comfortable silence (hs)

uma thurman {1}

The first film Harry ever watched was about a boy and a girl.

He was young, far too young to even grasp a concept like love, but still young enough to be captivated by the grandeur of it all. With his little head rolled back, he sat in front of the block of a television his father owned and watched and watched, and got more and more lost in it. His father always told him that he never said a word during the film because he was so entranced, which had been the intended effect. So it made sense that after that first one, there were many more to be put on for him in order to keep him still and quiet and not the pest of a toddler that he had a tendency of being.

(Unfortunately you can't bring a television with you to primary school, meaning there wasn't anything to be done about the young boy's lack of focus when he was squirming at his desk.)

Nothing ever quite stuck with him as much as that first film. Maybe because it was his first; the first one he melted into, the first one he thought about for nights afterward, the first one that made him feel like there was something beyond the small walls of their apartment.

Or maybe it was because there was just nothing else for a kid like him to dream about.

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"You're looking at the most overrated Tarantino film in this whole store, just so you're aware."

There were some things Harry couldn't control. He couldn't control the weather, for one— the downpour of rain that had been falling relentlessly since he'd woken up that morning was evidence of that. He also couldn't control the placement of that tree branch that his bike just happened to run over on his way to work; he couldn't control the way his body had thus been thrown down to the wet pavement; and he definitely didn't have any control over the scrape that ended up on his chin from the fall.

Some things just happen, right? Some things just happen and we have no control over them, and Harry was pretty sure he knew that better than anyone.

He did, however, have full control over himself when he walked over to the girl who'd been holding Pulp Fiction in her hand for the past four (six maybe?) minutes. He had full control over how he had been silently judging her from where he sat at the register, picking at the dried blood on his chin and staring at the familiar image of a fantasy-worthy Uma Thurman in her hand. He had full control over the way his eyes glazed over her, briefly at first. But then he stared a little longer than he usually did when customers came in. He watched her mewl over the cover of the DVD. She was tall, but not that tall, and for whatever reason she seemed like she was tired. Maybe it was the blotches of blue under her eyes that Harry noticed, or maybe it was the way she took forever just staring at the damn movie, flipping it from side to side and examining it, as if she kept forgetting that it was in her hand and had to remind herself it was there. Her other hand was torn between clamping into a fist at her side and reaching up to push the overgrown bangs from her eyes. Dark hair trickled down her back, tangled in damp clumps from the rain. It was near the three minute mark (not that he was keeping track) when he noticed a patch of ink on her arm. Little vines and flowers and even a face maybe, from what he could tell. It looked like a neat tattoo— he'd give her that.

Harry had finally decided to stand up and pace his way towards the aisle she was sandwiched in. He was choosing to do it, possibly out of boredom or possibly out of a slight frustration by her lack of decision. Who takes that long to decide if they want to rent a movie? Tired girls with bags under their eyes who probably don't have a clue about films outside of the ones that young Leonardo DiCaprio appears in, that's who.

"Sorry?"

His voice seemed to make her jump in her skin. She looked up from the movie, nearly dropping it.