Composing Love

She dressed like she was a goddess and talked like she was a queen, and I hated her immediately.

She wafted into the room in a flowing white dress, long chestnut hair not daring to move, her strange aqua eyes wide, huge, impatient. Immediately I knew she didn’t love him. He was a stone to step on as she rose up.

The way he regarded her though–as if she were the Mona Lisa, the sun, a rainbow after the worst storm ever. His gaze upon her squeezed my heart until it collapsed.

He waited on her, brought her lattes, teas, chais, Cosmopolitans. Wrote songs about her. Had me sing songs about her until I couldn’t eat, couldn’t think, found myself walking off into the sand at night just to avoid his crushing desire. I waded into the winter Atlantic just to revive my heart.

“Where were you?” he asked.

My lips melded into a fine line as I tossed my red knit gloves onto the counter, eyes never leaving their descent, so I didn’t have to meet his and show him how much I was hurting, how much I still cared about him. Not that he would notice. Would he?

“Walking.”

“I needed you. Judy wants to sing that song.”

That made my eyes rise, meet his. “My song? The one you said I could record?”

“Yeah. Well, she’s Judy.”

“No,” I said.

“What?”

“I said ‘no.’ It’s my song. I wrote half of it. More than half of it. It’s mine.”

He laughed. Laughed at me. Looked at me as if I was silly, sorry, wrong. Something in me froze. I loved him the way he loved her. Sadly, devotedly, unrequitedly.

When I spoke, it was so softly that he leaned forward to hear. “Will she love you if you give her my song?”

Something in my tone reached him. Maybe it was something in my eyes. Maybe it was my tears. Maybe it was the way I’d grabbed the bottom of his shirt and clenched it so hard that he placed his hands over mine, felt my warmth, touched my heart.

My fingers caressed his cheek, my eyes on his, he jerked back as if shocked.

“She won’t ever love me, will she?” he said, more to himself than to me.

I willed him to hear my silent claim: but I will. For always.

end