Hang out with us some more.
Cupcakes are yours anytime you want them.
I hope you liked your song.
Oh, the dedicated song. He remembered. Shit, he really remembered.
I can’t help it, I smile again and at the same time, feel something in my chest tighten at his words.
That he could want a next time. That he gave me a song.
Again, that strange feeling inside me as I realise what I’m actually smiling about is the possibility of a next time and another song. I’m smiling because of this possibility and I don’t want to think about how wrong it is. My heart’s pounding in my chest right now. It’s beating as if I’m excited or happy or turned on. I don’t know which of these feelings applies, but just for a moment I want to forget about all of the bad stuff, about all of the fear and all of the pain and just allow myself to feel it.
To hear my heart tell my body what it’s feeling and what it wants.
We keep chatting for a while about the night, about the shitty band on before him and about the music he wants to write and the ideas he has. He knows a lot about music and performing and even writing, I mean he really knows music. It reminds me so much of Selena and all the times she used to talk to me about it, I can imagine the two of them would’ve never stopped talking had they met in another lifetime. And now I know about his band, now that I’ve seen them and told him how good they are, it’s like a floodgate has been opened. He has so many ideas, so many plans. He sends me words he has written, links to songs he likes. I can see that music is his real passion and I know that his band has potential to do great things. I hope it works out for him.
By the time we both crash, I’m surprised to see it’s now 4am and I have over forty emails in my inbox.
I’m also still smiling. My heart’s still racing and for the first time in so many months I feel different, lighter even. I want to saviour this feeling.
Because I know what this feeling is now.
Tonight as I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep, his music enters my dreams. It’s all I hear at first and it replaces my usual nightmare for a while. It feels like a small breath of fresh air after months of barely being able to breathe.
When I wake up the next morning however, the nightmare has come back. The same strangled cry pulls me from my sleep and I have to force the images away, try to forget that awful picture that sears itself into my brain every single night and instead remember the previous evening. The band, their music and especially Luke’s voice. It makes me smile and although my heart is pounding from the nightmare, I feel it change slightly when I think about last night. When I remember how I felt watching him, listening to him. I wish I could let him know how it made me feel.
I wish I could let him know how much it affected me.
I wish I could let him know that he made me happy, if just for one night.
∞
Selena was a bit like me in that she was also pretty shy. It wasn’t the only thing we had in common, but I guess like Grace and me, it’s what made it that much easier for us to relate to each other. It also meant that Selena had trouble getting herself a boyfriend, because she just didn’t put herself out there. Even my Dad tried to fix her up a few times and that’s saying something from the man who only had a handful of girlfriends after he lost his wife.
I can remember the day I decided we needed to be proactive about it all. "Let’s put your profile on one of those websites?" I suggested.
"No way!" Selena had said immediately.
"Come on Selena, it’ll be great, they aren’t as crappy as they used to be."
"Yeah but they’re full of crazies who post fake pictures of themselves just to try and get laid," she said, handing me a coffee.
I was spending the weekend with her in Boston. It was actually Valentine’s Day weekend, which is probably what spurred me on to suggest it in the first place. The two of us had spent the night watching romantic comedies and lamenting our non-existent love life. Adam had only just died a couple of months ago and I remember Selena handing me a glass of wine the night before and saying, "Well if you’re old enough to have sex, then I figure you probably need a drink too. Just don’t tell your Dad," she said smiling. "Or Seth!"
I laughed, taking the glass from her. I’m pretty sure she knew I’d been drunk before, thanks namely to Seth anyway.
So that’s how we’d spent our sad miserable Valentine’s Day. Drinking a couple of bottles of wine and watching cheesy movies. The next morning under the burden of a light hangover and over a greasy breakfast, I came up with the idea.
"Come on Selena, it’ll be great, we’ll screen them and we can have a code to get you out of a bad date or something."