Die With Me was continuously pulled off of the shelf for the next week, every single day. Behind the counter, Jane worked on her statistics homework from NYU and watched the man come in. She concluded that he wasn’t poor with his changing attire and expensive articles of clothing that would occasionally appear. He normally chewed gum, and she admired his jaws; strong and prominent, up and down motions. Either gum or some type of food occupied his mouth that Jane found herself sometimes looking at.
She truthfully wondered about the stranger by the time Sunday came around. Her eyes narrowed at what page he was on, and he didn’t even look two hundred pages in. He’d been here for a week and not even half way done? When closing time came, he still sat at that table with that dark aura around him. Jane walked over to him and tapped his shoulder.“Sir, do you need me to check that out for you, or are you just going to come in everyday to read it?”
After drinking and those twenty-some-odd hours, Jane was back to her regular self. Her black skirt hugged to her thighs tightly and the man’s eyes tried not to look down her legs that looked so long in her black heels. A white and awfully thin shirt with a collar was tucked into the skirt, and he found it hard to look into her eyes. “I’d rather come in everyday. I’m sure if I don’t, you won’t have anyone else to think about.” He smiled. “And you are?”
“Someone you don’t need to know.”
He chuckled and stood. A good half foot taller than Jane, he seemed like a giant. He craned his neck downwards and squinted his eyes to the right of her breasts, “Well, Jane,” he smiled, “I know you now.” Jane despised the loose strands in his hair and almost ignored his name when he spoke. A gravel-like tone with an undertone of narcissism, as if he knew everything he did was far from the perfection Jane expected. “I’m Harry.”
It clicked in her mind almost instantly. She bit the taste buds on her tongue to relieve the sick feeling she had. It was him; the author of Die With Me. The one thing she hated read by the one person she hated even more. “You read your own work? Narcissistic, don’t you think?”
“Oh, my dear Jane, I read my own things to ensure that the best parts weren’t the front and back covers.”
“Those aren’t good, either.”
“I see you aren’t very fond of my work. Why is that?” Jane touched her now bleeding tongue to the back of her top row of teeth and simply walked away from the man she used to admire from a distance. She realized she couldn’t go far since she was still on duty. Harry followed her to her station and she nearly wished death upon him to get away from the writer. Beautiful words for such a tainted soul. It was easy to be a man, he didn’t understand Jane’s thinking, no one really did.
Once she got back behind the counter, she noticed Harry was sitting again with the book. His own book. He seemed actually interested in it, and Jane wouldn’t blame him if she didn’t hate the book herself. He looked over at her once. They stared into each other’s eyes and furrowed eyebrows broke out until Jane looked away, back at a computer, then to a man coming to check out a book. Of course, it was Harry’s book, so her attention turned back to the flawed man to find him utterly intrigued with what gray abyss was in her eyes.
Jane pursed her lips and bit the inside of her mouth next to the corner, and helped the man check out his book. He was brunette, a bit tall, but not as tall as Harry, and had these gray eyes. Darker than Jane’s, but nonetheless gray. Harry noticed their exchange of glances and how it was interrupting his staring with Jane. He was mildly upset. That is, until the man smiled and went on his way, then he stopped the nonsense running through his brain and continued reading his book.
Harry could feel Jane’s eyes on him; staring into his brain for wisdom, yet into his soul for his darkest secrets. Jane wondered about Harry Styles, what he had gone through to write such a tragic tale of self-awareness and allthewhile being completely lost. Lost in a world that once belonged to you, but now the work you may have done for naught. Andrew, the main character in the book, stood no chance against the rest of the living, nil. There was no point in his fighting, he was going to be stuck in the barren wasteland of his own mind whether he passed on or not, and Jane wondered if Harry put that into consideration.
That his main character, no matter what happened to him, wouldn’t be happy. He would be forever plagued with the knowledge that he’d lived in a world that he no longer was able to control, and was now being passed onto another world that he still had no control of. Another thing about Harry Styles was that he was not a religious man, or he just didn’t dwell on the knowledge of other religions. Christianity was completely ignored, and the whole idea of Heaven and Hell were destroyed. Passing on meant eternal happiness in Die With Me, not eternal life. There was no God holding Andrew back, it was just that he wasn’t ready.
Jane’s thoughts were split into tiny pieces when she could, yet again, feel the sea green eyes boring into the front of her skull. She didn’t want to look up to give him the satisfaction of getting her attention, so she continued looking at the computer screen that was completely blank. Harry knew it was blank too, because she’d zoned out and had been staring at it for minutes on end. He wondered if she knew he was staring at her chest and what was left of her waist that was exposed before the desk cut off all viewing.
He stared at her boobs, then her face. Her beautiful face with slightly flattened eyebrows and a pointed nose. Her lips were thin, but the lipstick painted on her lips made them look ravishing. Skin barely paling in the winter weather, nearing November, and her head sprouting out thick brown hair. Today, her eyes looked a clear ocean blue, and Harry swam in that ocean, searching to drown in the everlasting wonder of Jane Bradley. By the time Jane did look up, Harry was looking elsewhere. At Mrs. Johnson.
The old woman walked over to Harry with a slight limp on her right side from an old hip replacement surgery, and her gray hair was pulled into a ponytail to keep the long hair from her aging eyes. He watched her every movement until she came to his seat and sat across from him at the table. Harry’s eyes reverted to his book, ignoring the presence of the lady so close to Jane. Her voice was light and soft, like rain in a meadow of roses, and her words, no matter what she said, seemed always to be wise. “What are you reading?” She asked Harry.
He first ignored her. Her loud sighs when her question wasn’t answered, and the second asking of the question. She knew he heard her, he wasn’t deaf after all, but he didn’t want to acknowledge her presence for the simple fact that he knew Jane and would talk about her with him, a thing that he didn’t want to do. He wanted to believe that this beautiful Jane was a figment of his imagination so that he could look at her all the time, yet couldn’t get attached to her for his own dirty thoughts.
Harry sighed and finally acknowledged the woman after a while. “Die With Me.”
“What’s it about?” Harry’s attention turned to Jane who was, although not looking directly at them, was listening very hard. Every syllable, every word was caught by her small ears.
Harry cleared his throat. “It’s a terrible novel, to be quite honest. A ghost is stuck in our world, right? And he wants to find out who he died and pulls this girl that’s all abused to help him. It’s pretty stupid, messed up to put it lightly.”
Mrs. Johnson held her smile. She knew Harry wrote the book, she also knew that Jane was listening. “And why are you still reading that book if it’s so terrible?”
“Every terrible book deserves a chance, correct? Despite it being horrendous, it might have a good meaning and some good messages. Who would know if no one read it?”
“You’re a wise man.”
“Not wise, just knowledgeable.” He chuckled after her silky laugh flowed out in music notes and happiness. Jane listened and refused to smile on the outside, her slight happiness shown on the inside. Kept inside beneath those twenty-two hours that were now unaccounted for and her hatred for Harry’s book. He tried to impress the girl with the blueish-gray eyes and brown, medium length hair.
Jane could though admit that Harry Styles was an attractive son of a bitch. Pink lips that seemed to never be free of the cage his teeth served as, and said cage so pearly white. His overall smile didn’t pull to his eyes, it didn’t cause wrinkles next to his eyes. It didn’t seem genuine. But then again, aren’t all writers just writing words they don’t believe in for the simple pleasure of passing on false belief?
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short and sweet. i'm in love with mrs. johnson, and you'll love her, too. she's an amazing character. i hope you all have a happy new year, cheers & see you in 2015 ♥
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Burgundy || HS
Fanfiction[COMPLETED] A color so dark that possesses such potential-burgundy. Could a color so dark be deemed worthy of love? If black could be the inevitable twilight and it could be adored with a side of whiskey, then surely burgundy could be worthy of some...
