Harley’s blonde hair looks wild, piled on top of her head into a messy bun. A few loose strands spill down her face, brushing against her rosy cheeks. She looks gorgeous without even trying, and not in a hot girl kind of way. If I didn’t know Harley, I probably would walk past her on the street without noticing her. Which would be a massive injustice. Because once you discover what makes her tick, it’s impossible not to find the beauty in her slight imperfections. She’s like a painting or a sculpture.
Her jaw is soft, cheeks round and smattered with freckles like the rest of her skin. When we were kids, I would trace the tiny dots up her arms, pretending to connect them with my finger. She hated her freckles, said that pretty girls don’t look like her. I wanted to kiss her that day, and every day after that, because she was so fucking wrong. “Pretty” girls are mean and vain, ugly on the inside. I’d never met a model who didn’t try to suck the soul from my body, while Harley never did anything but breathe her life into me.
I drop my keys onto the entryway table and move toward Harley. She doesn’t slow her flow, swirling her fingers across the paper. My eyes fall to her booty shorts that ride up her sweet thighs, hugging every inch of her milky skin that’s dusted with freckles… and ink.
When did she get a tattoo?
I inch closer, careful not to disturb her while inspecting the unicorn at the top of her thigh. But it’s not some pansy-ass unicorn you’d see on the wall in a little girl’s bedroom. No, this one is dark, at least in its meaning. The lines are carefully etched, sprinkled with splashes of color. From the looks of it, Harley went to someone talented, probably our mutual friend, who owns Inkwell. Alec does the best ink in Philly. Harley would never let someone mark her body who didn’t have her skill. She respects Alec, considers him her equal, if not better.
I sit on the couch next to her, still quiet, still staring at the artwork on her thigh. Inside an antique mirror, a girl mounts a unicorn. No, a queen. A jeweled crown sits atop the queen’s blonde head, and she raises her arm above her head, a sword pointed at the electric sky. I don’t know what the tattoo means to her, but in my case, Harley is a unicorn, rare and impossible to catch. I’ve chased after her for so many years, patiently waiting to make my move. And now that I have her under my roof, I can’t bear the thought of losing her again.
I will never let her go. Much like the ink on her skin, Harley is a part of me.
My first friend.
My first crush.
My first love.
My first heartbreak.
And soon, my wife.
No one can make her happy the way I can. No one understands her like I do. They will never appreciate her for all of her quirks, or worship her like a fucking goddess. Because Harley is mine. She has always been mine. My beautiful talented artist, skillfully creating worlds with her delicate hands, envisioning a universe I wouldn’t want to live in without her. Harley is the best of us, the Queen of our company, the ruler of my heart.
I want to tell her all of this as I watch her draw in silence, wishing I had the courage to open my heart to her. Isn’t that what keeps us from falling in love? The possibility of someone prying open your chest and ripping out your heart. That was how it felt when I lost Harley. Like she had gripped her tiny hands around my heart and squeezed for dear life. Like it would never beat again. And then she came back, years later and under shit circumstances, the same girl I loved as a boy.
Except she doesn’t love me.
She doesn’t want to be here.
I slide my hand to her thigh, and not in a perverted way. My fingers hover over the unicorn.
“Do you like?” Harley asks, eyes pointed down at the pad, still working feverishly on her drawing. “It was my parting gift from Alec, right before I moved to LA.”
“It’s brilliant,” I confess. Like you.
The corner of her mouth turns up into a crooked grin. “Alec has a way of bringing my art to life. I wish I had his skill.”
“Alec says the same about you.”
She chuckles, switching from the vine charcoal in her hand to the compressed charcoal in the box beside her. “Alec offered me a job that day, said he didn’t want to see me go. But you know how I feel about putting my work on someone’s body. I want my creations displayed for the world to see, not hidden beneath someone’s shirt.” She smudges the charcoal with her finger, the blacks thicker and darker than before. “Art is too important not to share. And if this works out between us, we can share ours with the world.”