Thank you all who stuck with me for 19 chapters. I know that this was a relatively short one, but I felt that it was more appropriate this way: short and sweet, how I always liked it. Please let me know if you enjoyed/disliked it, and thank you all so, so much! xoxo
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Tonight is the night that I pledge my undying love for you in the same house that I first confessed it. Cerise wrote with a giddy smile on her face. I am unashamedly excited for it!
She folded the letter and pressed it against the others in a stray cigar box, inhaling the scent deeply before she giggled and set off to her beauty rituals.
Her skin was splendidly bald and smooth and her hair was in the peak of its wavy glory. Her dress was white and cotton—less sultry than one would assume for a night of this caliber—and as long as her old “garden dress”, which she had grown out of.
At long last, the bell sounded in the foyer. She all but leapt off of the stool in front of her vanity and sprinted down the stairs, calling his name as she did.
His grin made her knees hopelessly weak. It had been three months since she had left Holmes Chapel, and she had come to be content with the knowledge that she would soon see him than be eaten away with loneliness. He picked her up as though she were weightless and spun her twice before letting her feet kiss the ground as he did her lips; but with such virile passion that even Cerise was startled.
“Who wants tea?” offered a familiar Spanish lilt. The lovers reluctantly severed their kiss to accept chamomile tea from Manuela, who received a bear hug of gracious magnitude from the long-gone singer.
“Shall we take it outside?” Cerise asked him with an eager smile.
He nodded, still grinning as they walked outside with the teacups in their hand. Tonight, they would be completely alone in the mansion, as per Cerise’s demand. He was palpably enthralled to take her to bed — but for now he was content with her legs drawn lazily over his thighs on the bench outside; looking out at the world around them as they had always loved to do.
“I love it here,” Harry murmured, taking a deep inhale of the Georgian air. England was home, but Georgia was Cerise; which was basically the same thing. He would have been content to live in the middle of the ocean if Cerise was there, but this place would always claim a piece of his heart.
Cerise said nothing, but smiled sweetly; basking in the serenity and dreaminess of this moment, which she had been literally dreaming of for months.
Sometimes she would stop and ponder the mechanics of their relationship; a subject which fascinated her endlessly. Where she was logical, he was partial to be swayed by emotions; where she was realistic, he was an idealistic dreamer with thoughts so eccentric they even made him laugh. He was admittedly sometimes too smitten with the world in his head to be rational, but he was still the only person in the world who could calm down Cerise.
Harry had fooled many with his charms, led them to believe that his head was full of vapid nothingness—but that was far from the truth. His mind, Cerise had discovered early on, was a puzzle of complexity, and he was oftentimes overwhelmed by it himself. He found it difficult to verbalize the incredible notions that passed around in there, but Cerise always loved it when he did.
“What’s in your mind?” she asked him, a common phrase they both used with each other. What’s on your mind seemed too shallow and passive to begin to describe the thoughts they both had, which weren’t superficial enough to be labeled as on; but rather a state of in, because essentially, they both liked to live in their minds (though in different respects).
“Daydreaming, as usual,” he answered casually.
“What of?”
“I couldn’t tell you if I tried,” he replied, and leaned in to cherish her petal lips with his heart-shaped ones. The taste of chamomile and mint lingered in both of their mouths, and Cerise decided to pull a little trick on him that she had picked up from Amber.
His eyes bulged and he pulled back, stunned. “What was that?” he mumbled, a dazzled grin forming immediately.
She giggled and offered if he wanted to find out again.
He nodded enthusiastically and leaned in once more to kiss her; only to have her gasp halfway through and leave him literally breathless.
“Wow,” he uttered quietly, his mouth expressing his blissful pleasure at the strange notion.
Cerise smiled and tapped her collarbone. “The love-bites wore off too quickly last time. We’re going to have to make more tonight, so you won’t leave altogether.”
He raised his eyebrows suggestively and sipped the tea. “Oh, don’t worry—we’ll make loads.”
She laughed heartily at this, her tea slapping against the alabaster china as she did so. He sat and just watched her, knowing that this was a memory to be replayed dozens of times; and the way that her nose crinkled at the left side slightly was something that definitely had to be remembered.
The day drew on this way; in the dreamy haziness that their relationship had betook in its forming weeks. It was unbelievable that they had known each other for a year now. Hadn’t it been all of her life? Hadn’t Harry once been there in every day of her childhood—had he ever really left her, or came to begin with?
Before the sun began to set, Cerise molded her body into his in a sweet embrace. In those cherished minutes, she murmured to him her poems of adoration in broken Spanish, and he sang to her in his husky tones with deep, unyielding sincerity. He knew of her odd fondness for French music, so he serenaded her lovingly with the songs of the late Jacques Brel, lulling her into a soft daze with his gently passionate crescendos.
When it finally became dark, they decided it was time to retire to the bedroom. With anxious excitement, they chased each other up the stairs and burst into the bedroom with their lips already locked together.
Harry had to release her for a minute so he could look at the bedroom again. He inhaled its familiar scent until it had curled around every anatomical piece of his lungs as a bittersweet smile pulled gently at the corners of his lips. This was late nights of unspoken desires and Disney movies and the sweet, sweet scent of Cerise in his arms as the sun rose. This was home.
After a minute of fond nostalgia, Harry spotted the stack of neatly piled boxes and papers in the corner of the room. He wandered over to them, wondering what they were.
Inside the boxes he found Cerise’s heart wrenching soliloquies and countless billet-doux’s. To the left were the numerous sketches that were made with such raw passion that Harry’s heart ached with apologetic sorrow to see them. Scratched into them was the essence of hopeless loneliness and misery, and tears pricked in his eyes at the sight of them.
“Cerise—” he choked, looking over at her with a furrowed brow and forlorn eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head a little as a slight smile formed at her mouth. She walked over to him and melted into his embrace, her azure eyes staring up at him with startling adoration.
“It’s all okay as long as I love you, and you love me. Right?” she murmured up at him in a quiet susurration.
He let out a bitter sigh. “You still love me?”
Without any words and only the sheer magnitude of her love for him, she convinced him that she very much so did.
~The End~
