Hearts Of Gold h.s

Chapter 24

H

"Harry, if you keep moving, you'll ruin it"

"Sorry, sorry. I'm not used to having to sit still for so long" I laugh, causing her to send me daggers due to my hand shaking from my laughter.

Her attention goes back to my left hand and a small brush covered in a solid black colored paint across my pointer finger.

"Thank you for doing this" I say just above a whisper.

This morning when I was watching El paint her nails this same dark color, I guess she noticed how intently I had been staring and asked if I wanted to match her. She has the black polish coating each finger, but on each ring finger she drew a flame decal and on each middle finger, there is a smiley face.

"I'm happy to do it. Do you want the same designs too? I can just do them all black if you want." she asks

"I want to match you" I nod to confirm my statement.

"Then we'll match" I watch a smile pull on her face as she continues to paint each nail.

A few minutes of silence pass between the two of us before El mumbles out "You're so different than anyone else I've ever been with".

"What do you mean?" I raise my eyebrow even though her attention is on my hand.

She stops painting my nails and puts the brush back into the small pot of paint before looking up to me and pulling her knees up to her chest.

"I've never met a man, well.. other than Niall, that was so open to things that are considered girly. Nail polish, make-up and even clothing doesn't have a gender, but I've never met a man that agreed with that like you do. It's something that I love about you" she shrugs.

"I've always been into the 'girly' stuff" I use air quotes around the word girly to show that I agree that none of these materialistic things are directed to a specific gender and that gender only. Anyone can wear makeup. It doesn't matter what their gender or sexuality is. Makeup, clothes, nail polish or even colors don't have a set gender. If I want to have painted nails, I'll have painted nails. Nobody can tell me I can't.

Toxic masculinity is gross.

"I don't even think they should be labeled as girly. It's just paint" she says without even having to think about it.

"I'm glad you see it that way as well." I nod. "Now I want the flames and stuff. Same fingers as you" I tell her, wiggling my fingers towards her.

"Okay, okay. They have to dry first. It'll look like shit if I try to paint over top of the base coat right now." she tells me, reaching behind her to grab the pot of  white nail polish and a thin tipped paint brush to do the designs.

"Well that's lame"

The soft buzz of the record that El put on fills the silence between the two of us as we wait for my nails to completely dry.

Today is December 19th.

Tomorrow is going to be a hard day for her and I'm not sure if she even realizes that tomorrow is already the 20th. Well, maybe she does, but she's just holding herself together until she feels comfortable enough to let her walls break down.

I'm not going to poke at how she's feeling about tomorrow just in case she isn't aware of it yet. I want to give her a good day today. A really good day. Because I know she's going to have a few really tough days and she deserves to have a good day before having to deal with the head rush of emotions I'm sure she'll be feeling by this time tomorrow.