Aquarelle [h.s]

fifty-one

July came around with more trips to the beach than we could count.

The sun was warm and the water was cold, but we didn't really care. It didn't matter, because all we could focus on was each other and my usual canon camera, that over the past few months had become the trusty guardian of our story.

We took more pictures we could count on the seaside, but even more in the safety of our own homes, between splatters of acrylic paint and loose paper sheets. The world was our kingdom, and summer under our command. Nothing could stop us from doing what we enjoyed, and doing it together.

It was as if something between us had shifted, ever since we'd come back from Harry's house in Manchester. The air of London had never seemed clearer. A weight I didn't even know was there had been lifted from my shoulders, the crawling fear that Harry would change his mind and leave me all over again gone.

This time he was all in, and I knew it. Ever since he'd opened up in his father's studio, it was as if a hole had been opened in the hull of a boat: the water couldn't stop flowing inside, and if that was how it felt to sink, I would be happy to drown.

August arrived by surprise, with my parents coming to London and several attempts at drawing Harry with a dark red cherry in his mouth, its feeble stem clasped between his teeth. It was a complete fail and we ended up eating all the cherries in the span of the first forty-five minutes. Unprofessional, some would say. But there was little of professional between us anyway.

We chose not to go on holiday that summer, because we were in that moment of our relationship in which it would feel weird for either of us to go away and leave the other alone, but it would feel equally odd to go somewhere together.

We spent the last of our summer between work and little one-day trips to places close to us just to enjoy the sunlight, take some pics and find little nooks and corners for us to hide in together.

When we were away from London we could almost pretend we were different people, not having to worry about the weight of our past choices hovering above us and the scrutinising eyes of our friends, whose only goal as of lately seemed to be discovering what we would do next.

September slithered around with more work hours than we could count, that forced us to spend more time apart than we would've liked. It was okay though, because we slept over at each other's apartments more often than not, so we still got to see each other in the mornings and evenings.

I had to suspend our studio schedule because it'd become too hard to keep now that we were both rather busy, but it didn't affect my art in any particular way considering that we saw each other almost every day and, as I'd come to discover in the past 5 years, an asleep Harry managed to make a perfect model.

October dropped in with the first few cold mornings and chilling British winds, the warm light of the summer sun replaced by pale silver sunshines peeking through the clouds.

We got organised a little better and settled into the reality of the upcoming winter, so we got to spend some more time in the studio, even though it often resulted in kissing and other less wholesome activities instead of him modelling and me painting.

We went back to Harry's house in Manchester for some days and we managed to empty all the rooms in the upper floor. All the furniture in his father's studio was the first to go, since he said it made him really uncomfortable to see it so identical after so many years. We emptied it completely and replaced the pale grey paint on the walls with a warm orange one, that reflected the light of the sun coming from the two windows and gave the room a completely different look.

Harry reacted surprisingly well to the room of his nightmares being gone forever, mourning its disappearance for only some days, and while it still made him a bit uncomfortable to be in it for too long, the fact that he could walk inside without his hands trembling was a considerable step forward.