Chapter One

"Now if I only knew how to finish this."



The comfortable silence between us had hung for a good seven minutes. I sat in front of a music score sheet at my desk with my cell phone on speaker to my right. Todd usually called me right about this time of day during the summer, and usually I was unoccupied for the rendezvous. But something about this week's restless energy had compelled me to pull out one of my half-finished scores. Todd knew better than to interrupt me whilst in the middle of a creation minefield, so he had been sitting patiently at the phone, listening to me alternately tapping notes on my nearby keyboard, scatting beats, and scribbling notes onto the score with pencils, all the while muttering to myself like a crazy person.


"You're welcome to hang up any time, you know," I said. "I'm not one for conversation right now."


"I know." I heard him grunt with a stretch on the other side of the line. "It's fun listening to you while you're composing, though. You say some crazy shit every now and then."


I focused on bubbling in a quarter note, stuck in writer's block. "Like what?"


"I dunno. I think a while ago you said something about hornets bleeding out a heart from the inside out or something."


"Did I?"


He laughed with mock unease. "I keep tellin' you to stay away from that crack, but do you listen?”


Hornets…that seemed to strike something. I drummed a frantic beat with my right fingers, recording them on the score with my left. “I like it.”


“What do you like?”


“Hornets. Have you ever been stung by one?”


“Yeah, I did. It hurt like a bitch.” I heard his voice cringe at the memory.


I smirked in his direction. “Poor baby.”


“I know, right?” He sighed wistfully. “Life is so hard when you get stung by an insect.”


“I can only imagine,” I mumbled absent-mindedly. Suddenly blooms of bowed basses were coming to me and were echoing through the corridors of my skull. This was brilliant. “You know why I like having you around? Because you’re dense; it’s easy to bounce ideas off of you without worrying about you getting cocky and trying to remold them into other things.”


He laughed incredulously; the sound warmed something in my heart. “I’m…flattered, I guess.”


“Take the compliment. It’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”


“Aww…”


I gently picked up the phone and pressed my cheek affectionately to it. Of course he wouldn’t ever have knowledge of me doing such a gesture, which is probably why I did it. We’d been broken up for a good six months now, and I was still trying to convince myself of the fact. But it was hard to do when we still called each other every weekend and he still made me smile the way he did.


I sighed. “You’re too good to me, you know.”


He must have been reading my mind, because he replied teasingly, “Maybe I should hang up and leave you like a real jerk would.”


“You wouldn’t,” I laughed.


“Yeah, you’re right.” His sounded a bit more somber now. “Even if I tried, I couldn’t. You’re like oxygen; I try to go for twelve seconds without you and I start to asphyxiate.”


“Isn’t that a bit romantic?”


“If you’re a masochist, maybe,” Todd quipped. “I’m just stating a fact.”


I got up from the desk and laid myself onto my bed beside it. “Maybe you should stay here, then, if I’m so necessary to your existence.”


His voice dropped to barely a murmur. “I would if I could. Believe me.”


My face heated up at the soft intensity of his voice. I picked up the phone and turned off the speaker. I was suddenly aware of the quilt underneath me, its softness and how it brushed my skin as I stretched my arms over my head. I wondered how thin the walls around me were and if they would keep what went on in here a good enough secret. My head spun as the light above me cast watchful shadows on the walls.


“So how do you survive between phone calls?” I asked. “You didn’t sound asphyxiated when you dialed.”


He sat silent for a moment. “I dunno. Maybe knowing I’ll call you the next day’s enough to keep me alive.”


I smiled sadly to myself. “Maybe you don’t need to be right here to stay alive.”


“Well, that’s like saying I can survive by bread and water alone,” he remarked. “While that’s probably true, I’d much rather have a feast.”


I laughed my growing melancholy off. “You and your metaphors.”


I could hear the smile in his voice, knowing he had averted any further trouble for my sore heart. “I try.”


Perhaps too much, though, I thought. If you keep bending for me like this, someday I’ll snap your spine in two and be none the wiser.


A sudden rapping at my door interrupted my musing.


“Hey, hold on a second,” I said to Todd. I pulled the phone away from my ear and called, “Yeah?”


My sister Lisbeth stuck her head through the door. “Dinner!”


“All right.” I turned back to the phone. “I gotta go eat dinner now.”


“Okay. I’ll call you…next week?”


Next week…Perhaps he fared without me better than he realized. “Sure.”


I hung up with his goodbye hanging in the air, wishing the echo would remain until his next call.