The Lucky Ones

Chapter 8 - Wasn't The Way...

It was some kind of omelette that fell from heaven onto a plate. It was so good. Definitely a good kind of surprise. I don’t know what was in it, even though I had watched him make it, but it was so good and I finished it much quicker than I would have liked. I kept complimenting him in between bites and he looked genuinely pleased with himself. When we were done, I helped him wash up and then we settled in the living room with my guitar. Holding it always made me feel comforted, I always relaxed and felt so much better with my guitar in my hands. It had seen me through a lot of heartache, joy, love, gratitude, and pain. It was a trusted friend more than anyone in my life.

I took a deep breath and strummed, listening to the chords. “Okay…”

"How do you usually start?" He asked as he settled back in the couch next to me. I angled my body so I was facing him, balancing my guitar on my leg.

"Um. With a letter typically, but… I’m thinking I’ll just dive right in. Or attempt to." Without looking at him, I began playing. I tested a few chords together, my brow coming together as I strummed and then altered certain things and slipped new ones in.

"I like that," Harry commented after about five minutes of finding a melody. I looked up at him and smiled, playing it over again – this time a bit slower. "Oh, that’s even better."

He made some suggestions about how long a chord should be held or about how I should make a step with one part of it, but eventually we came up with a melody that worked really well. Harry hummed a long to it, tapping his knee with his fingers and his foot on the ground. I joined in, humming an octave higher than him. Our voices worked really well together and I was a bit shocked. He smiled at me and for the first time in a long while, I felt something stir in my heart.

When I was with Conor, it felt more like a fling. I didn’t think I was in love with him, though I did care about him greatly. Of course, the moment I start dating someone I’m “obsessed with them” and “talking about getting married and having kids already.” But none of that is true. I haven’t ever thought about getting engaged to someone, nor have I become obsessed with them. People like to let their imaginations run awhile and more than that – they’ll believe anything they hear.

But this feeling that fluttered in my chest was definitely something that I hadn’t felt in a long time – since Jake. It was nice, if not a bit unwarranted. I didn’t know how I felt about it.

"Lyrics," I stated suddenly as I stopped playing and pulled the pen and notepad to me, handing them to Harry. "You write, I play." He took them from me and we sat and came up with lyrics. We worked really well together, surprisingly, and it was nice to finally be writing music again after I hadn’t had it in me to do so in a while. Harry had some good lines and gave me some good suggestions on changing the ones I came up with. I liked that he was able to help me get back to the thing I loved the most. No one else had been able to lately. Not even myself.

We wrote for about four hours, going over and refining everything as much as we could. By the end of it, we had something we were both relatively proud of and decided to run through it one more time before putting it to rest for the day.

"I can see it in their eyes when I walk by/The way they think about me/I feel like dying inside but I don’t let them see," I started, my voice melancholy as I looked down at my hands strumming on my guitar.

Harry followed soon after, “If I let them in enough to understand/Nothing will protect me from them and/The pain that is bound to happen.”

"Whispers all around me trying to destroy/I try my best to block them out/But even I don’t think I’m strong enough now," I looked up at him to see him watching me and he smiled a little before continuing with me in harmony, "So I close my eyes and try to sleep just to forget/But the next day I’m reminded all over again. And I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so/And I don’t know what to say to make it all go away/But you’ve got to believe when I tell you now/This wasn’t the way I imagined it would go."

There was a small instrumental break before Harry sang again, his voice low but sad sounding; “Everything feels so heavy and nothing feels good/Words can’t express how much it tears me apart/Broken hearted whispers and drawn out sighs/Each day I wonder more and more why I even try.”

"I’ll never be right or true or kind in your eyes/You’ll take me for the rumors and spread more lies/Each night I try not to cry and get the hateful words out of my head/But I always just end up hating myself more instead," again we came back together for the chorus, "And I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so/And I don’t know what to say to make it all go away/But you’ve got to believe when I tell you now/This wasn’t the way I imagined it would go."

Our eyes locked as he dove into his last verse, the sound of the song sounding a bit more bitter and angry as our emotions had collided that way, “People will always find the bad in something good/They’ll always allow more hate in their heart/I don’t want to become like them too so what do I do?”

"I’ll hold my head up high and keep my smile wide/Maybe then they won’t see just how deeply I’m hurting inside."

"And I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so/And I don’t know what to say to make it all go away/But you’ve got to believe me when I tell you now/This wasn’t the way I imagined it would go," he trailed off and I repeated, "this was the way I imagined it would go…" The guitar played out for a little while longer and then there was silence between us again. We didn’t break eye contact and for a moment the air felt like it was electrically charged. We were both leaning in and it was one of those movie moments where you could just tell something was going to happen, be it a kiss or something else. But like all other movie moments, something interrupted. In this case, it was Harry’s phone ringing.

We both snapped back to our opposite sides and I cleared my throat while setting my guitar down as Harry dug in his pocket for his phone. I dropped the notepad with the lyrics and music on it to the table and began to pick up the crumpled pieces that we had torn off in frustration when something didn’t work right. I turned off my hearing so I wouldn’t eavesdrop on his conversation, though he didn’t seem to worry about me being in the same room as him. Once he hung up, he looked at me with that charming smile on his face again; “How would you like to go out?”

"Out?" My eyes grew wide. "Like outside. With people? Oh, I don’t know…"

"We don’t have to. We were just invited to go to a pub, that’s all. But if you don’t feel comfortable, we can stay in."

"But no. You can go! No reason for you to stay in if I’m being weird."

"I’d want to stay in if you were…" I looked at him, slightly taken aback and caught off guard by this statement, but then slowly I nodded.

"On second thought, going out sounds great."

The smile on his face was adorable.