“Well, I just assumed. You told me you weren’t going to school.”
“I did apply, to several schools, actually.”
“And?” I asked, both eyebrows raised, but she didn’t respond. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”
“I got into a few,” she added cryptically, a smile tugging at the side of her mouth.
“I don’t understand. Why aren’t you going to college then?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“I can’t go.”
“Why, Harper?”
“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.”
“How would you even know that Harper? Unless you tried?”
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.