taking a t-shirt and some shorts from her piles of clothing and heading for the door. She stopped at the edge. “You sleep with your feet at this end and I’ll sleep with my feet at that end.”
Harper winked at me before leaving to change.
“Oh,” I said to no one, the blood returning to my face but disappointment following soon behind. You’re still sleeping right next to her, genius.
I used the time she was gone to ready myself for bed. I usually slept in my boxers because I didn’t make it a habit to sleep with women, hardy har, har, but wasn’t sure what to do because I didn’t have anything else. I scrambled through my belongings and found a pair of old Adidas track pants. I removed my t-shirt and threw on the pants.
Harper
I can’t believe I suggested we sleep on the pallet together. I know why I did it. I genuinely couldn’t let him sleep in that gosh awful chair but if I was being honest with myself, it wasn’t the only reason why I did it. You can’t lie to yourself, Harper. And I couldn’t. Alright, fine. I did it because I wanted to know what it was like to lie next to a warm body, to feel close to someone sincere because sincerity is one of those rare human qualities that feels a bit like discovering a lost treasure. It is a rare commodity but once found, is absolutely priceless. That was Callum, pretty much in a nutshell. And I, to be perfectly frank, could count the people I’d found to be genuine on my right hand.
I came to the door and knocked before stepping in, so as not to disturb him getting ready.
“Come in,” I heard.
But there wasn’t enough preparation in the world to ready me for what I saw when I opened that door. Callum, standing above the pallet, the lights out but the faint glow from the hallway glistening across his perfect chest and highlighting the eight pack that painted his stomach. I gulped audibly. I stood there, staring like an imbecile.
“Uh, Harper?”
I shook my head. “Um, yeah?” A blush crept up my neck and plastered my face in crimson.
“You okay?”
“Uh, huh. Why do you ask?” I said, biting my bottom lip to keep from a nervous laugh and staring at everything in the room but Callum, a feat in and of itself.
“Because you’re just standing there. Listen, if you don’t want to sleep with me on the pallet, I understand.”
“No, it’s okay.” I answered as breezily as I could. I set all my stuff on the table with our clean laundry and headed for the soundboard to turn on some low tunes. “Do you mind?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “I can’t sleep without it.”
I look at him, surprised. “Neither can I.” It’s how I used to drown out the nightly yelling my last three foster parents used to embark on every evening after getting drunk or when they were getting in a fight or when I just wanted to drown out my situation.
I turned and walked over to the pallet. He watched me settle in before laying on top of the blanket I was underneath, his feet at my head, pulling another quilt at his side over his own body. Basically, we were as far apart as two people sleeping next to one another could get. After a few moments, he turned out the lights and it became pitch black and that’s the moment I chose to start laughing uncontrollably which, in turn, caused him to follow suit.