Your Voice Was The Soundtrack Of My Summer

I was one of Ralph's first customers that morning. I sat on the barstool armed with a pen and my notebook, with Delilah slung behind my back faithfully.

It was about 9:00 when the customers started to appear. Coffee was a huge hit at this time of day. It smelled like strong cappuccino and my nose itched from the strong scent. I was happy to find that Indigo was among the early crowd. Her eyes sparkled when they met mine and her enthusiasm was restored.

“Paul! Hey, what're you doing here?” she looked skeptically at me, grabbing the notebook from my hand.

“You're trying to write a song?” she eyed me carefully as she placed the notebook back on the counter.
“Yeah, you give me inspiration,” I confessed. She looked mildly surprised at this as she joined me grabbing another barstool and shoving it near my own chair.
“And how do I do that?” she demanded placing her chin on my shoulder.
“With your life is too short to be seen through an educator's eyes,” I mimicked her. She looked placidly at me and stuck her tongue out.

“So, are you getting anywhere?” she asked while she requested a Cappuccino from Ralph.
“Well, you could say I am. Here, read it,” I passed the notebook to her, while her hands eagerly reached for it, her eyes scanning back and forth.

“Today is a winding road that’s taking me to places that I didn’t want to go whoa. Today in the blink of an eye I’m holding on to something and I do not know why,” Indigo paused there, looking precariously at me.

Her questionable eyes searched for some meaning behind this song that I wrote for her. She pursed her lips tight and looked at me then back at the notebook and back at me.

“What are you trying to say?” she finally emitted, looking at me slyly with a smile that unknowingly could break so many hearts.

This reaction was totally unexpected. Maybe somewhere along the lines of,
“OMG PAUL YOU CAN WRITE!”

Or something like that, remotely close even. But no. Indigo had to look at me with her deep thinking looks and question me a question I didn't know I asked in the song, much less had the answer to.

“Don't look at me as if you don't know what I'm talking about, Paul,” Indigo mocked sternly said.

I didn't have to fake my innocence, because I clearly had no interpretation of what the hell she was talking about.

“I really have no clue Indigo,” I said with sincerity, while she looked at me with a small smug smile.

“You wrote about us. Our relationship. Or whatever you like to compromise it as,” she said with a small visible wink in her eye.

I looked at her in confusion and reread the words on the paper.

I’m holding on to something and I do not know why.

I looked bitterly at Indigo. I was unknowingly caught in the act, of professing my love to her and my feelings in a song.

How shallow and naive could I get?

“Well, unconsciously I did,” I sheepishly looked at her.

“Unconsciously? Implying that you what, wrote this in your sleep?” she smirked at me, writing a couple of lines on the notebook.

“Very funny. I just wrote. I wasn't aware that I was writing about us,” I shrugged; reading the perfect manuscript under my messy smeared ones.

I tried to read between thewords lines.

“So you're undertaking this as a co-written project?” I looked curiously at her, watching as she formed the words: top of the world.

“Well, yes. Since it's about us. So, I might as well contribute, right?” she momentarily stopped the ink flow and stared into my eyes with her beyond-words eyes.

“Makes sense,” I nodded in agreement.

“Hmm, you write really good you know. I didn't know you could write so good,” she muttered, her face bent over the notebook.

There's the compliment I expected. Which by the way, came later than expected.

“Thanks,” I said sipping my mug carefully, feeling the cold coffee slosh over my tongue.

“No really. And what I'm writing now is probably shit. You stop me anytime you like, okay?” she faced me clicking the pen at top rate.

“Sure. You write good as well. I mean, ‘I wanna let you know how much I feel your pain'? That’s damn straight good,” I enthused while she looked at me carefully, deciding whether I was only saying this out of generosity or out of truth.

I still didn't know whether I said it out of benevolence or truth.

“What do you want the title to be?” she asked, as she handed me the pen to add on to what she already wrote.

“Uhh, don’t know, how about. . ,” I underlined Soundtrack Of My Summer.

And handed it over to her to see, her eyes danced with some mysterious sort of blue and they shimmered ever so softly as they came to rest upon my own chocolate brown eyes.

“Ooh, I like that,” she nodded in encouragement and sliding the notebook back to me.

“Come on, let's go,” I finally decided, grabbing the notebook and pen, and grabbing her hand as I pulled her down.

“What? Where?” she looked at me in surprise.

Her eyes seemed pretty shocked but pleased at the same time as she laid a $5 bill on the counter.

“Bye Ralph!” she yelled inconspicuously.

“Sure sure, Indigo, Paul,” Ralph nodded his thanks. We ran out of the shed hand in hand as I scanned for the most remote spot on the sandy beaches, which were already mostly occupied with the regular inhabitants.

One spot caught my eye, the way diamonds caught your eye when surrounded my pebbles. It was on the boardwalk. I led her there then, while she aimlessly crossed the sandy dunes, while her feet every so often got stuck between the soft grainy sand and driftwood and occasionally seaweed that somehow traversed their way up here.

Once at the boardwalk, we stood there together, with her looking questionably at my face, probably wondering at why I resembled a flighty butterfly unable to settle down.

“Sit,” I demanded, she did so without question, her eyes looking up at me trusting and loving.

I sat next to her, pulling Delilah out and placing her on my lap.

“What are we doing?” Indigo looked at me and stared at Delilah in admiration.

“We're singing,” I bluntly told her.

“Singing what?” she looked absent-mindedly at me.

“Our song,” I exaggerated the first syllable and looked at her expectant reaction, wishing and waiting for her to hug me and possibly kiss me and maybe just maybe say that she would love me.

Although none of them did actually happen.
Of course they didn't.

“Oh! Okay, well, you might as well start then,” she shrugged.

“Sing it,” I instructed.

She looked at me hesitantly then her hesitance probably concocted by her embarrassment or claims of “not being able to sing”.

“Today is a winding road that’s taking me to places I didn’t want to go. . . ,”

I started to strum my guitar to her voice, which wasn't hard. A couple of chords and we stretched the song to new lengths. And after a while of her repeating words and singing and me strumming we got the first verse and I even sang along, her voice growing stronger and stronger as my voice intertwined with hers.

The glow in her face was so versatile. It could be menacing and glaring. It could be morbid and depressing. It could be jubilant and ecstatic.

And now it was ecstatic.

I looked at her at one point and she looked straight into my own eyes, wondering if my brown dookie colored eyes resembled something of importance to her or strikingly a symbolic thing.

I guess it did. Because I closed my eyes, and I felt her breathe on me cool my skin. A coffee flavored breath was the one I could remember best.

And our lips were fused together again. Her lips syncing together in harmony with mine own.

As it departed I felt her eyes look bashfully at me, and she sighed into my ear.
“I love you Paul Digiovanni,”

I nearly dropped my senses then. And I looked at this beauty saying that she loved me. Life couldn't get any better than this moment happening right now.

Too bad this was just an imagination. And reality was that we played together on that boardwalk, her eyes sparkling with flickering radiance. Her voice intertwining with Delilah's voice. And I was as silent as ever, listening to her voice and probably oblivious that I was wishing the hardest of all that she would love me.