oh, anna [-hs]

to be so lonely

a/n Welcome to the L.A. portion of the ride! This is the first, and won't be the last time we visit this beautiful city :)

But seriously, mentally prepare yourself for the L.A. chapters. Things are about to get CRAZY muahaha.

And thank you for all your kind comments! And! 500! Reads! What? I appreciate it!

14.

ONE MONTH LATER
HARRY'S POV

"Alright let's take it from the top?" I swivel around in my chair to press the intercom button on the control board. Mitch nods, moving his hands across the guitar to play the intro again. At the keys, Charlotte and Nyoh stretch their fingers. Adam leans against the back wall, his bass hanging low from his shoulders. Sarah grins and gives me a thumbs up from behind the drums.

Kid starts the click track from behind me, and then we're thrown back into the song, the soft ukulele strums echoing from my headphones. I close my eyes and nod along to the score, a smile spreading across my face as Sarah enters with the drum beat, and then the chorus floods through, the keys mimicking string instruments and Mitch playing softly behind the ocean of sound, and it stops, cutting back to the soft ukulele. Kid stops the click and I open my eyes again, pressing the button.

"That was incredible." I tell them. Sarah shakes her drumsticks in the air triumphantly.

"If only we had words to go with it," Kid nudges me in the side. I roll my eyes playfully.

"Give it time, something will show up."

"It always does." He jokes, and then leans down to the microphone I've been speaking into. "Time's up, you guys can pack your stuff up."

I push myself away from the soundboard, standing to grab my guitar case from the ground and grabbing my bag. "Great to see you as always, Man," I nod to Kid. He glances up from the computer and waves.

"Yeah, let's grab a pint sometime."

I wander into the studio to wait for Mitch to pack away his guitar.

It's been a month since I flew back. A whole month of mulling over music, playing with different melodies and tracks, and this is all I've come up with. The first half of a song I don't know the words to.

Like I told Kid, I'm sure they'll come. They always do. Even if it's slow at first. I tell myself, and others, this for reassurance, but now there's a part of me that wonders if the magic's gone without my muse.

Quinn Bellini. I make a mental note to ask her what her middle name is. I want to be able to say the whole thing out loud. I want to shout it. I want to tell her just how much she's grown to mean to me since I met her. But I haven't.

Not fully anyway. I was going to, but after what happened at her apartment, I'm scared. If making her pancakes sends her into panic and dyeing her hair, what would expressing my feelings do? When it comes to fight or flight, she's a flyer, a high one at that. I don't fight or fly. I freeze, every time. What good would telling her how I feel do, when I know that she'll fly away and leave me frozen in place, unable to follow?

I think back to our last conversation, the way she read me like a book. Just like that, all my insecurities and flaws displayed on the table between us. It was impressive, she didn't fly that time, she stayed and fought. And after she finished spreading me open I didn't feel upset or hurt, I felt loved. The fact that she was paying close enough attention to learn those things about me, to think about me like that, it made my heart race. All I had wanted to do in that moment was reach over the table and kiss her. But no, like I said, I didn't want her to fly away.