A Single Daffodil [Harry Styles]

Ticking Timebomb.

Grandpa Gene had been listening to Frank Sinatra all morning.

I was lying on the floor of his sunroom, resting my chin again my propped up hand as I flipped through the pages of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. When I had time to kill, I would spend time reading Grandpa Gene's favorite books. He had an old rustic-looking bookshelf located right outside the sunroom, filled with all his favorites. F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age classics, essays by William Faulkner, novels by John Steinbeck, the humorist words of Mark Twain. They were all there. All friends, sitting on the bookshelf. Every book had just as much of an aged quality about them as the bookshelf did. They were beaten up, frayed, spines split, pages pulled out, tears, tugs, and rips. I think that's what why I was intrigued in the first place. The books have been placed, they've traveled, almost as if they've journeyed the stories they declaim.

I had started The Old Man and the Sea at the beginning of the summer. I found my last dog-eared page, stretched out on the floor of the sunroom, and tried to get back into the story as Grandpa Gene painted at his easel. Sometimes I found Hemingway's style of writing very difficult to follow, mostly because he writes simple stories, but you can tell every word counts. Every word is full of thought, every word is pure, simple and straight to the point. I think that's why I catch myself getting stuck on the same sentence or paragraph for long periods of time. Stories can never be straight forward, or simple. Everything in this world is complex and chaotic, so it trips me up quite often when Hemingway gets all uncomplicated on me.

I was stuck on the same second paragraph of the fourth chapter as I idly twisted a loose curl that fell out from the messy bun that sat lop-sided on my head. I realized as my ankles swayed back and forth behind me, that I wasn't stuck on the same paragraph because Hemingway was trying to bamboozle me with his easy words. It was because Frank Sinatra was playing. All morning.

And when Grandpa Gene plays Frank Sinatra for longer than an hour, it means he's missing Grandma Bridgette more than ever.

I think Frank Sinatra was my grandma's favorite musician, or she had some kind of association with the late singer, because when my Grandpa listened to ol' Blue Eyes sing the sweet melodies about love, he smiled less and frowned more.

I couldn't focus on Hemingway because thinking about Grandpa Gene missing the love of his life, led my thoughts into a whole other destructive subject matter that I've been trying to avoid for the past couple of days now: the beginning of the end between me and Harry.

After a few more struggling moments of moving onto the third paragraph, I decided to give up and rolled over onto my side so I could look up at Grandpa Gene. His expression was pensive as he focused on blending different shades of blue into the corner of his new canvas. He was painting a warship at sea today. I wondered if it was the same ship he served on when he was in the navy.

"Hey, Grandpa?" I said after watching him paint for a while. "Can I ask you something?"

"Are you going to ask me why Hemingway cared so much about fishing and drinking?" He answered my question with another question. "Because I have yet to figure that out myself."

"No, nothing about Hemingway." I found myself chuckling as I pulled myself up into sitting position. I crossed my legs and leaned back onto my palms. "I actually have a question about long-distance relationships."

Grandpa Gene frowned, his brows creasing as he dropped his paintbrush into the cup of water. He didn't say anything verbally, but a fleeting moment of him looking tormented told me a lot about how he felt.

I took this as my queue to continue. "Well, you and Grandma. You were separated from each other a whole year because you were deployed back to the States, right? And you would write letters to each other and stay in touch the whole time you were apart."

"Right." Grandpa Gene confirmed.

"Well, I guess my question is..." I tilted my head and chewed on my lip while I thought about what I wanted to ask. "My question is, how did you cope without her? How did you manage?"

Grandpa Gene let out a steady exhale before responding. "In actuality, Vita, I didn't manage without her. I was miserable. Downright desolate. It's a feeling I will always struggle to describe. I knew when I left her in France, that I couldn't live without her. Letters weren't enough for me. I wanted to hold her hand, hear her voice, see her eyes light up. My future belonged to her."

I let his words settle with me for a couple of moments. I pulled my knees up to my chest and tightly wound my arms around them. "So, you knew you were going to marry her."

"Without question." Grandpa Gene answered not a second later. "That's why waiting a year for her was worth it. That's how our long-distance relationship worked. We had an end goal waiting for us. We had the same dream. We wanted a life together; we wanted to start a family together. It was just a matter of being patient and holding onto our dream until we could make it true."

"Right." I hummed, my eyes focusing on the wall behind Grandpa Gene as I dipped into my latest woes about where my own relationship was heading.

Long-distance relationships were as foreign to me as the Arabic language. If you asked me, dating was an all-inclusive enigma. I've seen friends and acquaintances try to do the whole long-distance thing, and I've never actually seen it succeed. Like Jayden, for example. He tried dating a girl that lived just outside Miami a couple of years ago, and it was going really well until Jayden had to leave Florida for competitions. Jayden was pretty lousy at staying in touch while he was out of state, so that relationship went down the drain pretty quick. I just couldn't see how Harry and I would be able to last. He was from England, I was from America. I had to finish school, he had to tour around the world. His schedule was demanding, strict, in the public eye and I was just a college student, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

"What are you thinking about, Vita?" Grandpa Gene's gravelly voice interrupted my thoughts. "You've been quiet."

"Everything and nothing, Grandpa." I sighed, jumping up to my feet and stretching my arms. "Would you like more coffee?"

He politely declined and went back to his canvas. As I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a second cup of joe, I couldn't stop thinking about Harry. About me. About us, together. Our relationship was being timed, and it had a countdown. There was a limit, and we were reaching it. We were a ticking time bomb. It was the beginning of the end of us. I could feel it.

It was a terrible feeling.