SOFT SPOT// h.s

0.8 ~ Chicken Noodles

"You're not driving. No way," Harry protested as I suggested the idea.

It was getting very late, and after stopping a while earlier to let the engine cool down and for Ellie to stretch her short legs, we crossed over the invisible border into New Mexico.

We had taken an accidental detour, ending up with no choice but to pass through the hectic city of Albuquerque. The traffic was chaos, and after a couple of hours being stuck in the middle of it, I had grown bored of the dazzling city lights which were no longer a novelty.

"Please Harry. I'm bored out of my mind," I whined, sticking out my bottom lip like a child.

"I'd rather arrive home in one piece, thanks very much," he replied.

I flashed him a dirty look and rested my head against the back of the seat. Ellie was fast asleep in her car seat, hugging her Minnie Mouse doll, despite the loud honking of horns and non stop street noise threatening to wake her up. In my phase of complete and utter boredom, I had begun peeling the black polish off my nails, a new habit that I had developed.

I was seriously considering a few options to get us moving faster:
1) get out of the damn car and walk myself...
2) force Harry out of the drivers seat, take over the car and just drive through everybody until I get somewhere...
3) number two again...

I hadn't rang Noah since yesterday and he was probably freaking out.. A lot.. I felt a pang of guilt gnaw at my stomach and I wondered how they were holding things up for the wedding. I thought of my dress, the feeling of the ivory silk between my fingers and the refreshing smell of the red roses that we had picked out together. Just the thought that in less than a week, I would be a married woman terrified me, but I wasn't more excited for anything in my whole life.

I glanced over at Harry and wondered how his life had been. Brief flashbacks of that night on the cliff spilled into my head as I recalled him telling me about his father, and how his family life was far from perfect. Did he ever escape the hostile threshold? Did he have a girlfriend? Probably not.

I couldn't imagine Harry being a committed kind of guy. I guessed he had been sleeping around in San Francisco, remembering when I saw him in the cafe and the smell of cheap perfume and alcohol and his tousled, messy bed hair.

Although of course it didn't concern me in the slightest how many girls Harry had been sleeping with, just a harmless thought.

If I hadn't been so desperate and caught up in the moment, I definitely wouldn't have asked him to take me on an 5 day journey home, seeing as I hadn't seen him in three years, and to be perfectly honest, I really didn't know the guy all that well to begin with.

I could hear him quietly humming along to the slightly static radio, accompanying a song I didn't know. I was immensely glad that he was beginning to step out of his little bitchy phase and had begun to grow more comfortable with mine and Ellie's company. I wasn't planning on telling him that Ellie was his daughter any time soon, if even at all, no matter how cowardly and selfish that may seem.

"Are you hungry or anything?" Harry asked me as we slowly drove a few metres.

I shook my head in reply. "I could however, do with a nice hot shower and a comfy bed to sleep in," I told him.

"Not going to argue with that. You smell," he joked, chuckling lightly. I liked his laugh, it made a strangely warm feeling stir in my chest.

"You do too," I pointed out truthfully. To be fair, he wasn't as filthy as me. My hair was knotted in clumps and my jeans were covered in stains of dirt. I hadn't worn a trace of makeup since California and my nails were caked with a layer of grime. I felt disgusting, but Harry wasn't too far off my level either.