Skipping a Beat

Reese was beautiful in the night. It wasn’t as if I would have admitted this to myself at the time that it became apparent, but in honestly, he was truly breathtaking during the late hours of the day. The moon casting faint light on his face, the lights from all the buildings lighting up the rest of his body, his lazy pace finally fitting in with those around us who were tired. He smiled softly and in the dark it looked even more attractive, the white of his teeth piercing the darkness like some sort of beacon.

It was almost illogical that someone be as beautiful as Reese was. Maybe in the end he wasn’t as beautiful as I have made him out to be, but that the memories I have of him, and the time between has changed it so that I only see his beauty. And maybe if you were to see him today in that same city with that same lazy walk you would not think he was as beautiful as I have told you. But this is my story to tell you, and in my story, this was how beautiful Reese was, and is, to me.

Even New York seemed too quiet and bland compared to the place we had just come from. The one filled with people who had more piercings than I had ever seen, who cussed like sailors and who looked at you as if you were completely naked before their eyes, as if they could see everything you thought about yourself and that they accepted you all the same. To me, it had made sense that Reese would be with these people. There was no one else in the world I could imagine him being friends with, for they all seemed too boring in comparison, paling against all that he was, and these people were too colorful to pale, even around Reese.

“I’m really sorry if my friends scared you,” Reese said after a moment of silence, a police car whizzed by with its sirens on then, piercing the night with its screams and my mind raced to fill in the blanks before it, and where it was going and why, what its fate would be. It was a game that my mother had taught me when I was younger, one that I presumed she would play as she waiting at the curb in her heels for a taker in the night who would pay her for her body.

“I’ve seen worse,” I lied, keeping my face straight ahead so he couldn’t call my bluff. Just the sight of them had been enough to send me into a frightened frenzy, but the way they looked at you was by far the worse, the kind that made you ashamed of all your secrets and sins and proud of them at the same time. They were a walking contradiction that group as I would learn over time, even if they did eventually stop scaring me, they never ceased to amaze me in that strange way that they were capable of. There had been times where I had actually been convinced that they could read minds, or at least mine, even though I knew that too be stupid.

“You are the worst liar that I’ve ever met, just so you’re aware,” Reese said, his voice lighter than usual, and a laugh followed after it, this one softer than I had heard earlier that night in the alley, but still it peeled like bells and made you want to just stand still and listen to it for a while, like everything else about him, he had a beautiful laugh.

“How do you know I’m not telling the truth and that I’m just the worst truth-teller ever,” I said, scrapping my feet against the rough concrete sidewalk, wondering what on earth I was doing here this late at night with a boy I barely knew who hung out with dangerous people.

And let me be honest when I tell you at this point there was no way that I loved Reese Munn. We were just barely friends in my mind, and there were no romantic thoughts that ran through it, even for a second. I did not stay with him because I found him attractive, or I wondered what his lips would feel like under mine, I stayed with him because he walked slowly and laughed rarely and had the strangest colored eyes I had ever seen. He was quirky and strange but he had good intentions so far, even if he did have that nagging guitar around his neck. I stayed with Reese Munn simply because Reese Munn is the type of person that you wanted to be around, infectious and interesting, it was easy to get trapped under his gaze and his words.

“I know you’re not telling the truth because they scare everyone,” Reese said, and this is when I knew he was talking about other girls of course, for he must have been. The way both Kelly and Freddie had said it made it seem like Reese was often one to have a girl under his arm.

“I didn’t think they were that bad,” I said, and this was slightly honest, for there had been some sort of redeeming quality about them. The way they always laughed at the same time and had smiles in their eyes, they were the people your mother warned you about if she cared enough to warn you, the kind of people you would see in movies or read about in books, and they were completely and utterly fascinating. It made up for the fact I had been just about ready to pass out in their presence.

“Of course they’re not that bad, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not scary,” Reese said, looking down at me out of the corner of his eye as he abruptly stopped walking and turned sharply to his right and walked into the door there, that as far as I could tell was connected to a restaurant that for some reason as still open at this ungodly hour.

It took me a moment to figure out where he went and when I did I quickly scurried after him and through the door that was about to shut and slid into the restaurant with its darkly painted walls. The one thing that stood out most about the décor was that there was an owl on almost every surface imaginable in the room. On the hostess stand, the walls, the floors, the ceiling, tables and chairs and doorways, almost everything was donned with an owl that looked at you with big eyes, paintings or carvings, lamps and plates and carpets. There was even a cage in the back of the room that was empty, but as far as I was concerned there could have very well been a living owl in it at one point in existence.

“It’s called the Night Owl, if you didn’t already figure that out,” Reese said to me as we slipped into a table a hostess had lead us too, in the corner, that looked out the window and onto the slightly less crowded streets. There was more people in the restaurant too, seated sparsely throughout all with their heads bent together in hushed conversation.

“Why is it called that?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes from staring at all the other eyes staring at me, the owl eyes that is.

“It’s only open at night,” he said, like it was strange that I hadn’t already figured this out. I guess it made sense in a way, but it was hard to think with all the eyes on you at every second. And maybe, it made sense that Reese would pick a place like this to be. All the eyes on him sort of like a crowd, the kind he was used to when he would slip that guitar off of his shoulder and let his fingers strum a beautiful melody.

“How long have you been playing?” I wondered out loud. In my mind, I had never even considered the fact that at one point Reese would have actually have had to learn to play the guitar, because it seemed almost as if talents like his were not to be learned but to be acquired over the years, like something that gradually comes to you or something you just always seem to have known.

“Since I was ten,” Reese said, shrugging his shoulders simply.

“And how old are you?” I shot back, because for all I knew he could have been an extremely young looking thirty-year-old.

“Nineteen,” He answered, “You?”

“Seventeen,” I said back, and for a moment I actually faltered like I wasn’t sure if this was the right answer or not, the way simple questions can sometimes make you do.

“Can you play an instrument?” He asked his eyebrows quirking up in slightly at this question, like he assumed I was extremely musically talented or interesting in the slightest.

I almost laughed but held it back by quickly lifting my glass of water to my lips and taking the smallest of sips. “When I was in seventh grade I played the flute for a week, but I couldn’t figure out how to hold it so I quit,” my lips curved up into a smile.

Reese smiled back, his eyes flickering amusement and he leaned forward on the table on his elbows just as a perky brunette waitress came to take our order for drinks and Reese ordered a beer and she didn’t even bother to card him but wrote down his order willingly and I faltered for a moment before stammering and quickly asking for a soda before she scurried away back to the kitchen.

“How long have you been working at Luna’s?” Reese asked, his feet knocking into mine under the table and I pulled them away quickly and tucked them under my lap. He smirked when that happened, watching as I turned the slightest shade of pink and scurried to move away from him, the owls were a silent audience to this exchange.

“Two years,” I finally answered after the short pause in conversation.

“That’s a long time,” Reese noted with a slight widening of his eyes. They were so dark all the time, even when light was on them, the darkest green I’ve ever seen.

“Well don’t have any reason to leave,” I said in a level voice, picking at the tablecloth with my finger nails, covered with owls, no less.

“Don’t you ever get bored doing the same thing every day?” Reese said, shifting again in his seat so that he was even closer and his feet withdrew from my space but I made no move to reclaim my territory.

“No,” I said, “What else would I do with my time?” I asked, trying to figure out where he was coming from and his eyes were on mine and they were so beautiful it almost hurt.

“Nothing maybe,” Reese said, his shoulders rising and falling as he sighed, “I mean, we’re young, we don’t have to do anything with our time, it’s the beauty of life.”

“I like working at Luna’s,” I said, feeling slightly defensive at his questions and tones and eyes. All of them dark on me, all of them slightly undermining, bringing to question everything I did with my life, it seemed, and challenging me.

“Why?” He asked, and he made a face like he would have scratched his head but he didn’t.

“Because I do,” I said, and now it was my turn to shrug and run a finger around the rim of my water glass as the waitress reappeared with our drinks and Reese immediately reaching to take a big gulp from his glass of amber liquid. We ordered our food and I gingerly sipped my soda, feeling it bubble in my mouth and my nose before I swallowed it and looked up to where Reese was still looking at me. But then again, it must have been a better option than the owls surrounding us.

“You’re the only teenager who likes working.” Reese said, his brow furrowing together like he was looking at a puzzle or a somewhat brilliant painting that you spent hours trying to figure out before you realize it’s just paint splattered on a canvas.

“Is there something wrong with that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him, my mouth turning down in the smallest of frowns and I found it impossible to hold with Reese still looking at me with his dark, dark eyes.

“Well—no,” he said after a moment, his smile falling slightly and his gaze dropping to the tabletop.

“Then who cares?” I said, taking another sip of my drink, as I scrambled in my mind for something else to say to him.

“Do these owls scare you just as much as they scare me?” I asked him once I set down my drink, for it was the first thing that happened to wander into my mind, and my mouth had blurted it out before I could make sure it was okay to say and I felt like an idiot when Reese seemed to pause mid-sip and give me the strangest of looks with the half of his face that I could see.

It took a moment for him to set down his glass and swallow his beer and when he did it took yet another moment for him to answer me, as if he was carefully going over his answer in his head. “I never really noticed them too much.”

“How can you not notice them? They stare at you,” I said, glancing around quickly and dozens of eyes stared back at me.

“I guess it just doesn’t bother me,” he frowned at me like I was just the slightest bit crazy, and I wondered for a moment if I could possibly be.

“Why do they scare you?” he asked, using the back of his sleeve to wipe his face off and it would have made me cringe if it was anyone else, but on Reese it just looked normal, something that you would expect from him, for he had no time to waste with napkins.

“They make me uncomfortable,” I said, leaning back in my seat as the waitress set our meals in front of us and they steamed up into the air, twisting and dancing as it began to disappear far above our heads. Reese tilted his head up to watch it, and I looked at him when his eyes were away from me, his neck stretched out as his head bent back, his shoulders still slumped as always, his arms long on the table in front of him, his jacket falling open and his T-shirt wrinkled with a day of wear.

“Why?” he asked me, a moment had passed and his head bent back down so that his gaze was level with mine, and the steam shimmered between us and made everything just slightly shimmery glowing. I wondered for the briefest of moments, if it made me look glowing behind it, as it did to Reese. I wondered if it would make me look unnatural and beautiful. My hair was short then I remember because Reese loved it short, and I was wearing an old vintage jacket that my friend from school had shoplifted and then decided she didn’t want, it was brown soft leather that felt like butter, but the sleeves were a little long and hung over my fingertips. I wore that jacket almost every day for three years until it finally almost fell apart at the seams. My makeup had surely worn off after a long day, and my eyes were probably half-lidded and sleepy, and not anything like his.

“I don’t know,” I said again, “I just don’t like it.”

“We can leave,” he said, trailing off slowly and looking more or less at a loss for words and my embarrassment rose and trailed up my neck and to my face and I ducked my head quickly.

“No, no it’s fine, I mean I guess I don’t really care,” I said, feeling stupid as I began to pick on my cooling food, it was some sort of burger with enough bacon and cheese to give a grown man a heart attack and it took me almost a minute to figure out how to even pick it up without the contents falling out and all over my plate. It occurred to me that maybe I should have picked something slightly less messy to eat in front of him, but my stomach had been growling and it had sounded so good on the menu that I couldn’t resist ordering it.

“You really are very strange Laura,” Reese said, smiling as he picked up his sandwich and took a huge bite out of it, getting mayo on the corner of his lip and licking it off seconds later. I noticed that he chewed with his mouth closed, which I had almost not expected, for it would make more sense for him to eat like every other man that seemed to frequent Luna’s.

“Maybe you’re just the strange one,” I suggested after I swallowed a bite of my food, and the ketchup had gotten on my chin and I quickly rushed to wipe it off before I looked like some sort of slob in front of Reese.

He chuckled, “Fair enough,” and took another huge bite out of his dinner, chugging another sip of his drink before he had even finished swallowing and it made me wonder if this was the first meal that he’d had in weeks.

“I’ve never really met anyone like you,” I confessed to him as he sat there chugging his beer and I let my eyes cast downward onto the table so that he couldn’t see them or my face at the moment. I figured that if he was going to sit there and call me strange, then I should at least bring to attention the fact that Reese Munn was by far the most different human being I had ever met.

He looked at me after he finished drinking and it occurred to me that he was waiting for me to go on instead of answering and I quickly tried to come up with more to add to my last sentence before I looked stupid, “You are the only person I’ve ever met who can play guitar so well, you don’t care what anyone else is thinking of you, you say whatever you goddamn please, and you eat like a pig,” I said, censoring my list in my mind so that I didn’t completely embarrass myself.

“I eat like a pig?” Reese said, out of all the things that he could have said in reaction to that, and it made my mouth quirk up into a grin as I fought back a laugh.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “You really do.”

“Well you are the first person to ever say this to me,” he said, looking down at his hands still wrapped around his sandwich and slowly set it down on the plate in front of him. He stared at it for a moment, as it were a traitor or some sort and then looked up at me again, this time with a grin on his face.

“Well you’re the oldest teenager that I’ve ever met. And on top of that, you’re boring,” he told me, his eyes boring straight into mine and that smile still on his lips.

I scoffed and pulled back slightly, my eyes narrowing even as a smile settled on my lips, “Hey, it wasn’t like I insulted you or anything, I was just telling you the truth!”

He grinned wickedly at me, and then laughed once, this one louder than the last, “I was too.”

“Screw you bastard,” I said before I could think about it and then my hands covered my mouth as it fell into an ‘O’ of surprise and now Reese was really laughing, loud enough for a couple a few tables over to glance curiously over their shoulders at us.

“Well then be honest, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done,” he said tauntingly, as if he already knew that he had one but was just humoring me.

I thought this over for a moment, and realized that what Reese had said was mostly definitely the truth. Every instance in my life was controlled and careful, actions were thought over before they were put into motions, my words were filtered by my brain most of the time and I never did anything anyone would consider crazy. And even though this should have struck me as something sad, instead I was rather proud of it, and maybe wrongfully so. But in my mind, there had never been any danger; there had never been any hurt or pain that I didn’t stop before it happened. There had never been any risks surely, but then there had never been any heartbreak either. Except of course, when my father left, but that had been beyond my control, and the guitar knows strange ways to seduce your heart.

“The craziest thing I have ever done, Reese Munn, is agreeing to go out with you tonight,” I said, smirking slightly as I met his eyes.

He was quiet for moment, and then he picked up his sandwich again, and before he took a bite he said to me, “I guess that does make you pretty crazy.”