Flower Girl | h.s.

24.*

Daisy

"Checkmate."

"Fuck!"

I knock the brown King piece over with my Knight. My chin rests on my palm, my elbow steadied by the table as I sit on the floor. Harry sits across from me, his eyebrows twisted together as he shakes his head, looking for other options.

"I'm going to go ahead and thank sixteen year old Daisy for sticking with the chess club, even though she wanted to kiss boys under the bleachers. She'd be proud of this moment." I laugh before Harry starts to take the pieces and move them to their correct position again.

That was our second game that day, and I beat him both times. Harry was a bit cocky when it came to playing games, which made it even sweeter when he lost.

"There was legitimately no other move for me to make, how did you do that?" He asked, placing the King back on its spot.

"You always have to be on the offense, and you trapped your King so it made it a lot easier to beat you when I know that you don't like to move the pieces around your King, so my Rook and Knight are always the strongest in the game."

He scoffs out a tuft of air before rolling his eyes and grabbing his empty coffee cup. We were up early this morning, not for any reason specific. Since the debacle on Thursday at my family's dinner, I had been living primarily at Harry's house. It felt safe, it felt like a place that I wanted to settle, a place where I wanted to be normal and find small activities that would make me smile.

A life with Harry consisted of small nothings. He didn't watch TV often, he read a lot, which left me time to do the same. We sat outside most evenings, and he often tried to point out constellations over towards the direction of the water where the light pollution wasn't as bad.

The kids didn't come back until the middle of next week, which meant that we had time to ourselves that I didn't realize how much I cherished. Spending time with Lottie and Brooks was fun, don't get me wrong– our days had become quite standardized, but my time with Harry was essential for us to really decide what was going on here.

With everything that had happened, the words that were exchanged at my parents', I could tell that he was walking on thin ice around me. He didn't ask anything of me, he only touched me with small fingers and kisses– nothing startling or heavy. We hadn't been intimate or shared anything too personal between the two of us in a few days, which wasn't like us. His touch, his butterfly kisses on my shoulders were enough for me.

It felt like he was holding back, but just enough where I wouldn't question it. He was holding back because I knew that he knew that I was in a bit of a funk thinking of how horribly everything had gone.

Harry had spared details about the conversation with my father and Carson, telling me that he respected me enough to let that go, and that I shouldn't worry about it. So, I tried my best to follow his advice, but it was hard. I wanted to know what they could have possibly said to infuriate Harry to the point of walking out, but I knew that it was better that I didn't. It would cause pain, hurt, I'm sure.

Even though I knew that Harry wasn't fond of my family from that interaction, he didn't want me to think anything of them regarding him. It was respectful and very mature of him, which I appreciated.

He had moved into the kitchen space to start loading the plates and cups into the dishwasher, I stayed on the floor in front of the coffee table as I watched him intently.

Another small quirk about Harry was that he ate all the time; he had picked up an apple from the fruit basket in the middle of the counterspace, even after we had just had a huge breakfast with French toast, breakfast potatoes, and a few cups of coffee each. I shook my head, a bit of a smile greeting my face before I stood up to meet him back in the kitchen.