The Soft Sound of Loneliness

Lawson was relentless with his desire for me.

He asked for a date every time we were near each other and when he realized that I wasn’t giving in, he had other people talk him up.

“Lawson’s a great guy, have you met him? He seems interested in you, I’ve noticed.”
It was the same words every time, as if he’d written each and every person on the street a script for the exact moment that I came by. And knowing Lawson as I do now, he probably had.

After a month and a half of endless Lawson this and Lawson that, the never ending talk of the man having almost driven me insane, I finally succumbed.

He tried to fuck me after our first date. After I’d refused calmly and stood to leave, he had said, “This could be over tomorrow, you know. We could both die without me ever getting to see your bare skin, or touch you like only man and wife should, or getting to hold your naked body all through the night.”

I remember that his eyes were closed as he said this and his voice was cool, as if he were telling me about the weather instead of his longing to screw.

It was cliché and it was bullshit, but I stayed anyway.

He talked through our entire first time. His voice held that calm, deep, raspy, Lawson-tone as he whispered sweet things into my ear, maybe trying to ease my pain.
He cussed a lot through it too, but the deep gravel-like sound of his voice made even the dirtiest words sound pure.

He talked until the bubbling warmth grew too hot in his stomach and he couldn’t speak anymore. And then the only noise he gave was a soft, breathy moan as his face fell into the crook of my sweat sticky shoulder.

I had not gotten that feeling of relief. I’d never been with a man before, certainly no man of Lawson’s caliber, and I could almost feel the ripping of my ass, then my stomach, until I simply ripped in half.

I remember his face against my neck, his lips on my forehead, his breath ghosting over my jaw.

I had expected Lawson to fuck me and then tell me to leave, but he made love to me and asked me to stay the night.

He was gone when I woke up the next morning and the coldness on the opposite side of the bed made my heart twinge, but I hadn’t predicted that he would be there waiting either. I left and didn’t hope for a call.

Lawson cared too much and he didn’t care enough.

---

He had called to apologize a few short but seemingly endless hours later, muttering a sorrowful sounding, “Sorry,” into the answering machine, then dropping the name of a bar and a time, and telling me he’d wait for all night if he had to.

The bar had been empty when I’d arrived and found him waiting on the front step, cigarette smoke billowing out of his nostrils in a way that had always seemed disgusting before I’d seen Lawson do it.

His blonde hair was messed up in that way that usually took at least fifteen minutes to perfect but was most likely the way he had woken up. His black button-up shirt was wrinkled and half untucked in a way was probably unintentional but still seemed to radiate elegance.

Lawson was perfect and beautiful in an unprepared and accidental manner.

His gleaming heavy-hearted eyes apologized a million times in the soft light coming from the street lamps but his mouth didn’t open once until he had grabbed my hand and tugged me away from the bustling street. I didn’t say anything and I didn’t remove my hand from his tight grasp until we were on a secluded side street, away from the sound and the lights of Maine at night.

“Have you ever been afraid of something that you don’t understand?” he had asked, his brows furrowing as his eyes avoided mine and searched the empty, secluded street. I nodded and let my hand drop from his. He turned to look at me, a fleeting glance before he turned away again, a nervous sort of look on his hard-edged face.

“But not like ghosts, or monsters, or angels. I mean something real, just something you’ve not… experienced before?” I shook my head slowly this time because I’d never been afraid of anything real, not really.

“It’s you. You’re the one that terrifies me and keeps me up at night, like monsters under the bed,” Lawson had said, his shimmering dark eyes landing on my face for the first time the entire night.

I didn’t talk; I didn’t know what to say in response to the confession. It was poetic, in a way that didn’t make sense.

He danced with me in the street, then, up and down the dimly lit lane, with only his rough humming of songs that he didn’t know as our melody.

It was midnight before we broke apart and Lawson had asked me to go home with him. He promised to be there in the morning. He promised never to leave again.

---

His eyes were pretty for a man’s and even prettier for the shit color that they were. Brown, of course, but the kind of brown that glittered and lit up his face, the kind of brown that made everything sparkle and shine like diamonds, no matter what it was.

Lawson’s face crinkled when he laughed, which wasn’t often, but it always felt like a victory when he did let out that deep, bass rumble of amusement. He smoked with his index and middle fingers, the rest fanned out across his face, like a mask to hide himself.

Lawson was a man of many imperfections and insecurities. He drank too much and smoked too many cigarettes. He didn’t have a family and he didn’t care to keep in touch with anyone. He seemed to live in his own alternate universe and didn’t take real life too seriously, but he was the most somber and realistic man I’d ever met.

Lawson was a poet. He pretended to hide under the label of a novelist, but his writing was shit and his words were ballads.

He was sensitive in a way that most men aren’t. He didn’t cry over girlie movies and heartbreaking novels and he didn’t cry when his mother died, but he cried more than I ever have.

He cried because he thought everyone was leaving him, that no one would be there when he really needed them. He believed that he was going to die alone, without a person in the world that would give a fuck.

He cried because of me a lot, too. Not because I was unfaithful or treated him badly, but because of how he treated me. He wouldn’t tell me why, but I knew that it was me and how he thought of me. He wouldn’t talk about it.

I couldn’t fix him.

---

I remember how his dark eyes had traced mine the night before he’d gone.

He seemed different, more serious and somber than usual, which was almost hard to imagine.

He had lain beside me on the bed we had shared for nine months and seventeen days and told me that I didn’t scare him anymore. He told me that his life was shit and his mind was severely fucked up and he couldn’t think straight. He was crying; but in his quiet, Lawson-like way, where the tears only fell and no sound was emitted.

He told me that nothing made sense anymore and how badly his heart ached for absolutely no reason and that he loved me, in a screwed up way that didn’t even make sense to him.

I apologized to him, then. For what, I still don’t know, but I told him that I was sorry and that I loved him too, in a non-fucked up way that made sense in the way that I wanted to wake up next to him forever.

He didn’t reach for my hand and he didn’t let his toned arm stretch around my waist before we fell asleep.

He was gone in the morning, leaving me alone with the cold side of the bed that I hadn’t experienced since our first date.

When Lawson left, he left a note that said it was his fault, everything was his fault and that it had nothing to do with me.

It was cliché and it was bullshit, but I believed him anyway.

I can’t say that I hope he’s happy somewhere, alone or with someone else, because I just want him to come back.