“Go back to sleep, Harper.”
I got up to put some clothes on but realized I’d fallen asleep in mine. When I opened my door, a sliver of light fell into the room, highlighting Harper’s hair and neck, making me almost wish she wasn’t sleeping in my bed, a sad reminder of what I what I couldn’t have. In five steps, I had the door thrown open, revealing a distraught Cherry and an amused Charlie.
“Oh thank God!” Cherry said, reaching for me and throwing her arms around my neck. I lifted a brow at Charlie as if to ask what was up but he only offered a shrug. A slap to the chest brought my eyes back to Cherry. “Why in the hell didn’t you call us?” She demanded, hands on her hips, tears in her eyes.
I tugged her close and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Cherry. We were just so exhausted. We needed sleep so badly by the time it was done, we didn’t think to call anyone.” I looked over at Charlie. “How’d you find out?”
“The news, Callum. You can’t seriously think it wouldn't have made the news.”
“I really didn’t.” I pushed Cherry back softly to look at her. “Forgive me?”
Just then, Harper threw my bedroom door open wide in my t-shirt, nothing covering her legs and panic written all over her face. “What’s wrong?” She asked. “I heard crying.”
Well, if there was any doubt in Charlie’s or Cherry’s mind that we weren’t ‘together’, the sight of her would have squashed them. Ironic that shortly I’d have to admit everything to the both of them. She peered down at herself and blushed. “Sorry,” she offered, hiding behind the door and peeking over the edge.
Cherry didn’t care though. She pushed past the door and hugged Harper fiercely, closing the door behind her, I assume, so Harper could throw on her jeans.
I stood staring at the door when I felt Charlie’s hand on my shoulder as he pulled me into a slap-hug. “Jesus, Callum. If you scare Cherry like that again, I swear I will hunt you down and kill you myself.” He pulled away, throwing his stare at the wood below. “You terrified us.”
“I’m truly sorry, Charlie.”
“It’s alright,” he coolly said, throwing himself on our couch. His eyebrows pinched as he took in his surroundings. “Good God, did Ikea vomit in your living room or what?” And just like that, Charlie was his normal, chill self making me recognize the rare sight of emotion he had shown me as the precious thing it really was. I must have truly shaken him. Cherry and Harper emerged arm in arm, smiling and happy, though glassy eyed. My heart constricted in my chest.
“We’ve got to go, Cherry,” Charlie said from behind me.
“What? You’ve just gotten here,” I said.
“We were supposed to leave this morning but when we heard what happened, we changed our flights to come check on you,” Charlie said.
“Where are you going?” Harper asked Cherry.
“Charlie is taking me to meet his family,” she answered.
I turned to meet Charlie’s eyes but he subtly shook his head as if to say ‘later. “Well that sounds like fun.” I walked over to Cherry and wrapped her in another hug. “Do you forgive me?” I asked again.
“Yes, you fool but let this be a lesson to you, Callum. Next time I hear of you on the news and you don’t call me to inform me, I’ll be forced to interrupt you and your lovely wife here,” she teased, pulling Harper in and kissing the top of her head, making my stomach clench. “I love you both, so very much,” she said, with tears in her eyes.
“Oh no,” Charlie said, pulling her away. “Come on, dear. We don’t have much time.” Then he grabbed Harper and squeezed the life out of her, whispering in her ear. I only caught the latter half but he essentially told her what he told me. The look on Harper’s face was priceless as he pulled away, seeing Charlie ‘unhinged’ from his usual collective. I almost laughed out loud.
Harper said she was hopping in the shower so I took the elevator down with the both of them and walked them to the curb to hail a cab. The bright yellow car swooped in next to them and Charlie opened the door for Cherry, settling her in, and closing it.
“Listen, I’ve not much time,” he basically whispered, heading to the other side of the cab, “but I’m in love with her, we’ve been secretly seeing each other these past few months, and I plan on proposing to her in London. If you so much as breathe a word of this to Harper, I’ll kill you, Callum.”
I laughed out loud. “Lots of threats on my life today, Charlie.”
“Yes, well...” He said, a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
“Congratulations, friend,” I said, warmly.
He smiled fully at that. “Thank you,” he said, pulling open his own door.
I ran back inside, feeling high from Charlie’s news but by the time I reached our floor, the merry had worn off from the task ahead of me. I opened the door and remembered that Harper was showering so I tore off my t-shirt, too lazy to pull off my jeans and fell onto my bed, desperately trying to convince myself that there was another way. I buried my head in the pillow Harper used and almost lost it. Her scent assailed me just as Stateless’ I’m on Fire began to play. I rolled over onto my back and drug Harper’s pillow over my face, clutching it there, breathing her in while the song thrummed through me, haunting me.
I heard Harper clear her throat and I tossed the pillow off my face, hoping she didn’t realize what I was doing. The song had yet to finish and all I could think was how appropriate its soundtrack would be for the conversation I was about to have.
“So,” she said, leaning against the door jamb, her arms folded across her chest, her hair dripping onto her shoulders and back.
I sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, unsure of what to do with my awkward body. “I’m leaving,” I said matter-of-factly. She seemed to have expected that.
“I see,” she said, moving to sit beside me. Neither of us could make eye contact so, instead, we stared blankly at my closet. “I’m going to miss you.”
“And I, you.” We were so quiet.
I opened my mouth to tell her everything, to confess everything I felt for her, to really verbalize it, but lost my nerve as Harper stood, leaving the right side of my body bereft of her amazing warmth just as the song came to an all too soon close. I gotta’ get out of here.
After a quick shower, I threw some clothes in a duffel and grabbed my school bag but as I turned the knob of my door, I let them fall slack at my feet. There was one thing I needed to do. I sat at my desk, grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and began to write.
Harper,
There’s so much to say. I never planned on doing it this way but things have become so strange between us, I don’t feel like myself. I feel like the honesty that used to be between us has evaporated into nothing but I know I at least owe you this letter. I owe it to myself as well, to be honest. I need to get this off my chest if I’m ever going to get over you.
I’m in love you, Harper, gut-wrenchingly in love with you. I dream about you. Every second I am awake you are in my thoughts in some manner or another. And I’ve always loved you. Unbeknownst to you, you’ve tormented me for years and though I felt I might have been strong enough when we first married to endure, now I know my heart can’t take it anymore. Each time you sit next to me on the train, warm and folded into me, I have to force my hands to stay buckled at my side, to keep from seizing you. When we study on the sofa, your feet in my lap, it’s everything in me not to drag your body onto mine and kiss you senseless. Every time I’ve placed my lips on your neck, I’ve imagined guiding those lips up your soft skin until they reach your mouth and owning that mouth with my own, possessing you with my tongue, Harper. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, just the smell of your beautiful scent sends me reeling, careening deeper and deeper into an attraction I never thought possible.
The hardest part is that you know me, probably better than I know myself. You feel a part of me, Harper. You can read me like no one ever has. You are my best friend in this entire world and I will never have the friendship I have with you with anyone else. I know this.
Remember that day, we sat in our old living room, talking about nothing yet everything that seemed important? My heart felt so heavy that night as our conversation felt bittersweet to me. I came so close to revealing all but couldn’t risk losing your friendship but now as it seems I’ve lost both and since I literally have nothing to lose anymore, I have to confess all because if I can’t get over you, Harper, I don’t know how I’ll live, how I’ll function without you.
That’s why I’m leaving. Tonight, actually. I hate to leave you one day before Christmas but I feel like I’m struggling to breathe around you. You are everything that is important to me and yet you don’t belong to me, you never really did. And that’s the most painful thing to admit to myself. I’ve been lying to myself all this time and now I have to pay for my carelessness.
I’ll be at Ames’ in Seattle if you need to reach me for anything. I need the distance to get over you. Let me find out on my own if I’m doomed regardless, Harper.
I’m sorry, more than you could possibly imagine.
Callum
I laid on my bed, the door closed to the rest of my shared home and listened to music until I was sure Harper had gone to bed for good. I felt like a coward but such was life. I needed distance and couldn’t face her lovely face for a second longer than I had to. And so, with my letter wrapped in an envelope and sealed, I slid the message underneath her door and made my way to the bus depot. I was getting the hell out of Dodge and not a moment too soon.
Because Harper was like a bullet to the heart and if I’d stayed even a moment longer she would have obliterated it and no amount of medical attention would’ve been able to revive it.
Harper
I cried myself to sleep. I’d lost him, I knew that. I’d lost my best friend and the one person I loved more than anyone in this world, more than myself. I woke startled, thinking I’d heard something but it was nothing. I’d only slept for maybe an hour. I glanced at my clock, it read eleven fifteen in the morning. I had no intention of doing anything but sulking in my bed the entire day save for the fifteen minutes I planned on throwing on a pair of jeans to answer the door for Chinese.
“You can at least shower, you dolt,” I told myself.
I climbed out of the bed and shuffled my feet across the chilly wood floor and into the bathroom.
Turning on the hot water, I pulled my hair from its ponytail and glanced at my swollen red face in the mirror. My hair was dramatically creased from sleeping with damp hair the night before. I’d have to rewash to get it out. I leaned in closely to examine my red eyes and hoped the steam would so something for my raw skin. I washed my hair twice and conditioned and as I reached for my body wash, my hand slid across the expensive bath soap Callum bought me last year on a whim. I grabbed the gifted soap and opened the cap, inhaling its heavenly scent. The tears started again but I tried my best to ignore them. I had been saving it for a rainy day.