AN: Short chapter, sorry. Hope you all enjoy!
It's raining outside. Huge, fat drops of water keep hitting the window, trickling down the glass, and splashing onto the wet ground. It's been raining solidly for the past week. Just when you think it's going to clear up a bit, a roll of thunder will sound off in the distance and the sky darkens yet again. James just brought me in a cup of hot chocolate, stopping briefly to lean down and kiss my now swollen tummy.
He's so happy, striding around the house, singing Christmas carols at the top of his voice. He wants to start auror training next year, but he's so busy with the Order as it is, I don't know where he'll find time. I don't want him to become an auror anyway, it's too dangerous. He won't listen to me though, and he gets restless when he's not doing anything. We decorated the house for Christmas yesterday – our first one together. We did it in the traditional muggle way, and James grumbled the whole time, but I think he secretly enjoyed it. He even tied a piece of tinsel around the cat's collar, and she's been hiding under the settee ever since.
I suppose what I've really been doing is putting off writing this story. Not that I don't want to write it, it's just not easy…back then there were so many different emotions getting in the way of everything. Pride, mainly. And not just James', either. Merlin, to be honest, it was probably mainly me, not that I ever would have admitted that at the time.
I followed James out of the Great Hall on that miserable September morning, shoving my hands into my pockets in an attempt to keep them warm. I saw his messy head disappear out the oak front doors and hurried after him, trying to arrange my thoughts as I went. What was I supposed to say to him, anyway? He clearly had a problem with me, and I was too blind to see what it was.
The rain started to fall as I left the castle, cold, heavy drops, trickling down my neck and making me shiver. I called out to him, but he didn't turn around or make any sign that he had heard me, just continued to walk down the sloping lawns, headed for the lake.
"Wait!" I yelled after him, slipping on the grassy slope. "For Merlin's sake, Potter, I only want to talk to you."
Eventually he slowed and stopped, then turned to face me, his face bare of emotion. "Not now, Lily," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the rising rain.
"What the hell is your problem?" I said, my voice louder than I had anticipated.
"My problem?" he asked, taking a step towards me, his eyebrows raised. "You really want to know what my problem is Lily Evans?"
I nodded, finding I could not speak under his scrutinising glare.
"You, Lily," he replied in a softer tone, looking over my shoulder, back up towards the castle. "You're my problem. All I want to do is forget you, but how do I do that?"
I mouthed wordlessly, attempting to come up with a coherent response, but found I couldn't say anything. The rain came down harder.
With a sigh, James ran a hand through his wet hair, taming it for a second before it sprang up again. "You think you like me, Lily, but trust me, you don't. You think I've changed and now we can be the best of friends, but it's not that easy."
I hesitated before saying, "Well, let's make it easy. There's no reason we can't be friends." I took a step closer to him, my voice now raised over the noise of the downpour.
"I can't be your friend, Lily," he practically yelled back, sinking his hands deep into his robes pockets and hunching his shoulders against the icy rain. "I can't be just your friend, because every time I look at you and realise that I can never have you, I feel like my insides are being ripped up. I'm never going to be okay with 'just friends'."
It takes a lot of guts to admit your feelings like that. I'd never really done it before. My entire life, I've walked around, over, under, even detouring past Canada, when it came to my feelings. Even James had never been that straightforward with me before. You see, the thing is, I think at some point in our life, we pick out a few people who we want to be close with. Just a couple of mates, and everyone else becomes a part of the scenery. So I'd picked my friends and kept my distance from the rest. And I didn't pick James. I don't know, in all honesty, I think at the end of the day, all we want is to be close to somebody, it doesn't really matter who, so this thing that we do, where we keep our distance and pretend not to care is just a load of bull anyway.
I remember wiping the water out of my eyes and pushing back my sopping wet fringe. A realisation seemed to strike me at the moment, as James searched my eyes frantically with his own, his mouth parted ever so slightly. I realised that if it came down to an ultimatum: all or nothing, I wanted all.
"I can't not have you in my life," I muttered so quietly I doubted he'd even hear me. But he heard alright. The corner of his mouth twitched as he wiped rain off of his glasses.
"If you'd told me seven years ago that to get you, all I had to do was stop chasing, it would have saved us both a lot of embarrassment."
"I didn't want you back then."
"So what's changed?"
I shook my head, not able to answer. What had changed? He was no longer seeking me out, but there had to be more to it than that. And then I realised: I hadn't picked James, but he'd chosen me. He stayed close, and no matter how much I hurt him, he was still there at the end of the day, and the ones that are still there, the ones that stay by your side through thick and thin…they're the ones worth keeping. And okay, when it came to James, sometimes close had been too close, but sometimes, that invasion of space was exactly what I needed.
"Why, Lily?" he asked, his voice nothing more than a deep rumble. Taking a step closer, he lifted my chin with a finger and pushed my wet hair off of my face.
"I don't know why," I replied. "It just happened."
James nodded solemnly, moving his hand from my chin to cup my cheek. "Is it real?"
If I'm to be truthful, I did consider the question. My heart and my head were saying two very different things. My head was explaining that I had no reason to love James, but my heart was stubbornly professing that it did, anyway. Maybe I didn't have to understand why I loved him, just the fact that I did was enough. In reply, I placed a hand on the back of his dripping neck, and drew him towards me as I leaned closer, tilting my head to the side and pressing my lips against his.
I still remember the feeling of his soft skin pressing ever so gently against mine, opening my mouth to allow his entrance, running my fingers up into his hair as he pulled me up against him. But more than anything I remember the small explosion in my chest as I realised that I never wanted to leave his side, that this was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
Maybe it's not the most romantic kiss of all time, with water dripping down our faces, our soaking robes clinging to a our goose bump decorated skin, ankle deep in mud, but I couldn't have hoped for better. Because it was with James after all, and even now, two and a bit years later, I still can't get enough of him. Even with all his funny little ways. I can hear him singing in the kitchen. He's making a trifle for Christmas, and has decided to deviate from the traditional sponge cake and raspberry jelly, and at the moment is pouring thick custard on top of ginger cake soaked in pineapple jelly. I just don't have the heart to tell him that people tend to stick with traditions for a reason.
But who am I to judge? Change is good, right?
Thanks for reading! Please leave a review!! I'll try and get another chapter up by the weekend. xx
