Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
harrison
I stood under the pale white light, waiting for him to emerge and laugh as loudly as I expected he might. People came in pulses, hauling their luggage behind them, looking for which way to go.
Finally, when I saw the mop of wavy locks and his defined, expressive eyebrows above all the other heads, I lifted the sign a little higher, wearing a very innocent expression under a chauffeur’s hat on my head.
Taylor grinned at the hat, then looked down at the sign reading Mr. Spicy Pants, then threw his head back and laughed the roof off the airport.
He dropped his duffel a few feet away from me, then leaned in and ran like he was on the football field, ramming through a line of opponents. He hit me with his weight so suddenly that I had to step back not to fall over, his arms wrapping around me hard.
It was incredible how straight-passing that one move was, even though its sole goal was to hold me. He was so much like a bro who just saw his old army buddy that it disoriented me. “Spicy Pants, huh?” he growled into my ear.
“Aren’t you?” I asked, hugging him a little more gently.
“If you want me to be,” he said, then relaxed his grip on my torso as he leaned in and pressed his lips softly against mine.
“I missed the taste of you.” He leaned a little deeper in, inhaling a breath of air near my neck.
“And the smell of you. And the feel of you.” His hand moved naughtily down the small of my back.
“You’ll get us arrested,” I said, but I made no move to stop him.
“I’ll be your prison wife,” he said.
A laugh ripped through me, and I shook my head, finally stepping back from him when he released me. I missed his good mood, the rays of sunshine that never seemed to dim. I missed what it did to me. “Four days is way too long,” I scolded him, picking up his duffel and carrying it for him.
His gaze moved over the duffel in my hand, lips on the verge of parting to tell me he could handle it, but then he just relaxed and walked beside me, shoulder touching shoulder. “Never let me do that again,” he said instead.
“I’ll buy you a chain and a ball, my dear,” I said in a suave tone.
“Good,” he said, voice falling deep.
We got into my car, buckled our seat belts, and I drove off the airport parking slowly before reaching the highway. Music came quietly from the disc in the player, Queen’s greatest hits.
“What do you want to do?” I asked him.
Taylor’s head was leaning calmly against the headrest, eyes closed, lips moving to the lyrics of “I Want To Break Free.” He opened one eye and looked at me.
He was adorable when he did that. “I want to shower. And I want to stay in. And you could make us a tea like that time we were hungover on Sunday. And you can tell me more about Tarkovsky.”
“Love it when you talk movie to me,” I said.
“Better yet, you can show me,” he said.
I drove on quietly, holding back a smile that threatened to split my face in half.
Some part of me, somewhere deep and far away, thought he was just being nice to me, making sure to bring up my interests every so often to make me feel heard.
But then, did it matter if he was just being polite if it meant he listened to me?
If it meant he heard me, knew me, and wanted to be there for more?
Was that not the entire point? Nobody had ever bothered to do it, even out of politeness, for longer than the first date.
“Then that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I said, not mentioning what I’d done to the rooftop of my building. He would see if after showering and catching a breath.
Taylor sang the entirety of “Bohemian Rhapsody” to perfection, not once stumbling over the words, even if he couldn’t hit those Freddie Mercury notes quite right. I loved that he was relentless in trying, though.
I parked my car in the garage under the building, stepped out with Taylor’s bag, and led the way to the stairs. We climbed up to my floor together, Taylor in front of me, his ass full and firm and stealing my attention completely.
Taylor showered alone while I prepared a pot of tea. He came out dressed in his cozy, baggy sweatpants and a slightly oversized T-shirt, towel in one hand, drying his hair. “Smells like nettle and mint,” he said.
He was right. They made a healthy tea if prepared correctly, so I placed the pot and teacups on a tray and sized him up and down with a thorough look. He was so otherworldly, achingly beautiful. Even more so than four days ago when he’d left.
“Let’s have this outside,” I said.
“You don’t have a balcony,” he said. “That one row of tiles doesn’t count.”
I laughed. “Follow me.”
“Walk this way,” he said in Igor’s voice from Young Frankenstein, making me laugh hard enough to nearly drop the tray.
We went up a flight of stairs to the rooftop, where I’d strung the Edison bulbs in six directions from above a small table and two chairs, the city lights glimmering all in front of us, the distant sound of traffic and voices and life never-ending, but here, a quiet haven just for us.
“You did this?” he asked. “Why am I even surprised? Of course you did.”
“It took half an hour,” I said nonchalantly.
Taylor shot me a look that called me a liar.
“Those are brand-new,” he said, pointing at the warm-glowing bulbs.
“And those, too.” Chairs. Table. Yeah, maybe I’d gone a bit far for an hour of sitting together.
Then again, maybe an hour with Taylor wasn’t something I could measure and compare to anything else.
It was worth a lot more than a morning of shopping and setting things up.
He stood in front of me after I’d placed the tray on the table. “Harrison,” he said softly. “I missed you.”
I lost myself in his eyes, in their honesty and openness, in the way he could say a thing like this and make it mean so many incredible things.
“I missed you, too,” I said, trying to look as honest and open as he did.
But was omission not a form of deception?
Still, it was an omission born out of necessity.
I wasn’t going to blunder the best month of my recent life for words that could be lost in the wind.
I slipped a hand into my pocket and pulled out a small gift. It dangled from my index finger. “This is for you,” I said, my voice suddenly gruff. “I figured you should have your own. You’re here often enough.”
Taylor looked at the set of keys to my building and the apartment, eyes wide with surprise, lips stretching into a gleeful smile. “If you can’t keep me away, might as well let me in.”
I laughed with him and put the keys in his hand. “I want you here, whenever you feel like it. So. Just stroll in when you’re around.” I’m always glad to see you, I meant to say, but Taylor leaned in and pressed his lips against mine, cutting off the rest of what I would have said.
When he pulled back from me, he tucked the keys into his pocket and scratched the back of his head, his bicep tensing. “Now I feel silly about the gift I got you.”
“You got me a gift?” I asked.
“Don’t be so surprised. It reminds me I never got you anything,” he said.
He reached into the other pocket of his sweatpants and took out a small, rectangular shape, made of plastic and with a white cover and a cute typeface in black.
“This took a bit of work. I had to hunt down a guy who still had a stock of empty ones in a record shop. He helped me record some of my favorites. But there’s a QR code on the back if you just want it on Spotify. ”
“You made a mixtape,” I said, taking it into my hand.
And sure enough, it was a cassette, Taylor and Harrison’s Mixtape printed across the white background, and a QR code on the back.
When I opened it, the inside of the cover was filled with a track list, but the cassette was the most interesting item, rewound already and set for playing, with a white strip across it and a handwritten T & H on it.
“Shit, I don’t even know if you have a player,” Taylor said. “Just scan the code. We can listen to it now.”
I still looked at it in disbelief. I didn’t think there were any empty ones for recording left in the world.
Or the western hemisphere, at least. But the thing he said snapped me out of it, making me laugh.
“You don’t think I have a cassette player?
Do you even know me?” I grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him hard against me, kissing him hard on the lips and holding him close for a while longer, savoring him, taking him in, remembering him.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s wonderful. It’s… well, the best thing I ever got.”
Taylor put a hand on my chest and looked into my eyes with gentle concern. “Your parents gave you a house in the woods,” he whispered.
I laughed aloud and shook my head. “This feels like more. Wait there.” The cassette player I had was in a box of vintage items I’d gotten off a flea market some years ago, so I went downstairs to dig for it, checked that the battery was working, and brought it up to the rooftop for us.
When I inserted the cassette and played it, a crackling noise came from the speakers, and the first song started playing. And of course, it was Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”
While Bowie sang about Major Tom, I pulled Taylor by the hips to join me.
“I remember the night we listened to it for the first time,” I said.
“I remember looking at you as you sang along, thinking how unfair it was that someone so beautiful should be off-limits. Someone who was pretending to be my date, yet someone I shouldn’t even think about. ”
“But you thought about me,” Taylor said.
I leaned in until my brow rested against his. “Every waking moment. And some sleeping ones, too.”