Anywhere With You • {J.C.}

||Forty|Date||

"Didn't understand what to see
Yeah, then I got a different view, it's you... no."
-Automatic Stop

A date.
Harlow supposed that's what people called it. It had been years since she'd gone on an actual date—since Alex had taken her to the movies to see Armageddon. She remembered wanting to see Fear and Loathing Las Vegas, but Alex didn't get the appeal. That was the last time she had ever gone on a "date." Sure, there were late night dinners, but it was typically at a McDonald's—in the parking lot. Alex was usually drunk, Harlow playing designated driver with a permit.

This was nice—intimate with an adult-like atmosphere. It was strangely sophisticated and not typically her "scene." But, letting Tyler take the wheel of their evening was surprisingly nice.

Harlow didn't know much about romance, she'd never quite been courted, nor wined and dined like this from the opposite sex showing interest.

It made her think of Julian; one particular time they had been eating outside of a pizzeria she used to work. She had asked him if it felt like a date—it hadn't, not to Julian.

After their dinner date, Tyler suggested they go to a bar—one with live music. Just because she knew The Strokes, didn't mean she cared much for live music. She knew those guys before they even played music—before they were what everyone knew them as.

Every bone in her body was aching for her to decline his offer. The last time she had been anywhere with live music, drinks had been spilled on her, and she had walked right into a girl coming out of the restroom. The saving grace of that night had been Julian, when they sat in her car, smoking a joint. They shared a few laughs, then they ended the night in the backseat—in his lap. It was the night she admitted that she liked him more than she should.

It hurt to remember that Julian had declared the same, only later rejecting the idea of becoming more than what they were—just friends.

But, she wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to live a little. Everyday was the same—mundane—stuck at a dead end job pursuing an education for no reason but to stall. She still didn't know what she wanted in life.

Standing in a crowded room full of people jumping and thrashing, Harlow realized she was caught in a cycle. Only this time, her emotions were in line. Tyler may have been attractive and attentive, but he wasn't Julian. He didn't give her those gnawing yearns—he didn't put that spark in her belly when she looked at him. No one had ever given her those feelings before, not even Alex, only Julian.

She gazed around the crowded space, seeing bodies upon bodies connected in only one way—the blaring music sounding through the room.

She was okay—for the first time in a long time, she was finally okay.

Until her eyes found his...

She didn't know how long he had been watching her, but judging by the deer caught in headlights look plastered on his pretty face, it had been a while. Those doe eyes held a piercing stare, filled with remorse. Despite standing in a crowd, Harlow was alone—everyone in the room seemed to disappear, even the music seemed to fade into silence.

It wasn't until she broke the gaze he was holding that she noticed a short blonde standing beside him—his arm around her waist—her hand on his lower back. Harlow was spiraling back into reality now, the sound of the loud music ringing in her ears as the people that disappeared from the room moments ago, suddenly appeared again.

In only a moment, Harlow had lost herself in another world—in Julian's world. But before she had a chance to slip under his spell again, she turned away.