Harry was ineffably charming. He was excitable and smiley and smirky and curious. He loved art. And he seemed to love Jo's museum.

At the ticket booth, when Jo pulled out her wallet, he had looked at her like she suggested he eat beetles for breakfast. "Are you joking?" He'd cocked his neck back and bulged his eyes. "I asked you out!"

Jo didn't remind him that he was a student who taught swim lessons in the summer to have his own place and she was much older than him and had an established life and bloody career. Or that he was her student. Because they weren't focusing on that today, so she just quietly put away her wallet and let him pay. She resolved she'd cover some petrol or food though. She assumed he would feed her.

Her mind wandered and she could almost taste the scone she had favored in her university days. That was on the list of things she wanted to happen on this already altogether perfect day.

Harry grabbed her hand back shamelessly, walked her to a stand and laid out the map. Jo almost told him they didn't need it, until she realized that she hadn't been here since the time she had strapped Ethan to her body before he could walk and come to say goodbye when they were moving to Manchester. Things may have changed in over 20 years. 20 years, her favorite place and she hadn't been here in two decades. She was astounded.

"Jo, where do you want to start?" He looked to his left and realized she wasn't with him, and pulled her over by the hand from where she stood stupefied. When she didn't respond still, he looked at her, "Alright?"

"I haven't been here since Ethan was a baby!" She stated. "How have I not been here in over 20 years?" Jo's eyes felt a bit misty and she was embarrassed by this reaction too.

Harry just half smiled at her and pulled her closer to him and ran his thumb over her knuckles for a minute. "Do you want a minute to check it out yourself? See what's changed?" He kept caressing her  hand carefully and smiling kindly. 

Did she want to be alone, no, but Jo did need to see if her favorite pieces were there. She squeezed his hand, the one he seemed unlikely to relinquish if she went by the grip. "Can we go to the third floor galleries? I want to see if something is still here, and then, let's look at the constellations and your Lichtenstein."

"That is a plan, but you left out something." He waited for her to fill in his meaning, but it was totally lost on her.

"What else? I think that's a pretty good day at the museum." She shrugged.

"What about your sweeties? I bet you ate..." he tapped his chin, "Scones, that's what I used to send with Ethan from the bakery right?" Harry's smile was a decoded enigma machine, like he knew all her secrets. It felt like he just might, and rather than feeling naked, Jo felt known. Maybe she was bare to him too, but that was now a thing of joy.

"How do you remember these things?" She started to pull away to walk to the staircase, and he kept her hand close and came to her side. The positioning, side by side, seemed very important to him. They walked up the stairs.

"I remember almost everybody's orders from the bakery, think it's my calling or somethin—"

"No, your calling is definitely painting." She meant the words, but would have lied to see that shy, pleased smile.

"I think because I worked there so long, and people are consistent, especially when someone else is going for them, stick to their favorite."  He tilted his head a little toward her. "You got nothing, or a scone, usually cranberry orange."

"That is some memory you've got." Jo complimented.

He opened the door, and leaned into her face as she went passed him to enter the gallery. His lips caught the corner of her mouth and landed on her cheek firmly. At her ear he murmured, "Imagine what else I could put it to use for."

Jo bit her lip and felt her face flame, like the docent near them could tell her skin was pulsing like strobe lights. She kept walking and only stutter stepped a little when his hand coasted across her lower back while she made her way passed the smiling suited older man who nodded. She must not look ridiculous, turned on and cavorting with a man half her age.

Jo looked back at him. Her man, Harry was grinning and beautiful and cheeky proud. "You're a shit."

"Yeah!" He came up behind her and did that awkward walk where he was hugging her from behind and their legs didn't really have room for a reasonable stride. The presence of his thighs against hers though made her happy for the dress and tights she had opted for. The tights were thin and she could feel his quads in the bends of her knee when he bent down to kiss her cheek. "What are we up here to see?"

She looked around and found the surrealist piece she had loved so in her college years. "C'mon." She disconnected from him and caught his hand and pulled him to the frame in question. 

"You know this, yes?" She pointed at it. It was a famous piece, the genesis of amovement, "The Exquisite Corpse" made by a bunch of artists in fin de siecle Paris looking for something new. They had passed it around and each drawn an instrument, and created a vaguely corporeal form out of the inanimate objects.

Harry scratched his head and fake smiled at her and she cast her head back at his response. What was that? Jo cocked her head at him in question.

He sighed, "I know it. Hate to say I hate it, and like, a lot of surrealism actually." He cupped the back to his head and Jo was a little surprised, but even more that he was nervous to tell her so.

"You afraid to tell me that?" She smiled at his bashful face. "You're allowed an opinion, express them freely enough in class and your coursework."

"Know, just, well, I guess brought you here and you excitedly drag me upstairs to show me a piece you love and I don't have a connection to it..." he trailed off.

"Doesn't mean you don't have a connection to me, Harry. We don't have to like all the same things." She squeezed the hand she had taken.

He shrugged. "Well, I like having things in common. You give me this special smile when we share something. Changes my whole day." His grin spread and she had that I common with him. The way his expression could affect her. "But I wanna year why, Teach. Maybe if you tell me why you like it?"

Jo looked at the painting. Why did she like it? "Um, I don't think I really loved it until I was making decisions about uni." She raised a hand to follow the line of the body, a stringed violin. "I was deciding what to do, and mum was expressing her strong opinions and I felt like I was a person made up of parts, but that didn't belong, like maybe, some was me, like the violin, what I wanted to do, other parts were what my mom wanted and forced on me. Then there was the future."

She looked at Harry then, "When I might get to decide. That was beautiful. And exquisite, the idea of writing my own definition. I dunno, it just seemed like if this could be art, a thing made up of all these jumbled parts, maybe I could be too." Harry took her hand and squeezed, "And I loved it even more when I got pregnant and ruined my mother's life." She smiled then, like a naughty teenager, which she wasn't, hadn't been.

"Jo, I don't connect to it like that, but the reasons you do." He took both her hands. "Best critique I've ever heard."

And Jo was made up of beautiful parts, she could see in his eyes. She looked back at the corpse and thought about what piece she was adding to herself now. Maybe just a focus on the violin. On her body, it felt like her own again, when she shared it with Harry.

Maybe now, if she were to draw herself, she would be made of a harp. And there would be instrumentse by her side, smaller versions of herself, but different in their own right. And right now, she imagined Harry as a cello, behind her stringed strength to give low down backing. Jo loved it, her new imagined body.

They wandered around the galleries and talked about the Rothko's. Pieces Harry loved and was disappointed Jo didn't.

"You don't like Rothko?" His offended face was so extreme she thought he might be exaggerating it. Then his face sorta tumbled down, like Jack and his paramour off a hill, and she realized he was upset by this in some way.

"I really, really don't, Harry." She shrugged. "It just doesn't do anything for me."

"But the colors! When they bleed together right! Just a touch at the ends of the blocks. You, you love colors, you love colors Jo."

"I do! I'm just not so sure about a painting of big blocks of colors."

"But it's not the blocks it's, it's where the colors bleed together. The magic is there, like at the edges. I don't, I don't know why I guess." He was excitedly making his case and she was thrumming to his enthusiasm at least, "I don't know, the edges they are like, holy. Like those places there, like the edges, where things meet and become a new thing, they're holy. That two things that are different, colors, people, lives, can come together and mingle and make something new."

He blushed at the end, like he'd been talking nonsense, but Jo was overcome. If he could like her corpse, she could love his edges. That was the best art critique she had ever heard.

She kissed him. And no one around them said anything, even though it was an extreme amount of affection for two Englishmen, during the day and without alcohol no less. When she pulled away, Jo's eye caught on the nearby lady docent, and instead of censure she got a conspiratorial smile.

Did she just grow an inch?

After a bit more roaming, Harry insisted they make it down to the cafe, and that he ordered.

"Here, Miss Joanne, a cranberry orange scone, with all the fixings, and a proper pastry, a pain au chocolat." He dimpled at her and she obeyed a long buried instinct and stuck a finger in it.

That made the dimple stay and he surprised her again when he sat next to her rather than across-crowding her space.

Jo looked at him and hitched an eyebrow then looked at the other seat.

"It's easier to share like this!" He assured her and started cutting up the food.

"Are you always this joyous, like a big kid?" She asked and his face fell. Jo'd hit a wrong note.

Harry looked at then. "I'm just enjoying being with you. Like, the real you, without a million expectations and obligations on you." He took her hand. "I'm not a kid, Jo."

She appreciated the directness, which he always treated her to, but he was still so young. But she had been enjoying being with him so very much, and she didn't want to ruin it. She flipped her hand over under his then and laid her head on his shoulder, sliding her nose up to the crease of his neck.

"I know you are a man. You smell good." She pushed her lips to where his pulse had sped up, "Now feed me."

Harry ducked his chin and kissed her nose, then gave her a chaste lock of lips before nodding and getting back to halving their treat. Just as he opened the clotted cream and was about to put it on her scone she stopped him.

"I don't like it like that." Jo shook her head.

He scrunched his nose up, "How do you eat it then? plain? Eww!"

"Scones are delicious, Baker Man!" She told him.

"When was the last time you had it properly?" He started to fix half up the wrong-right way, she assumed for her.

"Um, I don't really remember." She vaguely recalled her mother not letting her have cream and jam on her scones during tea anymore when she was 11 or 12?

"Will you try it like this, for me?" Ugh, his face was too much. So she opened her mouth to the proffered bite and closed her eyes over the delicious mix of flavors. Her eyes popped open while his fingers were still in her mouth and Harry looked like he'd made the scone too, not just served it.

God, he was gorgeous, smug and broad. She sucked his finger just a little on the way out. Bit down, because even if he was right and bigger than her, she still knew how to manage him a little too.

Harry's jaw went a little slack and he sat there for a minute dumbly while she put some cream and jam on the other half and offered it to him.

She laughed out loud when he blinked at her like a calf, "Are you going to eat this?" Jo asked, pointing at his serving.

"I'm," he looked at his plate, "I'm not really hungry for sweets anymore." He looked at her with steam coming out of his ears and collar.

Jo laughed again, and nodded at him to eat.

He did, but his free arm snaked around her waist and kept her pressed to him. She could feel the ball of his ankle against her lower calf and his shoulder was turned to where hers fit into his arm pit. They finished their snack, but didn't feed each other anymore, and Jo laughed over her breath again when he told her he needed a minute before he stood up. She excused herself to the powder room then. Gave them both a moment.

In the mirror there, she was more ingenue than temptress, but she felt like both.

They spent another hour at the museum, this time in the constellations section, and Harry talked the whole time about how curation was such an amazing field. Jo couldn't see him as a curator, he was a creator, but she was always in touch with his enthusiasm for all things creative. And they were always in touch, though their point of contact stayed at the pinkies they linked and pulled each other to and fro with. It was pulling her tide to and fro as well. And the caress of his pinky against her palm caused a ripple effect, tingling waves, to resonate in her ears, her toes, and her lower stomach.

Jo kept her eyes on the art around her, and only glanced at the piece beside her.

She once was picked up, well attempted, on some app, by a guy who asked her to see her signature. When she said 'huh?' back, he remarked that she was a masterpiece and he would like to see her signature. He didn't get to, but it was funny, and he clearly tailored his line to her bio. She still remembered it.

Jo was going to have to use that one on Harry, she thought as they crossed the parking lot back to his Volkswagen. She'd search him top to bottom, he must have a scrawled hand somewhere, probably from God.

When they got to the van, Harry opened her door, then closed it before she could get in. "Sorry, I'm losing my mind, I need to kiss you." He quirked his head in question and Jo bit her lip in response.

Harry used the hand on the door to guide her back to the faded blue paint and latched his mouth onto her own. His tongue slipped in and Jo sucked the tip deeper into her mouth, because she wanted to do more than taste his tongue right here on the Liverpool waterfront, but knew they couldn't. He had to feel as squirmy as her though, she decided.

"Fuck, Jo!" He laid his forehead against hers, "That was supposed to get me through dinner. It made it worse." That last part he said to himself, but she nodded her head in agreement and was even charmed that the slick of oil on his nose was on hers where they rubbed.

Harry opened his eyes then, and they both giggled because they were so close they went cross eyed to see each other. Jo deliberately pulled a crazy face until he snorted on her. She dramatically wiped away the spatter of spit he'd got her with and it was all he could do to stop bending double to laugh long enough to get her in her seat.

The giggle break got them through dinner, where they held hands, and Harry talked about his grandpa and sister, and how they both were amazing with numbers and he was supposed to go with Gemma into the family business. "The only thing I ever liked about numbers though was their shapes. Liked the squiggly lines."

"Did you fail maths?" Jo took a sip of her red wine.

"Nah, I was good at it. Just not interested at all. I can't fake it, bad at lying. I usually don't even bother trying." He gripped.

"Well, not being good at lying is a wonderful thing, if you ask me." Jo sat down her glass, and thought about how they both may spend a lot of time lying if this worked.

"Do you want to tell him? Ethan, I mean. About you and me?" Harry caressed her knuckles. She couldn't exactly read his expression, did he want to tell Ethan, or not?

She shook her head hard and he sighed, hunched in on himself. "Hey, remember, today is to see if we even want there to be a you and me. No seriousness or outside world yet. And I'm really enjoying this, you, so..." she looked down at the tables edge. "Can we just stay in our suspended reality a little longer?"

He didn't look happy or sure, but he nodded. Then he just took a minute to look at her, the feeling of his eyes on her hair line and frown lines and nose, and lips, but nothing like the admiration she felt when he looked at her eyes. "I'm enjoying myself too," he wanted to say more, she could tell. He kept it to himself and she let him.

Moments later, to get them both back on an upbeat, Jo was feeding Harry, and he was being so silly about her beets.

"Those are so good!" He smiled, trying to push the levity back into the veins of their evening. "Never had that."

"They're alright, I like 'em in salad better. I'll make that sometime."

"Tomorrow? Will you make it for me tomorrow?" Eagerness painted his face pink in hue.

Jo shrugged, she'd only committed to today.

But neither of them were ready for today to be over, so she suggested not going home yet. "Maybe we can find a pub, see what they have on the jukebox, sure it won't be as on point at your Jenny song..." she cast out and he bit her line and laughed.

"Yeah, let's go somewhere darker where I can feel you up." He wiggled his eyebrows.

"What makes you think I'll let you do that, now?" She blushed at his knowing grin.

Jo, well, they both, knew she was gonna let him feel her up.

It was just down the road, the pub they chose, maybe because they were both eager to get their feel, and a very quick stop at the bar, a few sips and a table adjacent to the tiny dance floor were their only impediments.

Nobody else was as interested in the music, or in moving to it in the classic semi dark room full of wood and homey smells. Maybe nobody else was with somebody they found so interesting.

Jo looked over Harry and tapped the side of her wine glass with the ring she wore on her pinky. His Adam's apple bobbed while he drank his beer. His neck stretched around his swallow and the lager felt heavy in her stomach. He had a mole, she'd not noticed it before. She'd just reached out to touch it when he brought the glass down onto her hand. It slipped and he lost his grip, it fell to the carpeted floor with a thud and slosh and Harry picked it up. They shared a glance and decided drinks were done.

On the dance floor, he surrounded her. Jo knew he was bigger than her, but she was never so aware of it as that night at the pub. Not even when he moved inside of her. The pulse of the music was slow and low like the thrum of her skin.  Not her heartbeat, that was fluttering at adiuble time.

His bad posture meant his shoulders were bunched in. Jo's own clavicle was bookended on both sides, She was hemmed in like a child in a playpen, safe and secure with his arms around her waist. The trails of his fingertips over her coccyx were like fire, a counterpoint to the lazy rock Harry did to the beat. She knew they were in public. Jo was very aware, but her mouth turned into the slightly damp musk at his neck and she inhaled him like lungful of miracle fresh air in the burning building they made before opening her teeth against him.

His trails at her back turned into gripping then, and his hands slid down over the globes of her arse. The suction she  moved onto is strong and she heard Harry moan her name before she felt a hand on the back of her thigh and realized her own fingers were at his belt.

Jo's lost her head. She was ready to have him on the dance floor, but his cologne lingered in her nostrils, almost worn off, but it and the beer and the gum he's put in his mouth were her favorite smell, and under that, just a hint of paint thinner and acrylic, that let her know he was painting recently. It wasn't a smell she knew intimately, but it was home.

She knew she should run away, she had tried, but she was so sick of overthinking it. She had made the sensible choice, Colin was sensible, but he never made her feel a fraction of this. This open hearted hope and burning desire that had her cuddling in museums and kissing in car parks, and nearly fucking on a dance floor. How Jo could feel small and delicate in his arms and wanton and willful at the same time, as strong and capable as she was, as he told her she was every time he looked at her. That her strength, to do the job, of making and raising kids and feeding them and all the other forms of creation that were hers make her the object the Spanish scoured the globe for. She is worth more than gold and he has found her.

They needed to go, because Harry had her by the upper inner of her thigh, he was about to guide her leg over his hip, and he had pulled away to stop the mark she was making from turning permanent. Jo knows, she knows, that if he gets his tongue in her mouth and his swollen dick closer to her center, between her legs, that they will end up in the toilet, or against the dark corner wall, or on the snooker table she can see out of the corner of her eye.

"Can I drive your car?" She asked him abruptly when he was an inch from home.

"What?" His voice sounded slurred, lost the 't' in the word like the bottom had dropped out of her tummy.  He's not drunk, Jo knew he wasn't because he only had one pint here, and two over dinner and she'd only had two glasses of wine. They were both on one though.

"Let's go, I wanna drive your van." And in a stroke of bravado Jo loved and marveled at, she reached into his pocket and pulled out his key ring.

Her finger may have coasted over the tip of his semi too, but when getting in the water, it's best to dive into the deep end.

His body was rigid, and Jo had to take his hand to lead him out. Harry came like a sweet horse on a gentle lead and didn't remember he was a stallion until they were passing the alley by the restaurant they had left not so long ago, at that, he pushed her against the brick wall and turned her in the inches of space he left between them.

"I need to be inside you right now, so hard for you," he swore and started for her hem again. "I
can't wait." 

Jo entertained the notion for just a second too long before she felt the rough wall against her back. That was going to break skin, or R.I.P. her sweater.

"You're gonna have to." She broke the kiss to say.

Harry pouted and it was cute, but petulant enough that Jo was less sorry to put him off.

In another move only her current incarnation would pull, she reached forward and hooked her finger through his belt loop and pulled him to the car. Harry had a hip first walk when he was feeling confident, it was emphasized right in that moment. But the confidence was hers.

In the car, Harry was vibrating and Jo was happy she chose to drive. It gave her a focus- without that, she's not sure she could keep her hands off him, just like he was feeling. She could at least grip the steering wheel. Harry had his hands in his hair. Their bodies had moved in time, but so had their blood, and his was shaking along his veins.

She could still feel it. Jo was not gonna keep herself from him. If she is el dorado, his golden city, he is atlantis, the lost life she gave up for her children, love and passion and art. But it had to keep until they got home. She'd send him round the back while she sent Audrey home, and she'll let him stay overnight. She wanted to cook him breakfast.

Jo was too grown for a backseat fuck. She knew this. That was college or uni days. But when she looked to the side and Harry had gone from shoving both hands into his hair to get ahold of himself to his pants, at first she thought he was wrenching himself to make it go down, but when she saw him stroke over himself under the tight denim, she wants to pull over.

When he looked at her, lids heavy like their desire was 10 pound weights, Jo was scanning the horizon.
Her eyes snap back to his when he moans and she hears his grumbled, "I'm so hard." Though it's beneath his breath. And that ends it. She wanted to be beneath his breath.

She took the next exit. Was thankful the motorway was empty at this time. She neglected to even look at anything less interesting than Harry touching himself in the seat next to her.

It's a backroad.

Turns out, she's not too old for the backseat. Especially when the backseat has a bed. His van is a cave of wonders.

Or the warmth of the engine when he presses her chest down to the hood. The inside was more comfortable, and she's not sure how they wound up out here. But she heard him slur, "please, s'a fantasy of mine." And she'd opened the door. She thought she had limits, boundaries, but not being able to say no to him teaches her better. She has no limits and she isn't to grown to be reckless.

She's just grown enough.

Author's Note: Hey guys- there is an extra or two around this chapter.

It's smutty, and I don't think the chapter needs it, but do you??? Hit that star button and let me know if you want it!!! I see Harry, again, in two weeks!! Ahhh!!