give her love » james potter

51

Aunt Sally brushes my hair as we sit in the living room watching Casablanca. I'd been stuck in my room for the past few days, feeling a hangover of sadness wrap around my like a too tight turtle neck. Until, she'd coaxed me out of my room with a promise of Indian food from our favourite restaurant downtown and a movie she'd bought while out.

She starts to braid my hair, which has grown enough that it can't be called short yet is definitely not long. It's a therapeutic process as I dip my naan into the paneer while trying to not cry as Isla and Rick slowly fall in love whilst the timing gets worse and worse for them.

"Maybe this wasn't the best I should've picked something else," she mumbles after she's finished with my hair and takes a sip of her ginger ale. 

I shake my head, wiping away my tears. "No it was so good, Aunt Sal," I try and convince her, though by this time tears are streaming down my face. "I'm just having one of those days."

Her arms immediately pull me closer and she gives me a squeeze, "Did I ever tell you about the guy I consider the one that got away?"

I shake my head.

(Sally Thorpe is nineteen and bored out of her mind in some class economics class her mother made her take. In the words of Mimi Thorpe, "If you must be so stubborn and go to university, you must take a business class and hopefully find some man that might be stupid enough to think they might be able to handle you."

They talk about capitalism and equilibrium and laissez-faire. All things she has no interest in and to be honest, she's not a fan of capitalism but doesn't dare utter it as all the men will just roll their eyes and mumble something about how she doesn't know anything.

Yet she bares it because her parents are funding all this and she realizes terribly privileged and that so many women would die and have died for her to be in that seat, but she just wants to get far away from there and back into the science building surrounded by books that actually suit her Biochemistry major.

That's when the most beautiful boy she's ever seen takes a seat beside her.

She's great at boys and relationships and at any time there are fifty people begging to take her on a date but, this boy who's beside her puts them all to shame. His serious expression is constantly flitting up from his notebook to the board, and she likes the way his dark blue button-down looks against his pale skin and is perplexed at how he barely even glances at her.

Sally has attracted attention her whole life but this boy doesn't even spare her a single drop of it.)

I furrow my brows, "Did you say hi? That's great at attracting attention."

"Of course not," she rolls her eyes, "I just tried looking nicer and accidentally bumping my hand into his while writing, yet, he'd just continue on like it never happened."

(So, she gives up after a month of pouring all her effort into him because Dante answers a question faster than her in a chem class and she remembers that she'd rather have a nice GPA than some boy's attention. 

Sally continues to sit beside him economics and everything is just boring and normal until--

"I forgot my textbook, would you mind if I looked at yours?"

She looked up at him in alarm, "Oh, well, of course not," she said, then pushed the book between them both. She held out her hand, "I'm Sally."

He looked confused by her gesture but shook it anyways, "My name is Kiyoshi.")