I want you to be happier
Michelle had been the first person that loved him solely for him. She had been the first person to put effort into getting to know him. He still doesn’t know why. He also doesn’t quite know what had been so captivating about her. He did know that Michelle Jones truly was an enigma, and he loved her for everything she was. He never meant to hurt her.
Of course he had been with people before, but none of those releationships had been serious. He never truly took the time to get to know them, but then again neither did they.
In highschool he had been quite the loaner. There simply wasn’t any time for actual friends when he had to put all of his time into school and into taking care of his mother and his little sister. Although school was not an actual problem for him. He was quite smart, if he could say so himself. All he had to do was endure those awfully boring years and motivate himself to get out of bed every single day.
It had been worth it though as he was now on a full scholarship in his second year in the college he had been dying to get into for years. He finally left the country side and actually had a chance to live without the constant worrying.
For the first time in forever things seemed to go well for him and his little family. As well as they could go, he supposed, with how they always seemed to run a bit short on money and the other usual problems they had.
For the first time in forever school actually challenged him, instead of being just mundane work that he needed to complete to get certain grades. He was actually learing. Sure it was a bit difficult to also work two different jobs whenever he was not occupied with school or his sister.
He was glad though, since the coffeshop and the bar he worked at actually had costumers so he actually earned enough money to pay for their small apartment that was close to his campus and his sisters school while also beimg near the hospital. Back in Tennessee that certainly hadn't been the case.
Things had been going smooth for exatly one year. Then, she came around.
And yeah, she wasn’t really special in the beginning. With the exeption of her occasional smartass comments he didn't even really notice her. At least not until he caught her staring at him during a lecture. She didn't even try to be sneaky so he didn’t pretend not to notice her and stared right back at her. Now that usually got girls to stop staring. He knew he was quite handsome, so it had happened before. But she was not like the others. She held his gaze firmly. Her boldness sparked interest in him.
Michelle was semi popular, he wasn't quite sure why he knew that, so it was kind of rare to find her alone.
After that lecture however, she had been. It seemed almost like she did that on purpose.
But of course, why would she actually wait for him? Why would she let him confront her just like that? How was she not at least a tiny bit ashamed of herself?
The girl was strange, and he didn't know how to feel about her. So, once he saw her in the hallway he approached her to confront her.
What he did not expect was for her to suddenly act all shy and flustered. What he expected was for her to start flirting. What he certainly did not expect was for her to pull out a sketchbook and show him sketches of him.
There was one of him in the libary and one in the cafeteria and one in another lecture and one at the bus stop. Of course, there was the one of him on that day. He recognized the old, worn out shirt that he wore and the infutile attempt at taming his wild hair he did that morning. This one had not been finished.
The whole thing was strange and definitely creepy. She even had the audacity to be casual about the situation. The sketches were good though, and he was quite impressed that now was the first time he noticed as she had apparently not tried to be unsuspicious.
"I like to draw people in crisis", she had told him.
Now that set him off. He was not in a crisis.
"Then why are you closing yourself in? It’s not like people dont try to get to know you, yet you seem to be stuck in that loaner role. I mean, i totally get that, i like being alone, but you just seem kind of.... lonely?" She sounded almost bored, but he swore he could hear some sympathie in her voice.
The first part was true. He did close himself in. That was because he was not particulary fond of other people. Simple as that. And most people that tried to get to know him seem to get stuck on trying to get in his pants anyways. He did not have time for that.
She was right, he did value being alone. But that did not mean he was lonely.
It also did not mean that he would appreciate her sitting next to him in all the classes they shared. It also did not mean that he wanted her to sit with him in the cafeteria, or for her to join him in the libary.
And just because he was starting to enjoy her company it did not mean that he was growing attached. He simply enjoyed talking to her and grew a liking to her morbid sense of humor and her obvious intelligence.
The air of confidence that she carried herself with was not unlike his own. One that could easily intimidate. The difference was that she made some sort of an effort in invited people into her life. For him what was needed to open up was a stubborn, sarcastic, confident and artistic young woman that was strangely determined and seemingly on a mission of figuring him out. Though he did think that she had already done just that.
He never admitted that he needed her in order to feel like himself again. Thankfully Michelle made it clear that he didn't need to.
Michelle made it sucessfully through every sigle layer of arrogance and stanoffisheness, through his obnoxious parts down to his vulnarable core. He told her about his dad leaving, and about his mom becoming more and more distant. She didn’t do much, but she listened. And she didn’t judge him when he broke down crying in the hospital after his mother just couldn’t remember him anymore. What she did was enough.
It took a while for him to tell her about his sister though, and how he practicially raised her on his own.
After she knew about Abbie, there was no more reason for him to keep her from coming over to his place and meet her.
He didn't need to tell her about what big of a deal that was, he never took friends over to his place and he certainly never introduced them to his little sister. That might have been partly due to the fact that previous friends were simply the few who succeeded in getting into his pants. They never stuck around for that long.
As it turned out they got along just fine. Abbie showed her her newest art project, a drawing of a girl named Gina, and Michelle gave her advice on how to draw the second eye. Abbie told them that Gina sits in the row in front of her in her art class. The young girl liked to draw things that made her happy.
Through their shared interest in art they formed a bond right away. Truthfully it would have been a big dealbreaker to him would Abbie not have liked Michelle, he trusted her that much.
After that it seemed as if Michelle had decided that he needed more people in his life except for her, his little sister and his derranged, sick mother. That would have annoyed him, had he not known that she was right. If he was being honest she always seemed to know what was best for him and while he used to act annoyed about that, it did always mean a whole lot to him.
He also was curious about her friends. Not her college friends, he knew them and while he now was semi friendly with all of them he had been dying to get to know her two best friends, Ned and Peter. He hadn’t met them yet, since they did not go to the same college.
Michelle was not the type of person that seemed like they would bother with labels such as "best friends". He kind of thought she used the term ironically since whenever she talked about them, which was gradually becoming more and more often, it was mostly of what idiots they were and that they were losers, also nerds.
"Honey, we’re nerds, too", he mused after that.
That then earned him a punch to the arm and a scolding about how "we’re not that kind of nerd, Harley.", she shook her head and looked dramatically down. " We do not meet up to watch the same dumb movies a thousand times over until we know all the dialogs. We don't spend precious money on dozens of lego Star Wars sets and try to recreate the movies with said legos and then force our only other friend in the whole wide world to watch that pile of absulute garbadge." There she dramatically clasped one if his hands in hers and stared him straight in the eyes. "We are not like them, Harley."
That resulted in them spending the following weekend hurled up on Michelle's couch, and watching all the Star Wars movies together. She complained a lot but knew there was no getting out of this. Truthfully, Harley was not an extrem fan like Michelle's best friends were but he did appreciate the franchise enouth to get fake offended at his friends complete ignorance, as he called it. She would keep on pointing out how Ned and Peter recreated certain scenes and how she had wanted to die.
"Don’t get me wrong Harls, i’m a good friend, you know that," Here he looked at her with raised eyebrows in false skeptesism which earned him yet another punch to the arm. "I support all of my friends in whatever dumb bullshit that they just so happen to be passionate about, like potato guns," "Hey!" "But a girl can only take so much of idiotism", here she sighed. Harley however saw the fondeness in her eyes. She loved them, he could tell that much, even though she was hard to read even to him. And when she fell asleep while draping herself all over his side, he had time to worry.
He worried about them not liking him. He usually didn’t care about what others thought of him. But they were Michelle's best friends. She had actually called them that. That made them special. He had to make a good first impression on them and could not let his obnoxiousness ruin their first meeting. He could not loose Michelle.
He was actually so worried he didn’t notice how he stared to distractedly stroke her hair, nor did he notice how that motion immediately calmed him down. He did however notice her nuzzeling her face into his side, and that made him smile.
He had her, and she stuck around for this long completely unasked. He stopped questioning that. She was his friend. He would make sure not to drive her away.
He would not mess this up.