The Way We Learned to Love ✓

37 - lily

*TW: Henry will be talking about what happened in some detail during this chapter

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october 2018 : 1 year and 11 months ago

Henry didn't even look real to her anymore. Lily had grown so accustomed to only seeing his head and shoulders on Facetime that she nearly forgot that he was a whole human, one who looked so out of place in her world now. His ensemble of faded hoodie, jeans, backpack, and wary expression almost made her feel like she was watching a scene from the past—the seventeen-year-old him was back, here to pick her up for school or drop her off after a late-night fast food run. But the eyes looking at her were not the bright ones of a high schooler. They were dull, weary.

Her own response to his unforeseen arrival on her doorstep only fractured the nostalgic illusion further. She normally would have swarmed to him like a moth to light, but here he was, literally standing in the light, and she was unmoving. The old, slightly grungy porch lantern emitted a low electric hum in those seconds of silence during which she was just staring at him.

Her voice was guarded, timid, like she still wasn't entirely sure she was talking to a real person and not a figment of her mind. "Why are you here?"

She knew the surface-level answer to that question, of course. They needed to talk. Or maybe she needed to sit and be silent while he yelled at her and got all his emotions out. But regardless of what Henry was here to do, she was startled that he had come two-thousand miles to do it.

He looked neither mad nor particularly pleased to see her, just extraordinarily tired. His shoulders fell slightly as he quietly sighed and confessed his motivation, clearly uncomfortable about it.

"It crossed my mind to do something really stupid and I haven't thought about that in a long time and it freaked me out, so I just...got on a plane and came."

She felt her body tense, her insides shrinking up into a ball, but his expression softened when he realized that he left her in stunned silence. A gust of wind quivered through the nearly-barren trees, the sound like thousands of whispers, and ruffled his dark curls. They were slightly longer now than when he left. He flinched a little bit when the sharp breeze grazed along his face and Lily only then noticed just how pitiful he looked, his cheeks and the tip of his nose rosy pink from standing out here in the frigid air.

"I'm cold," he added softly when she said nothing. "Can I come in?"

She stepped aside and noiselessly moved to turn off the fireplace. They must have had an unspoken understanding that they needed to keep quiet—she heard him closing the door as delicately as possible and turned around to see him slipping off his shoes to prevent his footsteps from making any noise on the hard floors. He started towards her room without acknowledging her further. She followed, closed the door excruciatingly slowly once they were both inside, and turned on the lamp that was on her nightstand. It anointed the room with its dim, vaguely pinkish hue.

Henry slumped down to the floor, sitting with his back against the wall. Lily mirrored his posture on the opposite wall, facing him.

The boy across from her somehow looked so youthful and so grown up at the same time. She always felt like his soul was older than he was. His body was that of a twenty-two-year-old, but the nervous awkwardness with which he currently carried it was like that of a teenager and he looked up at her with all the timid, frightened uncertainty of a child.

"Do you mind if I just talk?" he requested.

She shook her head. The fact that he was even letting it be a question after coming this far to say whatever he was about to say was so very Henryish of him.