"It feels like just last night, she opened my eyes.673Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXY1TJzyWyj
It feels like just last night, I filled myself with all these lies. . ."673Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaNSSgfRi5K
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What began as Grace's voice soon turned into a soft, muted male voice singing lyrics that were familiar to me. They were lyrics I looked at every morning, they were lyrics that had been ingrained into me, and they were lyrics that I saw in my mind every time I thought of her. Her gorgeous, feminine cursive were entrusted to that piece of paper, placing the very words that spilled from her mind.
Those words followed me everywhere, in my mind and on the piece of paper they were written on. They belonged to her, every single word of that unfinished song. All I was doing was keeping it safe for her until the day she wanted it back. That piece of paper was her own, and it was going to stay that way, at least that's what I wanted. Instead, I was hearing another familiar voice sing the words Grace had put together.
As my eyes opened, I was hit with the sound and sight of soft waves hitting the dock. Above me lied a small, dark red blanket that I'd never seen before. In a state of grogginess, it had taken a couple of seconds to realize that I was outside and lying down in the same spot that I had sat down in the night before. When had I fallen asleep? Clearly it wasn't the smartest idea to fall asleep out there, but I had already done it. It was what it was.
I rolled over and found Jay a couple feet away, strumming on a acoustic guitar as he sang her lyrics. "How do you know those lyrics?"
"Jo found this piece of paper by the doors in the lounge room. She thought it was mine." he waved a wrinkled piece of paper in between his fingers. "Seems like it's yours, though. You write them?"
"Do I look that talented to you? I wish." I pushed myself up, watching the blanket fall from my shoulders.
"I dunno. Maybe you are." I could hear Jay stand up as his footsteps forced the wood to creak. "Maybe you are, and you just need to be taught. Who knows, maybe you're more talented than whoever wrote these lyrics."
Jay sat down next to me and looked for a moment as his dark eyes seemed peer inside, reading past any barrier I still had up. Propping up the guitar on his lap, he began to lightly smack the guitar with the tips of his fingers and then strumming before giving it a patterned touched. With every smack and strum, a smile began to spread across his face as his head bobbed with every slap that hit the body of the guitar.
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A moment of silence passed as he held out the piece of paper that held Grace's message on it, along with his newly added, unwanted lyrics. The smirk on his face had said it all, acting like he had thought he sung another hit. What he had gotten wrong was that only Grace could have gotten the message across to me with those lyrics, from him they had felt fake and forced out, disingenuous. As talented as he was, love songs weren't his thing. Jay had already shown that he'd rather write about blowing his head off than talk about a girl he misses plenty of times.
"Don't ruin her music." I looked away.
"Yeah, that was pretty bad. Not going to apologize, though." I felt his foot stomp on the dock. ". . .Wait, her?"
His additions to the song weren't all that bad, at least to an audience that hadn't known any better. It would've sounded like a love song, and if it was from Jay, the general masses would've flocked to it just because of that alone. He seemed to know it, too. That what he just sang lacked meaning to him and he only sung the empty words that came to mind, in the exact same way I had spoken to other people for the past year.
If Jay was anything at all, he was an artist, and all artists have an ego. His narrowed eyes told me that he didn't like hearing that from me, yet he also knew he couldn't deny it.
He looked at me, sporting a raised brow. "My bad. I just kind of assumed that your boyfriend wrote this. Didn't really expect you to be the type who has a thing for girls."
"What type did you expect me to be, then?" I returned his raised brow, very slightly intrigued.
"Can't really say. I mean, you scream damaged goods, but definitely not lesbian." Jay pushed himself off of his rear-end and onto his feet before he offered a hand. "Not trying to be that guy, but I'm thinking a shower would suit you well."
When he had said that, it put a lot of things into perspective. So much had happened in just a couple short days, from one of the more harsh panic attacks I'd had to meeting a celebrity in Jay. That perspective, however, only brought me more questions. Questions that had been impossible to answer without experience, questions that I was afraid to see and hear the answers to. What was going to happen here? What was I going to become without the drugs? Would I like what I was and who I would become?
Would Grace be okay with who and what I would become?
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"Fwahhh!" Grace shouted.
Rolling over and onto me, Grace straddled me like the horses she loved to watch gallop around. Except what she was sitting on wasn't a horse. It was a girl her age that was lying on her back, her girlfriend. She leaned over me with a smile as her head hung to the left, moving ever so slightly back and forth. Her movements and expressions had said a lot, but she remained quiet and only watched.
Grace's expression went from a shit-eating grin to dead seriousness in the flash of a second.
"You'd tell me if something was wrong with you, right?" her gaze felt like it would burn into me. "You'd tell me if you were depressed or hurting over something, right, Lynn?"
"Of course." I buried my fingertips into her thighs and pulled myself up. "I'd want you to do the same."
"Oh, yeah?" her lips hit my cheek. "Then, tell me why you never smile around anyone but me."
The sudden sharpness of her voice caught me off guard, and the topic itself only added to it. Did I have an answer for Grace? Not really. If I had anything at all for her, it was a bunch of jumbled thoughts and pieces, but that was it. It wasn't just a single, simple answer that I could write in a sentence. Maybe there was a word for it, but I hadn't known it at the time. I was just a clueless teenager who cared about one person and one person only.
That was how it had been, until the words began to pour from my mouth.
"I smile for you because you believe in the things I do and say, and you believe in what I believe. What I value is what you value, and even if you don't, you respect it. You don't disregard me because something I feel doesn't fit into your paradigm." the words began to leak like Julian Assange. "I don't feel anything for anyone else, I. . .I couldn't care less if they existed or not. It's like things I value and love belong in another dimension, and everyone just throws it away. I feel fucked up, but I-"
A finger wiped underneath my left eye.
I had never truly felt a sense of belonging in my life, not since I was able to cohesively put together thoughts. It wasn't until Grace spread her wings that I began to feel something for another person inside of me. Even if the rest of the world was made of gold, I was colorblind. She had been fundamentally different from everyone else, like an angel touching the earth or an alien landing it's ship. Grace just wasn't human.
Did I love the people around me, outside of Grace? Of course, but I still felt no emotion towards them. I held no sadness or pity for those going through sad times, I could never celebrate with those who were having happy times, and I carried no anger for anyone or anything. I was simply distanced from the world. Maybe they were right, it was because I didn't go to church and I was dating a girl, that was why I hadn't felt like a regular person.
"I didn't mean to make you cry, Lynn. . .Jesus, you're such a crybaby." she wiped my eye again as she gazed into my eyes. "If that's it, then try talking more. Sometimes you just, I don't know, have to stick a round peg into a few square holes before you find another round one."
"You're the one that's always causing it." I turned my head, trying to hide the reappearance of a smile. ". . .I'll try if you want me to, but I don't know if it's going to change anything at this point."
Grace smirked again as her painted lips fell across her face, showing the glowing white teeth that rested in between. "At least you can say you tried. If it doesn't work, then you can just blame this place."
She took both of my hands and began to interlace the fingers on each hand, squeezing tightly as she brought her lips to my chin. She began along the right side of my jaw, taking a second to peck each spot before traveling back down and going up the left side. Each peck became longer and longer as she traced the left side of my jaw, until she stopped at my ear and moved inwards to my cheekbone.
"Hey, babe. I was thinking about something the other night." Grace had spoken without moving her mouth away at all.
"Yeah?" she had piqued my interest.
"You should let me teach you how to play guitar and sing." I could hear her smile. "Then we can leave this place together and go around the world."
Teach me? As much as I would have loved to do that with her, and even learn from her, I never had any musical talent in my bones. My singing had been saved for the showers and inside my head, while my fingers had never seriously touched an instrument with the intention of learning it. If I had the talent, I would have taken Grace up on that immediately, but I hadn't and I wasn't going to make her look bad pretending like I did. Still, why would I say no when it was a clear offer to spend more time with her?
"Give it your best shot."
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