But I know, yes I know we'll be alright.

Aliza

I wake up to a blood-curdling scream. My eyes shoot open, I look around disorientated. I fell asleep on the couch. Harry yells again, and my body moving before my mind can register. I fling myself into the kitchen.

I gasp in a breath. Oh wow, okay. My heart calms down when I see Harry in one piece. He's standing in the corner, palms pressed against the wall on either side of him. He's on his toes. I look at him helplessly; he has a very anxious look on his face. It seems like he's trying to push himself into the wall like he wants to disappear. "Harry." His eyes snap up. 

He points at the kitchen sink with a shaky finger. I walk to the sink slowly and peer inside, still standing away. I burst out in laughter when I see it; the little tentacles rub together as it stares at me. I turn my head to Harry.

"Is it about the living thing in the sink?" He nods in affirmation. "Harry, it's a cockroach." He gags, pushing his palm over his mouth. Why is he afraid of bugs?

 I turn back to the cockroach; it's still staring at me. I push the dustbin with my toe towards Harry without making eye contact, and I hear him scoff.

It doesn't take long until I hear him dragging the dustbin in his direction. I smirk but still don't look at him. I take a tong from the drying rack, one we used earlier cause we don't have salad spoons. I hold it in my hand, keeping it sturdy. 

I move slowly, trying to grasp the cockroach between it. It doesn't work. It moves away and speeds past me onto the counter. Harry squeals from the corner, and my shoulders are shaking from trying not to lose it right now. 

He's almost six-foot, afraid of nothing, except little critters. "Fucking kill it!" He yells; he kind of sounds possessed right now. "No, Harry, it's a living thing." The cockroach runs closer to him when I try to grab it again. " No, it's called a CREEPY crawly for a reason! Aliza, please, I'm serious!" 

He cuts himself off with another high-pitched yell, Jesus, he's got pipes. The dustbin falls over when he runs away from the corner. He jumps onto the barstool and crouches down, holding his knees. I go for the cockroach again, but it suddenly becomes airborne. 

Did it have to be a flying one?  Harry shoots onto the counter as it flies to the light. He takes his shirt off and starts swinging it towards the bug. He hits the light fixture, and the room goes dark. "No, I can't see it!"

Okay, now it's just tragic. The light flickers a couple of times and go on again. The cockroach is inches from Harry, hovering around him, and with the last swat, the bug and Harry hit the floor. I rush around to see if he's okay. 

He jumps up, still on alert, and find the bug on the counter. He grabs the closest thing to a weapon, which happens to be a spatula, and repeatedly hits the bug. "Devils fucking soldiers." He spat, not taking his eyes off the squished bug.

He turns to me and breaths for what I think maybe the first time since this whole thing started. "We're burning this place down, right now." He states, pointing around the room in a circular motion.    

I can't control my laughter at this point; it's just totally ridiculous. He's not laughing with me; Harry has a sad expression on his face. "Harry, since when are you afraid of bugs?" I ask him a little more seriously. "Since I use to sleep in places where they crawled over my skin at night." My heart walls cave in.

"Shit, I'm so sorry I laughed." I go to him and hug him. He's staring at the void, his arms limp as I hold him, and a ghostly expression covers his face. Goosebumps erupt on his skin; he's pulled into memory.

"Spiders and cockroaches. That's how low I was, sleeping in the dirt right next to them. Didn't even care, just passed out." His tone is emotionless. I kiss his chest, and he suddenly wraps his arms around me.

"I'll be your bug hunter." I offer as I look up. "Yea?" He smiles at me, one dimple popping out. "Yea," I repeat, and he leans down to seal the deal.

"It's okay that you laughed, you know, it is pretty comical." He says after we pull apart. "Wouldn't have laughed if I knew it was so sensitive," I reply. "It's not anymore, it... It's one of those things that will be around forever; it's what I take with me. You don't have to feel bad about it."

"Well, I mean, your vocal range is quite impressive." I laugh, and his shoulder begins to shake to, and I think... Maybe we managed to turn this time into a good memory, one where the dirt won't be on the forefront of his mind.

"Says the one who. The one who just ran around with thongs." He gasps, laughing harder.

He holds onto me to steady himself from the laughter that pours through him.

After the laughter dies down, I clean up the carcass from the counter, making sure that it's dead per Harry's instructions. 

Like the dismantled creature before me will suddenly stand up and crawl around.

Better not mention that to Harry; he'll start getting nightmares about zombie cockroaches.

I clean the counter twice and continue the dishes that were left untouched after Harry discovered the cockroach. 

I find him in the living room, his laptop resting on the coffee table. His earphones are in, and his mouth is moving. I sneak a peek at what he's doing. My eyes go wide when I see it. Well, I'm happy this never changed. I clear my throat, and I swear his head touches the roof as he jumps.

"It's not what it looks like." He stutters. His cheeks are red. "So you're not listening to music?" I ask him. He shakes his head viciously. "NO!... I mean, yes, but it was on autoplay, and I was deep in thought." He rambles. I lean over the couch and plug the earphones out of the jack. 

The very familiar words ring through the room, and Harry deepens into the couch, redder than before. But I know, yes I know we'll be alright.

"So that's not a YouTube playlist?" I point at the screen.

There's a moment when you finally realize, there's no way you can change the rolling tide.

He shakes his head, avoiding eye contact.

"And you weren't singing along?"

Escape from the city and follow the sun, 'cause I wanna be yours. 'cause you wanna be mine.

"Nope." He says softly, but his eyes are still glued to the screen. He sighs in annoyance. "It's adorable," I tell him. He mumbles something about being cute, and then I'm ripped from my position and swung over the couch, right into his lap.

The music is still playing as he growls at me before he kisses me out of nowhere. Okay then. He suddenly pushes me off him, and I fall next to him on the couch. "This is the best part," He says, focused on the video again. 

There's a future in my life I can't foresee. Unless, of course I stay on course and keep you next to me.

My head falls into the arm of the couch as I fold my legs under me, watching as he sings along now, over his quick stint of embarrassment. His eyes twinkle, and he has a lopsided grin on his face. Although he'll never fully admit to being a fan, I know it brings him joy, and that's pretty amazing compared to anything else.

We sit like this for a long time; I grab a book and make myself comfortable, reading as he listens to music next to me. We're taken out of his little bubble when his phone rings next to him. He's not talking to someone he knows, and I only hear a little bit of the conversation between them cause he's mostly just making sounds of acknowledgment. 

He puts the phone down and turns to me. "Realtor, he thinks he may have a place for the bakery." He doesn't sound very excited. "When are you going to check it out?" I ask him. "Tomorrow I have an off day; you wanna come with me? I'm just gonna check; it's not the right time yet, but maybe if it's a good price, I can put down a deposit." He says.

"Yea, I'll come." He smiles and rubs my feet. "Let's go on an adventure." He says, suddenly uninterested in his laptop. "What will we do, Harry?" I ask him enthusiastically. 

"We'll go far but also not." He tells me, and I laugh cause his answer is as vague as mine always are. He pulls me off the couch, and we're out the door. I don't even have time for shoes, which I don't care about.

Walking barefoot has always grounded me; it's like borrowing some of the earth's energy for a while. The ground absorbs the energy. I realize pretty quickly that we're heading to the farm. The sun is sitting low, but there should still be a couple of hours of daytime left.

We talk along the way, not in a rush. He tells me more about when he was homeless, and a cold hand squeezes my heart from the stories he tells me.  He tells me he started growing his hair after the first day at the bakery, mostly because he couldn't afford a haircut, but then he loved it so much he just kept it like that.

"I didn't want long hair back then; I wasn't the boy who wanted long hair; when it started to grow out, though, I decided that maybe I could be him again. The man I always wanted to be."

His hair is very long, over his shoulders, falling in soft curls by his shoulder blades. It always smells like roses. He tells me that he slept outside the bakery for almost a month and used the staff showers every morning before work. He'd pretend he just arrived. "Augustine found me one morning. I was sick, so I didn't wake up on time." He retells his memory.

I walk in step with him in silence. "She gave me a good chewing, but then she got me some medicine and let me stay in the staff room until I could afford a place of my own." I still forget how much he went through sometimes. He had it so hard it's a wonder he is who he is today.

He pushes the gate open, and we walk along the dirt road towards the house. It still takes my breath away; it's so beautiful. The old roof and red bricks are now brand new and soft gray color, just like I wanted.

We walk inside, and he switches on the lights as we go. There's some furniture, covered in old linen. We're slowly buying the things we need before we can move in. He disappears into the pantry connected to the kitchen.

He carries out a box and places it before me; then he does it twice more. "It's painting; that's why the walls are white. We're gonna paint the walls, whatever you want. We can paint flowers or sunsets. We can paint the most beautiful things." He says, and I think I'm melting right now. "You forget one key factor," I tell him. He raises his eyebrow. "I can't paint." He laughs, a booming laugh.  

"well, I can so." He replies cheekily. I scoff and fold my arms like a misbehaving child. "Kidding, honey, just pretend it's abstract." He shrugs. "We can paint over it and try again." That makes me feel a little better, so with newfound excitement, I rummage through the box.

"I want it to be a surprise," I say when I've formulated the picture in my head. "Okay, I'll take this wall then." He says, pointing towards the wall opposite me. He walks away, but I grab the back pocket of his jeans. "I need your cellphone," I ask him, and he hands it over after digging it out of his front pocket. 

I scroll through his pictures until I find the one I want and rest it on a makeshift stand I created out of the boxes and paint tins. There's silence around us; only the sweep of the brushes can be heard for a long time. 

The chalk that Harry uses screeching along the surface of the wall now and then.

I keep it simple, opting for a silhouette sort of thing. It's a picture I took backstage when he wasn't looking; he has a yellow ribbon tied to his wrist. I gave it to him before the show, telling him it's his ring... It's him always.

It takes longer than it should for such a simple picture. I'm not satisfied at all; it doesn't fit in with the house's aesthetic at all. " Don't turn around," I warn him, and he obeys.

"I need to know where the white paint is," I tell him. "I kinda lied about there being any white paint left."

"Harry!" I moan. "Can I see? Then I'll go get some white paint." He comprises. I gove up at this point. "Sure." He turns around and walks over to my side of the room.

"It's me." He notices. Good start then. "Why do you want to paint over it?" I stare at him and then at the painting. "It doesn't fit into the house. It's too dark. I didn't get it right."

"It's our home; we can do whatever we want to. May I?" He cups his hand, almost in a question mark.

"Be my guest." I shrug, and he takes a new brush. He moves around and finds the paint he's looking for.

He dips the brush in and pushes it against the wall, next to wall Harry's head. His tongue darts out in concentration.

A loose curl falls over his face, and he wipes it away. The picture that was sort of in my head comes to life before me.

His skilled fingers work along the wall as he shifts from side to side, mixing new colors as he goes. He dances too.

He blends the paint with his fingers, and only a couple of moments go by before there's a masterpiece in front of me.

The pastel colors hug the silhouette; different size clouds form a soft background. It makes the picture stand out perfectly.

I look at it in awe and then back at Harry, my head darting between the two. "It's beautiful." I sigh happily, overwhelmed by the beauty in front of me. "Sometimes, you just need a little bit of color." He murmurs, still looking at the art.

He turns his head to me slowly. "I use to think my life was gray, almost black and mediocre. You're my rainbow." He confesses to me. Leaning down and kissing my lips so softly, I wonder if it happened when he pulls back. "You're my everything."

I'm back to us sitting on the couch when I told him he used to be my everything, and hearing the same words makes me feel like I might be standing on the highest mountain right now.

https://youtu.be/RsEZmictANA

It's 07:38 on a Friday morning my time. 12 December 2020, and Taylor Swift posted this video precisely 36 minutes ago, and I'm so emotional right now cause I didn't know this song existed, and Aliza calls Harry willow, and I'm just so in love with them that it hurts!

"Life was a willow, and it bent right to your wind. They count me out time and time again."

I mean, come on!

Mkay Bye