Normal is Boring
III.
When we returned home from our tour, spending the night without him was completely strange and invoked a foreign feeling in the pit of my stomach and mind, but he was facing the same things so it wasn't too bad.
On our first night back, he came knocking on my front door at three in the morning and I didn't mind because it saved me the trip to his place. We stayed up until five drinking Belgium Hot Choco and flipping through silent TV stations so as not to wake anyone else up.
"Do you miss it?" He asks around the time we're beginning to fall asleep and I smile at him as all the memories come cascading down around us.
"All the time," I reply and consider adding another one-liner, but then decide against it, so I'm shocked at myself when I say it anyway, "I missed you."
He only nodded in understanding, "That's why I came."
I wanted to ask if it had anything to do with him missing me, but liked the idea of him being there for me instead of himself.
I played with the sleeve of his T-shirt because I think I was drunk off the Belgium drink. I ask him if he's planning on doing something so I never have to miss him again. His stare burns into my soul and I wonder if our close proximity is getting to him.
He answers yes, simply and plainly, and I'm way too curious to know exactly what these plans are, but he's not elaborating and my stomach is flying around everywhere except for where it should be. So I drop my head to the back of the couch and continue to stare at him, because looking away will not make him talk.
"There's an apartment available above the studio we'll be recording at," he states, his body turning toward me so my fingers drop from his sleeve to his chest, "It's small but—."
"Yes," I answer this time and I swoon over the smile he flashes at me.
I think I smile as well, but my eyes begin to flutter closed from being so tired and I wished I didn't drink so much hot choco. I hear him say that we're gonna have to stock up on our drink and I feel his hand run down the length of my hair.
"What else?" I ask as I tilt my head to rest in the palm of his hand and I think I'm making him tell me a bedtime story.
"Those glow-in-the-dark stars so we can stick them everywhere."
We both laugh at this, but my mind can picture our place perfectly and I find myself wanting nothing more.
"I want silly-string, too," I mumble as his palm then rests on the side of my neck and I can tell that it's the hand he used to hold his hot chocolate because the warmth is overwhelming.
"What about a piano bed?" I can feel his breath so close to me that I'm afraid to open my eyes. I'm not even sure if I'm still awake or not. I'm vaguely aware of asking him if that would be where we make our music and I hear him mutter a damn that is full of disbelief and torture.
His lips are on mine once again and my brain searched for a reason to split us apart but because I can't even think (and I blame the choco), he thinks for me and keeps us together because that's how he is.
"When we moving?" I murmur against his lips and I can hardly understand myself but I'm not too shocked when he understands me perfectly.
"Right now."
The words take my breath away and I can do nothing but agree with him. My fingers clench at the fabric of his shirt and I tug him closer, and I know it's bold but he seems to appreciate it for as long as I can recall until I feel his presence leave me. About time I open my eyes, he's already on the other side of the room sitting at the piano.
I was about to ask him what he was doing, but it became quite obvious that he got an inspiration for a song. And nothing interrupts those inspirations. But that was my first and main purpose for being in his life and I liked it that way.
His fingers played across the keys in a magical fashion, "Dadada….da daa…so I can hardly relax or even oversleep…I feel as if I were home…some nights…when we count all the ship lights…"
We moved into our small studio apartment the next day and placed as many glow-in-the-dark stars as possible around the whole place and I knew I would never care if we ever used actual lights again.
Once nighttime hit, we sat in the middle of our bare place (save the refrigerator and the microwave) and looked at all the glowing stars. He continued to add onto the song he started the day before and what we created there under the stars was something extraordinary.
"I guess I'll never know why sparrows love the snow…We'll turn off all of the lights and set this ballroom aglow…"
Upon his last words, I sat up on my knees and took in the larger stars in my view. I raised my arms out to the sides and pretended that I was a gliding and carefree bird because that's exactly what I was. I started to sing with his tune, "So tell me darling do you wish we'd fall in love?" I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned in close to him, "All the time-…"
He grinned and began a slightly different tune that got my heart pounding and my soul racing and my mind dancing. I jumped up and spun around under our stars, "Time together is just never quite enough…"
His gorgeous, melodious voice entered my ears and I spun faster, "When you and I are alone, I never felt so at home…"
"What will it take to make or break this hint of love?"
I became dizzy, not from spinning, but from our words, and I collapsed on my back beside him and my head rested near his keyboard so I could see the music he was producing floating through the air, my voice quickly following its soul mate, "When we're apart whatever are you thinking of?"
His voice took on a shape that filled up our empty room with everything, "If this is what I call home, why does it feel so alone?"
"So tell me darling do you wish we'd fall in love?"
He put his keyboard aside then swung his arm on the other side of me, and I could hear his palm press into the carpet beside my head.
"All the time," he replies to my question and I'm just glad that his answer matches mine so I grab his shirt again and pull him down to me. He willingly comes and I once again find that comforting weight on top of me and I never want to stop with him under our ridiculous amount of stars but it doesn't matter because we put all those stars there together.
We end up creating our music our first night on our living room floor and it was the kind that's worthy enough to say damn in disbelief and satisfaction, and I wouldn't have had it any other way because his voice sounded as beautiful as ever, and simply having the satisfaction of hearing it in my ear alone created a special engraving in my heart.
Afterward, when we're lying together and looking up at the dimming stars that held on for as long as possible to illuminate the room, he says to me, "Never change."
And I reply: "I'll never stop living our life our way." Because that's how it's always been and how it will always be.
We never do end up getting that piano bed, but he makes sure to keep his keyboard at the head of our normal bed and that adds enough to separate it from all the rest. We had to buy a nightlight that lit up a huge star in the middle of the ceiling so he could randomly wake up and play a tune or write down lyrics.
I didn't mind this setup because I did it a lot, too, and he made me feel like a little kid on Christmas because he would kiss me every time he liked my lyrics. And it wasn't like our normal kisses because he knew he had to reserve these kisses for a spectacular time to avoid the notion that normal kisses are boring.
Those certain words never came out of our mouth because I don't think we knew how to tell each other those words normally. We knew, so there was no reason to act like we needed reminded, but I do recall the time we tried our best to express ourselves out of music and bodies.
He said: "You're the peanut to my butter."
And I replied, "And you're the milk to my cookies."
"You're the words that I can't say."
"You just did."
And it was from that moment that it became quite obvious that we were never going to change but that was okay because we changed constantly together. We were someone else when we were together…someone more like ourselves, so we kept each other grounded in the air when we began touring for our debut album.
I think I missed our little studio apartment when we left but I figured it would always be there waiting for us, but I think I missed the stars more so we had to buy more glow-in-the-dark stars to stick all over our tour bus. Seeing the word Unaware amidst the stars seemed so strangely perfect that I wondered how I was so lost in the dark for so long.
"Do you think we should change our name?" I asked him one day on the road. Pieces of paper surrounded me that contained random lyrics from random times that I was trying to put together to make a song that made some sort of sense.
He didn't even look at me as he answered, "I'll never think that."
I cocked my head to the side and asked why but then he just said "Exactly."
I threw all the papers up in the air and found it almost tantalizing how slowly they all drifted back down to the floor. I caught his eye when I did this and there was something sparking between us as papers blocked and unblocked our view from each other but then it made me want to put a strobe light in our bus because that would make for some crazy times.
Instead of saying anything more, he continued to finger his keyboard and I found it strange how I became jealous over an instrument, so I did the only thing I could do which was crawl over all the papers until I reached him. I picked up the paper that landed by his side and read the few words that were on the page: "It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity."
But he only continued to play, "You fell asleep watching The Matrix Reloaded."
I crumbled the paper up and threw it behind me, "You think you know me so well?"
"Mmhmm."
"Then what am I thinking?"
Finally, he stopped playing and put the keyboard beside him. I'm glad I saw the sparkle in his eyes or else I would have truly thought he was annoyed with me, but I think he thought we were flirting, "You're thinking…" Then he raised his voice to do his poor impersonation of a female, "Oh my! He's not paying attention to me! I'm gonna throw that damn keyboard out the window!"
I glared at him but leaned in close to him, "I did not think 'Oh my!'" Then I kissed him because he knew me way too well.
Over time, we learned even more about what it was like to travel together as a duet on and off the stage. I often had a hard time wrapping my head around how far we had come and how our lives became so entwined that I couldn't picture a time when he wasn't in my life.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
And that's the ending to my lil' ficlet! I know it's a weird way to end it, but hey...look at the title, right? The song featured in this chapter is my favorite song from the past 3 years called "Saltwater Room" by Owl City. If you never heard it, you better rush on over to Youtube and listen to it cause it's the best song ever in the history of songs.
I wanted to write this tonight because I'm devastated over the last episode of Victorious. It was the crappiest ending to a TV show I've ever seen. There was so much wrong with it that I'm not even going to get into it.
Anyway, I enjoyed writing this because it was a challenge for me. I never wrote this sort of story, known as a "rambling narrative" but I'm so glad I tried it, because it was kinda nice to break away from the traditional and accepted norm of grammar and structure. Tried to have the title really live up to its name. So thank you to all who reviewed! Now to focus on another story...another Tandre perhaps? Hmm...
-Enula
