Artwork [h.s]

twenty-three

On the next day he came back to my house wearing the same exact outfit of the day before. I smiled to myself when I realised he'd done it not to mess with the part of the drawing I'd already done.

As I walked up the stairs followed by him I couldn't help but feel like something had changed after the conversation we'd had the day before. If so it could be called. Harry had told me something personal, and he hadn't pushed me away when I'd asked him about it. One one side I was happy because we'd made progress, but on the other I knew that Harry and I were way too different to nurture any kind of friendship. But I still couldn't help but feel glad that he'd trusted me with that little information, it meant more to me than I would've ever let him know.

He sat down on the bed, unintentionally smoothing down the white blanket with a finger. The day before I'd drawn him lying down on the sheets, but I had convinced myself I couldn't do the same after I'd slept on that bed. Harry was just too much for me to think of making him lie down where I'd lain down too. Which didn't necessarily make sense given he'd lain down on the grass just a week before, but that was just details.

I walked to the bed and turned around the pillow, smoothing it out and wrinkling my nose as I discovered a trace of his smell was still on it. "Lie down" I told him, and he did as soon as I let go of the pillow. I straightened myself up fast, getting away from our sudden closeness, before escaping the room and going into the studio. I always kept my works in progress there, since I often didn't want other people to see them before they were done because they would've looked awful. I couldn't keep them on the desk in my bedroom since sometimes my mum came in to talk to me, so I kept them all in my studio, since I was the only one who ever entered that room.

I opened the door and walked straight to the desk, taking the folder of my last drawing from where I'd put it on the chair. I turned around and made my way to the drawer on the opposite side of the room, opening it and taking out a bunch of coloured powders, pencils, tissues, rubbers and everything else I needed. I took them all in my hands and walked out, closing the door with my elbow. When I entered my bedroom I discovered that Harry hadn't moved at all. I left everything at the bottom of the bed, next to his feet, taking the chair from my desk and sliding it next to the bed, putting all the powders and everything that could've potentially destroyed my blanket on it. Once I was done I sat on the bed, my back against the wall and my drawing on my lap like always, and started my drawing.

I cleared my throat to momentarily break the silence that had been created, the only sound being the eventual almost inaudible scratching of the paper tissue on the paper sheet.

"We're so different" he said after a while, sitting up and staring at me in the eyes from my same height.

I just looked at him, not knowing what to reply to something like that, mostly because I didn't even know in which way he meant it. Was it a positive or negative thing to him? I couldn't decipher the look on his face.

"Doesn't that excite you?" He mused all of sudden, his voice coming out in a low purr.

"I-" I stopped myself, realising that I had no idea of what to say.

He bit his lower lip, his tongue peeking out to wet it. "We're opposites" he continued. "I attract people's attention, but I'm empty. You hide in plain sight, but you aren't."

I cleared my throat, looking down to escape his magnetic gaze. "I don't think that's true. Everybody has something inside" I said softly.

"You're yet to know me" he said lowly, the way his lips curved into each word showing he wasn't angry or annoyed at all, but I still decided not to risk anything by asking any further. I'd began to realise how detrimental it was to cross any of his boundaries when we were trying to make conversation, which made it quite difficult to do the latter, given that he was way more closed off than anyone I'd ever encountered.