Chapter 6
Jesse
I’ve just struck on a really excellent few sentences—the first worthwhile idea I’ve had in forever—to sum up my theory of a corollary relationship between geographic isolation, belated arrival of new trends in religion, and subsequent bouts of fanaticism and intolerance for those resistant to said new trends, when a now familiar interruption shakes loose every word I’d been racing to type before forgetting.
Tonight, though I don’t recognize whatever melody winds through my neighbor’s improvisation, just the first notes are enough to capture every shred of my attention as always.
Whatever he’s playing has a simple tune that wanders up and down through the keys, swelling and falling, louder and then quieter again, but always soft and slightly lonely sounding as it flows on.
Like every time I’ve heard him playing since that first night he joined my shaky rendition of Swan Lake, the urge to recreate that strange, separate duet pulls at me, tugging me on willing feet over toward my piano. I won’t touch it though. Just like I haven’t.
As I listen to the slightly muffled music, out of nowhere, the one-dimpled smile of the new barista at Upshot bursts through my thoughts.
Tristan.
He’s been in the back of my mind ever since I left the coffee shop today—the way his flirty grins and teasing, bubbly quips made my stomach flip with a thrill of nerves.
How after I’d gone to sit at a table with my latte—an absolutely perfect one, by the way—instead of the work I’d been supposed to be focusing on, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from peering over the top of my computer screen at him where he stood at the counter, arranging pastries and tidying up the display of tea bags.
The way, once or twice, I even could have sworn I’d caught him watching me from under the black, silky swoop of his bangs.
The thought was so riveting and scattering that, after a distracted hour of trying to keep my eyes glued to my notes, I’d packed up and headed back to my apartment.
Maybe me thinking he was looking at me was nothing more than wishful thinking, but he certainly hadn’t called anyone else sunshine, at least not in the time I was there.
The fact that I know this is probably a little pathetic, and yet it really was impossible not to listen whenever a new customer approached him with an order.
And the way he’d leaned in over the counter, so close that my next breath had filled me with that minty peach-vanilla smell that lingered in his soft purply-black hair, when his graceful, long fingers closed around the lapel of my coat to wipe it clean—
The last notes of music fade beyond the wall, and from nowhere, a dizzy sense of confidence seizes me, mingling with the hot, hard pounding of my heart at the memory of the tease of Tristan’s nearness.
Whether it means anything or not, I’m tolerably sure that a drop-dead gorgeous man might have shamelessly flirted with me today, just for the hell of it. And that was despite me having soaked him in scalding hot coffee, too.
And fuck, the way his teeth grazed his soft, full lower lip for that too-short moment—
Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m sitting down at my piano, letting my hands hover over the keys.
What the exchange at Upshot and this have to do with each other, I have no idea, but somehow, in my overheated brain, the two have gotten all tangled together and all the reckless daring I wish I’d let loose earlier comes flooding to the surface.
And then my fingers press down, releasing the first notes of Greensleeves, one of my favorites of the pieces I’ve learned.
It’s a tiny leap of courage. Probably a laughable one, yet for me, it’s a leap none the less.
I’m only four or five measures in when my unseen neighbor joins me. At the sound of the notes echoing mine through the wall, my fingers falter for a moment, but he keeps playing, smoothly working my discord into the melody as he layers the familiar tune with new intricacies.
By the time the piece is over, I’m grinning from ear to ear.
I’m sure as hell my elation over this ridiculously antisocial socialization means that Alex is once and for all right about me needing to get out of the little bubble of solitary predictability I’ve built for myself, but that’s really neither here nor there because the reckless buzz of courage isn’t gone.
Unfortunately, courage is apparently not something that keeps well overnight. That, or its antidote happens to be a certain pair of warm hazel eyes and a somehow simultaneously cocky and sweet one-dimpled smile.
Either way, all it takes to choke on every shred of my intention to throw myself off the deep end and invite Tristan to dinner is his cheery, “Hey, sunshine,” as I step into the rich, spicy warmth of the coffee shop the next afternoon.
The sound I force out in response might be considered a greeting. Thank god he at least seems to take it for that, based on the way his smile splits into a friendly grin. That, or he’s laughing at me, which, once again, is a distinct and miserable possibility.
“Another quad soy latte for you?” He tilts his head slightly, the eyebrow with its silver ring rising questioningly.
“Impressive.” Christ, that didn’t sound patronizing, did it? At least today I’m apparently able to make myself say something other than the bare minimum, robotic ordering of a drink. “You remember everyone’s orders in just one day?” There, that was friendly, right?
The dimple in his cheek deepens. “Nah,” he shakes his head, those black bangs slipping rebelliously down into his dancing eyes. “Only the cute ones.”
I don’t need a mirror to know that my face—my goddamn traitorous face—is as brilliantly red as the stop sign visible through the corner of my eye out the window.
All I want to do is hide it where neither Tristan nor the other barista, the one with the curly red hair who I like because she’s always reading on her Kindle between orders, can see.
I can’t though. Instead, all I can do is stare at that gorgeous smile with its goddamn dimple and those laughing hazel eyes that feel like they’re searing right through me to expose the hopeless crush I’m nursing.
From behind him, I can feel his coworker’s eyes pinging between us.
“Or the ones I have to make twice,” Tristan goes on with staggering nonchalance and innocence, except this time I know I’m not mistaking the twitching of his lips.
Goddammit. He is laughing.
“Easiest to remember though are the ones I wear home on my shirt. Those I definitely don’t forget in a hurry.”
He has to work at it because I’ve fixed my mortified gaze down on the wood of the counter, trying futilely to will the blazing heat in my face away, but by some sorcery he manages to catch my eye just the same.
“Now, you put all three of those together?” His voice drops slightly as his grin shifts into a coy smolder that has my mouth going dry and my palms breaking out in a sweat, “And there’s no way in hell I’m ever forgetting your drink, sunshine.”
And then, instead of having the decency to wait around for the fifteen or so minutes that it would have taken for me to rearrange my thoughts back into anything like logic enough to formulate an acceptably clever response, the bastard just flashes me a devastating grin.
Before I know it, he’s spinning around to saunter away from me, toward the espresso machine to start making the drink I never confirmed I even actually wanted.
By Sunday night, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that a nightmarish date with Todd is inescapably set in my very near future.
Every day I’ve gone back to Upshot to try to make myself ask that small, simple question, and every day, I’ve left with nothing more than unsaid words and another perfectly made latte.
Not to mention a heart more hopelessly enamored than ever.
Over the hours I’ve spent tucked up in a corner of the coffee shop, using my laptop and a few research books as cover for the fact that I’m actually scrambling to work up the courage to ask him out, I can’t deny that I haven’t been able to stop glancing up at Tristan from behind my facade of work.
His effortless smiles light the room, along with the easy, bouncy enthusiasm of his voice and the musical lilt of his frequent laughter.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Tristan isn’t just gorgeous and irresistibly charming, but also as compassionate and thoughtful as he seems.
It’s impossible not to notice how genuine his interest is as he listens to the stories of chatty customers and how sincere his answering words of congratulations, sympathy, or understanding are.
His smile is infectious, and I can’t deny that I’ve spent way more time than I have any business to have spent quietly eavesdropping, taking in the small kindnesses he so freely gives.
Like yesterday, when a girl’s card was declined at the register. Tristan kept his voice low so that his words weren’t broadcasted across the quiet space, but the girl’s loudly embarrassed explanations about how she’d paid her bill and couldn’t understand, made what had happened clear.
Tristan hadn’t hesitated to cut through her words with an easy, smiling, “I’ve got you,” as he scooped a few bills out of the tip jar and popped them into the till before spinning off to make her the drink she’d ordered.
Maybe all of it should make me feel more able to approach him, knowing that, if he does turn me down, it will be kindly and gently.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Because with every little thing I notice about him, every new revelation of his sweetness or humor or effortless grace, my desperate crush only grows.
At least he hasn’t stopped calling me sunshine.
Do you think you’d want to get dinner with me sometime?
Could I take you out for dinner this weekend?
Wanna grab a bite together when you’re off work?
The trouble is, every time I’m standing at that polished wood counter, face to face with Tristan’s copper and green flecked eyes and that teasing, one-dimpled smile, every possible way I could ask the question only sounds worse and worse in my own head.
So unbearably awkward it makes me cringe and clam up.
Jesus, I’m lucky if I manage to force out a choked, “How’s your day?”
I’m not too proud to admit that I have taken the oldest advice in the book and literally practiced these questions in front of my mirror. At low volume, lest my virtuoso neighbor hear me acting like the antisocial weirdo that I am.
That, however—whatever strange pseudo-friendship that I’m forming with said virtuoso neighbor—is a significantly different matter.
Our odd, through-the-wall duets have become the second highlight of my days with amazing speed. At least this one, unlike the other, doesn’t come with a hefty dose of angst and self-doubt.
Through no fault of my own, I know now that my neighbor gets home every night around seven forty.
It’s not that I’m creepily eavesdropping or anything like that, but the wall between our apartments is paper thin and completely useless at blocking out sound.
As a result, considering the fact that, after dinner, my evening routine never consists of anything louder than typing, heavily skewed toward the use of my backspace key these days, there’s no missing the telltale open and close of the door of the adjacent apartment, or the creak of footsteps mapping out their owner’s path around the space.
It's when those footsteps go quiet and the first melodic chords sound that I set down my work and untuck myself from my chair to cross over to where my piano sits against our shared wall. Since Wednesday, the evening I’d found the courage to join him in another duet, he’s done this every night, playing those brief, welcoming chords. Inviting me to join him.
And I have. While I’ve tapped out the best of the simplified music my online lessons have covered, he’s picked up the melody, turning my amateur efforts into something extraordinary.
It’s only a few pieces we play together each night.
I don’t know enough to do more than that without getting repetitious, and yet there’s something strangely intimate in the interaction.
Something that feels comfortable and companionable, despite the fact that we’ve never exchanged a single word nor seen each other’s faces.
I don’t know a thing about the man on the other side of the wall, but somehow, he’s become my friend.
Alex would say that this is sad and lonely and the ultimate proof that I need to get myself out and into the real world.
Likely, this is why, though I’ve offered up the miserable yet thrilling Upshot barista saga to him in texted updates as proof that I’m working on his ultimatum of finding someone to take out on a date, I haven’t mentioned my neighbor to him.
Because, eccentric as the exchange is, I don’t feel like it’s a lonely one.
In the last few days, probably aided by the fact that I now have the very real and very appealing image of Tristan’s black hair-veiled, ever-laughing eyes, dimpled smile, and toned, slim body teasing through his ridiculously thin, tight shirts to overshadow it, I’ve quite wisely allowed my fantasy of Mr. Darcy-ish melancholy sexiness to fade.
Instead, regardless of what comes of it, I’m simply curious to meet the man with whom I’ve developed this unique affinity.
As the vibrations of the last notes fade from my piano, I’m on the verge of marching over this moment to do it.
Only when I’m partway through pushing back the stool to stand do I remember that, despite the fact that we’re both obviously awake, it’s now edging on nine o’clock, and showing up at a stranger’s door this late isn’t the most normal thing to do.
Tomorrow. I’ll go over tomorrow. A decent interval after I hear him get home.