May [H.S]

27

Harry
•••

Perdu dans une foule.

Salted raindrops gathered on the surface of her hair, mist drowned the humid chilly airs that weaved in between the towering skyscrapers, gusting from the sea just down the way. The animated commotion encourages the never-ending flow of nose-tickling breeze. The abundance of bright, colorful flickering lights hardly suppress under the waltzing cloud the city wore like a hat. They held up in spite, abrasive against the cool, blue-gray tone the sky favored as the sun decided resting behind the cloud cover was yesterday's news. What's left of her light glimmers from the west, hiding beneath the possible threat of late-night rain.

Meg's long legs strut ahead, claiming the bit of sidewalk as her own before anyone else dares to do so first. Naturally, I hang slightly aback, mesmerized as the breeze once again knocks into her and ruffles the little droplets catching in the back of her hair, carrying a charming frizz. A trait that secretly gave her away– her hair was always styled to the nines, curled, blown out– in Emerald city it fell without an ounce of effort, still Meg, still eye-catching.

The green-blue hue of the city beams against her skin, and the scene in front of me is purely from the climax of a movie, a naked eye as the lens, and one as the audience. 

Halting, our feet finally line up at the very edge of the crosswalk, where Meg decided on a whim to stop, eyeing the bright green stoplight, annoyed. The immersed vehicles zoom past us, my eyes frantically tracing between each humming hunk of metal, watching the motion waft layers of her damp hair right from her shoulders, sticking against her face. Stood too close to the street. Meg steps down in confidence the moment the light glimmers in a bronze shade of yellow, and I jump to force my arm in front of her seeing the lights of another car flying down the busy street.

"Jesus, watch where you're going!" I scolded without another thought, forgetting in the heat of the moment how well she usually reacts to being told what to do. She throws her hands out defensively, "They should've slowed!"

"You don't own the streets of Seattle!" I roll my eyes and keep a firm hold of my arm strained against her torso while the light remains the same color and the traffic begins to slow. With a huffed grumble she obliges, and I stare down at her, "I feel a fucking grey hair growing in."

Twisting the locks atop my head. I'm going to have salt in pepper hair by the time I'm twenty-seven; if I spend any longer with her, I can see it now. Knock off, poser, Cruella Deville. On second thought, maybe I'm not so opposed, that would be a cool costume.

"Hurry!" She yelps, ahead of me once again, glancing over her shoulder with a smirk and nearly halfway down the street.

There it is again, another fucking gray hair, right at the heap of my head. I swear she does this shit on purpose to freak me out. It works.

I have to jog to catch up with her, my feet diligently finding the slant of the curb. She's anything but off-put, surging her path, she doesn't have to knock shoulders with anyone. It's like they can sense her importance, sheepishly moving out of her way, magnetized by the cloud of energy radiating from her skin. Those split-second glances probably engrave into their minds, the siren-like stranger that got away. She was the kind of person you'd see once and pathetically thought about for the rest of your life. Unlike them, I wasn't blessed with that kind of mystery.

I do remember the feeling, though, just faintly– the splotchy periwinkle mist that hummed over you, the blind euphoria that trailed along with the freshness and abundance of what ifs– the first day when she interrupted my practice. From then on, she was all I could think about. Whether stranger, acquaintance, friend, or lover.