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Thanks a lot to each and every one for all the love and support in the previous chapters. I'm so happy and thankful. ☺️🙏

Here we go,.......

"Phoebe!"

"Hmm" she hums keeping her head on his chest inhaling his odour; He smells redolent. His heartbeats, she wonders, can be a competition to the hundreds of drummers if she is to make a comparison! Or atleast if she "tries" to make a comparison. "Tries" being the key-word.

Well romanticism doesn't go really well with low-key lives, hence proved again; she chuckles at her own comparison skills. She hasn't adapted this 'lack of skill' for herself neither has she chosen to resemble 'her'. It's him. He has chosen to fall for her and make her stand in front of a mirage of hers. It is a maze of accidents, in better words to put together – a 'coincidence'.

"You should go, get the breakfast ready. It's already past noon." Harley muffles, looking away, lighting up another joint.

She knows what she's made him remind of. She has grown an unhealthy habit of not missing on the creases on his face whenever her phone rings. At times, Phoebe can be too observant to keep her otherwise nonchalant impression on. She sighs at his always change-of-topic attitude whenever he faces something out of his self-drawn comfort zone. She knows every twisted turns of his sadistic ways and dark corners of his insecure alleys of pushing things to edges to delay facing them for forever, always shrugging it away. But she knows him better to let him be on himself. She knows he can never have the answers if he's let be alone on himself in such times. He has the terrible combination of ego and cowardliness in him to ever be trusted with.

"The breakfast is already ready when you were out in your drunk slumber, sleepyhead" she jokes feebly trying to make the environment lighter, her finger tips drawing shapes on each of the lines and fabric of the 'butterfly tattoo' on his stout bare chest, spreading it's wings across it, showing him the ray of light. She prefers to believe this way. Butterflies never fly their wings in darkness, do they?

Before Phoebe can sigh a breath of hope her gaze lies on the other two tattoos wounding his left wrist – a rope and an anchor! How contradictory! Well, Phoebe can trade her li'l pretty not-so-eventful life, in fact, for the authenticity of the statement that Harley Wilson is contradiction's favourite devil! Nevertheless, She has her own interpretations regarding those tattoos though. She knows he is still roped by his own rigid toxic habits, too much lost to find his shore. But she is not his anchor. She can sail with him, can be his sailor too perhaps, and maybe even drown with him if things turn too worse but his rope & his anchor is someone who is not her, no matter how much she wishes it were she.

Phoebe Evans was just another girl around the turn with a masculine attitude compared to those lassies that come to her parlor everyday, an average appearance and a mediocre two-shift parlor job is all to say a 'catch'. She had never been much of a dreamer. True, she didn't wear her heart on her sleeves but neither did she shield it in her chest. Whatever it was, it was less tumultuous... for sure.

"What has she signed up for?" Phoebe has found herself asking this several times, "what is she still holding on to?" ....... Her eyes linger on the 'Cross' [tattoo] standing out from the others on the tatted joint of his wrist; a sign of faith and hope. If anything life has taught her it is 'a little love is better than none'.

"You're amazing, Bae." She comes out of her zoned out session feeling wetty kisses on her skin as he pecks her temple softly, slowly... seductively and in the next minute pushing her out of the bed "Now play me a beautiful song" Harley laughs out. She doesn't trip or get baffled. She's well accustomed to these unpredictable insouciance traits of his. Phoebe knows Harley is greedy. When it come to expecting things from his loved ones he is greedy, he is greedy for more attention, more pampering and more of a feeling of secureness.

Phoebe rolls her eyes defiantly. It has never stopped amusing her how he is the hardest person to face his demons... at the same time the easiest one to talk about the same. All she knows about him is because he is so open about things and all she struggles to understand about him is because he is too closed up to read at times.

Phoebe Evans very well knows when Harley Wilson says "play me a song" which one he exactly refers to. She walks over to the stand the third-hand Piano is standing on. Soon her short, un-manicured hands start playing through the keyboard as the music sprawls all over the room like winter turns into spring... as pleasantly... as significantly. The words are not there, but from every single line on his face she sees they [the words] are in his ears... ringing from his past........

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That's all for now. Here's the second chapter.

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Love,

Neer