Burgundy || HS

quatorze

Jane woke up with the naked feeling again, but she didn’t feel it in her bones, only on her body. And by the coldness of the bed beside her, she knew that nakedness was not being shared. She felt sore, hurt even in her muscles, but shook it off. It wasn’t surprising to find Harry not in bed with her the morning after. It’d happened before, but at least she was positive he’d return after then. But even with the security that her lover would return, Jane wondered where he was to return from.

Where was he always leaving to? He might’ve gone to see Mrs. Johnson at her grave, which reminded Jane that she hadn’t told Harry that she would soon be making a large decision as to whether or not to move into Emilee’s old home. She swallowed her morning breath and retreated to the bathroom to rid of it and the sticky cling sweat had to her skin. Her hair smelled like lilacs when she was done washing her hair and body, Harry still hadn’t returned.

Once getting to the living room, Jane knew he was for sure coming back. His laptop sat closed on the other end of the couch and his overnight bag was thrown aside in the heat of the moment. A blush rose to her cheeks at the thought of it. How had she found herself smitten with the writer of a book that she could not stand? He seemed to push aside his slight narcism for the simple belief that Jane might want to be with him. But little did Jane know that he was hiding a little more than a paid off penthouse.

When Jane found herself eating a bagel with strawberry cream cheese while listening to the television, she felt that it was suddenly a bad idea. Then, there was a picture of herself and Harry. Was Harry famous enough for people to care of what he did? No. But was he attractive enough? Hell yes. They spoke about Jane and stated that she was nameless so far, then went on to talk about Die With Me and its multimillion dollar movie deal. Jane still despised the book and frankly couldn’t believe that Harry was getting paid so much for it. Yet, she was still finding a slight happiness in his success. Yes, she was happy for Harry.

The book laid on the coffee table while the orchids sat in a vase in the kitchen. Jane got up from her seat and took the book with her. The cover was soft, smooth, hard. It felt like a masterpiece but was anything but. She reached the kitchen and pulled one of the orchids from the vase. Harry had gotten twelve roses which hinted at putting together the amount of letters in “Jane and Harry”. Taking away one rose, she clipped the stem off and placed the flower on the inside cover, placing it on the bookshelf in her room, and walking back to the couch.

Knocking on her front sent panic through her for some odd reason. But when two extra knocks and a small grunt was outside the door, she knew it was Harry trying to come up with something creative and obviously miserably failing. Jane got up from the couch and walked over to the door, stepping over the basket Harry had brought her the previous day. The flowers in the kitchen sat next to her favorite place to people watch. More knocks on the door reminded her that Harry was waiting.

And he stood outside the door with his brown winter jacket on. Black jeans hung onto his legs and a large, white sweater peeked out from under his jacket. Jane wanted to admire her favorite one of his hands, but it held the oddest object—half a loaf of bread. Jane scrunched her eyebrows, “Harry, why do you have half a loaf of bread in your hand?”

“Well,” he pecked her lips, “what a great question.” He shifted his weight to his left side and held up the bread for explanation. “You see, my lovely, I went home to go see if I’d forgotten to put something in my bag and then, I remembered I needed to go grocery shopping. And then there was this huge traffic jam and I had to detour and happened to pass Central Park, where I had one of the most cliche moments of my life with you, and I thought a thought.” Jane began to hold in snickers at his childish tone. “You wanna know what thought I thought?”