Hearts Without Chains

24.

~You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the number of times you get back up~ Andrew Sorkin

Harry-

When I arrived at Joeys house, she opened the front door with fuzzy hair and squinty eyes. She looked confused, running her hands over her face as she got a good look at me, realizing that, well, I am at her front door to pick her up.

"It's only nine." She stated, and I smirked amusedly at the way her dark hair was poking into her glasses.

"And?" I asked, making her shake her head at me. She left the door wide open as she walked away to let me walk inside myself.

Now, I sit at a barstool in her kitchen, as she sips at a cup of coffee and eats a piece of toast with fucking tons of peanut butter on it. I hate peanut butter. She's eyeing me as she chews on her toast, a hand holding a coffee cup that's covered in piano keys, unpainted fingernails tapping the counter with her other hand. After sitting in silence for a minute or two, listening to the damn tapping of her fingernails, I finally decide to make proper eye contact with her. I feel my lip pull up on the right side in a small smile as she gives me one of her own. Her eyelids seem heavy still, fluttering underneath the lenses of her glasses.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going?" She asks me, breaking the silence we were engulfed in.

I shrug my shoulders, and shimmy my jacket off my shoulders. When my shirt moves off my left shoulder with the action, I see her eyes flick to the tattoo inked there. I move my shirt back into its place, making her attention waver.

"I'm not sure where I want to take you yet." I tell her, and then she takes another bite of toast drowned in peanut butter.

"That's disgusting." I tell her, and she glances down to the toast on the plate beneath her.

"Is not. Peanut butter is delicious."

I shake my head in disagreement, and she takes the last bite off of it as to disagree with me as well.

"I'll go get dressed." She tells me.

I wait downstairs because I know if I follow I will be damned. So I stay, and while I'm at it I finish her cup of coffee to wake me up a little more. And then when she comes back down and finds an empty cup waiting for her, she scolds me as she makes more, but this time in a travel cup. After fifteen more minutes of waiting for her to gather her shit, we finally leave her house. As she walks in front me, I shove my hands in my pockets, eyes flicking down to her ass. It looks damn good in jeans. I decide not to make a comment on it like I want because it will only make her embarrassed. I walk around to my side of the truck, opening my door and sitting inside as she struggled to open hers for some unknown reason to me.

She sets her purse in the back when she finally gets in, the light purple shirt she wears also making her chest look great. But I don't comment on that either, and start the truck instead. I hate noticing these things about her. It makes my scary liking for her more real. When she takes her glasses off I am about to ask her why before she pulls her hair back in a ponytail, ridding them to run her hands through the sides of her hair.

"Do you care where we go?" I ask her, and find her shaking her head no when I glance at her.

I really have no idea where I should take her, and I wrack my brain for places we could go.

"Do you like hiking?" I ask her. Her eyes are much more evident without being hidden by glasses.

"Hiking?" She asks, putting her glasses back on.