Haunting Harlow (1*+)

Fancy a game?

“I can’t believe you’re all leaving already,” Harlow said, setting her coffee mug down on the kitchen table. The week had flown by and Harlow wasn’t sure she was ready to let her friends go. 

“I know! It’s gone so damn fast. We need to do it again.” 

“Jase is right,” Freya agreed. “We definitely need to do it again. Let me know when and I’ll book time off work.” 

“I think I might stay for a while longer. Keep Harlow company, if that’s okay, of course?” Chantelle asked, sitting into an empty seat at the table.

Blushing, Harlow reached for her coffee to try and hide her face. 

“Oh, my days you two! You’ve been at it again, haven’t you?” Rebekah exclaimed in shock. “Seriously ladies. Why don’t you just date?” 

Chantelle spluttered and looked across the table at Harlow for help. Neither of them was cut out for commitment, not that they had discussed it before. It just became a mutual understanding and they’ve been perfectly happy with it over the years. 

“Chantelle, you can stay as long as you like. You all can. As for dating, you know neither of us does that. Fun is fun. Dating gets serious and then the feels kick in and neither of us is any good at the whole commitment and feels thing. Friends with benefits are perfectly fine.” Harlow said it in such a matter of fact way that her friends, all except Chantelle, were staring at her like she had just told them the sky was green. 

“What?” she asked, puzzled by their expressions. 

“Erica Harlow! You little bloody minx. In all these years you’ve never admitted to sleeping with Chantelle. Neither of you has. I can’t believe you’ve finally fessed up,” Jase, told her, acting like a father who had just discovered which child had been in the cookie jar. 

Freya and Rebekah smirked as they nodded their heads in agreement, causing Harlow to roll her eyes. It was true, they had never admitted it but then, they had never been asked. 

“Maybe we’ve never admitted to sleeping together because we don’t actually do much sleeping?” Chantelle replied, curtly, then laughed as Jase dropped his jaw and stared at them both with a mixture of intrigue and shock. 

“Pick your jaw up, Jase. Your mouth looks like a bloody tube tunnel,” Harlow said, poking him under the chin. 

“So how does this friends with benefits thing work then? I’m your friend and Chantelle's too. Do I get a friends with benefit pass to watch?” Jase asked, then ducked as Chantelle picked up a cloth napkin and threw it at him. 

“You can watch your way up those stairs and grab the bags. i***t. The cab will be here soon,” Freya commanded in her best sergeant major voice.

Harlow, despite laughing at Jase as he scored his chair back and trudged out of the kitchen looking like a scolded child being sent to bed, felt her heart beginning to break at having to say goodbye so soon. It had been a wonderful week that none of them had wanted to end. They had walked for miles, talked until the early hours of the morning, made out, got drunk almost every night, and finally spent the morning in the village, shopping for souvenirs and having a delicious pub lunch. It had been the best way to end a perfect week. 

“Are you sure you don’t mind me staying on a day or two longer?” Chantelle asked her, pulling her from her thoughts. 

“Not at all. I’d have all of you here forever if I could, ” Harlow replied.

“Oh, don’t start me off. You know I'm like a bloody tap,” Rebekah sniffled. 

“s**t, man. Are you sure you want to stay here forever, Harlow? I mean, I know Manchester isn't exactly the bee’s knees but. Who am I kidding? Of course, you want to stay here. It’s beautiful. f**k sake. Every holiday. Do you hear? Every holiday we do this. All of us. Always,” Freya told her. 

Freya was usually the unemotional one but as she spoke, Harlow saw the glisten of tears in her eyes. It had been hard to leave them when she went to London after university but it seemed harder now they were older and had commitments. 

Harlow stood, swallowing the lump rising in her throat, and beckoned her friends for a hug as Jase returned. “Every holiday. Forever.” 

.

.

.

.

.

“It’s insanely quiet without those three,” Chantelle said, dumping the wine bottle on the living room coffee table, after pouring herself another glass.

It had been a few hours since Jase, Freya and Rebekah had left for the station. Harlow had gotten used to the random giggling over nothing and the teasing of each other and without it, the house really did feel quiet. 

“Movie?” Harlow asked. She rarely watched television and wasn’t really in the mood but she needed something to occupy her. 

She kept finding herself gazing at My Adonis, which had somehow ended up back on the fireplace. Not that she minded gazing at Caleb's extremely fine form. She could and did, look at him quite often and for a long time but the more she did, the more she found herself fantasizing about him. 

“No, I’m not really feeling it tonight. Think I’m just going to jump in the tub and read or something. Maybe even grab an early night.” 

“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, actually. The early night, I mean,” Harlow agreed.

She watched as her friend emptied the remains of the wine in her glass, then left the room to go upstairs, leaving Harlow alone. The silence was deafening and she found herself absentmindedly gazing at My Adonis, again, for what was possibly the one-hundredth time in the last few hours. Caleb often plagued her mind, and Harlow, of late, had found herself dreaming of him. It was strange, dreaming so regularly, and usually erotically, about someone she had never met and each time, the dreams had become more intense, leaving her waking mid orgasm and wanting more. 

“You do know you don’t help with my high s*x drive, don’t you?” She asked My Adonis, with a smile. 

Shaking her head with a sigh, knowing that Caleb had no idea how much she wanted him to f**k her, she looked around the room for something to occupy her. Spotting the handcrafted chess set she had bought earlier that day while shopping in the village, she wondered where to display it. Deciding to set it up on the largest of the nesting tables at the side of the sofa, she quickly got to work. A few minutes later, Harlow looked at the chessboard and smiled. Each piece was carved to represent a medieval style and varnished to a high standard, creating a smooth, shiny finish that caught the light, perfectly. It had caught Harlow's attention the moment she had walked into the gift shop and she had instantly decided that she was buying it. Not that she played chess but that didn’t matter to Harlow. 

Pleased with her new addition, she took one final glance at My Adonis, who was watching her from the fireplace, blew him a kiss then made her way to bed.