Page 93 of Sounds Like Love
“In a forever night—no. Notforever, doesn’t fit.”
“Never-ending?”
Like the story?
“Oh, we’re a story never told before.”
I looked at him, smiling.Just trying to get it right.
He jotted it down and sang the lyrics. Then he laughed. “Corny, but you know? I like corny,” he said, and took a gulp of his now-cold coffee.
I watched him with a smile. “I do, too.” I’d never seen him this animated before, and my heart squeezed because I loved this fire in him.
He asked, “How did you figure out it was the wrong tempo?”
“Because I listened to your heart beat,” I replied simply.
His face softened. His shoulders melted. It was an answer he never expected.“You’re amazing.” Then he leaned forward and kissed me, and I felt his adoration like a sunrise, bright and warm and golden. He pressed his forehead against mine, savoring the connection. “I have been so tiny and mad for so long,” he murmured, “that I forgot what it felt like to make something. To enjoy making it.”
“It’s magical, isn’t it? Nothing like it.”
“I think it’s because of you,”he thought, and I leaned into him, and kissed him again.
Good love songs made you want to fall in love. They held emotions, weight, memories. What was the point infeeling, inbeing, if I couldn’t make anything with it? I saw the world best when I was on the outside looking in. I had just been so afraid of doing that. Of taking my emotions and holding them up to the light. I was afraid they’d fracture, that I would just find myself broken, but the truth was that love was like a diamond—it sparkled and it cut. Someone just needed to give me the courage to look. And now a new picture was taking shape.
He read over the lyrics as they coalesced, writing his own between mine, combining our ideas.
This was the right song. These were the right lyrics. This was what it wanted to be, whether or not we were ready for it. The melody was getting softer, after all. And—even though neither of us wanted to admit it—so were the sounds of each other’s voices in our heads.
At first it wasn’t much, but as the day wore on it became harder to hear him.
Because thiswasthe right song. Written the way it was supposed to be.
He looked back at the lyrics. “My mom would love this song.”
I turned to him on the bench, looking up at him. I tried to imagine what his mom had looked like,if she had his dark hair or his bright eyes, his stature or his nose or his wide, soft mouth. I wondered what music she liked, her favorite food, her dreams. How she had stumbled into Roman Fell’s embrace. Did she and Sasha have the same kind of humor? Did she like loud prints? Where was she from, to give him that soft accent I couldn’t quite place?
“Can you tell me about her?” I asked.
He shifted on the bench to face me, too. “What do you want to know?”
Everything, I wanted to say, but I settled on, “Whatever you want to tell me.”
He let out a breath, and then got up from the bench.“She was amazing,”he began, walking over into the kitchen to pour himself another cup of coffee, although it was afternoon now, and the coffee was very much cold. He took his black, as it turned out, whenever he wasn’t ordering it from a barista. His voice might have been faint in my head, but it was clear. I didn’t have to strain to hear it.“She lit up every room she walked into, and she never met a person she didn’t like.”
I left the piano, too, and went to lean against the breakfast bar. I folded my arms over each other and put my chin on my hands. “Would she have liked me?”
“Oh, she would have had ariotwith you,” he said.“And your mom.”
I marveled at the idea. “It’s not so far-fetched that our moms might’ve known each other. They both played in the Boulevard. Maybe they were friends.”
“Maybe, but she never talked about it. I don’t even know when she was in or for how long,” he replied sadly. “But … I like to think that maybe my mom planted the song in my head to lead me to you,” he teased with a laugh,and slid up onto the barstool beside me. “I like to think she’s still around in a way. Making things happen. She was a romantic that way, you know. She always thought that her big break was just around the corner. We moved around a lot when I was little. She kept trying to make a name for herself in LA. She was my best friend.”
Like my mom was mine. It was hard losing her now, but if I had lost her when I was younger …
“She died on her way to a music audition, actually,” he went on after a moment, tracing his thumb around the lip of his coffee mug, looking down into the blackness, but not really seeing it. “I’d stayed up half the night studying for some stupid math test, so I didn’t even tell her bye before she left. She probably opened the door, said goodbye like she always did, and left. I could’ve told her to be careful. Good luck on her audition.” He frowned, the memory still raw, even twenty years later. “But I didn’t, and she died in a car accident on the way there. A drunk driver heading home from an all-night bender. Head-on. The EMTs said it was instant. I think they just told me that to make me feel better. So now I just—I have to keep her memory alive. And when I had my wreck it sort of … was a horrifying wake-up call.”
We sat quietly for a long moment.
