Here Comes The Sun

twenty-three

t h e . k i n d . of  g u y . h a r t . d o e s n ' t . l i k e

august 11th
toronto

A FEW DRINKS AND SONGS LATER, MILES HAD FIGURED SOMEONE WAS INTERESTED IN ME. And even though I was a naive one and usually thought no man ever saw any interesting depth in me they wanted to learn about, I had a feeling Miles was right. A young Leonardo DiCaprio look-a-like had been staring at me from across the café, gently tucking his hair behind his ears, sipping from the glass filled with a dark fluid. Miles was convinced that if he and his boyfriend Drake stayed with me, the guy would never come over to have an innocent chat with me, therefore they moved a few tables away.

I knew his name. He had introduced himself before he had started singing, he had stuttered it out a bit due to his nervousness, and it was impossible to not remember, because his voice teleported me straight to heaven where angels were his backing vocals. How his fingers had gently stroke the strings of his guitar, how his eyes had been closed all that time, how his raspy yet smooth voice had calmed everyone in the café. He had amazed me.

A girl was singing a vintage song in front of me on the stage, while I played with the red-striped straw in my rum and coke. Tipsiness whispered in my ear to join the girl on stage, but I knew how to stay in control. Each time I had a refilled glass, the bartender threw a little more rum in it and a little less coke, but I didn't mind. I had a day off on Monday anyway. I didn't like how the girl sang Tonight You Belong To Me by Patience & Prudence, her voice was too high-pitched to give a flawless performance like the ones before her did.

"You know what," all of the sudden, someone on my right moved the second stool of the table backwards, put down their drink and sat beside me, "the girl looks like a nice gal, cute nose and all, but someone should tell her to stop embarrassing herself like that."

I downed my drink as I realized who had assembled the guts to come talk to me. "Isn't that a bit rude to say? She's doing her best, and most importantly, she's having fun."

"Isn't it rude and selfish to burden us because you want to have fun?"

Our eyes connected, and I immediately recognized a spark of playfulness in his green-blueish irises. The corners of his lips were curled up the slightest bit, clarifying the words slipping through those lips; he didn't mean what he was saying, he just liked playing with me in that way, because he had probably excepted me to disagree with his statement. I inspected the rest of his close existence, and what caught all of my attention was the vibe he carried on him. Just like Hart, he looked like the type of guy who didn't care about anything, dived through the skies as free as a bird. I wondered if I attracted those people because I looked stressed all the time. I must have.

"You think you're better than her?" I asked, using the same playfulness in my voice as he did.

"Do you think I'm better than her?" He charmingly pushed a hand through his medium length, blonde locks and leaned his elbow on top of the table. My motherly instinct wanted me to warn him about not accidentally pushing his glass off, but I had enough control over myself to not do that.

"What I think is that you're a bit cocky," I said, pushing my glass a bit away from me so that I could cross my arms on top of the table, which seemed to distract him. He took my glass and walked to the bar.

He proceeded in pushing the bartender away and starting to make his own drink, until the bartender got back at him and they ended up having a little quarrel. It eventually looked like the bartender gave him permission to mix himself, and I couldn't contain some giggles — especially when he raised the, what looked like a pink-colored drink from this distance, in the air and sent a wink my way. I tried to shake the blush on my cheeks away, but unfortunately that didn't quite work out for me.

from hart feingold's eyes

The worst thing was seeing her leave with someone else. She was the prettiest girl around, and I couldn't blame the man, but I felt like taking care of her all the time. Letting her leave with another didn't feel right, honestly, it felt horrendous. But it was better this way — it was better if she didn't see me, it was better if she didn't think about me, it was better if she didn't fall in love with me. Still, it was rather hypocritical that I saw her, I thought about her and well . . .

august 18th

"Are you even listening to us, Hart?"

"I'm sorry," I quickly turned down my phone, looking at Mason. He had been in the House of Commons as long as my father, therefore he was my right hand. Without Mason, I would have never been able to run for Prime Minister.

"What's distracting you from our campaign plan?" he asked calmly. The kind of calm where you just knew it was out of the purest form of anger.

"I'm just really tired. Been up 'till three A.M. to work on the campaign plan, man."

"You need to stop saying 'man' after every sentence," Melinda said, another woman in the House of Commons who had been wanting to take over my dad's party when he passed away.

I sighed deeply, and looked out of the window for a few seconds. The trees outside

"You haven't sent us the work you did on the campaign plan?" A voice from the end of the large table.

"You should've finished it by now, otherwise we aren't going to be able to finish the plan." A voice from my right.

"Oh, and don't forget to prepare your speeches for the schools you're going to visit." Left.

"Everything's taking so long, Hart. You really need to hurry." Right.

"Why are we even telling him what do to? He's the leader of this party." The voices were coming closer and closer.

"I told you he's too young to be in a dominant position like this."

"Maybe after he's over the death of his father he'd deliver better performances."

"Grégoire, how could you say such a thing?"

All of the sudden, I blacked out. The voices kept echoing in my head like I was in an empty cave with water crashing into the rocks, creating utterly loud sounds which my sense of hearing couldn't cope with. What sucked me back into the real world was my heartbeat. Never had I ever felt such weight on my chest, and it worsened by every word that was said. The water in the cave disappeared, magically replaced by lava, and my body warmed up within seconds. Sweat dripped off my forehead, and I couldn't stand being in that fucking room anymore. I grabbed my coat and ran out of the meeting room without thinking twice.