32
HARLEY
The weather was just as cold as it had been yesterday but this time Harley had happily escaped Bishops Avenue and was now standing in front of a row of houses by London Bridge Station where Scarlett lived.
Uninvited, might she add. Even though she had only been gone a couple days, her soul needed rejuvenating and only Scarlett could do that.
The grey clouds swirled in the sky, and she knew she needed to muster up her courage to knock on the door to not catch herself in the incoming rain.
As she was about to, the door opened to reveal an older black woman, who didn't look to be any older than forty with a neutral expression on her face, “Are you okay there? You've been standing outside my house for a minute, so I thought I’d help you out.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have the wrong house.” Harley said hurriedly, pausing for a bit before continuing as the woman assesses her, “I’ll be going, then.”
The woman’s next words stopped her just as she was slowly moving away, “Scarlett will be home soon, come inside.” Not giving her any time to protest, “It’s too dire for a girl to be lurking out in this weather.”
Harley paused once again, more nervous than she had before, picking up at once she was meeting Scarlett’s mother. She followed the woman into her home, immediately embraced the warmth that enveloped her as she stepped inside.
The house felt a lot bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside, but it still felt lived in.
Harley could tell immediately it was a home that held a lot of memories.
The soft brown and green decor was wholly endearing; from the walls, to the wooden staircase that led upstairs and even the mantle atop a tiny faux fireplace.
There were a multitude of framed images of Scarlett and her mother from varying ages.
Seeing pictures of them side by side, it was much more telling now that she was her mother; she had her heart shaped face, brown eyes, nose and lips even if not the hair nor dark brown skin.
She picked up one of it, Scarlett couldn't have been any older than eight, hair slightly redder than it was currently, holding ice cream twice the size of her head with such abject concentration that she still possesses till today.
“Honestly wonder where she got such a sweet tooth from, it definitely wasn't from me,” Scarlett’s mum said, a fondness in her eyes and voice.
She handed Harley a steaming hot cuppa, she couldn't be more grateful and proceeded to say that. “You have a lovely home, Miss Argent.” As she led her to the couches in the living room and implored her to sit.
“How long have you and my daughter known one another?” Getting straight to the point, it seemed.
“A few months.”
“The university, I’m assuming?”
“Yeah, I just started.” Awkwardness exuded out of her every second she sat there cradling her cup, focused on trying to give off the right first impression.
“Excuse my prying but I know all the people my daughter calls her friends, even the ones I don’t like, and I have never heard of you before,” she explained, taking a pointed sip out of her own cup of tea. Harley felt a little funny, maybe sad that Scarlett had never spoken to her mother about her.
“No, it’s okay. I understand that entirely, I wish my own mother cared enough to do that,” Harley spilled out rapidly, she felt her cheeks heat up at the oversharing. She said nothing in response and Harley knew she had fucked it already.
The sound of a key jiggling with lock led her attention to the door, a convenient interruption to the staggering conversation that Harley was certain would replay in her mind over and over again, hauntingly. She stood up immediately.
“Mum! Je suis de retour,” Scarlett yelled as soon as she entered. I’m back.
“In here,” her mum yelled back in response.
Scar took off her boots at the entrance and bounced inside.
She shrugged off her leather coat and hung it upon the rail behind the door.
Her hair a little curlier than usual and being held together by a headband, “The line was genuinely a piss take–” she started rambling without looking up from her phone and Harley coughed a little to get her attention.
Scarlett did a double take, shock marring her face at Harley’s appearance.
Instantly, she ran up and locked Harley into a hug that had her struggling to breathe for a second but she hugged her back once she managed to free her arms. Scarlett’s mum watched the both of them in silence and a look in her eye.
“Pourquoi tu ne m'as pas appelé ? Je serais arrivé plus vite.” She whipped her head at her mum, glaring. Why didn't you call me? I would’ve gotten here faster.
Her mother simply shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Et pourquoi enfa?te ? La meuf n'est là que depuis 5 minutes.” What the fuck for? The girl has been here a grand total of five minutes.
Harley watched the whole situation in marvel because she knew if she spoke to her mother in that way, it would've likely ended with a completely different result. She immediately recognised where Scar got her sparkling personality from. She grabbed her by the head and turned it in her direction. “She’s right, I only just got here.”
Scarlett’s smile returned and they shared one together, the rest of the world fading away as they gazed into the eyes of one another. Just seeing her again meant all was right in the world .
“Let me leave you both alone,” Scarlett’s mum said, getting up from the couch.
“I’m not talking to you ever again,” her daughter said to her. Her mum simply laughed and gave her a kiss on the head.
Before she exited the living room, Harley called her back, “Thanks for the tea, Miss Argent.”
“Harley, call me Ana?s,” she responded, giving her a wink as she left for the kitchen. Which was when she realised she had never given her her name so she was aware of who she was the entire time.
Scarlett yelled that she’ll come down to help make dinner later.
“Come with .” Scarlett pulled her up the wooden staircase and once they got to her room she locked the door.
For some reason despite how much time they'd spent together over the last couple months, as she entered Scarlett’s room she felt like she was peeling off another hidden layer of her.
It was so different from what she had been expecting.
It was startlingly pink. There were some film posters on the wall, her desk filled with makeup neatly on one side of the desk.
A small wardrobe that was opened just a little and Harley could see a peak of some of the outfit in there.
There was a part of the wall that marked Scarlett at different heights, it stopped at age fourteen which showed the height she was now.
Make no mistake, the room was quite small, very in fact, but she made it work to the best of her ability and Harley couldn't help but feel a sense of kinship and pride in that.
“This is…bright,” Harley said, a laugh almost spills out of her.
Scarlett narrowed her eyes in false anger,“Not too much, I almost never let anyone in here. Very sacred grounds.”
“Wow, consider me special.”
“You are,” Scarlett replied without missing a beat and that had Harley staggering for a minute as she looked at her, their eyes holding for a moment.
Harley wasn't stupid she knew she felt something for Scarlett but she was her friend. It would be stupid of her to try to risk a sure thing for feelings she didn’t understand.
So she looked away, refusing to acknowledge the way her friend’s face fell for a brief second.
“Tell me how the visit to the lion’s den went.” Scarlett patted the bed next to her and Harley did just that, briefing her on everything that happened and she had to basically hold Scarlett back from getting her shoes on to walk the distance to Astaeris and give William a piece of her mind.
“That bastard.” Her face wholly transformed, reminding her greatly of the girl she sees when she’s around the people at the university. “How could he say that to you?”
“I had low expectations going in so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised,” Harley said, laying back on the wall with a sigh. “For some reason I expected him to be more. I think a part of me just wanted to think there had to be some redeemable quality to the man my mum seemed to have loved.”
She was naive to think this because she remembered how she had dealt with two decades of the result of his callousness. But like he said to her that morning, there was no escaping him.
“He doesn’t deserve you, Starley. You’re my shining star, and that’s all that matters.”
Harley smiled at this, secretly delighted that the outrage led her to saying this. Scarlett locked their hands together, gently rubbing hers with her thumb, in circles. “Are you going to tell Annabel about the cancer?”
She recalled their conversation in the kitchen and couldn’t help but wonder if this was Eleanor’s way of punishing her for her mother’s misdeeds.
“I should but…I know you don’t want to hear it but she walks around like every issue that arises with her father and her life will pass by pretending it doesn’t exist. Yet, I see the shadow cast in her eyes.
Sometimes, I’ll catch her in heavy disassociation and you can tell there is an emptiness between them.
I don’t know, I think this might send her over the edge.
” Harley didn’t say it out loud but in spite of the recent changes with Arden, she worried she would come home one day and find Annabel… maybe she shouldn’t even think it .
“Speaking of mothers,” she said instead, changing the subject. “I almost turned back around when yours opened the door. I thought I had the wrong house.”
“Did you think my mama was white as well as my father?”
“Definitely not. I thought you were part of the one percent of latinos in the UK but I actually see it now,” Harley confessed with a laugh.
“Well you’re not far off actually. Mum’s mum was Brazillian, where I was born, and mum’s dad is Ivorian, but generations of Argents were raised in France which was how mum met dad.
The Irishman that stole her heart.” There was a fondness in her eyes when she spoke about her parents meeting.
“You know, Bloss and I, both being Ivorian, is how we became friends in the first place. Anyways, you should see me in the summer. I tan exceptionally well but unfortunately winter washes me out.”
“The hair helps, I like it this way.”
Harley gestured to her curls being more prominent.
She reached out to push a curl back for Scarlett and her hand just rests there, cradling her face.
She didn’t realise she had left it there for too long until she noticed Scarlett had stopped talking.
When she tries to drop it, Scar grabs her hand and just covers it with hers.
“You think?”
“Absolutely,” Harley said with conviction, trying desperately not to focus on the fact that Scarlett was moving closer to her.
The room felt still but it wasn’t until Scarlett kissed her that the world really did stop.
Harley was certain the earth stopped rotating and the only thing moving was their lips once she kissed her back after the initial shock had worn off.
They gravitated closer to one another, every touch of their skins was like a fire being ignited in her. Her hands reached under her shirt, wanting to feel even closer than they already were.
“Lottie!” They sprung apart, the moment fizzling between them as they simply stared at one another. Realising and processing all at once, trying to gauge what it all meant. Of course she knew what it meant. They had kissed. And it was the best thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life.
“I should go, Annabel is probably wondering where I am.”
“Harley, wait–” she heard Scarlett call out but she had already bolted out the room, out the door and down the street, not even catching her breath.
Holy fucking shit.