Skipping a Beat

I was about halfway home when I realized that I was a moron. The feeling of his lips was still on mine, the groaning fresh in my ear and I wanted to turn around and take it all back. I wanted to shove him away when he had pulled me close, I wanted to hold back my sigh and restrain my wandering hands when his lips were on mine, I wanted to take back the way he made my lips curve into a smile afterwards. Of course, it was impossible to take back a kiss like that, especially a kiss with Reese Munn.

The next night he strolled in late as usual, his guitar slung over that same shoulder, his shirt rumpled and worn like he had worn it to bed, his eyes found mine though, in the dark while all other eyes were on him. Out of all the eyes he could’ve met he sought mine out, held them in his own for a moment, his grin sliding onto his face that had a girl in the front row almost pass out.

I wanted immediately to duck behind the counter and count my heartbeats to make sure they were all there. I wanted to smash a cup against the floor so I would have something else to think about. More than anything though, I wanted Reese Munn to march out the door with that stupid guitar of his and never come back. But even more than that I wanted him to drag me over the counter and kiss me until I couldn’t breathe, and that was what scared me more than anything.

He greeted the crowd as usual, played his songs in that same way he always did, head bent looking at the ground or the tip of his shoe, shoulders moving slowly in sync with the beat of the song, girls falling over themselves around him and I stood at the back making coffee quietly and cleaning the constantly growing pile of dirty cups. It could almost be the same as every other night of my life for the past few months. There was nothing remarkable about it, no shift in the air, no stolen glances across the room. Even Claire had no idea what had happened that day when I strode in the door and I was sure she’d be able to at least tell.

Maybe in my head that’s what made me upset, the fact that kissing a boy like Reese Munn was really just the same as kissing any boy who had ever existed. Maybe in the moment it seemed big and important and remarkable, but at the end, what it boiled down to was the fact that Reese Munn was human. In my head maybe I had made it out to be this big landmark occasion I wasn’t even sure I wanted, maybe I build him up too much in my thoughts. But then I would close my eyes and remember his hands gripping the bottom of my shirt as if he was going to move to rip it off and I would want to collapse all over again.

He finished late again, people took their sweet time heading for the door, two girls gave Reese their numbers and one of them made him retrieve it from her shirt. I pretended I had a headache and escaped to the back room, Claire worrying after me like a young mother does, making me sit down at the counter in the back as she took my place out front where the girls were ordering a last minute coffee before they left and I could hear the scraping of Reese already stacking the chairs before the tables were clean.

Claire was again in the backroom after the door shut behind the girls in the jeans too tight to be comfortable. She was standing over me, a glass of water and an aspirin in her hand and even though I didn’t even have a headache I took it anyway. She was still standing over me though, blocking the harsh light with her figure, hands on her hips.

“What is up with you tonight girly?” She asked, sliding in the seat across from me, the chair scraping against the floor harshly and I was starting to think that I really did have a headache.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, peaking up through my eyelashes at her.

“You’ve been off all night,” she decided leaning forward and concern began to melt into her features like I was her own Luella sick with the flu.

“Define ‘off’,” I said, making quotes with my fingers, listening carefully to the sounds of Reese moving around in the front room, wondering if he was thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him. Deciding that he probably wasn’t when he was reaching his hands down the dark haired girls shirt, in fact I was probably the furthest thing from his mind all night. Maybe he had completely forgotten about the kiss all together and woke up with a hangover too big to recall the night before. But maybe he was thinking about me too, about the way my hands pulled his hair and the way I kissed his chest and suddenly it was too hot and uncomfortable in that back room with Claire staring me down.

“Off like you’ve been out of it with the customers all night, like your mind is completely somewhere else,” her voice was stern but leveled with the layers of worry that softened it like mothers do.

“So what are you going to give me a time out?” I asked, grinning at her because I knew she could never be really angry at me.

“No, but I do want you to tell me what’s been on your mind, and not as your boss, but as your friend,” she said, crossing her arms on the table as if she was some form of therapist and I could see it now, her sitting in the office and clicking a pen as a patient spilled out all their private secrets to her and she collected them like people collected sea shells.

“Nothings on my mind, I’m just tired,” I said, which wasn’t a complete lie because it had taken me hours the night before to finally fall asleep, and even then it was fitful and full of worry, worry that seemed to still be spilling out even now.

“Just tired,” Claire repeated and I know she didn’t believe it by the way she looked at me.

“Yeah,” I said, moving to stand up by suddenly there in the door was Reese, the scraping noise from before had stopped and there was just silence in the room and I felt like I was going to tear my own skin off to get away from it. I knew Reese had his eyes trained on me, boring holes into my back burning through my shirt and skin and scaring me for life.

“Hey,” he was saying just as Claire was standing up too, and his voice was deep again and I felt myself flush deeply because Claire was still in the room, and now she was looking back and forth between us and I wanted to die of humiliation because I wanted to throw Reese on that counter and do him that very second but instead I clenched my fists and kept my eyes on Claire, not even bothering to turn around and face the guitar boy in the doorway.

“All finished Reese?” Claire was there to save the day? Her voice tight and professional as if she could feel the tension mounting between the three of us, her accent showing through the way it did whenever she got nervous.

“I just have to take out the garbage,” His voice had thankfully returned to normal and I could hear the shuffling of his feat get softer until they were finally moving away and the air rushed back into the room and into my lungs and I thought I was going to pass out again.

“So its Reese,” Claire said, and then she was grinning wider than I had seen her in a while and I thought she was going to jump up and down and cheer for a second before she was sighing in relief, “Thank God too because I was starting to think you were a lesbian.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back, not missing a single beat, crossing my arms and pretending to glare at her. “Nothing is going on with Reese and I.”

“That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told,” Claire informed me.

“No, the biggest lie I ever told was earlier when I told you those pants didn’t make you look fat,” I said, but then I smirked and she broke out into a laugh and lunged to smack me on the arm like she did whenever I said something offensive but funny to her.

“What am I going to do with you Laura?” She asked, more to herself than to me, and she placed a hand against her head.

“You’re going to do nothing, and I’ll go on living my life and you’ll live ours. It’s quite a nice arrangement really, considering its seemed to work for this long.”

“Laura, if you keep this up you’re going to end up all alone someday,” she said, her voice getting more serious, the smile slipping off her face like a forgotten memory.

“I won’t end up alone,” I told her quickly, “I’ll have you.”

“Not forever,” she warned, as if this was some sort of an omen, a sign that maybe I should have taken note of and I almost did, because it scared me to think of that.

“But for long enough,” I said, smiling and trying to move on from this conversation, reminding her that she had a little one at home she had better go tuck in because she had school tomorrow. And then Claire finally gave in, patted my head on her way out and blew me a kiss that I pretended to catch and stick in my pocket as she whispered out the door with a final reminder to me to lock up the place, as if I would forget in a city like this.

I was back in the main room, my jacket over my shoulders, my shirt had acquired a new coffee stain on it this evening I noticed when I was checking the locks in the front room, flicking off the lights, walking out the back door and locking it behind me before Luna’s finally went to sleep for the night.

And then suddenly as I was walking down the alley there was a tall hooded figure, arms reached out and enclosing me, and I would have screamed if I had not caught sight of the guitar case sitting on his right before it was Reese’s voice at my ear, the low one that had previously embarrassed me but now just made my insides stir awake from what felt like a long hibernation.

“So you don’t think there’s anything going on between us?” He said, his tone slightly mocking and I knew he had overheard my conversation with Claire and I felt embarrassed all over again.

“There isn’t,” I insisted, even as I melted further into his welcoming arms.

“Of course,” he obliged, placing soft kisses around the shell of my ear that made me toes curl and my body form to meet his.

“I’m glad you see my side of things,” I said, before his lips ran into mine quickly, devouring them, sucking my soul from them and placing it inside of his own. I gave in all the way, allowing myself to be carried away by his lips, letting his arms slide around me and his hands slide up the back of my shirt and onto the bare skin. He kissed me feverishly, as if he was a dying man about to see his last night, as if he thought we were already back in his bedroom by the way he pushed me closer to him still and made noises into my mouth that were entirely inappropriate for a public place.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he gasped once as we broke apart for a second and that further fueled the fire burning in my gut, the idea that Reese Munn himself had wanted someone like me, the coffee girl with messy, tangled hair and coffee stained shirts instead of someone dangerous and tantalizing like Kelly. No, instead Reese was perfectly content standing in an alley and kissing the life out of me and I wanted to wrap my legs around him and feel him closer to me everywhere.

“What about the girls with the numbers?” I asked him again between kisses because I couldn’t resist and he smiled into the kiss which made me love him even more.

“I put them in the trash before I took it out,” he told me, and then his arms were lifting me off the ground as if he knew what I was thinking, and I remember wondering briefly for a moment if his arms had gotten so strong from all the years he played guitar, his hands were calloused and rough against my bare skin of my back and someone was passing by on the street, coughing at the two interlocked teenagers tucked almost completely in the shadows.

“We should probably stop,” I told him again after my lips were swollen and my need fulfilled by his body and he grumbled an unhappy agreement by setting me down on my feet again. It took me a moment to get my bearings, my head dizzy from lack of oxygen, and my legs wobbly from being pressed up against him, my body shaking all over like I was cold when I was anything but.

“Do you want to go out?” He asked me after my stomach growled loudly in its chambers and I glanced up at Reese, lit dimly by the streetlamps, his eyes still shining in the dark, his hands fresh with the feel of my body and I gave myself over to him, nodding, slipping my hand into his and letting him lead me away from this life and into another one.