Skipping a Beat

Reese had another girl on his arm the next week at Luna’s. The past few days he had avoided talking to me, I had averted my eyes from him, cleaned all the cups in record time and served the customers with a smile. I didn’t understand how we came up with this agreement, and maybe we never really did, but instead it was just a happening of fate.

Whatever the reason, it had been days since the kiss in the back alley, the argument in Camelot and the destroyed goodbye outside in the dark streetlamp and I watched him as he played with his head tucked down and pretended that I wasn’t watching him, I listened to the music wind its way around my ankles and work its way upward until I forced it back down and kept it there with a sharp hand I saved for dire circumstances. And then the lights would go up and people would shuffle out late and we would clean around each other and I would pretend that I never felt his lips on mine or his hand on my hot skin and that he never whispered in my ear and I would be careful not to run into him or touch him. And he would be silent and keep his eyes away, he would take out the garbage and stay outside while I wiped down the tables and he would tromp back in and I would dive into the back room where Claire gave me disapproving looks and punished me with her own stony silence. It felt like it had been days since I last used my voice, as if when I tried to speak again it would crackle and die for lack of use.

And then there he was with a girl under his arm, and she was smiling like she had never been loved before and he was frowning but he was still touching her shoulder and cupping her chin when she wouldn’t look him in the eyes and she leaned into him like it was so easy. Two people leaning into each other, two hearts beating, as if this was all as simple as breathing or walking.

She was beautiful, really. Hair like honey over thing shoulders, long and swooping down to her back as if she was hiding secrets. Upturned nose and high cheek bones, wide green eyes and a small bow mouth that was now stretching and smiling up at Reese, skinny legs tottering on dangerously high heels and a shirt that fell to reveal a plane of flat stomach and a bellybutton ring.

He was glancing over her head though; I was cleaning the same cup that I had already cleaned and pretending that it was more interesting than him standing there with someone else. The people were waiting in the seats for him, some of them turned around in their seats to see him already, girls smiled and waved but he wasn’t looking at them. He whispered something into the girl’s ear that made her smile and her back arch and then she separated from him and glided down to find an empty seat, picking one near the back as if she was trying to blend into shadows and Reese stood there for another minute, and I could feel his eyes on the side of my face and on my forehead but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. There was the hushed murmur of the crowd for another minute, and then it was rising and there was the scraping of the stool that Reese used against the ground before he was collapsing into it and there was a shuffling as he picked up his guitar before I allowed my eyes to dart up to him to see a tucked head and strong arms under a worn T-Shirt and the people swooned into him and the hearts all melded into one as if this was all so easy. As if it was easy to open yourself up and let yourself fall into someone, hoping that they would be there ready to welcome you in.

Then he played and everyone fell into his spell the cast. The music trapped them under, pulled them closer, forced their hearts open more than they had been, and this happened every night. You could see the people falling in love with him, could see his guitar reach its arms over the crowd and hold them prisoner to the music and it was like everyone in the room was holding their breath while he did that, as if we were all anxiously awaiting to see what would happen next and it made so much sense why Claire would hire him the way she did, right off the street, the way she hired me. It made sense that she would want this boy in her shop, playing his songs and making everyone fall in love with him. People in love buy more coffee, it would seem, because they came up to me one by one and I served them all with a smile and hushed voice as if this was a sacred place.

“I’ll take a low-fat latte,” was said like a prayer, and I would nod and smile and wince when the machine turned on and wish that it had been quieter. And I would make their change and hand them their latte and they would walk away as if this was a communion, crossing their hands across their hearts and I would wait up at the altar for the next person wishing to be saved and Reese would make them all fall in love as if he was sent from heaven above and the angles around him fluttered and he glowed in the fantastic light and he was beautiful, more beautiful than any angel could have been, and he was real. Shining in the light, skin warm underneath the heat, his body was palpable; it was relevant, you could reach out and touch it if you wanted which made it seem that much more holy. For no one that beautiful should be allowed to be touched, no one like that should be on the same level as mere mortals.

And when the set was over he smiled at the crowd and they once again took their sweet time heading out the door, and the cold air would rush to great them with the sharp sting of reality as it often does when leaving a place of worship. Reese and his girl were still here, and she leaned into him and he explained something in a low voice that made her frown until he kissed her softly on the forehead and she shuffled outside. When the door swung shut behind her with a final click the silence was suddenly so loud and unbearable that I wanted to break another cup just for some relief from it. Pounding down on my ears, filling my insides with its hammering beat, until I realized that was just my heart in my chest, loud enough for it to be heard in my head, as if it could have been heard by anyone walking by on the street if they paused long enough by the coffee shop.

“She’s pretty,” I noted to him because it was too unbearable in my head and I wanted him to be miserable with me. I wanted him to pound in his head, I wanted his mouth to water at the thought of me and I couldn’t do that if I didn’t exercise my slowly dying voice.

“Yeah she’s cute,” he agreed, he took the garbage and walked to the back as he did every night to give me my few minutes of privacy where I wiped down the tables as if there was nothing more in the world I would rather do and he would come back in slowly and make his presence known. He wouldn’t lean into me or whisper in my ear, he wouldn’t take me out the back alley to kiss me breathless or invite me out again.

But he would be in the same room and breath the same air and the girl outside would be looking in at us and wondering what I was wondering about her. And I wondered what she would think of me, in my overlarge sweater, legs like a chicken, straight chocolate hair that looked like it had no life, upturned nose like I was a snob, wide pools of blue where dark eyes should have been and she would probably know that I was no threat to a girl with a bellybutton ring, and she would tell Reese that tonight when they had sex in her apartment that she would let him walk her too. And I would be at home with a whore mother and I would stay up all night worrying about what she was doing the next day and if I should lock my door in case he came in there for seconds and the next day I would avoid Reese and duck my head and I would grow up and move on and maybe meet someone new, someone I would let walk me home, someone I would take into my bed who would not be Reese, and I could be okay.

“Laura,” Reese was behind me. I wanted to whirl around then, maybe place my hands flat on his chest but instead I gripped the edge of the table and buckled my shoulders in a hunch.

“What?” I asked, my voice strangled when it was meant to sound light and I wanted to shoot myself in the foot then so he would have something else to focus on.

“She doesn’t kiss like you,” he told me, and I felt my knees go weak and my eyes roll back in my head as if he were already touching me and I planted my palms against my thighs so that they couldn’t move anywhere because the honey girl was probably out there on the street, straining to read our lips, leaning into the window, wondering if she should burst back in and claim that she forgot something, like her boyfriend.

“Okay,” I said for I had nothing else to say, no response that would be witty, no plea that would sound real, no words that came to mind except for that one, the one that comes to you when you need a million other words and they all escape you.

“She lets me walk her home though,” he said, as if he had carefully gone over these words in his mind, weighed each one of them before he flipped them off his tongue and me and I caught them with my ears and with my heart. There was still no words though, just feelings rushing over me, none of them capable of being spoken or explained, all just brilliant colors that flashed around in my head, battled each other for dominance, bloomed and grew inside me and stretched me out to the limits of my soul and then grew still, past where I ended, past where there was nothing but space and space and space that I could never occupy.

“I don’t know what you want me to do Reese,” I said, because that was the only truth that came to mind in the hurricane of colors, the only rational words I could use and string together and they happened to be the truest, the words that meant something, the words that could never explain how my head was whirling, but they would do and he would understand these words, he might even agree with them and then my heart could deflate in its chest and the space inside me could shrink again until it was small enough to carry with me.

“I want you to do whatever you want to do,” he sighed and looked both younger and older in that split second, like he was forming two separate people who wanted two different things.

“Well right now I’m not sure what that is, and I’m sorry Reese. I am. I am so sorry that I am not a good person, that I can’t make up my mind and that I’m a mess. But you have a girl waiting outside for you,” I said all in a rush, and I felt all the words on my skin and in my brain and they hurt to say but they were the absolute truth. And I owed him that.

“Do you know what it’s like Laura?” He said, stacked his last chair and crosses his arms, nostrils flaring like he was suddenly angry at me or himself. “I’ve been seeing all these other girls that are not you and I’ve been kissing other girls that are not you. I’ve been trying so hard to focus on the fact that they’re hot as hell, and that they like me back in an obvious way. But that girl out there? She stumbles over her words constantly, and she presses herself up against me too often and her mouth tastes like cherry instead of coffee and strawberries, and as hard as I might try, as hard as that is, she is not you Laura. And I guess that’s all it comes down to.” Reese leaned against a table, pressed his weight into the side so that I thought it might topple over under his weight. But he wasn’t paying attention to the teetering table, or the eyes I saw in the back of my head, but he was paying attention to me, where I was trying to not show that my hands were shaking and that my knees wanted to buckle. And all those words he said were ringing around y head like that song of his and they were beautiful and scary. But then most frightening things can be beautiful in a hopeless sort of way, and I did feel hopeless, so it made sense that I was both beautiful and scary.

“Reese,” I said, and then repeated it. The smallest litany, his name, just his name on my lips and his face was changing and melting and he was forming one person again with one singular goal, and the way he was looking back at me made me nervous.

“I’m not asking for the world Laura,” he said, and his face became serious in that second, so that I was forced to actually listen to the words instead of his voice behind them. “I’m just asking for you to try.”

I looked at his arms, the muscles moving that made the beautiful movement, his lips which I knew felt soft and warm under mine, his eyes that were piercing and unexpectedly timid. I looked at all of him, leaning and lazy and it made me want so bad to be the girl he wanted me to be, and that he wanted me to be that too, and I was so caught up in words and songs and him that I nodded. “I’ll try, I swear I can try.”

He smiled a little, as if this action was me granting him eternal life and all the money world in one swipe, and he moved closer, and the eyes on my neck became more pressing, more urgent, like I could feel the emotions behind what she was seeing, as if I could see what she was seeing through her eyes, and it did not look good.

“I think your girlfriend is waiting for you,” I said, and grinned apologetically before jerking over my shoulder with my thumb. Reese, as though a spell was broken, straightened up and halted his advancement towards me, glanced over my shoulder at something I didn’t dare turn around to witness and winced a little. “It would appear as if you are correct.”

“I often am,” I said, and tried a real smile, and it was easier than it had been in weeks before, like I had taken off a heavy coat of makeup. “But you should probably go walk her home.”

“You’re probably right,” he winced again and moved forward to place a hand at my elbow. “Tomorrow though, promise me tomorrow.”

“I couldn’t possibly promise you an entire tomorrow,” I sighed and moved away from his hand even though it made me painfully aware of the cold air inside Luna’s.

“Then try at least for me. Try tomorrow,” he whispered and the way he whispered made me want to forget about the girl outside the glass and kiss those thin lips and touch his bare arms and soak up everything that was wonderful about him like a sponge.

“I’ll try,” I said, moved out of the way and walked towards the counter, and by the time I mustered up enough courage to turn around he was walking out the door and she was greeting him with an enthusiastic kiss that made me sad in some private, deep-down part that I didn’t like to share or become involved with.

And he pulled away and took her hand and took her to her home, and I stood and wiped down the already clean table, pretending that nothing hurt at all, not even in the deep-down private parts of me. At home that night though, curled up in my bed with my mother out doing something I would much rather not be aware of, I let myself feel the hurt.

And it felt like waking up.