Daddy issues || h.s

2.9

Her head was resting on his chest, her sweet breath fanning over his skin, causing goose bumps to rise all over his body. His fingers tugged at the ends of her hair, making her nervous habit his own.

"What's your favourite colour?" he asked, his voice ringing out in the silent room."Deep crimson red," he heard her say. Her eyes were closed, and her voice was merely a whisper. She was shutting the world out, but she was letting him in.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because it is a colour of many things; desire, shame, passion, power, love, grief. It represents so many things it cannot be defined in a book or by a person. It has a new meaning every day, depending on how the sun shines on it or the eyes that see it. That's why it is my favourite colour, because two people can look at it and see two completely different things." She did not look at him while she spoke. Her eyes were trained at their joined hands, where her delicate fingers played with his. "What is yours?"

"Blue," he said. "Not only because it is the colour of the soul, the sky and your eyes, but because it is the colour of nostalgia, and of hurt. For a time, all I could see was blue, and sometimes my vision is specked by the melancholy colour. And even though I think it will never fully go away, I try to imagine it as the colour of the sky above me instead of the colour of the ocean below me."

As he talked, Adelaide rested her chin on his chest. Her exquisite eyes stared into his, and he thought maybe he wouldn't mind the blue in his life as much if it had been the shade of her eyes.

"What's you favourite movie?" he asked her after a while.

"Peter pan," She answered. "Because it is the only fairy tale without a happy ending. Because when given the choice, Wendy chose to grow up, while Peter didn't, and even though the moral of the story is generally that: "All children grow up," I think it has more to it than just that. I think it is a tale about choices. It tells young children that in life, we are forced to take hard choices, and that while you choose to do one thing, the person you love may choose to do something else. It teaches us that we may be forced to leave the people we love behind, in order to be who we really are. But it also teaches us that we should never forget the people we once loved, because even though they may be gone, the love we shared still linger in our hearts. Right here" She placed her small hand on his chest, right above his heart. She felt it beat underneath her palm, and it struck her how very real he was, how fragile, yet how strong he was. How, even when faced with the worst of heartache, his heart continued to beat on, never once stopping to catch its breath. And for that she admired him.

"To die, would be an awfully big adventure," he said, a smile tugging at his lips.

"No Harry. To live, would be an awfully big adventure." She said and left a light kiss on his heart.

"What's your favourite season?" He asked her."Autumn, because it turns the world golden." She answered. "Why are you asking me all these questions?" She asked, once again resting her head on his chest. He felt her eyelashes fluttering against his skin every time she blinked. It felt like a butterfly batting its wings.

"Because I feel like I know you better than anyone else on this earth, yet if someone asked me what your favourite colour was, I would not be able to answer." He said. "And then I would suddenly feel like I didn't know you at all. And I never want to feel like that."

"Harry, you need to realise there's a difference between knowing someone and knowing things about them." She said. "When you know someone's favourite colour, or favourite movie, you know something about them. But when you know they way someone looks when they sleep, or the way their eyes light up when they talk about what they love, you know them. But you also need to understand that you can never know someone one hundred per cent, and that while you may know me one way, someone else may know me a different way. But that doesn't mean either of you know me better than the other."

Her words hung in the air for minutes after she had spoken them, and while they may be gone by now, they were forever etched into the mind of the boy she spoke them to.

They were silent for a while after that, until Adelaide's stomach gurgled like a drowning man, and they realised their hunger had moved from their minds to their stomachs. "I think it may be time for breakfast," Harry said before wrapping her in a blanket and carrying her bridal style down the stairs. And as the sun rose outside their windows, and the pancakes turned golden, he looked at her and realised how lucky he was to be one of the people who actually knew her.

Later that day, when Abigail came come, her nose was clogged from a cold she had caught on the plane home, and she could not smell the yellow paint drying in the minds of the two people she would never truly know.