Just Sit Back

When I met him, he had just hit it big. At least in his book he had. A simple boy from Phoenix, hitching a ride on a Greyhound bus up to Seattle, to meet his new business partners/co-workers/best friends.

He seemed to be at an all time high then, shaking everyone's hands and cheesing it up. Laughing with his new friends, holding his stomach and shaking his mop of hair. It didn't take me long, being the merch girl for This Providence as they started off on their first big tour, to figure out that David Blaise wasn't just excited to be going somewhere with his life.

Nope, he was just happy. Boy, oh boy, was that boy happy. I found that out easily at first, and then everything else about him came much slower. This boy was more complicated than he thought he was- than he thought he could ever be. He wasn't just a bassist from Phoenix, Arizona. He wasn't just a cute boy with a smile.

He was David Blaise, and he was going to change my life.

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He was an open book, you would think. He was always smiling, always talking, always joking around. He never actually opened up, though. Not until it was late at night or early in the morning, when he was becoming homesick and I was unable to sleep.

The bus would be stopped at a rest stop, stationary and quiet. I would crawl out of my bunk and move as silently as possible to the front lounge in search of a drink and my laptop. I never expected him to be there, sitting on the cushions, his knees pulled to his chest and his eyes staring towards the floor. I hoped he would be there, but I never expected it- even if he always was.

He acted surprised, even after the first few days, lifting his head and smiling slightly. "Danielle, what are you doing up?" he would whisper.

"Oh, I don't know, David. I just can't seem to get to sleep." The first words leaving our mouths were always the same, I could count on that. Just like I could count on him to still be awake at 2 AM.

Then, I would get us both a water from the small refrigerator and he would pat the seat cushion beside himself. After tossing him one of the bottles of water, I would unscrew the cap of my own, taking one small swig before sitting beside him. He would let his legs fall over the seat and I would pull my knees up to my chest. A switch of positions. My legs would lean towards his lap and then we could start talking.

At first, we talked about why he wasn't sleeping. He missed his mom, and the unfamiliar movements and sounds on the bus didn't help his longing to be back home. After that subject wore off, we started talking about ourselves. Our childhoods, our adolescence, how we actually got associated with this band. Anything and everything was thrown into our conversations, and it could be mentioned numerous times.

He seemed to calm down as we talked and so did I. Our lungs and throats hurt from laughing, our cheeks from smiling, and the skin on my cheekbones never quite fading of the color that he put there. Soon, around four or five AM, we would doze off after our conversation had died down. After sitting back against the couch, not saying a word, with my head on his shoulder and his head on mine, his fingers spread out across my knee, we would just sit back and we would sleep. Finally.

We always woke up at 7:30, as expected. We always met up at 2 in the morning, just by chance.

It took two and a half weeks. Seventeen days, or 51 hours, of resting on the sofa together. It took three thousand and sixty minutes for David to make his move.

I had just taken my first sip of water and replaced the screw on top of the bottle. I was getting comfortable, folding my legs under myself, when he turned his body. He didn't let his legs fall, his feet resting on the floor. He just simply turned his body, his torso twisting towards me. We didn't speak- we couldn't speak. I hadn't rested my knees on his lap yet. That wouldn't have mattered, anyhow, since I couldn't speak when his mouth was pressed to mine.

"I think you know what I want to talk about this morning, Danielle," he said, finally letting his feet fall back against the ground.

We could talk now and trust me; we were going to talk.

"I want to talk about us, and this kiss, and how you felt about it. How you feel about me," he smiled slightly, and my knees fell into his lap. His fingers spread out across the skin there, before continuing. "Don't lie, I can take it. Just tell me."

We weren't playing by the rules, by the book. If we were an atlas, we weren't on any chartered road. We were lost, heading off into dangerous territory. Head on. Which meant, I didn't have to tell him. I didn't have to sit back and let my head rest on his shoulder and allow the words to pour from my mouth. I didn't have to, because we weren't following any rules now.

We were traveling the country. I was selling merch by day, he was playing gigs by night. The time in between, when the air was quiet and the sky dark, that was ours. The time we spent laughing and smiling, feeding off of each other's early morning high. We were drifting in and out of consciousness, continuing to let words flow from our open mouths. We were sitting back, just sitting back on the weird couch cushions, falling in love.