Two Hundred and Thirty

If there was anything to say between us, I wouldn’t have wanted either of us to say it because the silence was too sweet to be broken. In the days after the show where I ruined everything, silence was a common occurrence in my home and amongst the people I knew, yet that silence left a fowl taste in my mouth.

The roads were pretty much dead, the occasional car slipping past us on the oncoming side. I wondered what she was so fascinated in outside the window as we passed houses and open spaces of land. But then I remembered back to when I was younger and myself and my brothers sat in the backseat as our parents took turns in driving to wherever we were going. There was always that calming knowledge that you’re passing everything by without a care, just thinking about whatever you wanted. And I changed my mind in asking her what she was looking at or interrupting her to start conversation.

Ryan Adams launched into the next track and it was as if an electric current shot through Rae’s bones and brought her to life. She snapped her head to me, and I dragged my eyes off the road to meet their wide stare. Excitement oozed through her skin and the whiteness of her smile lit up her face.

“I love this one!” She cried, bobbing her head over enthusiastically to the music.

She began humming the intro and a sudden confidence erupted within me.

I let out a light laugh before bursting into the intro with a singing voice that wasn’t mine. “Did I slip? I know I stumbled.”

She joined in, “Did I trip? Cause I know I fell.” Her laughter echoing in the words she sang.

We carried on, letting the other sing alone to the lyrics we didn’t know and screeching the high notes before breaking down into laughter. Both our mouths almost splitting from the aching, tight grins on our faces as we sang. There was one particular note that she knew she shouldn’t attempt so left it for me to howl. She crippled over, clutching her stomach and flinging herself into a fit of hysterical laughter. Not the light chuckles we’d shared or the ones we’d forced out from the pits of our stomachs, but one that mirrored that of a young child. The kind of laugh that makes you laugh too, but also makes you feel slightly proud that you created it.

I could feel a ball of heat slowly rising in my chest as we carried on, I’d only ever felt this whenever I did shows… well, when everything was okay. It’s like a mixture of excitement and pure happiness, just fighting inside you to the point where you have no control.

Partially, it scared me. Not so much that I noticed at first, but looking back, the fact that she made me feel like that was terrifying.

I flung my head back and screeched the last high note, igniting her laughter once more before the music faded out into the next song. I glanced over to her, to see her whipping a tear from her eye and smiling at me like I’d just told her the greatest news possible.

“I just nearly threw up.” She chuckled, shaking her head and unlatching her eyes from mine.

I returned my attention to the road ahead. “I think we’d get arrested for what we just did to that song.” I laughed.

“Definitely.” She sighed, letting the chaos of the past few minutes bleed into the air. “You know, I don’t need to go to the store anymore.”

My brow pulled tight and I glanced to her quickly and then back at the road. “What, why?”

She puffed out air from her lips and looked at me like she was embarrassed. “Whenever I had a shit day, my brother would make me this special coffee, with ice cream and chocolate and vodka. So I was gonna make us some, but I think we’re alright now.”

All previous embarrassment fell from her face and she looked at me like she was relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t as pissed as I was before. The blue of her eyes wasn’t as vibrant as it was in the day, but deep and consuming, like the more she looked at me, the more she soaked into my skin. I looked at her for too long, to the point where I had to swerve the wheel quickly when I drew my attention back at the road.

I stared ahead.

I had intentions of going home and drinking myself into next week and she thought that we both needed some twisted drown-your-sorrows coffees to make us feel better. And for so long, I’d thought that that was the only thing that truly did ease the pain and maybe so did she. But in that second of eye contact, we both discovered that all we needed was the right company.

There was no going back now, I couldn’t ever recover from a shit day with alcohol again. Maybe it would help, but sitting here right now, I was completely alright, no pain, no anger, no bitterness. And that was something that only this could give me. I’d always known that alcohol could only help so much, so I started accepting the offers of cheap girls in bars. All along I’d known that it was company that I needed, just not in the same form I’d just had with Rae. The fact that these women threw themselves at me so willingly, wanting me like no one else did these days, it did make me feel better. I could drift into these women’s lives so intimately, but not so greatly that I’d do any real damage like I had to my family and friends. To be wanted. To be in the life of another but at no risk of ruining it all, that’s the comfort that sex with these women gave me. And then the alcohol made me forget about it all after.

Neither of these things would ever have a scratch on singing ridiculously whilst driving late at night… with someone who’s laughter had the ability to knock down buildings.

I snapped myself back into the situation, regaining my grip on the wheel and wondered what she’d just been thinking about whilst I was thinking myself.

“I’m just starting to notice how much of this place I’ve been missing.” She sighed, staring out the window.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been here for two years and all I’ve really seen is the walls of my apartment and wherever Lucy’s taken me- which is usually bars and people’s houses.” She laughed a little.

“So you’ve never been hiking or walking-“

“No, never.” Her confession nearly made me crash the truck.

“Wow.” I said. “You should come out with us sometime… we do that kind of stuff, like going to the lake and walking through the parks.”

She turned to look at me but I chose not to meet her this time.

“You know, that was partly the reason I came out here...” Her head turned away from me once again. “I guess I forgot.”

I tried to understand what she meant, or what the thought process was in her head, but I just couldn’t. I took it that I was never meant to understand.

“I’ll talk to Jared tomorrow, we’ll sort something.” I said.

She shuffled in her seat, moving one of her knees up to her chest and stared at me like i was about to tell her a story. “What’s the best place you’ve been to?”

I glanced to her and couldn’t help but smile. “I have to say my personal favourite is the lake we go to in the summer-“

“Why?” She really did remind me of a child. “What’s so good about it?”

“I don’t know. It’s just so beautiful… it makes you think. I’m not sure what makes something beautiful like that, I just know that it is.” I turned to look at her. “And I like that.”

She nodded, not because she understood, but because she accepted what I was saying like it was a fact of life.

“You’ll love it.” I added.

“I don’t want to intrude though, I mean, it’s something you do with your friends and-“

“Rae,” I shook my head. “I’ll let you know the details.”

I could feel her eyes burning into my face, so much so that I don’t think she realized that I’d stopped the truck and we were outside our complex. She didn’t flinch, not even when I killed the engine and turned to face her.

I wished that I could just turn it back on and we could go back to how things were going. The complete silence that fell with the turning off of the radio made all the tension from the restaurant car park flood back in.

She blinked delicately, but never stopped staring, like she was trying hard to figure something out.

“What?” I chuckled.

She shook her head, her brow strained. “I’ll see you soon, John.”

And with a gentle smile, she let herself out of the truck and trotted into the building. Leaving me in what felt like a wreckage of an explosion. The smoke simmering off the hot metal and the air clogged with ash. I hadn’t truly realised how fast my heart was beating during that car journey or how short my breaths where, until she’d gone. And now, it was as if someone had come along and released me from the iron clasp that had been tightly hugging my ribs.

After a few deep breaths, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and text Jared;

How about we go down to the lake this weekend?

He replied almost instantly;

I'll round up the troops!