.Perfect Fantasy. |H.S.|

Chapter 36. Déjà vu.

.Natalia.

"It's a little too late for him to leave, don't you think?" Anne's distressed voice kept me from completing my mission of wiping the shit out of the counter, the question bothering us at the same time.

"Maybe he'll stay," I said, smiling the most reassuring, stupid smile I could muster. We'd both finished washing and drying the dishes and moved on to cleaning the rest of the lunch remainders. I'd passed the same spot for the third time, and it didn't really need the scrub-down, but I needed something, anything, to keep myself away from knocking on Harry's door, to keep my mind from wondering what the hell was happening upstairs.

For the longest time, she said nothing. I didn't really felt the need to add anything to the polite conversation, so I stayed silent as well, letting my mind conjure up all the possible things she was probably thinking. We'd fixed them a tray full of coffee and food, the past couple hours spent as a quiet lockdown, and Sean was the only person in and out of his room.

By the moment my legs got tired from waiting we sat down on the breakfast island, I'd straightened my arm across the surface in an attempt to get comfortable, when my ears practically perked up as Sean's footsteps crossed the room once more, this time not asking for food, but looking at me mostly.

"Er, Harry wants to talk to you." He mentioned, drawing his cigarette pack from the back of his jeans and stepping out through the door leading to the garden, not even expecting an answer.

I looked at Anne, then she looked at me knowingly, mumbling a faint 'oh, just go' in a voice almost too soft to hear, her hand waving back and forth in dismissal.

So I slipped away from the waiting and practically ran upstairs where I knocked on his door with trepidation, each sound rising against the silence of the hallway. My patience was thin and ready to crack, as I turned the doorknob around and my eyes immediately landed on him; sitting on a low-slung, brown leather couch set up against the far wall. He had one leg crossed over the other and his head was bent down as I watched him run a hand across the back of his neck and then into his very distressed hair.

"Explains what exactly?" Harry sighed and stopped talking, caught between keeping his private conversation and looking to me. He took the phone away from him for only a second, and gestured a fast sign for me to wait on him.

At that point, I simply stared, not really knowing where or what to look at first.

His bedroom was very intimidating, not exactly how I pictured it in my mind, or how I saw it in my dream; the entire place dominated by an intriguing four-poster bed, built of the richest design, probably vintage, with some padding surface that ended in the fluffiest of pillows, all assorted in a tasteful disparity of grey fabrics. I walked around his half-filled weekend leather bag and the pile of perfectly folded clothes waiting, my attention suddenly intensifying to a new find-a wide variety of vinyl's from different eras, tattered book titles probably found in second-hand stores, and a set of candles that were already used. My finger traced the furniture and I stopped at a stylish brown bottle containing some kind of fragrance. I touched the lean gold line on the square lid, and then pushed on the spray, all while butterflies erupted in my stomach; it was Harry in a bottle, and I was delighted to see his stuff up close, pure aesthetic beauty that showed me this whole other side of him as I looked into some double-matted, black and white printed photographs.

"What then?" He tried again, frustration making him beg through the phone. "Then, she kills me."

Shit! His last words startled me in the deepest way, almost dropping the expensive bottle from my hand.

I tried to remain perfectly still, not to make a sound. But my mind couldn't stop racing and my heart wouldn't stop pounding and with just a few words he managed to dismantle my most concentrated efforts to think that everything was fine.