Dealing With Absence » h. styles au

11ᵀᴴ CHAPTER

                                                   11ᵀᴴ CHAPTER   

                   “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are”

 

“I’ve got a scar below my chest from when I fell off my bike when I was younger, my natural hair colour is black and my uncle’s cat killed him three years ago.”

The night is finally starting to cool down as the wind blows silently announcing the upcoming rain, after days and more days of pure drought. The lack of humidity had attacked Elisha’s rhinitis, sinusitis, and basically all the other ‘-itis’ she could think of, but it’ll finally cease. She hopes.

Dinner had gone by smoothly, quite naturally, actually, and two minutes after Harry had introduced himself, he’d been ignored just as if he’d been part of the group for ages. So, it was, indeed, a great dinner. Also, now Leesh and PJ have a professional to help them with the article, which means their chances of outstanding amongst others might increase a lot, if they articulate their ideas well enough.

It had been most of what the conversation revolved about during the whole of forty minutes they spent sitting around the table, just discussing said ideas and listening to Harry’s previous experiences just to see if something new and smart popped up to help them even more.

Now, though, Harry and Elisha have completely forgotten business, focusing only on each other’s expressions as if it could denounce which of the statements is a lie. She bites back a smile as she watches Harry’s frown nearly knitting his brows together, his whole expression turned into genuine concentration.

And everything is adorable, basically. Because everything about Harry seems to be genuine; the way he truly laughs at PJ’s awful jokes, and how he quickly got along with Dora, politely, but never dismissing her quirky habits. He’s all gangly and loosen limbs walking down the street, has tripped over himself at least three times within the last ten minutes, and just genuinely, genuinely is thinking of a right answer.

“How did it happen?” he finally asks, hands shoved into his pocket and gaze turned to the ground, staring at his feet.

Elisha frowns herself. “How what happened?”

“The cat thing,” Harry sighs, shrugging at her. “How did it kill your uncle?”

“You think it’s one of the truths?” she wonders, looking at him as if he’s nuts.

“I feel like I should say this is the lie, but it’s just too absurd, so it has to be true. Either that or you like overdramatic situations,” he reasons, shrugging again and looking up when a drop hits his head. “So, I’ll go with the black hair. That’s the lie.”

Leesh rolls her eyes, sighing. “You’re good at this,” she admits defeat, looking at him curiously. “Jazze ran away one night, and my uncle only heard about her the following day. When he found out she’d got hit by a car he had a heart attack. Too attached to the little thing, the poor man. Had been suffering with the divorce and Jazze was the only to keep him some company. May both rest in peace.”

Harry wrinkles his nose, curling his hands into his pockets. “Tragic,” he offers with an apologetic look. Then, “I’ve got a sister three years younger than me, I’ve nearly died of overdose once and I already killed a bird.”

Elisha doesn’t even think of this one, even though she knows she should follow Harry’s tactic. “Overdose,” she blurts, then considers the other options, but maybe she wasn’t supposed to choose the less probable one. Maybe he’s trying to fool her.