I don’t think a response is necessary, but I say, “Okay,” anyway because I always try harder with her than I do with anyone else in the communication department.
She plays it through and even though the volume is turned down, the hairs on my forearms stand on end. It’s good. “Reminds me of The Cure,” I tell her when she’s done.
“Nobody sounds like The Cure. The universe would never allow it.” It’s joking and self-deprecating, but she also sounds like she really means it.
“I didn’t say it sounds like The Cure, but that it reminds me of them. Their darker stuff.”
She nods. “It’s probably the darkest melody I’ve ever written. Taber loves it so far, the guitar is broody. He thinks he’s a badass when he plays it, I can tell.” A sheepish smile that’s pride with a little humor mixed in appears on her lips, and I love more and more how layered she is. She never gives herself over to one emotion one hundred percent. She’s a dichotomy, a division, a blend of contradicting (sometimes harmonious and sometimes not) emotions that are always a revelation of exactly who Alice is at any moment in time. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s not guarded, she’s ardently forthcoming. Naked. Exposed. I always feel so flat. Her dimension is awe-inspiring. Tonight, I want to soak it up.
“I like it,” and then because that isn’t enough, I add, “Ireallylike it. What about the lyrics?”
She sighs and the smile fades as she sets the keyboard back on her dresser and returns to the bed. “I’m struggling with those too. It’s a dark song that needs depth, but everything I write just sounds like unrefined rage or cheesy angst. It sounds manufactured; I want something organic. I want delicate, raw despair because that’s what I hear in the keys and guitar. I’m kind of in a good place for the first time in a long time, so those words are elusive right now.”
It sounds like she’s inside my head. It’s not always delicate, but I live in raw despair. And then a thought occurs to me, and I know I shouldn’t, but tonight I’ve let Alice crawl inside me and I want to give something back. “It probably won’t help, but I wrote this poem for English last week…” I pause then because I shouldn’t share this.
She shifts and all of her attention is on me. “I need to hear it.Now.”
I shake my head. “No, I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s stupid. You write song lyrics, real poetry. This was just an assignment.”
She makes aPfftsound to dismiss my dismissal. “There is nothing amateur about the depths of your soul, Toby. Tell me.” When I don’t say anything, she adds, “Please,” and searches for my hand with hers.
When her fingers slot with mine and her thumb doesn’t wrap around the back of my hand but instead curls and slips between our palms, the knuckle and nail stroking my palm whisper soft, I ask, “You sure you want to hear it?”
She leans in until I can feel her lips touch my hair. “More than anything,” she whispers.
The words, the feel and the sound of them, make me shiver. The kind of shiver that begins down deep in the pit of my being and spreads like adrenaline-based lust through my veins. This. Girl. I close my eyes, carve out my black heart, and bare it for her to see, feel, and hear. It’s absolutely terrifying.
“Darkness is passive denial of light.
And aggressive denial of self.
Thoughts rearranged,
Emotions relabeled,
Personality retracted
By a thief
Until all that remains
Is a delicate, reluctant cacophony of shame.
Screaming,
So much blame.
So much blame.
Conscience profound.
Self-preservation drowned.
So much blame.
So much blame.
It all fades into oblivion
