The Other Side(43)
She’s sitting on the end of the bed, her legs dangling over the edge of the footboard, and taking a bite of her sandwich. “Oh,” she says with a full mouth. I know it’s not ladylike, but it’s just one more thing about her that’s cute. It’s cute until I hear the hurt in her voice.
“Will you be around later? When I’m done with my work?” I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to come back, but I’m uncharacteristically trying to give myself an in if I do.
The corner of her mouth curves up in hope before she says, “Sure, I’ll be here.”
I leave her eating the best sandwich that’s ever ended up in my stomach.
There were no messages on the answering machine, but it’s three hours before I psych myself up enough to go back down and knock on her door. Waiting for her to answer, I repeat the reminder, You’re nothing. She deserves better. You can’t be with her.
When she opens the door, I know it’s true, but I stay anyway.
Her room feels, once again, like home. It makes my heart beat erratically and my palms perspire. I can’t acclimate to home or the idea of it, and my nerves spiral.
When she sits on her bed, I remain standing because there isn’t a chair in the room.
“My brother won’t be home tonight, he’s staying at Inga’s.”
I immediately drop and sit on the floor because I’m not sure if that statement was purely informational or purely invitational. “Okay,” I say, slipping out of my sweatshirt because now my pits are starting to sweat too.
“What do you want to do, Toby?”
Because I’m alone in an apartment with this beautiful, kind, fierce girl who sets me on fire, I want to say, Kiss you. For hours. But because I know I shouldn’t, I say, “Listen to you play one of your songs.” Because I really want that too.
That smile emerges, the one that’s a little shy and a lot playful. “Really?”
I nod, still in the habit around her, and then answer, “Of course.”
She brings her hand to her mouth and taps her bottom lip with her pointer finger before running the tip of it back and forth; she’s thinking. “I’ve been working on something new, do you want to hear that?”
“I want to hear everything,” I answer earnestly. I don’t want to lie to her tonight. I don’t want to hide from her tonight.
Her smile grows impossibly wide. “Good answer, Toby. Can you please hand me my keyboard? It’s on my dresser.”
I stand and retrieve a smallish keyboard that’s already plugged in to an outlet and set it on the bed in front of her.
“Thanks,” she says as she turns it on and presses a few buttons. Before I can sit back down on the floor, she pats the bed next to her. “Sit by me. If we’re touching, I don’t feel like I’m alone playing for myself.” The pause is significant enough that she prompts a second time. “I won’t bite.” As my butt depresses into the mattress next to her and my shoulder grazes hers, she adds loud enough that I can hear her, “Unless you want me to.”
God help me, she’s flirting. The sound in my throat is almost a laugh.
That makes her laugh. “This one is still rough. I’m struggling with the intro, so I’ll skip that part for now.”
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, “I really like 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.