Callum & Harper (5 page)

I’m getting attached.
She’s too much for me and I find myself wishing she’d just leave before she breaks my heart.
You can’t get attached. Attachment is death for someone like you, Callum.
It weighs more to me than it does for regular people. I glanced her direction as she lifted a pile of wet clothes into the dryer. She peeked over her shoulder at me and smiled before turning back and starting the machine.
Stay with me, Harper,
I find myself silently pleading.

I don’t know what it is about this girl, but it feels like nothing to want to take her on as if I can afford to double my responsibility load and, you know, I think she may have felt the same way.
What is wrong with you, dude? You can barely feed and clothe yourself.
I’d been at it for a few months longer than her and it was painfully obvious, even if she hadn’t already admitted to it. This was obviously her first night on her own.

I knew it was our pasts that united us. Though, I’ve met others with a similar bond, none had ever believed in me as implicitly as this naive girl.
Did you hear how she told you your dreams would become real?

She’d obviously lived through a harsh childhood too but, somehow, remained as trusting as she did. It was refreshing. Refreshing and incredibly
dangerous
in a city like New York. I knew if didn’t take care of her, she’d be eaten up and spit out, then shoved into a gutter and left for dead.

    “
Tell me a little about yourself,” I said, desperate to hear her talk.
    She pinched her eyebrows with a smirk. “What do you want to know?”
She reached me and I tossed her by the waist onto the machine at her back.
God, she weighs nothing.
She bit her bottom lip and turned her head, attempting to hide her blush. I really hoped that blush belonged to me. I turned and pushed myself onto the machine next to her.
    “Who’s your favorite band? And don’t tell me it’s MilliVanilli or something because I’ll have to kill you right here,” I teased.
She blushed, every inch of her face covered in a rosy hue.
    “MilliVanilli? How
old are you
?” She joshed.
    I smiled before clearing my throat. “Um, does ‘Dream On’ mean anything in particular to you?”

“
Yeah,” she said, quietly, looking introspective. “It reminds me how fleeting life can be and how those around you can steal you from yourself...if you let them. It reminds me to protect myself.” I wanted to ask her who she needed protection from so I could beat them to a bloody pulp but she distracted me once more with her lovely mouth as it began to speak. “Anyway,” she shrugged, “Enough about that.” She laughed nervously. “Depressing. Um, Barcelona’s my favorite band. Their lyrics are especially meaningful. They’re especially sweet, to me anyway. I mean, their song ‘Please Don’t Go’? I’ve
always
been a sucker for violins.” She meets my eyes. “Ever heard of them?”

   
I reach into my back pocket and pull out a flyer. “Oh who? Them?” I ask, nonchalantly, pointing at the name at the top of the flyer.
Harper snatches it from my hand.
    “Where did you get this?” She questioned, her voice raising an octave in shock.
    “Oh, they’re just touring with my buddy’s band.”
She shook her head in disbelief and swallowed audibly.
    "They'll be here in two weeks," I continued. "Why don't you come with me?"
    "In two weeks?" She said. "Two weeks?" She repeated.
Commit to knowing me in two weeks, Harper. Don't make me beg.
    "I think I would love that."
    "You think?" I joked as I exhaled an inward sigh of relief.
Chapter Three
Loo
k What You've Done
   
Callum

    “
Tell me why you didn’t apply for college,” I asked her as we walked back to the studio at ten to midnight.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “How do you know I never applied?” She said.

“
And?” I asked, both eyebrows raised, but she didn’t respond. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”

“
Because...,” she sighed, her shoulders drooping in resignation, “because I wouldn’t be able to do it. I don’t think I
can
do it.” She suddenly steeled herself, standing tall, pushing back her shoulders and raising her head. “It’s too late now anyway. It’s nearly June. There’s no way I could even enroll.”

She smiled and ducked her face in her chest, her chin shook back and forth.

“
Where were you accepted?” I asked, moving on to the most important part.

“
A bunch of state colleges.” She cleared her throat. “NYU.”

I playfully push her as if to say ‘get out’ but she doesn’t expect it and almost toppled over. I reached for her clumsily, caught her by the waist, and brought her into my chest.

“
I’m sorry,” I murmured into her ear.

She stared up at me, so beautiful, lips full, eyes bright with excitement. Her sweet breath smelled of the strawberry lips gloss she had a habit, I noticed, of applying every half hour. She was so close I could smell her hair again and I forgot myself, openly inhaling her.

“
What are you doing?” She asked, straightening herself from my grasp, cheeks flamed.

“
Smelling you,” I stupidly blurt, removing my grip from her small waist.

She bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing and wrinkled her nose. “Wh-what for?” She stammered.

“
Because you smell like oranges, pineapples and the ocean. It’s the most unusual scent I’ve ever smelled and it’s addictive,” I confessed. Her face lost its playfulness. “I first smelled you in that lobby, Harper and I wanted to bury my face in your hair then, too.” Harper’s breathing sped up as she studied my face, looking for something but I’m not quite sure what. “Anyway, I’m sorry,” I continued. “It won’t happen again, I apologize.”

I started walking, the embarrassment too much to shoulder and cowardly hide through my false determination to reach the studio. Harper slowly caught up with me and we walked side by side for the majority of the walk in silence.

“
So,” I uttered suddenly, nearing the door, trying to make light of what happened, “journalism and NYU, I’ve heard, are a fantastic combination.”

   
Harper laughed out loud. “It does, one of the best actually.”
    “
So
?”
    “So, what?” She shrugged her shoulders.
    “So come with me tomorrow morning. I have to get some paperwork done and it will give you the opportunity to pick my advisor's brain.”
She stopped me at the door, her soft hand on my forearm. I instinctively flex to prevent myself from covering her hand with the one resting on the door.
    “Why would I do that, Callum?” She asked me earnestly.
    “Why wouldn’t you, Harper? What do you have to lose?”
    “Absolutely nothing, I guess,” she answered honestly.
    I opened the metal door and let her in, walking ahead of her to the studio. Inside, it was slightly warm but not uncomfortable.
    “Music?” I asked, walking over to the studio’s soundboard.
    “Mmm,” she answered, breaking open the laundry bag and separating our clothes into two piles. The smell of the freshly laundered clothing filled the tiny space with a bursting fragrance.
    “Thank you,” she said quietly as I flipped through tracks.
    I turned around to face her back. “For what, Harper?”
    “For clean laundry, for taking me in, for seeming interested in what I do with my life,” she said, her hands coming to rest on the table in front of her.
    “I
am
interested in what you do with your life.”
    She curved her body around to face me. “Why?” She asked bluntly.

“
I don’t know,” I answered honestly, shrugging. “You just feel important to me, for some reason.”

She leaned her backside against the table, seemingly for support. “But you don’t even know me, Callum.” Her bottom lip trembled.

“
You’re a kindred spirit,” I offered up, but I say this only to stop from revealing the whole truth. The partial was all I could give her without sounding insane. If I was being candid with her, she’d only find out that I felt something for her that could only be the equivalent of a gravitational pull towards the center of the earth. She was a magnet for me and I was powerless to resist. It was more than a mere attraction.

“
I guess we do have eerily similar backgrounds,” she agreed.

“
Yeah, look at where we met.”

“
Exactly,” she winked.

   
I picked up one of Charlie’s acoustics and sat on the swivel chair next to the soundboard. I absently began to play a song I wrote months ago. It had a melancholy melody and I’d never really played it for anyone. It wasn’t my intention for Harper to hear it, it was just second nature to pick up Charlie’s guitars and start playing with paying no mind to who’s around. I wasn’t used to anyone else hearing me play except for Charlie and his band.
    “Callum, that is beautiful,” she exclaimed.
I stopped playing, a heat creeping into my face and up my neck.
    “I-I didn’t realize I was even playing,” I said, attempting to shake the humiliation from my face.
    “Don’t stop,” she begged quietly, sending my blood to an ultimate boil. She moved to sit in one of the other swivel chairs next to me.
    I coughed into a fist. “Um, okay. Any requests?”
    “Well, since you’re actually familiar with
Barcelona
. Could you play
Please Don't Go
? If you know it, that is?”
I smiled. I did know it and immediately start singing it to her, strumming the strings softly. The melody is simple but beautiful. It incited waves of intensity to roll off Harper and they hit me like a hydrogen bomb. My fingers almost stilled from the shock of it.
She’s ridiculous extraordinary
, I admitted to myself. She closed her eyes and grinned at the lyrics.
    While most people act awkward and uncomfortable when others sing to them, Harper surprised me by letting it be what music was, natural and beautiful. She moved her eyes with mine and it seemed to be the most unfeigned, unpracticed thing in the world. She even sung harmony with me for the chorus and I was completely taken by her by the end of the song.
    She leaned in closely with glinted eyes. “Play another,” she whispered.

And I did. Four more, actually and Harper Bailey made me feel like a freakin’ rock star instead of the nobody I really was. She wrinkled her nose adorably and sang along, scrunched her eyes closed and bit her lip to prevent herself from beaming a bright smile at her obviously favorite parts, and raised her hands, dancing and twirling around during songs with an accelerated beat, her hair fanning around her.

When my fingers could take no more, I set the guitar down and slumped into my chair. Realizing I was tired, Harper turned on a few tunes through the soundboard.

“
Come on,” she said, grabbing me by my hands. A shot of pleasure that
she
reached for
me
sent me reeling with an unreasonable need to bring her close. “Dance with me?” She asked, giving me the out I would have paid a million dollars for at that moment.

We threw our arms out and shook our heads as we screamed the lyrics of three songs at the other, yet exhaustion never took me. Harper gave me energy enough to last for weeks. Despite the unusually dark room, I felt like I could decipher the smallest lines of her face. That’s how attuned to her I’d become in those few hours and I studied every expression, memorizing what notes made her happiest.

What are the odds?
I thought, as
Barcelona’s
‘Please Don’t Go’ suddenly played softly, magnifying our loud breaths caused by the effort of dancing around. I held out my hand to her, my face sobering quickly. She hesitated for only a second before sliding her hand into mine. I brought her body close and my breath sped up even more but not from the earlier exertion, no, this was from proximity.

Harper laid her head on my shoulder as we swayed back and forth to the resonating piano, the long, low strokes of the violins, and the soft, meaningful words. We sang the lyrics to each other, letting the impact of their words sink into our hearts.