boys don't cry. [h.s]

fifteen

April

Isabel was nervous. Being sandwiched between Harry and Caitlin as Niall sped down the M23 on Saturday morning with an illegal number of passengers squeezed into his Range Rover really didn't help matters either.

Niall and Liv were arguing over what song to have playing in the front, Niall continuously swatting her hand away as she tried to change it, but the four of them squished together in the back seat were completely silent. Zayn was asleep, his head resting against the window with his chin tilted upwards, and from Isabel's angle his black eye looked even worse. Caitlin had headphones shoved into her ears, texting furiously on her phone and occasionally singing quietly without realising.

Isabel was chewing on her nails, glancing at Niall's speedometer whenever she got a chance, and Harry was staring out of the window quietly with his hands folded in his lap, completely lost in his thoughts.

Isabel was nervous because Harry was nervous. She could feel it radiating off him, his anxiety soaking into her every second she sat next to him. For someone who usually covered up all of his emotions and hid away from so many things, his apprehension was unnervingly contagious.

She wanted to say something to him, anything that would help him offload, but she had nothing to say, and she was certain he wouldn't like it if she tried to talk about it in the confined space of the car either. So she sat in silence, gnawing on her nails and trying her best not to stare at him.

Closing her eyes, her thoughts drifted back to the Tuesday earlier that week. Coming back from work in the evening, she'd found Harry and Scarlett making surprisingly adequate conversation in the kitchen.

It was Harry's last night there before he went back to the boys, and he'd grinned at her when she arrived, jumping up to make her some tea as her eyes scanned over the paint splatters on his ratty t-shirt with the hole at the bottom and the streaks of cobalt and marigold in thin, uneven rivers up his arms. She excused herself for a minute, going upstairs to change, and as soon as she pushed the door open to her room her breath had caught in her throat.

Harry had clearly been working in there earlier, and, perhaps forgetting that there was a chance she would enter the room without him, had left his work lying open on the bed. And Isabel just stared, entranced, at the drawing of her. Her hair lay fanned behind her, golden and deep, and for a moment she stared at the colours he'd put into it, how long it must have taken, how someone could see so many different shades in something she stared at everyday and wouldn't have been able to replicate like this. Her eyes were open, barely, and her teeth biting down on her lip as she laughed, the freckles on her nose drawn carefully, the shadows from her eyelashes, the line of her cheekbone, the slight dark circles under her eyes, the curve of her upper lip. It was all there, every part of her, in perfect likeness, but paradoxically so much more beautiful.

It wasn't even one of Harry's major works, though, this was just a practice in his sketchbook, part of his development, a practice leading up to the real thing. She didn't dare turn the page, knowing he would go crazy if he knew, so she took to examining the only page available to her. Every piece of space on the double page space was used; the left-side the painting, with the original photo paper-clipped to the top, and the right side was Harry's Harry's notes, lengthy and organised, jotted around the page in all different directions with parts crossed out and others underlined or circled. At the top of the page, it read: "Development; oil paint?? – 'Confessions'".

She frowned when she saw that word, trying to read his notes to understand but there were immediately references to artists and techniques that she couldn't appreciate. She skimmed the page quickly, her eyes stopping when she saw "Adam?" and a line coming from it that led to: "Robert Browning"