Callum & Harper(12)

“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.