Chapter Thirty-Seven – Alex #2
“Is there something wrong with me?” I ask because, even though I wasn’t thinking about it, it doesn’t make any sense for this man to say that when I can feel how badly he wants me.
“Wrong? No. I just don’t think it’s worth taking such a step this quickly.
At any other time, I’d agree. But today, I can’t help the laugh that escapes my lips as I slide off him and sit on the bed.
“Let me see if I got this…” I start, watching him sit up and slowly make his way toward me. “You’ve stuck your dick in every hole there is, and when it’s my turn, you want to get married?”
A.J. closes his eyes and stops for a moment, holding back a laugh, but I’m dead serious.
“You’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” he growls, pulling me by the thighs and lying me down on the mattress.
“I’m serious, Anthony,” I shout indignantly.
“I’ve missed hearing you call me that, right beneath me.”
I try to open my mouth to argue, but he’s already kissing me like he wants to burn me with his tongue. That’s it. He’s really not going to have sex with me.
He’s just going to torture me.
But, if the torture is having to kiss him for hours, I think I can endure it.
***
The weak sunlight invades the room before the alarm clock goes off, and I watch Anthony Fortin sleep like a baby. His serene face, long breaths, and his bare ass, but still inside his white boxer briefs.
I smile thinking about last night. How I love everything about him, and how the two of us, here, together, felt so right. I lean back, grab my phone from the bedside table, and open the notes app where, suddenly, the song I started drafting when we were in Europe takes on new contours.
Back then, I was just a hurt and unhappy girl trapped in her own skin. Now… I may still be those things, but I’m not just them anymore. I reread all the verses, tweaking what now feels obsolete, reworking what no longer makes sense, but without taking the soul out of the song.
“Are you writing the text for the billboard saying my kiss was amazing, or gossiping about the delicious night we had?” A.J. asks with just one eye open and his messy hair falling into his face, and it’s inevitable — I lie down on top of him, kissing him.
“It’s you who’s going to make the billboard, I’m writing .”
“Seriously?” he asks, excited underneath me, and I nod. “That’s incredible. Something new, some tweaks?”
The question leaves me uncertain.
“A little of both. I started this song in a dark time, now the morning sun is shining so brightly that I don’t know exactly how to finish it. I still want to stay true to the Alexandra who wrote those words, but I also want the song to have a bridge or a more hopeful ending.”
“Can I see it?” he asks, and I quickly sit up, making space for him to sit too. I hand him my phone, and thirty seconds later, A.J. shakes his head.
“Read it to me, or sing it if you already know what you want to do with it.”
The lights are all on outside
But still, I stumble in the dark
I’m the loneliest girl in the city
Surrounded by voices, lost in the world
I carry life on my shoulders
As if it’s the price of existing
No map, no direction, no dance in my song
But with a tired chest and hope in my hands
But that’s not what it seems
I don’t think I’ll forget
And I wish I were more…
More than I am
But all my stories end in heartbreak…
“And that’s it. I started writing this song for my dad, but I realized it’s for me. It’s a letter.”
A.J. nods and stands up, looking for some paper around the room, and I smile. Because I’m the notebook girl, but I don’t reprimand him. A little while later, he comes back to bed holding a Beauty and the Beast notepad.
“It’s a love song, right?”
“I’ve never seen it that way, maybe self-love?”
“She’s the loneliest girl in the city, not by choice, and that hurts her, so I think the biggest longing is for company.”
“But not now, she still has all these wounds. We can offer a perspective, but not make it definitive. What do you think?”
A.J.’s eyes are scanning my face so brightly, so happily, that I can’t help but smile back. He leans in to give me a quick peck, and as he pulls away, he holds my chin.
“Makes total sense,” he says, stepping back with a wink.
We try everything: loose phrases, rhyming words, disconnected ideas. Nothing seems to work. As if the song is there, just watching, waiting... still not ready to be written.
We decide to take turns in the shower and let the melody grow in the silence, hoping that maybe some light will shine on it.
I rush to my room and grab a change of clothes from my bag while A.J.
is in the shower, and I can’t help but think: maybe he thinks this song is about love… because he wants to save me.
Me, the loneliest girl in the city.
I return to the room, wanting to punch him. Because this doesn’t exist, he can’t save me. But then A.J. steps out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel in a somewhat awkward way, with a huge smile on his face.
“Do you like it?” he asks, handing me his phone, all wet, with a single verse written in Portuguese.
One day I’ll be able to look back.
On that day, the past won’t burn my skin.
Life will make space, and courage will return
Maybe then I’ll go back to where it all started and maybe
Just maybe, I’ll recognize you
By your touch, your smell, your gaze.
We were never discrepant, we were just broken in different places
One day I’ll be able to look back.
On that day, the past won’t burn my skin.
And on that day, we’ll be Unbroken,
Bigger than the world that lived on our shoulders.
I don’t say anything, I can’t say anything. I just nod, remembering when we were at my house, and A.J. told me he wanted to write in Portuguese with me. That Alexandra could never have imagined seeing the expectation in his eyes, much less such a beautiful, deep text that described her so well.
But here, I feel grateful. Not for Disney, not for the music or anything else, but for him, for someone like him to believe in me and insist so much.
Standing on tiptoe, I press my dry body against his and kiss him. And maybe that’s it.
Maybe being the girl of the band guy isn’t the worst thing in the world if he admires you and loves your art.