Always.

“Kel, did you finish the Psych homework?”

I tapped my pencil on my sheet of Spanish homework in front of me. Harry just walked through the door from some afterschool tutoring thing. “Oh, hey Harry. My day was good, nothing interesting happened in the past two hours; thanks for asking.”

I could practically hear him roll his eyes, even though my back was to the door. His footsteps came closer and closer until I could feel him right behind me. I couldn’t hide the smile that spread across my face. Harry kissed the top of my head. “Hey baby, how was your day?” he asks, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.

“Good, thanks. How was tutoring?”

“They’re getting it. But they can only focus on math for so long. Geometry is killer though, for freshman they’re doing pretty well.”

“Geometry was absolute hell. I don’t know how I passed.” I told him, holding onto his forearms.

“You copied me.” He kissed me on the side of the head. “Speaking of copying, did you finish your psychology homework?” he takes his backpack and sets it on the table before sitting down next to me.

“You know for one of smartest kids in our grade, you sure ask to copy me a lot.”

“No I don’t.”

“You’re not helping the point I’m trying to make here, Harry. Stop talking.”

“Come on.”

“It’s just the psychological perception of color. It’s not that hard.”

“I’ll help you with Spanish.”

“Harry, we’ve been through this before, you take French.”

“They’re practically the same.”

“It’s in my binder, just grab the stupid page. I need to finish this before we leave.”

He grabs the paper from the binder next to him and pulls out his sheet from his Psych book. “It’s Friday, you have all weekend.”

I smirk at him as I finish writing a sentence. “Maybe I plan on spending my weekend other ways.”

His eyes grow wide as he looks up from his paper, but I just bite my lip and smile before focusing my attention back on my homework in front of me.

“Fuck it.” He moves his paper to the side of the table and pulls my chair closer. I giggle and scold him.

“Harry! Let me finish!”

“Nope.” he kiss my cheek and then to my jaw and then my neck. “You can’t look at me like that and expect nothing to happen.”

“Yes I can. Just stop for a second please.” His teeth grazed the skin of my neck before leaving another kiss.

“Mmmmhm.” He hummed against my throat and kissed upwards to my chin. I wanted to protest again, actually I tried but it just came out as a moan. I felt him smile against my skin as he kissed me on the lips for only the third time today. Once this morning when we woke up, just like every other morning. The second was after school when he met me at my locker before I came home. I love it though, when he kisses me like this and he knows it. I kissed him back and his hands gripped my sides as he pulled me closer to him. I got from my chair and onto his lap. My arms wrapped around his neck as I kissed him deeper.

“I love you.” He whispers.

“I love you more.” I whispered before kissing him again. “I love you so much, Harry.” I tugged on his hair that was between my fingers. I kissed him over and over and his hands roamed over my body. We had to leave soon, and I really want this but I just. “Harry, two more questions. I have two more.” I say breathlessly, but he still kisses me.

“Do it later.” He kissed me again.

“Ha-” I tried to get out but he took advantage of my open mouth and kissed me harder.

Harry pushes my back against the table. “You need to stop talking.” He says and stands from the chair. He lifts me up a little so I’m sitting on the table. “About your homework.” I close my eyes as his hand moves to my cheek and then trails it down my neck. My breath hitches as his fingers trace over my collar bones. He quickly connects his mouth to my neck and sucks harshly.

“Bedroom.” I try to get out.

“You know,” he pulls back. “I think it’s about time we christen the apartment, don’t you?” he asks looking me in the eye, and let’s just say I didn’t reply with any words.

***

“Alright, we will be back later tonight. Help yourself to anything. We made lasagna, it’s in the oven just keeping warm. Anything else? You guys have done this before. We’re gonna go.” Ryleigh’s mom knelt down to say her goodbye to her daughter before the left her alone with Harry and I.

“Uncle Har! LORAX!” Ryleigh shouted at him.

Harry lets out a loud puff of breath and crouched down next to her. “We watched it last time, can we please watch something else.” He begs her, jutting out his bottom lip at her.

“But I like the Glow song.” She tells him, giving him big puppy dog eyes. Harry told me on the way here that he didn’t want to watch the movie again because of that stupid song.

“It’s just the one song.” He said. “We don’t have to watch the movie to just listen to one song.” He tells her, and suddenly an idea pops into mind.

“Well,” I say, crouching down next to Harry and look straight at Ryleigh. “Maybe if you ask nicely, Uncle Harry will be nice and get the song on his phone for us to listen to.” I tell her and her eyes grow wide with excitement. She looks too adorable, I knew Harry would have a hard time saying no to her.

She turns to him right after Harry throws me a dirty look. I know she’s pulling the puppy dog face yet again. “Fine, I’ll download it…” he turns and walks to the oven, probably to pull out the lasagna. “I can’t believe I’m downloading this fucking song.” He muttered as he walked away, I’m sure Ryleigh-

“Uncle Har said a bad word.” She giggles and snuggles into me.”

“I know, he’s very naughty. He got coal for Christmas.” I whispered the last part in her ear to make her think it was a secret.

She giggles into her hands and runs into the kitchen, and I laugh as I get up to follow her. She’s wrapped around his legs before he sits down and he’s at her height. Well, maybe he’s a little taller.

“What?” he asked while she giggled. He looked at her cluelessly before looking over at me.

He smiled at me, a very toothy grin and I smiled back. The room felt very open a bright and beautiful, just like him.

Ryleigh was observing our little stare off, I nearly forgot she was there for a moment, and Harry did too until he heard he gasp. He eyes darted to the little girl before she whispered something in his ear. She covered her mouth and said something I couldn’t make out through her squeaking with, what sounded like, excitement.

“I do,” he replied to her with that grin still on his face, and his gaze flickered to me.

“Tell her!” She told him, no longer whispering. She motions toward me, and then looks at me and places her hands behind her back before walking to me. “I’ll help.” She says to him. “Can I have your hand please?” she asks me, and then she moves my hand to Harry’s. He laces them together. She smiles again. “Harry has something he would like to tell you.” She says in a very matter-of-fact tone and then takes her place next to him once more.

Harry looks me directly in the eye and I lose my breath when he takes both my hands in his. “Is this alright?” he looks at Ryleigh and she gives him a nod of confirmation. He looks back at me. “Kelly, I’m in love with you.” He tells me, looking at me like he has other times before.

Ryleigh squeaks with joy. “I told you both!!” she jumps up and down. “Now be a man and kiss her.” Her words make me laugh, but they soon stop when I see Harry lean in. He pecks me softly knowing that 1, she won’t give up until he did, and 2, she didn’t need to see a passionate kiss. And this was okay with me.

“I love you, Harry.” I tell him. I guess she was right. All those months ago, she knew. A little girl could tell that he was my love, my life. It’s funny because I didn’t even though. And here she was with such little knowledge in the subject, already knowing we were in love. I wish I could be like her, young and simple minded. She’d observed the love from her parents and could just tell. She didn’t over think anything, lucky her.

“Maybe you were on the naughty list because you waited to tell her.”

She spilled the beans, and he was confused too.

He looked at me with a glimmer in his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not so sure that’s why.” He bit his lip, he bit his fucking lip. I was melting.

“Well, you don’t want to be on it again, so tell her every day.” Ryleigh instructed him.

“Yes ma’am.” He said. “I’ll be sure to let her know what she means to me every day.”

“And if you don’t want to be on the naughty list, we have to watch The Lorax…” she said calmly.

Harry stared at her blankly, and they sat like that for a while and then he started fiercely tickling her. She laughed until she was in tears. “Guess I’ll be getting coal this year for being naughty.” He looked up at me and winked. I blushed, though she knew about us being in love, I was glad she didn’t read into this because not watching The Lorax was in no way relative to why Harry would be on the naughty list.

Notes