Mindlessly

Chapter 6.

Harry's POV

Watching Margaret's cab drive away, fading into a speck of yellow before disappearing all together was heart wrenching. I am captivated and I don't understand. 

One day, just hours I have known her and she's become the only thing I can think of.

Thoughts of our time at the coffee shop flood my already spinning and exasperated mind. When we arrived, one would expect a first time like this to be filled with awkward notions, blank stares and odd gestures. Instead, her laughter, the way it filled the room with such an intensity, I surely thought everyone in the room could feel it internally.  

She ordered an Earl Grey tea, extra hot and we took our seats, I watched meticulously as she added precisely just the correct amount of honey and a dash of sugar. She asked of my art, and without hesitation I told her.

"What was your interpretation of it?" I had asked her.

"It was drenched with emotions, the darkness, struggles, the want to disappear and forget, but the light, a source holding the subject back. Keeping their feet on the ground..."

I remember how she trailed off here, nervously pushing her hair back behind her ears in a way so adorable I am not convinced it could have been done by another human being.

She told me of her flat, she's out of my league. She has more money than I've ever seen in my life. Her photography. I didn't tell her that I spent nearly twenty-minutes analyzing the small child with her nose buried beneath the flower.  It was wonderful work.

She asked many questions, she asked about my job at Michael and Marie's, she asked where I lived, where I was from.

I'm not one to open up, but I did allow her to know I too, grew up in Cheshire as she did.

The night flew, it flew too damn quickly for my taste and I've just realized that once again I am without her phone number. I'm walking up the stairs to the door of my flat when I cut my reminiscing short.

"Jules?" I call out, flicking on the lights.

"I'm home, where are you?" I walk around and check her room before ultimately deciding she's not here.

I walk to my room and peel off my shirt and beanie before unbuttoning my jeans and kicking off my worn leather boots. It's been a day. Quite the day. And if I had to be honest with myself, the second I hit the cool surface of the sheets and look out my window at the dark Chicago night, I wish that my dreams will be filled with Margaret's chiming laughter.

Margaret's POV

My alarm wakes me up at my usual time and I get up easily remembering I have the day off, and my actions slow remembering about my visit with my father at 2. My dad has stage 4 lung cancer, he was diagnosed about 4 months ago and the doctors predicted him about 8 months to live. I give it my best effort to see him as much as possible. He refused to let me take him in and care for him, instead he's in a nursing home an hour away. Very high end of course, but nonetheless a nursing home. When my mum died, she had already, thankfully arranged plans for my father and I in the event that she was no longer around.

She was always so on top of things and organized. I didn't see her as often as I wish I had, she was head of Neuro Surgery at a hospital near our home in England. That being said, my father and I were left with a lot of money and after the accident we picked up and moved to the States.

I make myself a cup of coffee before sitting down at my work area, shaking the mouse to bring light to my computer screen. A quick check through my emails and I head back to my room to get dressed.