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Homing Bird

Chapter 5

Never one to be late, I woke up at 7:30 the next morning. My alarm went off and I was quick to silence it; both because I was excited to wake up and start the day and because I hate the sound of that damned thing. Admittedly, mornings are not my thing. If I could, I would sleep in until 1pm and not feel bad about it. In fact, I’ve even reconsidered the whole “lawyer” thing just because the “9” part of “9-to-5” is not all too appealing.

Nonetheless, I started my day at 7:30 the day that I got coffee with Harry. I swung my feet out from under the covers and planted them on the cold wood floor. Butters remained splayed out at the end of my bed, legs twitching, probably dreaming of chasing squirrels. I stood up and walked over to my closet to throw on a sweatshirt before I padded over to the kitchen across the house. As I walked past dinosaur bones mounted on the wall in the hallways, I realized I hadn’t called my uncle in a few days. Or my parents, for that matter. No use now, I thought, it’s still only 2:30 in the morning in Michigan. I would have to call tomorrow.

I pulled eggs from the refrigerator and a pan from the cabinet next to it, mindful not to start a pot of coffee and spoil coffee with Harry. Coffee with Harry, as in Harry Styles, I thought to myself. The Harry Styles. Of One Direction. I almost needed to drill myself into remembering that Harry is famous. Walking home with him the night before felt so normal. The disarming nature of his personality works wonders in dismantling the idea that his fame made him any more or less of a normal person. My mind wandered back to walking next to him the night before underneath the glow of street lamps. Bantering back and forth with him felt easy.

That’s what I told myself as I scraped the eggs from the pan onto a plate: coffee with him would be easy. Harry is just a normal person that’s extended a kind offer to work on our prospective projects as friends. And having a friend here would be nice.

By the time I finished up with breakfast and got my fill of the morning news, it was 8:00. I got in the shower, did my morning routine (essentially nothing besides brushing my hair and teeth), and threw on some clothes. 8:30. Still another half hour. In the meantime I walked over to the stack of papers on the dining room table. Only 23 files to get through. I wondered how many songs Harry would write today.

At 9 there were three swift knocks on my door. Grabbing my book bag hanging off of a chair in the kitchen, I took a deep breath and walked to the front door. Harry was leaning against the side of the house in dark jeans and a blue t-shirt, absentmindedly twirling the keys to a sleek black car running in the driveway.

“‘Morning sunshine! Ready to go and law it up?” Harry asked rather cheerfully, turning to walk down the front steps as I locked the door behind me.

“‘Law it up?’ So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.”

“Um, I guess I really didn’t know what else to say besides that because I don’t actually have any idea of what it is that you’re doing.”

“No, ‘law-ing it up’ is fairly accurate.” I climbed into the passenger side of the car and moved a black leather-bound journal from the seat. “Where should I put this?”

“Oh, just throw it in the back.” I turned to the back seat of his car; messier than I would have anticipated. There were shirts splayed across the bench seat, crumpled sheets of paper on the ground, and two empty soda bottles in the cup holders on either side of the car. I reached around and moved the sleeve of one of the shirts to place the journal next to it. I fastened my seat belt as Harry backed out of the driveway and into the street.

I leaned back in the seat and watched the houses fly past my window. Harry hummed along to the radio and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Like I had predicted, driving with him felt easy. In fact, the oddest bit about driving with Harry was the fact that we were driving on the left side of the street; something I could never quite get used to.

“So how exactly is the song writing going to work today? Do you already have an idea of what you’re going to write?”

Harry flicked a stray piece of hair from out of his face with his free hand. “Uh, yes and no. I normally write the words before the music, so that’s what I’ve tasked myself with today. I have a few things I know I want to get down, and then I’ll have to fill out the rest.”

“Got it, got it. Will I be able to read any of it?”

“Only if I get to read some of your legal stuff!”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I don’t know, to make me feel important.”

“I see. In that case, I think we’ve got ourselves a deal.”

We pulled into the parking lot outside of the bakery and found a spot a few paces away from the front door. We were, as it would happen, the only people there. Harry jumped out of the car and began to walk around the back to open my door for me. I opened my side before he could get to me. Seeing that I had already gotten out myself, Harry opened the back door and retrieved his journal, then pulled a pen from behind his ear and shoved it in his back pocket. The bells on the front door jingled as we walked through the front door.

When we got to the front counter, Mary emerges from the back room with a pan of bread in her hand, which she nearly drops when she spots her most recent customer.

“Harry!” she shrieks, running around the counter to give the boy twice her size a hug. He embraces her with open arms and asks how she’s been as she begins to rock him.

Mary pulls herself off of him and smooths her apron. “I’ve been good, really good. The store has been good, but rather quiet without you.” She looks around the lanky boy and spots me. “Hello to you, too, Kath!”

“Good morning, Mary!” I say with a laugh and wave.

“Well, will it be the usual for you two today?” Mary asks, heading back behind the front counter.

“Why don’t I help you out? I can get the tea or whatever it is you’re having,” Harry says, looking in my direction, “and you can finish getting the breads together for the morning,” Harry tells Mary.

“Would you really? That would be so sweet of you, dear! You know where everything is.” Mary takes the pan of bread off the counter as Harry walks around the corner to start warming a kettle of water. As Mary walks by to the back, she pinches Harry on the bum, and he jumps just a little.

“Hey hey hey!” Harry yells, swatting Mary away. She just chuckles and continues her work.

“I’ll go set our stuff down at a table. Do you have a usual spot?” I ask Harry.

“Yeah, the one pressed against the window there on the left.”

“That’s my normal spot, too!”

Harry turns to me and gives a little thumbs up.

I place his journal down on the opposite side of the table and sling my book bag to the floor. I take out my laptop and place it in front of me just as Harry comes up from behind me with two cups of tea.

“Here we are! Two cups of chai. I forgot to ask what you’d like, and I had already started making chai. I hope that’s alright.” He blushed and took the seat across from me.

“I think that will be fine. Thank you.” I smiled, trying to hide the red in my face.

“You can’t thank me yet! You haven’t tried it!”

I took a sip to appease the eager boy before me. “It tastes like chai to me.”

Harry relaxed back in his seat. “Alright, alright. Good. We’re all set then.”

****

“What rhymes with ‘lungs’?”

I looked up from my laptop to sea Harry tapping his pen repeatedly against his open-faced journal. I stopped typing for a moment to try and help in any way I could.

“Rungs?”

“Technically yes,” he said, “but no.”

“I’m not sure, have you looked it up?”

“No, I’ve just asked you! But maybe I need to!”

“Listen, I’ll have you know that I got an A in poetry in undergrad.”

Harry threw his hands up in the air and exclaimed, “Alright little miss academia,” taking care to punctuate each syllable of “academia.”

“You asked me for my help!”

“Yes but that was before I realized you were no help at all!” He laughed and winked at me.

I crossed my hands over my chest. “Okay well you couldn’t come up with anyth-”

“TONGUES!!! Tongues! That’s why rhymes with lungs!” Harry clapped his hands in delight and turned down to his journal, scribbling ‘tongues’ down furiously in black ink. He looked up for a moment to apologize for the outburst, and returned to scribbling in the journal.

He wrote with his mouth open, both shoulders hunched over the journal before him. When he really got going he would start to tap his foot on the ground or drum his free hand on the table. He always skipped lines when writing so he could go back and cross out words and phrases as he wished. Watching him write was like watching a child take a spelling test: intense focus and concentration, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, striking things out and rewriting them again.

By now the cafe had filled up a bit. Two or three businessmen sat at tables scattered throughout the building, busy answering emails or writing proposals. Harry had been right the evening before about not being recognized here. Well, most people recognized him, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it. It was mostly a double take, or a head nod in his direction. Nobody stopped and asked for a selfie, which I’m sure he was grateful for.

“Alright, I think this one is as good as it’s going to get for right now.” Harry said matter-of-factly before dropping his pen and relaxing back in his chair.

“How many songs is that for today?” I asked.

“Two completed, and one smaller one that might need some workshopping.” He thumbed through the pages of his journal and closed it, winding a black thread around the edge and securing it with a button.

“Very nice, very nice. So what exactly is the song writing process for you? Do you come in knowing what you want to write or do you wait for it to come to you?”

“A little bit of both. A good portion of the time lyrics or a melody will come to while I’m doing something random, like, I don’t know, boiling water for noodles, and I have to make a note of it in my phone to write down later. Other times, a bit like today, I set aside time for myself to clear my head and put thoughts on paper.”

“I see. And what do you normally write about?”

Harry paused before answering, perhaps finding the right words. “My experiences.”

I pressed on. “Experiences with what?”

“Things that happen in my life.”

“Like what?” Maybe I was prying.

“Anything, really. Touring. Home. Feelings. Have you listened to anything I’ve written?”

Have I listened to anything he’s written? Obviously.

“Yeah, a few songs.”

He smiled. “A few songs? Which ones?” He leaned forward in his chair.

“I’ll admit, I was a One Direction fan back in the day.” I tried my best to avoid eye contact with the smug boy before me.

“Okay, so you’ve already heard what I’ve written! And you like it!”

“I said I was a fan of One Direction, I never said anything about you specifically!”

Harry feigned shock and placed a hand over his heart. “Now that just hurts.”

“Sometimes life can be like that. Are you going to write a song about it?”

“Maybe! However, I have already written a song about you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh really?”

“Yup. Do you want to hear it?”

I leaned forward in my chair. The space between our faces above the table grew ever smaller. “I would love to.”

“Here it goes: She makes fun of me, though I’ve made her nice tea / Nevermind it though, for I still find her so pret-ty,” Harry broke rhyme but continued to sing, “Kath I’m getting hungry for lunch, can we please go make a sandwich?” He stood up from his chair and held out a hand to me, looking rather pleased with himself and his song.

He finds me pretty. I’d sing those lyrics all night long.

“I’d love to.”

Notes

Hi all! Thank you to those of you that have been reading, and my apologies for the infrequent updates: life at university is pretty busy (can anyone guess which school I go to??). Anyways. I'm hoping that in the new year I'll post a little more frequently. I would love to hear any of your feedback, be it positive or not, so feel free to let me know what you think of the story so far!

Thanks again for reading,
ukulady:)

Comments

“Like a fucking gazelle or something” “running is terrible and should not be an accepted form of fitness” I like you already. Truly laughed out loud reading those.

Hopeless1313 Hopeless1313
12/17/18