Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
taylor
The lyrics to “Life on Mars?” followed me throughout the morning as I poured milk over my cereal and sat at the kitchen island with my elbows resting on its cool surface.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked, coming down the stairs with Peanut by his side. “Are you humming?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“It must have been some movie,” Jason said, scratching Peanut behind the ear, then walking over to the fridge, scratching himself behind the ear, too. Sometimes, I was certain he was doing this on purpose.
“We never got around to watching the movie,” I said. “Harrison stuffed eggplant slices with cheese. You can’t imagine how good that was.”
Jason looked at me over his shoulder with a frown twisting his eyebrows for a moment or two. “Cool guy, huh?”
I shrugged. I had to bite my lip not to laugh at Jason’s narrow eyes and the lingering look of gentle confusion. He took out Peanut’s open can of food and spooned a generous portion into a clean bowl, then carried it to the corner where Peanut liked to eat.
With his priorities in order, Jason proceeded to make himself a grilled cheese sandwich, while I continued to hum the song that was stuck in my head. The tune slipped from major to minor for no particular reason, and I let it fade out because it made me inexplicably sad.
Shaking my head a little, I carried the bowl to the sink, rinsed it, and stacked it inside the dishwasher, then went back to my room to find that book I owned.
It had to be somewhere in there. There were a few scattered textbooks on my desk, my laptop was open and gathering dust in the center of the workspace, pens and pencils had rolled around a stack of notebooks, the beanbag was pushed to the corner, and the bed wasn’t made yet.
On the windowsill, watching out, was the stork Harrison had bought me.
It made me pause, erasing my mission from my mind for a long moment before I got back to my senses and rummaged through the drawers.
Still dog-eared, the paperback was under a stack of corrected essays, and I tucked it into the back pocket of my baggy cargo pants, turned to the wardrobe, and found myself a hoodie.
It was a picnic, so I decided to go with a casual look.
My feet pattered against the stairs as I hurried down and toward the door.
“Where are you off to at the crack of dawn?” Jason asked, rinsing his plate.
“Out,” I said, sticking the headphones into my ears. “Got plans. Gotta dash.”
I didn’t need to look to know that Jason was trying very hard not to put two and two together because the result would fundamentally change everything he thought he knew about me, life, and the universe at large. Only when the door closed behind me did I let myself laugh.
And just because I had a strong suspicion that Jason was at the window, spying on me, I boogied down the path to the street and around the corner. The music carried me down the street long after I was out of Jason’s field of vision, but I didn’t stop.
The lawn by the philosophy department was inclined, and the grass was just a little overgrown, and students had already placed their picnic blankets around the park.
The biggest one was a checkered red-and-white blanket with a basket covered by yet another checkered cloth, this one blue and white, and the figure lying on his back caught my gaze immediately.
Harrison wore a navy blue, short-sleeved polo shirt paired with beige shorts and darker brown loafers. It was a ridiculously polished look, especially when I realized that he wore green-tinted sunglasses with a faded golden frame.
I dropped next to him on the blanket. “Now I look like an idiot.”
Harrison lifted his sunglasses and scanned me. He took a moment. “No, you’re perfect. I might have overdone it.”
We looked around, and sure enough, few wore the latest Hermès look to a book-reading picnic. “Maybe a smidgen,” I agreed.
“Got a book?” Harrison asked.
I slapped my ass where it was still packed in the pocket, then pulled it out. “Don’t judge. I only read fifty pages, and I’ve been meaning to continue, but I kept putting it off.” I placed it on the blanket between us.
“Are you kidding me?” He picked up the book with delight on his face. “I grew up devouring every Discworld book I could get my hands on. Terry Pratchett is a personal hero.”
I frowned a little. “Huh, and I just picked it up because the cover was funny.” It was a busy illustration featuring Death, a horse, a scrawny kid, a woman, and a single word, Mort, lettered across the vast blue sky.
“This is my favorite,” Harrison said. “Well, top three, for sure.” He handed it back to me, and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Mr. Intellectual liked my book. “What did you bring?”
Harrison pulled the white-and-blue cloth off the basket.
“Breads, jams, a thermos of coffee, and this.” He lifted a heavy, hardcover edition of The History of Film Composition with a black-and-white cover that showed actors in a room with a window in the background and a boy playing outside in the snow.
“Interesting,” I said honestly. “You can tell me about it. I don’t think I’d survive reading this.”
“It’s not so dense and technical,” Harrison said.
“No, I mean it literally,” I said, lying on my back and lifting the book above my face to demonstrate. “It would crush my skull. See?”
He laughed and took the book away. “I see what you mean.”
“So? Any updates?” I asked.
“I saw you fourteen hours ago,” he said.
It took me a moment before I understood. “I mean with Emma. Is she here yet?”
The casual confidence faded from his face, and his muscles tensed. He shook his head. “But her girlfriends are here, and there’s space for one more blanket.”
“You didn’t talk to them, did you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good. We can stretch our legs a little if you want to hold my hand and let them see,” I offered.
Harrison hesitated for the shortest of moments, then waved the idea off. “We can leave that on the maybe pile for now.”
I glanced at Harrison, then let my gaze linger.
His ears were pierced, his cheeks were covered in the shortest stubble, while his chin and upper lip sported a stylish goatee, and he had a long dragon tattoo down his right arm.
I hadn’t realized he had a tattoo. It made him look a lot more daring and dangerous, but I knew he wasn’t dangerous at all.
There was something very comfortable and safe about him. It had me wondering what Emma possibly could have been thinking. Was the other guy that much cooler or hotter or whatever? I wouldn’t pretend to be an authority on the subject, but I couldn’t imagine someone cooler or hotter than Harrison.
Now that he wore short sleeves, I could see the bulging biceps and the defined, triangular forearms, and the broad shoulders stretching the shirt so wide, and even a strip of flesh where the shirt lifted to reveal his belt and what were unmistakably his abs.
Even his legs were athletic now that I thought about it.
Contrary to Finn’s assessment, I didn’t think Harrison only worked his glutes at the gym.
His quads and calves were big and defined just as well.
He leafed through the book while lying on his side, supporting his torso with one elbow planted onto the ground. “Jam?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “How often do you work out?”
His mustache twitched down as he thought. “Every other day. I do a full-body workout until I’m swaying on my feet, then take a day to recover.”
“Evenings? Mornings?”
“Evenings,” he said.
“Let’s go together,” I said. “You’re due one today, right? You weren’t swaying last night.”
Harrison lifted one corner of his lips in a lazy smile. “Why do you want to go together?”
“I want to see how you do it,” I said. “I’ve been working out since I was fourteen, but your proportions are something I can’t even dream about.”
“You can dream.” He cast his gaze back to the page, though the small smile remained on his lips.
We helped ourselves to some of the jam and bread from the basket, and later, Harrison poured coffee into cups. Small groups clustered all around the park, reading, chatting quietly, snacking, and enjoying the sunshine.
My hoodie absorbed the heat so much that I decided to take it off and let the sunlight kiss my skin. I folded it and tucked it under my head, then noticed Harrison had paused reading, his gaze moving over my torso to my face, concern furrowing his brow.
“Am I not supposed to…?”
“She’s here,” he said and looked away.
I followed his gaze to the girl passing between blankets.
Her curls bounced around her head and shoulders as she hurried to the empty spot her friends left for her in the middle of the group.
She stepped onto someone’s shoe, then apologized, but the guy laughed it off, and she looked around, one hand on the straps of her bag, the other moving to tuck the stray locks behind her ear.
She took the park in, moving her gaze all over it in one sweeping glance that stopped at Harrison, flicked back to me, and turned to Harrison again.
Emma raised her hand and waved at Harrison, who waved back, but his breathing was a sudden wheeze as he did so.
She turned away and set her things in the group, speaking to the girls now.
“She’s very pretty,” I said. Prettier than even in the photo in the center of Harrison’s crime-planning corkboard.
“Yes, I know.”
I didn’t say anything else after that. Harrison’s lips were pinched as he turned the pages of his book. I didn’t think he was reading anymore.
We stayed in the park for another hour before Harrison needed to catch a lecture. I had my own classes to attend a little later, so I put my hoodie on and helped him pack up, and we walked in the same direction for a few minutes.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Peachy,” he said, smiling. But when I didn’t join him in joking, he nodded. “I’m okay. She saw us. You were practically naked there, so that must have caught her attention. She’ll think about that.”
“Mm, mission accomplished,” I said. “I’m happy to strip at request whenever she’s nearby. Just say the word.”
He shot me a playful look that assured me he really was okay. “You don’t want to give me all that control.”
I clicked my tongue. “You’re too sweet to abuse that power.”
“That’s what I made you think,” he said.
“I’m happy to put the state of my decency into your hands, Harrison,” I told him. “You’d never ask me to do anything that was improper.”
He threw his head back and laughed aloud.
“I’ll see you tonight, then,” I said.
“Text you the details,” he said, and we went our separate ways.
As I walked back to the Bel House, a tingle in my stomach told me I was nervous about something. Maybe having the whole campus think I was now gay and dating the coolest devil around wasn’t such a smart idea.
I’d done a fair share of silly things in my day, but pretending to date Harrison could end up taking the crown. He was wonderful, interesting, and incredibly charming, and it would take a while to convince everyone that it had all just been a prank.
I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. It didn’t actually matter what strangers thought. And I’d have an easy time with my friends. That knowledge should have calmed my nerves.
Except…
Except it didn’t. The tingling, fluttering sensation of anxiety remained in my stomach, calming down in the lectures, then intensifying when Harrison texted me about where his gym was.
It was the same one I went to, just a different location, so my pass covered it.
I went to my room in the early evening to check that I had clean workout clothes, then packed them and headed to meet Harrison at his place so we’d go together.
As I walked from campus, there was a skip in my stride, and my heart beat a little erratically, but I was, in all honesty, just excited to see Harrison’s technique.