I kicked a pebble down to sidewalk, trying to distract myself. Harry didn’t seem to care either, because he was whistling an unfamiliar tune and playing on his phone. I could handle if the entire walk was this way, but Harry spoke up.
“So how was your flight?” Harry asked, shoving his phone back into his pocket and picking his own pebble to kick along the pavement.
“It was okay. I really hate flying,” I answered honestly.
“Yeah, I know you do,” Harry chuckled. I looked up at him with a confused expression on my face. “When you used to come out here, you would have to sleep the rest of the day because the flight scared you so bad.”
“You remember that?”
“ ‘Course I do.”
“Oh,” was all I was able to say.
The warm feeling that ran through me when he said that angered me beyond comprehension. I was only a friend to Harry. I didn’t even know if we were still friends, but I didn’t honestly care at this point. Harry remembered me. He remembered a small fact about me. And that was enough for a small fire to ignite throughout me. I hadn’t even realized I was staring at Harry.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. The smirk on his face told me he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Huh? Oh, I dunno.”
“Tell me.”
“Why?”
“So I can hear you say you were thinking about how sexy I am,” he smirked.
“Was not!” I squeaked, hitting his arm.
“Oh, I like it rough,” he smirked once again, sending a tingling feeling throughout my entire body and a deep blush to creep onto my cheeks. “but I don’t think his is the type of thing we should do in public.”
“You’re so gross!” I said, covering my face.
“I know I am,” he smiled triumphantly, looking away from me and stealing the pebble I had been kicking the short distance we had already walked.
Everything had changed about Harry. The only thing about Harry that I remembered being the same was his soft brown, curly hair that was always in disarray because he would constantly push his hair back and those eyes. The green of his eyes was incomparable to any other color on the universe. They were a heavenly color.
“So what have I missed in Gentry’s life, huh? Five years is a long time,” he finally spoke again after what felt like an eternity of time, time I had spent trying to muster up the courage to continue our little banter.
“Nothing much. All that’s changed is I went through high school,” I responded nonchalantly.
“There’s a lot more that has changed about you than just going through high school,” Harry’s voice was low and his eyes racked down my body again, before a smile appeared on his cheeks.
I immediately became self-conscious. My wavy, red hair was in a messy bun on top of my head, exactly how it had been when I woke up this morning. I was certain that my hazel eyes were blood shot from exhaustion. My red track shorts hung lazily on my hips and the white t-shirt that I had attempted to cut into a crop top was falling off of my shoulders and exposed my all too colorless skin. My red vans were falling apart and had holes all along them. I looked homeless.
“Earth to Gen. What are you doing when the summers over? Let me guess, ‘I’m moving back to Smalltown, Tennessee because I love it so much there and the small town life is so much better than this crowded California city!’” Harry said, mocking what my mother would always say.
