For traceit, someWhereinRoma, christyZ and Valentinas. Thank you so much for your feedback and support!
7
We lay together in the aftermath of our passion, bodies slick with sweat and sliding against one another's, and I know we had a conversation but I've never been able to remember what it was about. I was too busy wondering what the hell had just happened to me. Hearing him call out my given name in the throes of ecstasy reminded me of hearing about my mother's death; I had expected to feel nothing at all, and instead found myself flooded with emotions so unfamiliar to me that I couldn't even name them. In this case, of course, the emotions were rather different, but overall I just felt… Vulnerable. Not at all like myself. Norah Castle was never, ever vulnerable. Honor, on the other hand, clearly was, and of course I know they're not really two different people, they're both me, and regardless of what I'm called it shouldn't make a difference but it did. It was as though by burying his face in the crook of my neck and sighing that one little word gently into my ear as he came he had stripped me completely bare, learned a secret I didn't know I had, and so I lay with my head on his chest listening to his heartbeat slow and just feeling so confused. None of it made sense, what was happening to me, if anything was happening to me. It just… Nothing made sense.
I suppose this is why I didn't protest when he again suggested breakfast, and why I let him dress me as carefully as he had undressed me the night before. Last night it had seemed like a harmless little thing, perhaps a mild kink, but in the light of day there was a sweetness to the gesture that made me ache somehow. And as he tucked his collared shirt, which I'd never fully removed, into my jeans, his fingers brushing against the bare skin of my hips and making me shiver, I knew, absolutely knew that I should just dress my damn self, send him on his way and shower once more. I ought to remove his scent from my body again, scrub until I could no longer feel his touch on my skin, until I no longer felt indelibly marked, and I'd had one night stands before but they'd never made me think anything like this, or really anything at all. Somewhere deep inside it terrified me, and actually that is the reason I walked two blocks down the street with him to a quaint neighborhood diner. Norah Castle wasn't afraid of anything, and she was certainly never terrified; I felt that if I didn't confront this fear it would be a tacit admission that deep inside, I wasn't Norah Castle at all, and I couldn't let that be true because if I wasn't her I wasn't anyone.
I don't know if I'm explaining this right, but it didn't make sense at the time either so... Anyway. We ended up at the Sunny Side diner, whose main attraction seemed to be a huge clock in the image of a fried egg, and which Will kindly explained was the only restaurant in town open at 7 a.m. He guided me to a small table in the back, and we sat across from one another, our legs fitted together like the teeth of a zipper, and neither of us tried to pull away because why? Considering that it was a diner I'm sure they had food on the menu, but I never managed to read a single item because he kept smiling at me over the top of his, and making little comments about the neighborhood, and shifting his legs slightly so that I couldn't help but shift with him. God, I hated it, this feeling that suddenly I wasn't myself anymore, this feeling of being compelled by some unknown force to answer each of his smiles with one of my own. And he was so painfully attractive with his messy hair and shadow beard and bleary hazel eyes that I wished I could look away, and have I mentioned already how none of this made any sense?
After a few minutes Will made his choice and set his menu aside; I followed suit because my menu might as well have been written in Cyrillic for all the good it had done me. He smiled again, and god how I wished he would stop that, reached out and took my hand. It still felt good every time he touched me.
"I really want to thank you, Honor," he began, toying with my fingers and looking straight into my eyes. "Last night, just talking to you, that really helped me, and I want you to know I appreciate it."
"And the rest of it?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood, uncertain of how to respond to his gratitude because while the effects of what I'd done might have been beneficial to him, I had really only had that conversation for selfish reasons.
His soft smile widened into a wicked grin. "I should probably thank you for that, too. It was… I've never… I mean…" and he was blushing again.
"I know," I replied, putting him out of his misery. "Me either."
The waitress came to take our orders (oatmeal and fruit, which apparently was on the menu, for me, an astonishing variety of pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns and assorted animal products for him [Where on earth does he put it?]) and disappeared again with quiet efficiency.
Will gave me a considering look, though what he was considering I'm not sure. It was almost as though he was trying to see me better or see through me altogether, and I was nervous for reasons that had nothing to do with my disguise, though that should have been my first concern.
"Last night… What made you decide to take me home? I've been wondering and wondering and I really can't figure it out."
"You don't spend a lot of time staring at yourself in the mirror, do you?" I asked, nudging my knee against his and laughing.
"I'm not saying I'm not pretty," he answered in kind before sobering slightly. "I'm just saying that can't have been the only thing. You chose to speak to me. I didn't have the nerve to speak to you."
I closed my eyes, conjured up an image of him as I'd first seen him, fairly radiating pain on that ridiculous excuse for a stage, drawing me inevitably closer the way planets do with stars. And I wanted to tell him the truth, wanted to be as genuine with him as he had been with me, because I felt he deserved it. And anyway, again, withholding information isn't the same thing as lying.
"When you were singing, you were so…" I searched for a word big enough to encompass all the emotions I'd seen in him; there wasn't one. I settled for understatement. "You were so sad. That song, it sounds…"
I paused, struggling for words. It was deeply frustrating, trying to explain this without exposing myself. "On its surface, it doesn't seem so depressing, you know? The music is kind of upbeat, the lyrics are ambiguous. But I've always found it heartbreaking, and you were singing it like you knew that. Does that make sense?"
He nodded, staring at me intently. "Yes. It's funny though… Until this week, I never found the song sad myself. But I tend to sing to myself when I'm upset, and for some reason that song came to me as the one that described what I was feeling."
"I understand," I whispered, because it reminded me of how I'd written it in the first place, just rhyming the directions to my apartment for no apparent reason and then realizing who I wished they would bring to me. I felt a tightness in my chest, felt all the strangeness of him saying these things to my face, unaware. No one else had ever understood the song that way, and I almost wanted to thank him for it.
Instead I squeezed his hand gently. "I'm really sorry. About what you're going through. I can't imagine what it's like."
"I don't know," he said, "I almost think it might be for the best… Maybe the baby was the only thing keeping us together, and how long would that have lasted? It's better to end it now instead of bringing a child into that mess."
I nodded, agreeing with him, but it seemed too… Glib. "That doesn't mean it doesn't suck though."
He laughed at my language. "Yeah. It does suck. I really wanted it so much…"
His face was sad again, and I could have kicked myself for my insensitivity. Some distraction I was, reminding him of everything he wanted to forget.
"Alright, you asked me a question," I said, interrupting what ever depressing thoughts he was experiencing, making it sound like a game. "A rather personal question, in fact. So it's my turn."
Expression lightening, he nodded in agreement, though it seemed to me as though he understood my motivations but was willing to go along with it. "What kind of personal question will you ask? Boxers or briefs?"
I shot him what I hoped was an exaggeratedly sultry look. "Oh, I know the answer to that one. No. What I want to know why you're here in Lima teaching when you're able to sing the way you did last night. Your voice is…" Understatement again: "Good. Really good."
He smiled, pleased by my compliment though he shouldn't have been at all surprised; surely I was not the first person to tell him this. "Thanks. I love to sing, love to perform, but teaching is… It's my passion."
There was a fervent light in his eyes as he said this, one typically reserved for lovers and messiahs and true callings, and like so many things about him it made me feel confused. He had passion that matched, and talent that far outstripped, mine, and with that combination he could have achieved at least as much as I ever had, maybe more. How could he possess all of that and make a choice so different from mine? I didn't understand him, was beginning to think I couldn't understand him, and I didn't understand why I wanted to.
"Honor?" Will's voice interrupted my thoughts, and it occurred to me that issues of an existential nature are time consuming things and better to deal with alone, like cloistered in an abbey or something, otherwise they make conversation awkward.
I shook my head and smiled, resolving as usual to think about all of this later (where "later" is greater than or equal to "never") and the tilt of my lips didn't feel like a lie exactly. "Sorry, I just… Checked out." Which was a serious understatement, but he nodded in understanding, and I continued "I've never met anyone who felt so strongly about teaching. What's your subject?"
And yes I only asked because I wanted to keep him distracted, and thereby distract myself, but I was curious too.
"Spanish," he responded, which was unexpected. I would have guessed… Anything other than.
"Impressive," I said, and meant it. "I barely speak American."
He laughed, a warm deep sound that did something strange to my insides, and shrugged. "I'll tell you a secret: my Spanish is not great. I, uh, majored in econ in college. But I kind of speak it and I do enjoy teaching it. And I also run the glee club at school, so I'm still involved with music. I still get to perform occasionally, even if it's just for the kids."
Our food arrived, and I peppered him with more distracting questions until he was goaded into telling me about the soap-operatic drama surrounding his glee club and Sectionals, which they'd just won. He introduced the various students, called them "my kids" and spoke of them with such deep, genuine affection that I began to feel as if I knew and loved them too. From his descriptions I could discern a little of myself in each of them, which was either a good thing or a bad thing for them, depending on your perspective.
"I wish I could see you guys perform," I murmured unthinkingly, and his face began to glow with excitement.
"You should! Come to our meeting Wednesday, we'll put together a performance for you. I think you'll be really impressed with them, they're so talented and they just work so hard. " His enthusiasm was unfeigned, and I wanted to say yes. But the situation was so…
"I don't know, Will, wouldn't that be weird?" It would be very weird for me. The whole disguise issue aside, teenagers are far savvier than people give them credit for. I knew they could easily add two and two and arrive at four if I showed up to their meeting for no apparent reason.
"Look," he said, serious again. "I've never done this kind of thing before so I don't really know how it works. Is it against the rules for us to be friends? Because I'd like us to be."
I looked at him and wanted to laugh at his naïveté. Didn't he realize that after last night we could never be friends? Didn't he understand the basic theory behind one-night stands? We shouldn't have exchanged names, I thought. We shouldn't be having breakfast together. The terror he'd instilled in me earlier came back, intensified by the knowledge that even this brief conversation together had made me want to know so much more about him, and it occurred to me that maybe Norah Castle could be terrified of something after all. And did I even understand the basic theory behind one-night stands? This was just silly. This was the moment for me to let him down gently, explain that we shouldn't see each other again, because that's just not how it worked.
"I'd like that too," I answered instead, because I am an idiot.
TBC
Normally I try not to beg for reviews, but I would really really really appreciate feedback on this chapter, especially anything you specifically liked or disliked. An earlier draft of the chapter just didn't seem right, so I went through and rewrote it and I'd like to know if that was a good idea or not... Thank you in advance!