Chapter Seven
When I return home I settle into my couch with my acoustic guitar, determined to knock out the beginnings of my next album. I have to show Jeremy, Owen, Matthew, and everyone else that I have it in me to be a real musician, not a one-hit wonder fueled by a high-octane heartbreak. I play around with the three songs I’ve written, but they don’t grab me, so I move onto something new, grateful that Ethan is with his dad tonight so I can focus on music and then dinner.
Two hours later I have cobbled together a smidgen of a little melody that could turn into a full-blown song with a bit more coaxing. Lyrics will come in time, I tell myself. At least, I hope they will because my heart is starting to beat faster, and I’m not sure if it’s fear or excitement. Maybe it’s both, because I’m scared as hell about meeting my deadline, and I’m more excited than I should be about dinner.
I put my guitar away in the closet and take a quick shower. Twenty minutes later, I’m staring at my bed, littered with outfits I have tried on and rejected. This is just a dinner with a reporter. It’s not a big deal, and it’s definitely not a date with an insanely hot man. Whichever outfit I choose next will be the winning one. I reach for my favorite jeans, my black leather boots, and a vintage sky-blue sweater, with the V-neck made out of a secondhand men’s tie. It’s very retro and very hip and with just a quick swish of powder, blush, and mascara I’m ready to go. I grab my coat and shoulder bag, head downstairs, and take a cab to the West Village.
When I arrive, I pay the cabbie and head into the little bistro, painted emerald green and tucked into the corner of a brick building on West Fourth Street and West Twelfth. Matthew and I agreed to meet at eight o’clock and I am only ten minutes late, so it feels like on time.
“The other party is already here,” says the host, who sports a totally shaved head and is clad in a black button-down shirt and jeans.
Damn. I arrive nearly on time and I’m still the last one to the table. Then again, Matthew’s probably the type to always be on time, to hold doors, to rise when a woman sits down at a table. The host leads me to Matthew, who closes the book he’s reading and stands to give me a nearly there kiss on the cheek. My eyelids flutter closed for the briefest of moments at the feel of his soft lips so near to me. The notion crosses my mind that I can turn my head and learn exactly how soft those lips are. Discover how he kisses, if he’s the type who devours you, or if he starts out slowly and teases with kisses that leave you wanting.
But I restrain myself, instead enjoying the flip my belly executes at his touch. I’ll take what I can get, and even that sensation feels good to me. It’s been so damn long.
“Do you want me to take your coat?” he offers.
“Sure,” I say and shrug out of my coat, letting the sleeves fall to his waiting arms. He folds it once, then hands the coat to the host. Matthew waits for me to sit down, then returns to his chair.
Manners rule. I like them.
“Jane Black is late,” I start. “She rushes to the table and issues a standard-order apology, muttering something or other about how hard it is to find a cab in this town. I push aside my copy of James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential and insist it’s no big deal. I love being delayed by people who have no respect for someone else’s time.”
A nascent smirk forms on his face.
“I just figured that’s how the story would start,” I say playfully. “And then lead into the typical, ‘she orders the veal parmigiana and then asks how many calories are in it’ or something.”
“Wait,” he says. “So you’re saying I’d write a typical story?”
I laugh. “Funny, how that’s the one part you key in on.”
“And are you saying yes, that there is a story?”
I laugh again. “Nice try. But we’re not there yet.”
“One, you don’t have to apologize as I’m rather caught up with Ellroy’s book at moment. I’m fascinated with tales of Los Angeles. And two, I can’t stand those celebrity feature stories that all start the same—so-and-so sat down and wore a white T-shirt and ordered the Perrier. They’re all the same rehashed banality, aren’t they?”
“Absolutely.”
“So thank you for fitting me into your busy schedule and with dinner no less. I’ve never been here before, but I hear it’s great.”
“Me, too. Never been here that is,” I say, then add, “And truthfully, that may be because some of these West Village places are so hard to find.”
“I have to confess,” he says, raising an eyebrow as he reaches into a pocket to take out his smartphone. “I actually had to use the GPS on my phone. The last time I came to the Village—I live on the Upper West Side—I was all turned around trying to figure out how to get to West Twelfth or West Thirteenth or Little West Twelfth.”
“Right? Would someone please explain how West Fourth and West Twelfth can intersect here?”
“I’m not entirely sure it’s possible,” he answers as if I asked a serious question, and I find it completely endearing that he’s playing along so ably. “I suspect it’s a time warp or a black hole of geography or mapmaking.”
“And then there’s those crazy streets like Gansevoort and Horatio. Who even knows where they go?”
“As if anyone can find those bloody streets,” he says, closing out the GPS on his phone with gusto. If I were rating our opening remarks, I’d give us an A for chemistry.
Except this isn’t a date, and he’s not a suitor. He’s a reporter, and I’m getting carried away. “Oh, God, you’re going to report this, aren’t you? Jane Black doesn’t even know where Horatio Street is,” I say in mock terror.
“I could so take down your career in one second if that story leaked out,” he says, wagging a finger playfully. “But I shall restrain myself and I promise not to let our readers know about your little cartographic challenges.”
There it is. The reminder that I need to be cautious. “Wait, this is off the record, right?”
“Ah, the fear everyone has when sitting down with a journalist. But, please don’t worry.” He reaches across the table to clasp my hand in his, and my breath catches. He squeezes my hand reassuringly, and the barest touch from him is dizzying. Maybe because it’s been so long, maybe because it’s him, maybe because I don’t have a clue if he’s gently clasping my hand as a reporter or as the man sitting across from me at an intimate, low-lit restaurant.
But his touch sends shivers up my spine. Good shivers. I ask the universe for him to leave his hand on mine. The universe listens for ten more seconds, and these seconds are the closest contact I’ve had with a straight man in years. “I’m very much looking forward to having dinner and chatting off the record. I should let you know, though, that if I were to report a story in such a hackneyed fashion, I would know immediately if you ordered veal parmigiana that I was dining with an impostor.”
He places his hands in his lap, and I miss them instantly.
“How would you know that?”
“You’re a vegetarian.”
“Yes, but it’s not like I’m wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘Meat is Murder.’”
“That is true. That is very true. But you gave a quote to Vegetarian Times for a story called ‘Nothing with a Face’ that was like a who’s who of all the vegetarians in the arts,” he says, and my heart beats faster at the admission that he knows all these little details about me, that he remembers them and can recall them. But then, he’s simply good at his job. That’s all.
“So do you have a dossier on me or something?”
“Yes, it’s ten inches thick. Every story about you ever written, every story you’re ever referenced in.”
Two years ago he probably wouldn’t have cared about that article, nor would any other critic. But now it’s part of his prep work, as my backstory is being assembled. Just like other parts of my backstory are coming to light, much more scintillating things than “She doesn’t eat animals.”
“Did you really look up every story ever written? And does that mean you know my given name too?” I ask, because Black is my stage name. My given name is a bit too Mellencamp for me.
“Jane Stanchcomb,” he whispers in a conspiratorial voice. “But that’s not a secret, since that’s your brother’s last name.”
Then he laughs and I notice how his blue eyes sparkle a bit as he does. When I was younger, I wanted blue eyes like Natalie, who landed the All-American looks from my mom’s side of the family. Instead, I inherited my dad’s coloring, dark brown hair, dark brown eyes. I am dominant B all over—nothing recessive at work here. Then there’s Matthew, and his eyes are a sort of a pure blue, a dark blue with barely any other color in them—no speckles of green, no flecks of gray, no hints of hazel. They’re just blue and they’re almost impossible to miss because they stand out all the more against his very dark hair with the slightest wave to it. His cheekbones are chiseled, his lips are full, his face is so damn handsome that sometimes I feel as if I have to look away. But I don’t want to look away. I want to look at him. It’s almost unfair.
“Though I’d still love to know how you chose Black as your stage name,” he adds, and he seems genuinely intrigued. But is he only intrigued because I’m the singer of the moment?
“Maybe I’ll tell you someday,” I say.
“I make you a little nervous, don’t I?” he says softly.
More like wary, but it’s not just because of Matthew’s previous bad reviews, or even because of Jonas and his Grammy ambush. I’m wary because, on the one hand, I’m having a fantastic time so far with Matthew and he’s actually quite funny, on top of all the other assets he brings to the table. But on the other hand, I wonder if it’s an act, if it’s part of his effort to land a story, part of his sales pitch. I want to trust my instincts to like him, but my instincts have been wrong before. Besides, Matthew has an agenda, and I should focus on whether I want to be on it, not whether I’d enjoy running a hand through that hair. Because of course, I’d enjoy touching him. That’s a no-brainer. The harder decision is the business one.
I wave a hand in the air, trying to act casual. “No, no. Of course not.”
“Please don’t worry. I looked up a few articles before I left the office. I wanted to be prepared,” he says in a soothing voice that shows he has a sweet side, a caring side. And there he goes again, racking up more points in his favor.
“It’s nothing,” I say, flustered now.
“Well, I’ll have you know I completely admire your discipline in being a vegetarian,” he says in a highly serious tone. “I would love to be one myself and think it’s quite the right decision, moralistically and health-wise. But I’m actually forbidden from being one.”
“What do you mean?”
He leans across the table to whisper, and the nearness makes my skin tingle. “When I left England for the States four years ago, I had to sign a letter that I would uphold the image of Britain’s fine dining standards.”
I laugh loudly, loving how he can shift from genuine concern to teasing in a heartbeat. “And what are those standards?”
“We’re only allowed to eat lamb, sausages, and fish and chips in front of you Yanks.”
“By order of the Queen, I’m sure.”
“Speaking of, we should probably look at the menu,” he says, looking away when I say Queen.
I can’t resist. “Do you know the Queen?”
He keeps staring at his menu, but a faint blush creeps to his cheeks. “No. Of course not. Why would I?”
Wow, I’ve caught him off guard now, and I kind of like this feeling. Of control. So I go fishing for more. “I would imagine she’d be particularly concerned about how you represented her country when out of it.”
His lips quirk up. “I’m quite sure she doesn’t care what I do.”
“Hmmm. Right. I’m sure she doesn’t care a bit about certain peers.” I tease out the last word, doing everything I can to elicit a reaction.
He looks up at me, trying to deny the smile on his face. “Surely, I am nothing.”
I nod in an exaggerated fashion, narrowing my eyes, as I repeat back one word. “Surely.”
The waiter appears. “Can I get you started out with something?”
Matthew gestures to me. “The lady can go first.”
Lady. Of course he’d call me a lady, being a baron and all.
I opt for the beet salad and fingerling potatoes. He chooses the braised short ribs.
“No lamb on the menu. The Queen will be so sad when I tell her.”
“Tell me about this article you have in mind,” I say after we finish eating.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Beat magazine loves the idea of this dark horse who came out of nowhere, the little engine that could.”
I hold up a hand, a mischievous glint in my eye. “Just Beat? What about you, Matthew?”
“Well, of course I love the idea, too. It so happens that my editors love it as well. The whole Internet buzz and marketing that Jeremy masterminded was genius. Now, the big question is—how can you top it? What do you do for an encore, a follow-up?”
I groan inside, flashing back on my three blah songs. I’m going to need to find a club and beat some inspiration out of myself soon.
“But wait. We don’t just want to do that. That’s just the starting point. I want to follow you, spend time with you as you embark on this next album. I want to sit in on some of the recording sessions, observe as you and Owen brainstorm and create. To really get into the creative process.”
“You want to know how the sausage gets made.”
He quickly taps his nose and points at me as if to say, You’ve got it.
“So you want to sit in on our recording sessions and have the freedom to write about all the dredge that comes out before we maybe write something remotely decent?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to have total access to Jeremy and Owen and me?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to know what goes into this—how we plan the album, the songs?”
“Yes. You’ve already started, right?”
“Of course.” Three mediocre songs that I can never use. But hey, there was that little melody I stitched together this afternoon on my couch. “And would you like to know which brand of toothpaste I use too?”
He shrugs playfully. “Suppose it couldn’t hurt. Jane’s Tips For a Brilliant Smile has a nice ring to it.”
“You’re asking for a lot.”
“I know. So what do you think?” There’s a childlike glimmer in his eyes.
“Why me?”
“Because Glass Slipper is redefining how independent music is marketed, because Jeremy doesn’t give a shit about appearances and corporate accouterments and rules. And because I f*cking loved your album and I can’t wait to hear what you do next.”
I don’t say anything immediately. I want to bask in the glow of his compliment for a moment. I want to savor the fact that he likes my music. But hell, I don’t have a goddamn clue what I’m writing next, so how can I let a journalist into my creative process when it’s on a standstill? And even though Jeremy wants this, I’m going to need to keep Matthew at bay until I get a grip on some words and music.
“Maybe,” I answer.
He leans in closer across the table, looks me straight in the eyes, and when he does that my resolve starts to weaken because his eyes are so beautiful, and he doesn’t break my gaze. “When you were younger, when you were a teenager, did you read the music magazines?”
“Of course I did.”
“And did you read those in-depth features where you really get to know a musician, how she works, how she operates? And did you ever wonder, ‘When I am a famous rock star someday, will they do this kind of feature on me?’”
“Did you get a hold of my diary from high school or something?” I say playfully. Because, though I didn’t keep a diary, Matthew is uncannily hitting all the right notes.
“I have a hunch you didn’t keep a diary,” Matthew fires back.
I smile at him this time but don’t let on that he is right. “I will think about it. When do you need to know by?”
“How’s a week?”
“Fair enough.”
Matthew raises his glass to toast. “To my hope that you’ll say yes.”
I clink my wine against his vodka tonic.
He adds, “So you’re doing David Letterman before your Roseland show on Friday. And I also saw on CRB Radio’s website that you’re doing Words and Music Sunday morning with Max Cohain.”
“Wow. Letterman, Roseland, CRB Radio. You are thorough.”
“I’m trying to impress you. Win you over with my encyclopedic knowledge of your career now. But listen, watch out for Cohain. He loves the pretty ladies.”
Matthew smiles at me and I can’t think of anything to say as a tingling feeling sweeps through my body. Pretty. Does Matthew think I’m pretty? I swallow, a touch of nervous hope racing through me. Holy f*ck. Maybe this isn’t a one-way street. Maybe he’s has a thing for me too. Because he’s holding my gaze, almost as if he’s waiting for me to say something. But I haven’t a clue how to respond. All I know is my body is buzzing, alive with possibilities. Something shifts, too, in his expression. His eyes are usually so playful, and they seem to twinkle. But now there’s an intensity to them, and they’re darker. Neither of us says anything, and the electric quiet makes my brain feel blurry and my blood turn hot.
“Pretty ladies?” I ask carefully, in an uncertain voice.
“Like you,” he answers, looking me straight in the eyes. I don’t want to look away. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to do a single thing to ruin this moment.
Then the waiter brings the bill, and the moment and whatever it was turning into is broken. Before I can reach inside my bag to retrieve the gift certificate, Matthew has already handed the waiter his credit card and sent him on his way.
“I was going to pay. I told you I had a gift certificate. The meal was supposed to be on me.”
He waves his hand in the air. “I love that you offered and you’re very generous. But we have a policy at Beat. We can’t accept any kind of gifts. So I’ll be picking up the tab for the next few months.”
I smile at him, giving him a flirty tilt of the head. “You’re presumptuous.”
“Optimistic, I like to think,” he says as the waiter returns his credit card and he tucks it back into his wallet. Then he adds, “Besides, even if we were just having dinner I’d want to pay then, too.”
“You would?”
“Of course,” he answers and his voice is stripped of all the teasing, all the toying, even all that journalistic seriousness. He seems so completely sincere in his tone, in his features, and then he does that thing again—where he reaches for my hand, clasping his on top of mine. I’m suddenly aware of the pressure on my wrist. Of the smooth inside of his palm. How his skin feels hot on my skin. I’m dying for him to slide his fingers through mine, because that would be a sure sign, right?
“Of course I would want to take you out, Jane.”
I am warm all over with his words. Does he mean them? That I’m pretty, that he’d want to have dinner even if it were just dinner? I don’t know how to read into his words, or if I should. But I want to read into them. I want to believe in this hand on mine. That he wants to be touching me, as much as I want this trace of contact with him.
“You would?” I start to say, but then I swallow the words because I can’t trust him, and I certainly can’t trust myself. “Hey, I have a totally wild idea,” I say, brushing off the innuendo as I gesture in the general direction of his back pocket where he put his phone. “Turn off your phone. Let’s try to find our way out of the Village without a map.”
He reaches for his scuffed-up, well-worn leather jacket and pulls it on over his long-sleeved white shirt. Then he retrieves my coat and helps me put it on, always the perfect gentleman. We leave Café Cluny and stand on the corner outside the bistro in the chilly air of the late February night.
“Okay, we really should just close our eyes and turn in circles a couple times and then go whatever direction we wind up pointing when we open our eyes,” he says.
“But what if we wind up in different directions?”
“You mean, what if I spin faster or slower or something?”
“We can’t really be assured that we’d spin at the same speed.”
“You’re right, you’re right, of course,” he says, stroking his chin as he goes along with our game. “I hadn’t considered the possibility of speed variations.”
“I know. You close your eyes and I’ll spin you. But I’ll close my eyes, too, and then just to be fair, you’ll be the one to say stop.”
He closes his eyes instantly. I reach up to place my hands on his shoulders. He’s taller than me—I’m guessing six foot two to my five foot seven. Still, I catch a faint scent of his aftershave, a cool, crisp smell. I’m so tempted to lean in and inhale deeply. But I resist, instead sniffing him quietly for just a second, letting him linger in my senses, letting him drift up into my mind and down into my body. For a moment, I shut my eyes, too, and I feel like a wild racehorse, with a little bit of heat and a little bit of aching mixed together in the belly of the beast. I open my eyes quickly and start turning him around. Once, twice, three times. Four times. Five times.
“Are you ever gonna say ‘stop’?”
“No, I really enjoy being spun with my eyes closed. It’s a fetish of mine. I’ve been to rehab, but apparently I’ve just relapsed.”
I laugh and he says, “Stop.”
He opens his eyes, feigns wobbling, and grabs hold of my shoulders as if he’s about to fall. I smirk at him. “You’re just playing around.”
Then he parts his lips, and he has the slyest smile on his face. “Playing around, you think?”
He’s returned to that tone of voice I can’t read. It’s neither his toying one nor his serious one. But the look in his eyes is full of hunger, and then I feel the softest touch on my hair. He’s fingering a strand of my curly hair and I am so far out of my element that I’m not sure what to do next. All I know is I’m leaning closer to him, because this kind of touch, so clearly the way a man who likes women touches, is both foreign and extraordinary to me.
“Yes, I would,” he says in a soft voice that borders on a whisper.
My body is racing, and the moment is full of so much anticipation, so much possibility that I could bottle it. But still, I feel like the sidewalk under my feet is swaying, and I need to know which way is up.
“You would what?”
“I would want to take you out. Much like how I want to kiss you.”
I can barely process his words. They’re so heady, so woozy, so utterly foreign to me. No one has wanted to kiss me in the last seven years.
“May I?” he asks, and I am in a blissful bubble of his accent, his blue eyes, and his total classiness in asking me, like a proper gentleman, which turns me on even more. I want this sliver of time to be suspended so it lasts, but I desperately want to be kissed. I want to be kissed by someone who wants me, by someone who knows what he’s doing, and by someone I am immeasurably attracted to.
By Matthew.
Who’s holding me tight with those dark blue eyes, the color of a lake in my perfect Maine, and I can’t let go. I can’t look away. I can barely speak. This feels so unreal, but yet here he is—wanting to kiss me. I would go into shock if I weren’t completely tingling all over.
“Yes,” I say, grinning, but then my smile is erased by his lips as he presses gently against mine with such softness, such sexiness that my knees go weak, and I loop my arms around his neck so I don’t fall.
He wraps a hand around my waist, tugging me closer as he kisses me, and I’ve lost all awareness of my surroundings, of the city, of the last several days of my life because the second Matthew’s lips touch mine, I know it is one of those kisses.
The kind you could write a song about.
I hear the word amazing press into my brain. Amazing lips, amazing kiss, feels amazing, you’re amazing. At one point, I actually murmur the word in his mouth. Kissing him is like a Chris Isaak song. It’s not frenzied or frantic or a mad dash to the end. It’s slow and unhurried, dreamily unfolding over and over. It’s desire stretching out.
His lips exploring mine, his tongue tangling with mine, his hands lacing through my hair. His sexy sighs that tell me he’s savoring this kiss as much as I am. He brings me closer, his long, lean frame terribly close to mine. For a brief second, I can feel him pressed hard against my thigh, and it’s thrilling to elicit this kind of reaction from a man.
Arousal.
Then he breaks the kiss, and I stumble. He catches me. “You okay?” he asks, and he’s back to that playful voice I know from the Grammys.
“Yeah,” I answer, and it feels like I’m waking up, because everything feels hazy and warm, as if morning light is streaking in through the windows at dawn. As that image flicks past me, it occurs to me that it may be more than a metaphor. It may be an apt description of the first kiss in seven years that feels like a two-way street.
“I’m very sorry,” Matthew says, taking a step back and assuming a proper, poised stance.
“What?” I ask, bewildered. Now the dream is ending, and real life awaits.
“I should not have done that. I don’t kiss people I want to do interviews with. I don’t get involved with sources. I can’t do that. I can’t go there,” he says, so quickly that the words come out in a jumble. But I can make out every confusing one of them. “I don’t want to do anything to compromise the story.”
Right. The story. We’re back to the story. “But we haven’t even agreed on the story,” I point out.
“I know,” he says with a sigh, then scrubs his hand across his chin. “And maybe this sounds crazy, but would be possible if we just went back in time ten minutes? Erased what happened out here. I’m phenomenally attracted to you, but it’s probably best if I focus on my job.”
I furrow my eyebrows and am tempted to shake my head hard to the side, as if I’ve just emerged from the pool to see if there’s water in my ears. But yet amidst my confusion, four words bang loud and clear, like a drumbeat—phenomenally attracted to you.
Because I feel the same. I am phenomenally attracted to him.
“So,” he continues clapping his hands together once, briskly, in some sort of getting-down-to-business sign. “Thank you so much for listening to my proposal for the article. I’m so eager to hear if you want to do the story, and I’ll call you in a week, as promised, to touch base.”
Then he reaches for my hand, shakes it once, and flashes me his best friendly grin, before he hails me a taxi and sends me home—hot, bothered and thoroughly nonplussed.
I’ve officially entered the twilight zone.
…
An hour later, I’m back at my apartment standing in the doorway of Ethan’s room, flossing my teeth.
Ethan’s room is like a snapshot, a moment frozen in time. The chair at his maroon desk is angled out, a piece of red construction paper is filled with crayon images of stick figures on a hill, lining up next to a spaceship. The tip of his white karate belt hangs over the edge of his bottom bureau drawer. His room tells the story of a little boy, happily lost in his imagination before his mom called to him, telling him to hurry up or he’d be late for school. He pushed away from the desk, left the half-finished drawing, hastily closed his bottom drawer, and raced to the front door.
I miss Ethan on the nights he’s with his dad. I should be used to these stretches without him. But I’m not. I’m still keenly aware of his absence when he’s not here. Because on the nights he is here, even after I’ve put him to bed and I’m reading or listening to music or talking to my mom on the phone, the apartment carries a certain warmth, a certain coziness because of the presence of a sleeping child. I love our new place. We moved into it last summer. It’s our house, really, Ethan’s and mine.
Yet I don’t even have to be here in our apartment tonight because there’s no sleeping child. I could leave. I could go for a walk. I could go to a bar. I have all the free time I didn’t have in the first five years of his life. But I still feel just a little bit empty and a little bit naughty being a mom without a kid for the next few days.
I return to the bathroom and toss the dental floss in the trash can, then head to the living room. I grab my notebook from the table, open up to a clean sheet of paper, and flop down on the couch. I hum a few random notes, stringing together a little melody, then write down some thoughts.
Dreamy kiss.
Unexpected kiss.
Kisses that go on and on.
I take a deep breath, and a small smile tugs at my lips.
It’s only a few lines, but I’m writing again! Finally! After months of silence, new chords and notes and lyrics are knocking around in my head. And all it took was a kiss to ignite such musical possibilities. I can picture the next several days, as songs and bridges and choruses unfurl in front of me with reckless abandon, as music pours forth like a rainstorm in the desert. Jeremy will be thrilled. My fans will be happy. But more than that, I’m happy again because making music feeds my soul. It’s my heartbeat, it’s my blood pumping, it’s the air I need to breathe.
Then my phone buzzes. I grab it from my back pocket and click open a text message.
Dinner was lovely. Thank you so very much for your time.
And that’s it. No mention of the kiss that rocked through my bones. No mention of the phenomenal attraction. No mention of wanting to take me out again.
Matthew truly did erase those ten minutes on the street, and is now the super-professional reporter.
I close the message and return to my notebook. I tap my pencil against the paper. I scrawl out a few random words, like Shut it down, all business, then so annoyed right now.
But the rhythm is gone; the inspiration has slinked away. I write down the words Mixed Messages at the top of the page. If this ever becomes a song it’ll be the perfect title, because that’s what Matthew is sending me.
And I am confused as hell.
I try to write more words, more music, more lyrics. But all I hear is a warped-sounding song that makes no sense. Like my dinner with Matthew.