H- You know I hate birds but I’ve been teaching them how to sing for you. I would do anything for you. –E
“Fuck” Harry moaned as he emptied himself into the quivering girl below him. He collapsed onto the small double bed next to her, panting. “Fuck.” He reiterated as he whipped the perspiration off of his forehead with the corner of the sheet that was tangled in between their bodies. He looked over at the fragile girl lying next to him, facing the opposite wall. He rubbed one calloused hand down her bare back and ignored as she flinched away from him.
Ellie had her eyelids drawn tightly, willing him to stop touching her in such a falsely compassionate manner. She sat up, letting his hand fall to the mattress and she heard him sigh as it hit. She pulled her cropped t-shirt over her head and replaced the boy short underwear she was previously wearing with a fresh pair.
Harry muttered, mostly to himself, but staring at Ellie as she stood at the side of the bed. He watched her shoulders slump and her head rolled back, her delicate eyes searching for something written in the ceiling
“Please, just don’t.” Ellie breathed out. The small room’s suffocating atmosphere was quickly becoming tangible, “Don’t.” She looked back at the man that she was in love with. She didn’t want happiness if that meant giving him up, he <i>was</i> her small slice of happiness; even if it was the brief periods when she was writing about him, or when they were having raw sex in a dingy club bathroom. She saw Hannah in the back of her mind and choked. The walls in the small room where close to collapsing around her and she felt her lungs shutting down. She moved over to the closed window and unlatched it and pushed it open, letting the crisp night air flow into the room. Breathe: she reminded herself, just breathe. She stared at the pavement below and for a brief moment imagined herself jumping, and splattering onto the unforgiving concrete that was 8 floors below her. Maybe then he would realize that he loved her.
“I wanted to talk to you about the other night, about your little outburst in the bathroom.” She could hear the smirk in his voice as the words left his mouth
“What is there to talk about?” She whispered so quietly and so indirectly that one would think she was asking the wind and not the man standing behind her
“Don’t play dumb, Ellie.” Harry ran his fingers through his damp hair, “You shouldn’t say shit like that. You shouldn’t waste your words on things you don’t mean.”
Ellie closed her eyes and leaned further out the window, giving herself to the darkness, begging the night to take her away from this crumbling room. She felt a hand grip onto her shoulder and pull her back in, keeping her prisoner. She walked to the small nightstand and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, she lit one.
Inhale.
Exhale.
“You think that I don’t love you?” She asked, letting their eyes meet for the first time of the night, “You honestly think that I would say something like that and not mean it?” She inhaled another mouthful of smoke. Exhale.
“I thin-”
“I’ve loved you since the first day I met you, Harry. Since the first time I saw you I have belonged to you completely. You know that.” She was exposed and she was vulnerable, and somewhere in between the window and the nightstand she had gained a faulty backbone. “I know you love me. I can see it in your eyes when you see me in public but you can’t touch me. I can feel it in the way your pulse quickens when I get close to you.” She took three small steps closer to where he was standing, now fully clothed, next to the window she had just dreamed of jumping out of. Was he dreaming of the same thing?
