Starstruck

Part 14

Warnings: swearing, angst

Historical Inaccuracies: N/A :)

Word Count: 4.5k

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

My birthday had been an absolute disaster, to say the least.

It hadn't started out as a disaster, waking up with the morning sun warming my face. I normally hated to be woken up that way, because it meant that the dawn had broken into a new day when I'd only just managed to fall asleep. My thoughts kept me awake most nights, and when on a rare occasion they left me alone, the sounds of parties or sloshed band members took up the torch.

But I'd fallen asleep before the dawn on my twenty-seventh birthday, and had awoken with a rather lovely girl in my arms. Sure, I'd woken up with lovely girls before, but that had usually been after a drunken round of bedroom pleasantries, ones that became very much unpleasantries as soon as the night came down.

This had been different.

For one, I hadn't taken her to bed, but for another, what had been beautiful in the nighttime remained so in the light of day.

She, usually alternatingly vibrant with talk and reserved with intelligent pensiveness, had seemed almost subdued where she lay in my arms. Her hair was messy, no doubt from my lack of usefulness as a pillow, and her lips, subtly pinkened, looked powder soft where her face was nestled against my chest. I felt afraid to move; she looked delicate in her unconsciousness, and my clumsy hand would only shatter her.

Yet I longed to touch her cheek.

Strange, this longing.

From my chest it ran to my fingertips and toes, and stole my breath away, like a thief who'd noticed that I'd purposely left my doors unlocked. Purposely, because I wanted this— I wanted to touch her cheek, to hold her in my arms. I couldn't remember the last time I'd wanted something so terribly, yearning taking over the few thoughts that did not concern themselves with my general fears of failure in life.

And I wanted to hear her laugh, all the time, because, god, that laugh. I wouldn't mind kissing her laughter away, stopping only to hear it again.

When I spoke, she listened, listened like she truly wanted to hear what I had to say, not like she was just being polite and waiting for me to finish so that she could leave and get on with her day. No. when I talked with her, my words were light and they flowed that way, stories I'd never told anyone spilling from my tongue as though I believed I had it in me to continue to trust her, forever. As though she and her familiar presence would stay with me forever, would always be there to welcome me home.

But I'd just about ruined it all only a few hours later, in telling her the only truth I'd ever feared to tell her— the truth that would push her away if she chose not to come with us on tour. And of course she'd said no, because her whole life was in London, in the city, and neither I nor anybody else had the right to take that from her. Deep down, I'd known that she would say no, but my naïve and wasted heart had still tried to convince me otherwise, and so I'd asked her.

Now there was nothing to do but to leave and to bury whatever nonsense I'd been carrying around my head for the past few years.

Years I'd spent gazing at her, first from afar, and then from such a closeness that when a sigh escaped her lips, it brushed mine. If anything had been meant to happen, it would have happened by now.

And now, as I gathered my things from around my bedroom at Ridge Farm, it was too late. Six weeks had gone by, and six weeks had brought me as close to her as I'd ever get.