Chapter 7 #2
He glances up at me as he screws the top back on the bottle. “It is.”
“What?” I study his face for signs of a joke. “I was kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” he says. “That’s Raya.”
I blink. “What is that?”
“Ra-ya,” he says, enunciating every syllable. “My gui-nea pig.”
“Holy shit.” I blink again. “You’re not joking. I need to meet her. Immediately.”
Harrison doesn’t argue, and a minute later, he’s back with the guinea pig. She’s wrapped in a towel and cradled in his arms as if this small rodent is his baby, except instead of soft, chubby cheeks, she has furry, chubby cheeks and gray and white splotches all over her quivering body.
“You have to be gentle,” he says. “She likes being cuddled, but don’t squeeze her too tight or she’ll get hurt. And make sure you keep the towel wrapped around her. It makes her feel safe.”
“Did she tell you all of that?”
Harrison’s side-eye makes me think his genuine answer is yes, but nonetheless, he hands me the guinea pig.
“Hi, baby!” I say, curling my arms around her minuscule body. She squeaks in response, her beady black eyes staring up at me with a trusting expression. I look at Harrison with wide eyes. “I would die for her.”
Harrison exhales a laugh, leaning forward and gripping the counter, arms spread wide. “I’m ordering a pizza.”
“For Raya?”
“I was thinking for humans, but maybe I’ll give her a baby carrot as a treat.”
I give him my best puppy dog look, and Raya squeaks. “No pizza for the precious little baby?”
He rolls his eyes as he orders on his phone, then picks up both mugs and leads me into the living room. I sit on the far end of the couch, and he settles onto the other side, crossing his right ankle over his left knee and leaning against the armrest so he’s facing me.
The couch is suddenly feeling like more of a love seat.
Apparently, I’ve reverted to my middle school self, and I can’t be within three feet of a boy without being terrified of cooties.
He adjusts his glasses, and now I am trying extremely hard not to wonder whether Harrison wears glasses while he’s thumpthumpthumping. That’s none of my thumping business.
I kick off my sandals and pull my knees to my chest, settling in against the armrest so I’m also facing him. I press Raya to my chest and give her a quick kiss on the head.
Harrison and I stare at each other for a moment and then both take a large sip of wine.
I’m about to suggest he pick a movie to put on, but somehow what comes out of my mouth is, “Glasses?”
He adjusts them, then runs a finger through his hair, combing the waves out of his face. “They’re new. I’m not sure how I feel about them yet. But wearing contacts every day has been making my eyes hurt.”
My cheeks heat. “You look…” Sexy, my brain supplies. I pause, gathering my thoughts. “You look like an adult.”
I take another large sip of wine.
He follows suit, sipping as he studies me. “One of the side effects of aging.”
We both take another sip of wine.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Aging?”
“As much as I love getting drunk and talking about mortality, I meant your girlfriend storming out of your apartment.”
“Ah, yes.” He takes another long sip of wine. “That.”
He’s rolling his eyes and sipping his wine like everything is good and fine and casual, but it has to be more complicated than that. I know next to nothing about his relationship with Stephanie, but fights are never easy.
“Seriously, would it help to talk about it?” I ask.
He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it and looks at me with an assessing expression. Finally, he says, “I don’t think that’s a conversation we should have.”
Oh.
I get it. After what happened five years ago, he doesn’t know how to react to my sudden reappearance.
He has other friends he probably talks to about this.
Friends he actually trusts, and friends who know about everything that’s happened in his life in the last five years.
I’m certainly not one of those friends, so where does that leave us?
Friends with Limitations, perhaps.
Harrison studies me, lips pulled to the side. “It’s just…complicated. With Stephanie.”
“Yeah. It’s fine. I get it.” Harrison doesn’t look convinced, but I don’t allow him to continue with an explanation that would undoubtedly hurt my feelings. “How about we put on a movie and drink several mugs of wine?”
Harrison doesn’t react immediately, as if it takes him a moment to decide what the appropriate response should be. And then—
He smiles.
I was resigned to never seeing those dimples again, and to not only see them, but to be the cause of them? Well, feelings never fade entirely, obviously.
We spend the next fifteen minutes scrolling through movies, both extending olive branches in the form of commentary.
Harrison says he still has never made it past the first five minutes of Up.
I tell him about how my parents and I rewatched every Jurassic Park movie last summer, which then inspired my mom and I to have a Jeff Goldblum movie marathon.
Our conversation grinds to a halt when Pride & Prejudice pops up.
We both turn our heads, gazes clashing. He remembers as well as I do—the pink tinge of his ears tells me so.
It was a Wednesday. My twenty-first birthday.
We had plans to go out and celebrate the following weekend, but Harrison worked hard to get his homework done in advance so he could spend Wednesday night with me.
We went to a shitty liquor store and bought a shitty double bottle of wine, and then we watched Pride & Prejudice—2005 version, of course.
By the time we’d finished, we were both drunk and crying into our mugs of Barefoot Moscato.
(Someone in Jamaica Plain loves you! ) I don’t remember who was clinging to whom, but we were definitely curled up against each other all night, each one pretending we weren’t as drunk and emotional as we actually were.
He got me a copy of Emma by Jane Austen as a birthday gift that year.
A special edition, with beautiful embroidered flowers on the cover and the title written in curly, metallic letters.
He’d written an inscription on the inside cover.
Emma, for Emma, from Harrison, for your twenty-first birthday.
I cannot make speeches, Emma…I’d been confused about his choice of words until I’d actually read the book a year later, months after Harrison and I were no longer talking.
“I cannot make speeches, Emma,” the full quote read.
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
Harrison only looks away from me when he’s fully standing and walking to the door, which is how I realize I completely blocked out the sound of the doorbell in my mental haze.
When he sets the pizza down on his coffee table, I open it immediately. It’s half pepperoni and half pineapple, and a huge smile splits my face. I look over at him as he’s settling back on the couch, and he freezes, taken aback.
“You got me Hawaiian?” I ask.
“Yeah?”
“Just like old times,” I prompt. And the mugs, and the movie. And these feelings I’m having. “Except we used to get all Hawaiian pizza. Have your tastes changed?”
He huffs a laugh. “Is now a good time to reveal that I don’t actually like Hawaiian pizza?”
I drop both the pizza box lid and my jaw. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“Why did you eat it so much with me?”
He raises a single eyebrow. “Because you liked it?”
It’s stupid, maybe, but my first thought is that he must not care enough about me anymore to eat Hawaiian pizza.
I clear my throat, and he does, too.
“Well,” I say, nodding at the TV screen, “are you hitting play or what?”
He stares at the screen, Keira Knightley looking over her shoulder in the freeze-frame. I can see his thumb tracing circles around the play button on the remote, and finally, he hits play.
And that’s how, two hours later, we end up crumpled on the couch in a tipsy, glossy-eyed trance as Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen meet in a field.
My emotions are dangerously heightened, partially because of the movie, but also partly because Raya is now wrapped up in a bundle across Harrison’s chest.
“I cannot believe I agreed to put this on,” Harrison whispers.
“I’m going to be emotionally hungover at work tomorrow.
This is too much for my fragile heart.” If I couldn’t hear the laughter in his voice, I’d be concerned he actually means it, seeing as he just fought with his girlfriend and therefore would be completely justified in having a fragile heart.
“Shut up, you didn’t even remotely argue with me.”
“I should’ve.” Harrison hmphs and slumps down on the couch. Raya gives an empathetic squeal.
“Be honest,” I whisper. “Do you have a crush on Keira Knightley?”
“Do you not?” he asks, and I giggle in response. “Stop laughing at me,” he says, still not looking at me.
“Stop pretending you’re not a hopeless romantic,” I counter.
This finally seems to grab his attention, and he looks over at me, his eyes wide and glassy from a combination of tears and intoxication.
“I don’t think I’ve ever pretended not to be both hopeless and a romantic.
” The serious, earnest tone of his voice catches me by surprise.
So does the dark, dark brown of his eyes as they stare directly into mine with a focus that makes me forget Darcy is about to deliver one of the most iconic lines of the movie.
Harrison looks down at Raya, imitating Darcy. “I love—I love—I love you,” he tells her. She chirps in response, and I feel my soul leave my body and float off into the ether.
Much like Darcy, I am suddenly feeling bewitched, body and soul.
Impenetrable. My mind is impenetrable. I am here to redeem myself and reestablish a long-lost friendship, and that is all.
“Oh,” is all I can think to say, even though what I really want to be saying is, Can we do this again tomorrow, and also the night after that? If you agreed to watch this with me, does that mean you don’t hate me anymore?