boys don't cry. [h.s]

twenty five

June

"You okay?"

Isabel glanced over at Harry, finding him looking at her with his eyebrows puckered up.

"I'm fine, just tired."

It was late, around 11pm, and they were walking through the woods back from their shift down by the car park at the bottom of the hill. There was a big funfair in town in two days' time and so people had been arriving constantly all day, and Liv's uncle had asked Harry and Isabel to direct cars into the car park, regulating the traffic, answering questions and making sure nobody got lost in the dark.

But Isabel wasn't really that tired, even though they'd been working long shifts for four days now. She was worried, constantly, about how she felt about Harry, about what to do, and it was eating her up.

"Are you sure?" Harry asked, tugging his lip between his fingers. She nodded, smiling at him, and he stopped walking, tugging at her hand so that she'd stop too. She was wearing his jumper, the sleeves falling past her fingertips, and he had to burrow his hands up the cuffs to catch her fingers.

"Yeah," she nodded. He took his other hand away from his lip, tucking it under her hair to hold the nape of her neck and leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

"You've been acting funny for ages."

He smiled and kissed her nose, but she could see the anxiousness in his eyes and it made her feel guilty. "It's just hard working on a hangover every day when it's so hot and stuff. I'm fine."

He screwed up his nose and sniffed. "Maybe you should get chronic hay fever like me. Then you get drunk off one beer you're so pumped with pills." He grinned. "It's pretty hard stuff that, I'll tell you. That antihistamine high is something else."

She bit her lip and laughed, and his smile widened. "You're so weird."

He laughed, leaning down and brushing his lips against hers once. "Let's do something mad."

She raised her eyebrows and waited, watching the cogs whirl in his head as he looked around the expansive black of the trees surrounding them. Then he smirked, looking back at her with mischievous eyes and kissing her again, swiping his tongue across her bottom lip but pulling away before they could kiss properly. "Let's go."

He pulled her along behind him, turning left instead of going straight ahead back up the hill towards the tents, and she struggled to keep up with how fast he was walking. They were wearing high vis jackets so that the cars had been able to spot them in the dark, and the fluorescent light of Harry's back was the only thing she could see in the black as she stumbled after him, clutching his hand with both of hers and digging her nails into his palm.

"Here," Harry said triumphantly, and when Isabel peeked around his shoulder she realised they were at the lake. It was completely deserted, the deck chairs that normally surrounded it put away and the kiosk shut. Everything seemed so dark and silent that for a moment Isabel was scared to breathe in case she interrupted the complete stillness of it.

Harry let go of her hand and shrugged his high vis jacket off, unzipping his hoodie and taking that off too.

"What are you doing?"

He cocked his head to the side and smiled. "Swimming."

"Harry, it'll be freezing!"

He frowned. "No it won't. It's had the sun on it all day, it gets hotter in the evening."

Isabel just gaped at him, but he was already shirtless, pulling off his shoes and socks. He looked up at her, his nose wrinkling as he smiled. "Come on."