Aquarelle [h.s]

Harry

FEBRUARY

There's a nightingale on the branch outside his window.

Harry lifts his head and stares at it. It states back, its beady eyes glinting in the crimson light of the setting sun. It ruffles its feathers, hops along the branch, tilts its head to one side, then the other. Harry taps on the paper sheet before him with his finger, then stands up and leaves his room.

The light of the kitchen is bright when he turns it on. He takes a leftover piece of bread and goes back to his room. When he nears the window, the bird is nowhere to be found. He opens it regardless and puts the bread on the windowsill. One day he'll be able to make the nightingale trust him. It just won't happen today.

He sits back on the bed, then rethinks his decision, stands up, closes the window, pulls the black curtain to hide his view of the world outside and lies on the mattress. His head is on the paper, and a faraway, dull ache is in his heart. More like a distant memory, the kind you may forget bits and pieces of, but that never leaves your mind. Longing is quite different from heartbreak—he's come to discover that while the latter doesn't last, the former is impossible to get rid of. And how could he?

"Don't be ridiculous," he mutters to himself. It must be the city, the paper, the bird. His mood has suddenly turned sour, a mixture of emotions he can no longer untangle in his heart. He can barely tell where they start, their end a mystery.

His phone dings with a message, and he picks it up. A text glares at him from the screen.

From Adam: we're over.

Harry sighs and lets the phone go. It falls on the bed next to him, and he stares at it. Maybe he should apologise, he thinks, and at least explain himself. It isn't Adam's fault he ended up tangled with him.

He used to be more careful years ago—he never let anyone close enough to sting them. He'd learnt his lesson, and there was no space in his heart for someone else.

But he's been feeling lonely as of late. He's missing something he hasn't had for a long time. Maybe that's why he tried with him—truly tried, for the first couple of weeks at least. It didn't work out, though. Not for him. He hadn't realised how burnt he still was until Adam said I love you and he ran. Maybe sleeping around is all he's good at.

Fortunately for him—and unfortunately for Adam—running away seemed to coincide almost to perfection with the date he was set to move to London. He'd never told him, and still he packed his bags and left without a word, because growing up has never seemed to stifle his uncanny ability to flee.

Considering the last words said between them were Adam's damned I love you and three weeks have passed since then, Harry truly isn't surprised he was just broken up with. He chuckles. Him, broken up with. There's a great deal of irony in it.

Now, he has a new type of respect for him. Sweet, kind Adam, with his freckles and puppy brown eyes rimmed by round glasses as if he'd just stepped out of another century. Daring Adam, that came to him at the uni reunion dinner and finished his evening in the men's bathroom with him at midnight, the cheers in the hall loud enough to drown every other sound. Organised Adam, with his planner always at hand and laptop constantly in his bag, with his dreams of becoming a philosophy professor at the university they studied at.

And Harry had let himself dream too, for once. But he'd always known he was too good for him, and so he'd always kept his distance. Considering Adam said I love you three weeks ago, though, it didn't work well enough.