You Know, Lately I've Been Thinking...
Damn This Girl
Lately all I can think about is this girl that I know, and everything that comes with knowing her. When I turn off the light before I go to bed, I have a split second of thinking ‘If I were her, I’d have turned the on the light on my phone, because she is afraid of the dark,’ or when I run her favorite trail, I can hear her breathing alongside me, taunting me when I slow up. If I ever eat pancakes for breakfast I think about that time we threw chocolate chips in the batter and ate and ate until we lolled around on the floor like bloated puffer fish.
I remember her mouth on mine too, but those aren’t memories. Those are dreams, and she has the starring role. In my mind, we have an elaborate love story, but in reality, she has a steady boyfriend, and she thinks the sun shines out his ass. So I make do with what I do have.
Today I am spread-eagled on my sitting room floor, and her head is on my stomach. It growls hungrily and she laughs, a peal of happiness that sounds better than any music I could write. “Tay,” she says. “I think your belly wants some food.”
Hers growls in response and she laughs again. “Your belly wants food too, Gracie,” I laugh and she smiles brilliantly, wiggling round on the floor until she’s sitting again, and then she stands.
“Lets make pancakes!” she exclaims, and my mind goes again to that day we ate too many and she fell asleep curled into me, and I imagined for a second that Jayden didn’t exist.
If she sees the darkness cross my face, she thinks nothing of it, and she skips into my kitchen as if she lives here. When you have known someone for fifteen years, their home feels like your home.
She is getting things out of the pantry when her phone chimes, and my heart sinks. It is Jayden’s message tone, and she will drop everything to be with him. Her eyes are so bright and her smile is so wide that I sigh impatiently and say, “Just go,” when she looks at me beseechingly. She squeals happily, presses a chaste kiss to my cheek, and she is gone.
I am reeling in her wake.
It is the next day, and I am making nachos in my kitchen when my phone rings with Gracie’s tone. I try not to leap on it, and answer it in a normal voice. “Taylor York’s phone. This is his secretary, can I take a message?” I say in a sassy voice, but Gracie doesn’t laugh. The absence of that sunny sound on the other end of the line makes my heart drop. Something is wrong.
“Taylor, I need you to come and get me,” Gracie is hysterical, and I can barely make out her words. “When you get here don’t ask questions, just get me out of here.”
In a split second, I am in my car, disregarding road rules and sitting at traffic lights kneading the steering wheel with white knuckles. My heart is racing, I am sweating, and my thoughts are racing at a mile a minute. Stupid thoughts like ‘axe murderer’ and ‘house fire’ spring to mind, and I can do nothing to quell them.
When I get to Gracie’s house across town, her front door gapes wide open and her beloved planter boxes are smashed on the front stoop. I grab the heaviest thing I can find in my car, a tire iron, and warily make my way to the front door.
“Gracie, sweetie?” I call out tentatively, and make my way over the threshold. Things are broken everywhere and there is blood on the carpet. My heart is in my mouth and I think I could cry. The house appears to be empty until I make my way upstairs, where I can hear a strange, repetitive noise emanating from the bathroom in Gracie’s ensuite.
Her house looks like a bomb has gone off, and her room appears to be ground zero. The mattress has been flung from the bed, the sheets twisted around each other. “Gracie?” I call, terrified, and look into the bathroom.
And there she stands, my girl, with bruises and blood all over her perfect self, scrubbing and scrubbing at her skin, and she is crying hopelessly, and then she sees me and as I drop the tire iron she throws herself into my arms and I carry her out of her broken home, shutting the door behind me.
I hold her close as she cries, her thin frame wracked with sobs, my heart breaking with hers. I will never forget the image of her scrubbing away the blood until her skin was raw, trying to scrub away the bruises that won’t leave, my girl, her light gone out.
Through incoherency and sobs, I make out that she is saying she is worthless, that things would be different if she were a better girlfriend to Jayden. The sound of my heart cracking in two is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. “He’s worthless, baby girl,” I mumble into her forehead, slick with sweat and clammy. She’s still the most beautiful girl around. I say sweet things to her until she is breathing at a somewhat normal pace, until the tears have all but stopped.
Her eyes are still watery as she pulls away, looks around the room. She grabs my guitar and shoves it into my hands. “Sing me a song, Tay. Make it all better,” she pleads, and it is impossible to say no. My choice needs no thought.
“If I die young, bury me in satin. Lay me down on a bed of roses. Sink me in the river at dawn, send me away with the words of a love song.” It is her favorite, and I learnt it just for her. I play it in full, and with each verse, her breathing slows. She wipes her eyes on the sleeves of my shirt that I have leant her and lies back against my legs.
Later, as she’s lying top and tail next to me in the dark as the storm rages outside, I wake from a fitful doze and hear her mumbling, singing off-key to herself, “Lord, make me a rainbow. I’ll shine down on my mother. She’ll know I’m safe with you when she stands under my colors, oh.”
And I sit up with renewed vigor, and I lick my lips nervously, and she gasps a little into the dark room because I startled her, she thought I was asleep. “Gracie Jean,” I rasp, and she sits up too, because to us, full names mean something serious is going to be said.
“Yeah, Taylor Benjamin?” She asks tremulously. And I find myself saying all the things I tried not to say to her.
“You are special.” I begin, and she huffs out her disagreement. “Hear me out. You are special. You’re wonderful. You have these dimples unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen, and when you smile your eyes smile, and I smile and you’re scared of the dark, and you don’t like olives on your pizza and when you’re happy you are electric.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I can hear her breath shaking in her throat as she tries not to breathe too loudly. “Jayden Ames is the stupidest man I have ever met. To break something so perfect is blasphemous, and if I ever see him again, I’m going to break his face. That’s a promise.” She knows I mean it. I do not like confrontation and anger, but for my girl, I would do anything. She’s moved closer to me, and I am daring to hope.
“You have a crease in your forehead,” I move closer too with every sentence. “You put extra milk in your chocolate milk because it’s too strong otherwise. You run five miles a day. You named your cat Malfoy because when you were fifteen, you loved Tom Felton more than life. You ate so many chocolate chip pancakes that one time that you passed out on my floor with me. Without a doubt, it was the best night of my life, because I got to be close to you. And…”
I don’t remember what I was going to say, because her small body slams into mine with such force that I hit the wall behind me, and suddenly the taste of her mouth isn’t just a dream anymore, because she is kissing me so completely that I cannot think straight. Her skin is salty with tears, but I kiss her eyelids and her forehead and her nose, because I swore to myself that one day I would. Her tiny hands grip my hair and pull and its bliss because I never thought I should be so lucky. I don’t care when her teeth scrape against mine, because they are her teeth, and her mouth tastes like chicken chips, and I hate chicken chips, but I’m so crazy for her that her mouth on mine is all that matters.
And when she pulls away, she says the one thing that I have imagined her saying, with feeling, every day for fifteen years. Her breathing is erratic and her lips are swollen and she’s gripping my face tightly, her forehead pressed to mine and my back hard against the wall as she breathes, “I love you, Taylor York.”
I remember her mouth on mine too, but those aren’t memories. Those are dreams, and she has the starring role. In my mind, we have an elaborate love story, but in reality, she has a steady boyfriend, and she thinks the sun shines out his ass. So I make do with what I do have.
Today I am spread-eagled on my sitting room floor, and her head is on my stomach. It growls hungrily and she laughs, a peal of happiness that sounds better than any music I could write. “Tay,” she says. “I think your belly wants some food.”
Hers growls in response and she laughs again. “Your belly wants food too, Gracie,” I laugh and she smiles brilliantly, wiggling round on the floor until she’s sitting again, and then she stands.
“Lets make pancakes!” she exclaims, and my mind goes again to that day we ate too many and she fell asleep curled into me, and I imagined for a second that Jayden didn’t exist.
If she sees the darkness cross my face, she thinks nothing of it, and she skips into my kitchen as if she lives here. When you have known someone for fifteen years, their home feels like your home.
She is getting things out of the pantry when her phone chimes, and my heart sinks. It is Jayden’s message tone, and she will drop everything to be with him. Her eyes are so bright and her smile is so wide that I sigh impatiently and say, “Just go,” when she looks at me beseechingly. She squeals happily, presses a chaste kiss to my cheek, and she is gone.
I am reeling in her wake.
It is the next day, and I am making nachos in my kitchen when my phone rings with Gracie’s tone. I try not to leap on it, and answer it in a normal voice. “Taylor York’s phone. This is his secretary, can I take a message?” I say in a sassy voice, but Gracie doesn’t laugh. The absence of that sunny sound on the other end of the line makes my heart drop. Something is wrong.
“Taylor, I need you to come and get me,” Gracie is hysterical, and I can barely make out her words. “When you get here don’t ask questions, just get me out of here.”
In a split second, I am in my car, disregarding road rules and sitting at traffic lights kneading the steering wheel with white knuckles. My heart is racing, I am sweating, and my thoughts are racing at a mile a minute. Stupid thoughts like ‘axe murderer’ and ‘house fire’ spring to mind, and I can do nothing to quell them.
When I get to Gracie’s house across town, her front door gapes wide open and her beloved planter boxes are smashed on the front stoop. I grab the heaviest thing I can find in my car, a tire iron, and warily make my way to the front door.
“Gracie, sweetie?” I call out tentatively, and make my way over the threshold. Things are broken everywhere and there is blood on the carpet. My heart is in my mouth and I think I could cry. The house appears to be empty until I make my way upstairs, where I can hear a strange, repetitive noise emanating from the bathroom in Gracie’s ensuite.
Her house looks like a bomb has gone off, and her room appears to be ground zero. The mattress has been flung from the bed, the sheets twisted around each other. “Gracie?” I call, terrified, and look into the bathroom.
And there she stands, my girl, with bruises and blood all over her perfect self, scrubbing and scrubbing at her skin, and she is crying hopelessly, and then she sees me and as I drop the tire iron she throws herself into my arms and I carry her out of her broken home, shutting the door behind me.
I hold her close as she cries, her thin frame wracked with sobs, my heart breaking with hers. I will never forget the image of her scrubbing away the blood until her skin was raw, trying to scrub away the bruises that won’t leave, my girl, her light gone out.
Through incoherency and sobs, I make out that she is saying she is worthless, that things would be different if she were a better girlfriend to Jayden. The sound of my heart cracking in two is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. “He’s worthless, baby girl,” I mumble into her forehead, slick with sweat and clammy. She’s still the most beautiful girl around. I say sweet things to her until she is breathing at a somewhat normal pace, until the tears have all but stopped.
Her eyes are still watery as she pulls away, looks around the room. She grabs my guitar and shoves it into my hands. “Sing me a song, Tay. Make it all better,” she pleads, and it is impossible to say no. My choice needs no thought.
“If I die young, bury me in satin. Lay me down on a bed of roses. Sink me in the river at dawn, send me away with the words of a love song.” It is her favorite, and I learnt it just for her. I play it in full, and with each verse, her breathing slows. She wipes her eyes on the sleeves of my shirt that I have leant her and lies back against my legs.
Later, as she’s lying top and tail next to me in the dark as the storm rages outside, I wake from a fitful doze and hear her mumbling, singing off-key to herself, “Lord, make me a rainbow. I’ll shine down on my mother. She’ll know I’m safe with you when she stands under my colors, oh.”
And I sit up with renewed vigor, and I lick my lips nervously, and she gasps a little into the dark room because I startled her, she thought I was asleep. “Gracie Jean,” I rasp, and she sits up too, because to us, full names mean something serious is going to be said.
“Yeah, Taylor Benjamin?” She asks tremulously. And I find myself saying all the things I tried not to say to her.
“You are special.” I begin, and she huffs out her disagreement. “Hear me out. You are special. You’re wonderful. You have these dimples unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen, and when you smile your eyes smile, and I smile and you’re scared of the dark, and you don’t like olives on your pizza and when you’re happy you are electric.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I can hear her breath shaking in her throat as she tries not to breathe too loudly. “Jayden Ames is the stupidest man I have ever met. To break something so perfect is blasphemous, and if I ever see him again, I’m going to break his face. That’s a promise.” She knows I mean it. I do not like confrontation and anger, but for my girl, I would do anything. She’s moved closer to me, and I am daring to hope.
“You have a crease in your forehead,” I move closer too with every sentence. “You put extra milk in your chocolate milk because it’s too strong otherwise. You run five miles a day. You named your cat Malfoy because when you were fifteen, you loved Tom Felton more than life. You ate so many chocolate chip pancakes that one time that you passed out on my floor with me. Without a doubt, it was the best night of my life, because I got to be close to you. And…”
I don’t remember what I was going to say, because her small body slams into mine with such force that I hit the wall behind me, and suddenly the taste of her mouth isn’t just a dream anymore, because she is kissing me so completely that I cannot think straight. Her skin is salty with tears, but I kiss her eyelids and her forehead and her nose, because I swore to myself that one day I would. Her tiny hands grip my hair and pull and its bliss because I never thought I should be so lucky. I don’t care when her teeth scrape against mine, because they are her teeth, and her mouth tastes like chicken chips, and I hate chicken chips, but I’m so crazy for her that her mouth on mine is all that matters.
And when she pulls away, she says the one thing that I have imagined her saying, with feeling, every day for fifteen years. Her breathing is erratic and her lips are swollen and she’s gripping my face tightly, her forehead pressed to mine and my back hard against the wall as she breathes, “I love you, Taylor York.”