by Kelly Oram
He wriggled his eyebrows at me and I lost my composure, laughing loudly and without shame. “Sorry. Can’t say that I’ve ever felt the urge. Nothing personal. I’m sure you’re a great guy.”
He sighed. “The best ones are always straight.”
“Actually, in my experience, the best ones are always gay,” Jordan argued.
“That’s because you have no taste in men.” Colin gave me a grave expression. “It’s true. She doesn’t. Her dating compass points only to jerks.”
“Shut up, Colin.”
“Prove me wrong even once, and I will.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and picked up her sundae. Colin and I both watched her take a bite and shudder with pleasure. She let out a groan and then pointed at me. “Eat, before yours melts. It’s seriously amazing ice cream.”
Colin nodded. “And Jordan would know. She has an obsession with ice cream.” Instead of going back to the counter, he pulled out a chair and sat down. “She practically lives off the stuff, and yet still stays thin.”
“I run,” Jordan grumbled. “A lot.” She gave me another look. “Eat.”
I did as I was told.
“So, Nate,” Colin said. “You haven’t explained the girlfriend thing yet.”
I shrugged. “Don’t really have an explanation. She and Pearl ganged up on me this evening about moving out of the dorms into my own place. She was the one who made me e-mail Jordan about the room.”
“Pearl just failed to mention that I’m a girl,” Jordan added.
Colin snorted. “Of course she did.”
“I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to tell Sophie. She’s going to freak, but I think I’ll be able to convince her. Jordan is definitely the lesser of two evils.”
Colin laughed again, and Jordan defended me around a mouthful of ice cream. “It’s true. I saw his last living situation, and I’m definitely the safer option.”
“If you say so.” Colin turned his skeptical eyes back to me and took a moment to shamelessly check me out again. “So what’s your deal?”
I shook my head. “Nothing too exciting. School and my girlfriend are about all I have time for these days, and sadly it’s in that order.”
“Oh, stop being modest,” Jordan said. “Nate is a triplet. How cool is that? He’s got two insane brothers who are almost as gorgeous as he is—and before you ask, no, they’re not gay, sorry.”
Colin closed his mouth with a huff and I laughed again.
“And,” Jordan continued to brag, “Nate’s a music major over at Steinhardt who’s so talented that he’s here on scholarship.’”
Colin’s hand came down on my arm. He blinked at me with wide eyes. “Is she serious? On top of all your gorgeousness, you’re really a singer? Please, please, please, if there is a God at all, you will tell me you play the guitar, too.”
“Yeah, I do. And the bass, and the keyboard a little.”
I kid you not, Colin squeaked with excitement. I glanced at Jordan for some kind of explanation, and she rolled her eyes. “Colin has an unhealthy obsession with musicians. You’re basically his fantasy man, except, you know, straight.”
“Play for me?” Colin begged. “Sing me a song?”
“Seriously? Right here? Now?”
“Yes.” Colin jumped to his feet and crossed the room to a corner where a small stage was set up with a microphone. There was an acoustic guitar case lying against the wall. “Come on,” he said. “Open mic night is Thursdays, but I’m sure no one in here will care if you play something for us. Right? You guys want to hear a song, don’t you?” he asked the few people in the café. They all glanced his way and then went back to their business. Gotta love New Yorkers. “Please?” Colin said into the microphone. “One song?”
“You’d better get up there before he starts singing you a love song,” Jordan said. “Trust me, nobody wants to hear that. He can’t carry a tune at all.”
“All right, I’m coming,” I called to Colin, who clapped enthusiastically. I grinned at Jordan. “Any requests?”
Jordan’s answer surprised me. “Why don’t you play me your favorite?”
“My favorite?”
She nodded. “You obviously love music the way I love movies, so you must have a favorite song.”
“I have a lot of favorite songs, but I want to know yours.”
“I don’t really have a favorite song.”
My jaw fell all the way to my lap. “None? Not even one? How can you not have a favorite song?”
“I don’t know. I don’t listen to music very much.”
I slammed my fist over my heart. “Jordan, you can’t be serious.”
She laughed and shrugged. “I’m a movie girl. I appreciate the power of a great score to enhance a film, but I don’t really listen to the radio.”
I frowned but conceded quickly. “I guess that’s fair. I mean, I don’t have a favorite movie, so we’re kind of even.”
Jordan gasped, as if I’d just threatened her life. “That’s not true! Tell me it’s not true!”
I smirked. “Not really. It’s like you with the music. I’m not a big movie guy. I don’t really watch TV much. I go to the movies every now and then with family or friends, or on dates. But otherwise…”
I honestly thought Jordan’s head was going to explode from shock. “No.” She slapped her hands over her face and shook her head. “No, I can’t live with someone who doesn’t have a favorite movie.”
“Well, I can’t live with someone who doesn’t have a favorite song.”
She slumped back in her chair, thinking very hard about something. “Okay, we’ll just have to help each other find one.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” I teased.
I was kidding, but Jordan was dead serious when she agreed with me. “Tell me about it. You can’t just pick a favorite movie. You have to see it and then be so moved by it that you just know you’re never going to like anything better.”
She got so passionate about this subject that I, again, realized how similar we were. Movies were her life the way music was mine. Even if she never loved music, she would always at least understand how I felt about it. “It’s the same with songs, except there are a lot more songs out there than there are movies. I wouldn’t even know where to start with helping you find a favorite.”
She grinned and nodded toward Colin and his tiny stage. “You can start by playing me yours.”
“Okay, but if I do, then you have to sit with me and watch your favorite movie when we go home.”
I made it sound like a chore, but it actually sounded like the perfect way to end this wild day. Her entire face lit up and she squealed. “Deal. Now get up there and play us a song, before Colin starts twerking with the microphone stand.”
I laughed myself across the room and took a seat on the stool Colin had set out for me. He handed me the guitar and sighed when I began to pluck at the strings, testing to see if it was in tune. I let him adjust the mic for me, and then cleared my throat and smiled across the room to Jordan. “Okay, you asked for my favorite song. I have a lot of favorites, but in the end it always comes back to one. My mom died from an illness when I was ten, and they played this at her funeral. I know that sounds morbid, but since then, hearing this song, or playing it, has always calmed me down whenever I’m struggling with anything. It makes me feel like she’s with me, watching over me. I know if I saw her in heaven she’d know me, and I think she’d be proud. So…” I had to clear my throat again. “Anyway, here it is, Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven.’”
As it always happens, the second I started plucking the strings I fell into the music and let it take over. Music is powerful. It’s contagious. A song, depending on the tone and how it’s played, can change the mood in an entire room. When I’d started playing, the handful of people present had been chatting away with their friends or messing around on their phones, not paying me the least bit of attention or caring. But when I strummed the last chord,
the room fell into a reverent silence. I looked up and every single person in that room had their eyes trained on me. Some were somber, some were smiling, and a few even had tears falling down their cheeks.
It was their reactions that made me love performing so much. Chris and Tyler loved the rush of it. They loved rocking out with a high-energy show. They loved getting a crowd going, shouting and screaming their names. They loved the attention. I loved touching people through the music.
Colin, blubbering shamelessly, began clapping, which inspired everyone else in the room to join in the applause. “NYU’s own Nate Anderson, everyone!” Colin cheered.
I waved and smiled my thanks to the impromptu audience, and then started to stand. Colin stopped me. “Oh, no, Nate, you can’t. You have to do another one.” He pushed his bottom lip out so far it looked painful. “Please?” he begged, turning to the room full of café patrons. “He was amazing, right? We need another one, right?”
I was surprised when he got an enthusiastic response. Colin grinned. “See? You have to.”
He didn’t need to try so hard. I was at home onstage in front of an audience, with a guitar in my lap. “Okay, okay. Fine. I’ve got another one.” Adjusting the guitar once more, I grinned at the people in the café. “You guys are going to laugh at me, but since I’ve already brought up my mom tonight, I feel obligated to play her favorite song next since she’s the one who taught me how to play the guitar in the first place. Judge me if you must, but this is my absolute favorite song to play on the guitar. I warn you now, Mom was a big Dolly Parton fan.”
Everyone laughed, but they immediately stopped when I launched into the intro for “Jolene.” It’s one of the best songs ever written for the acoustic guitar, and quite impressive if you can play it well. After that, the requests started coming and I played for the next hour before Jordan was finally able to drag me away—and that was only after she’d literally pried me out of Colin’s fingers when he tried to kidnap me and take me home to be his roommate.
That first night in my brand new place, Jordan made me watch The Princess Bride. I got a twenty-minute lecture first about why it is the greatest movie of all time. Something about its particular brand of satire being very hard to accomplish. Its ridiculous over-the-top comedy, while managing to still be dramatic, romantic, exciting, and full of heart. And it’s timeless. No matter how old it gets, it stays good and never feels dated. It was a good movie. I liked it. And I didn’t even mind Jordan’s running commentary through the whole thing. It got stuck in my head, though, and I ended up dreaming about it.
Jordan was awake and nursing a cup of coffee when I emerged from my room, dressed and ready for school. “Morning,” she mumbled. “Mugs are in the cupboard next to the fridge, if you want coffee. I made plenty.”
Her hair was a mess, her eyes were half closed, and she’d yawned through that entire sentence. I grinned as I searched for a coffee cup. “Not a morning person, then?”
“Not until my coffee kicks in. How’d you sleep?”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and took the barstool next to hers at the counter. “I slept great. That bed you’ve got in my room is much nicer than the twin piece of junk I’ve been bunking on for the last month.” I sipped my coffee and, with a laugh, added, “That’s the last time I watch a movie right before bed, though. I had the strangest dream of my life last night. It was insane, and I totally blame you.”
“Really.” Jordan glanced at me, a little more awake than she’d been thirty seconds ago. “Do tell.”
As weird as my dream was, I had no problem explaining it to Jordan. “I was Princess Buttercup, and Sophie was Prince Humperdinck. My brothers had kidnapped me because they were trying to start a war with Sophie. I think they were supposed to be the giant and that annoying short dude with the whiny voice.”
“Fezzik and Vizzini.” She said their names in the accent of the Spanish sword fighter guy, and it made me laugh.
“Right. Those guys. Then you came along, dressed as the man in black.”
“I got to be Westley? Sweet. I would make an awesome Dread Pirate Roberts.”
“You did,” I agreed. “You stole me from my brothers and took me on this wild adventure where we became pirates searching for buried treasure. Colin was your first mate and kept talking about Neverland and the lost boys.”
Jordan snorted and almost choked on the coffee in her mouth. “Talk about his ultimate fantasy.”
“Anyway, it ended up with us finding the cave where the treasure was buried, but instead of gold and jewels, all we found was Pearl.”
“Pearl?”
“Yeah. She’d been waiting for me, and she gave me a fortune cookie.”
Jordan perked up in her seat. “Ooh. What did it say? It could be your subconscious trying to tell you something.”
I laughed. “I hope not. It said, ‘You killed my father. Prepare to die.’”
Jordan, fully awake now, burst into laughter. She finished off her coffee, then patted my shoulder after she climbed to her feet. She was still laughing as she rinsed her cup in the sink. “That is the awesomest dream ever. And the subliminal messages are crazy accurate. I think I’m going to have to start calling you Buttercup.”
I really hoped she was kidding. “That might actually be worse than Runt.” She winked and pulled a box of power bars from the pantry, holding it out toward me with a question in her eyes. When I nodded, she tossed me a bar. “Thanks. What subliminal messages?”
She stopped unwrapping her own bar long enough to smirk at me. “You’re kidding, right? You dreamed your brothers kidnapped you and held you hostage. Then I came along and rescued you. You’re totally Buttercup today. And I’m Westley. Which is awesome.” After taking a bite of her bar, her brow crinkled up and she frowned at me. “It’s interesting that Sophie is Humperdinck, though. I mean, he’s the villain who has Buttercup trapped in a loveless engagement. You and Sophie aren’t having problems right now, are you?”
“No. We’re fine.” The question startled me. Or maybe it was the parallelism Jordan had just pointed out that I didn’t like. “It was just a dream.”
“True,” Jordan relented. “And even if it was your subconscious trying to tell you something, it was probably just about your anxiety of having to tell her you moved in with a girl.”
She had a point.
“You figured out how you’re going to break the news yet?”
“No clue.”
“Why don’t you bring her over here later? Show her the place and let her meet me. We can convince her together.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. “Yeah, okay. It can’t be until later this evening, though. I have to go get a new laptop and a new phone after classes, and I need to go get all my stuff out of the dorm.”
“Oh, I can help with that. I’ve got a car. Why don’t you and Sophie come here after you’re done shopping, and we can go get your stuff together? Moving will be a lot faster that way.”
A car to move all my stuff in one trip? No way could I refuse that offer. “That would be awesome. Thanks.”
“I’ll even get takeout. Sophie can grill me over dinner.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. You guys like Chinese? All this talk of fortune cookies is making me hungry.”
“It’s Sophie’s favorite.”
Jordan grinned. “Perfect. It’s settled, then.”
“Sounds good. But no fortune cookies. Not after that dream.”
Jordan laughed and said, “As you wish.”
I rolled my eyes as she danced out of the room, laughing as she went to go get ready for her day.
. . . . .
When I got to school, I was surprised to find Chris and Tyler talking with my music tech teacher. My heart skipped a beat. I was sure their presence was because of my destroyed laptop, and as much as I appreciated their attempt to plea my case, they were Chris and Tyler. My professor was cool, but my brothers could be a bit much.
I h
urried over to them and stumbled to a stop when they all burst into laughter. “Uh, hey, guys.”
Chris and Tyler both gave me huge, excited smiles. “Dude. I can’t believe Will Treager is your teacher,” Tyler said.
Will Treager was a popular R&B singer in the late nineties, who later became a producer for Epic Records before deciding to teach.
“He’s won four Grammys,” Chris added.
Their shock was both amusing and annoying. “Yeah. I know. I told you, Steinhardt is one of the best schools in the country. That means having the best teachers, too.”
Chris frowned. “Yeah, but you didn’t tell us you meant for, like, real music.”
“We thought you just meant all that stupid choir geek Beethoven crap you did in school last year.”
Oh, Tyler. I sighed. “They teach that stuff here too, and it’s not crap.”
I wanted to die of embarrassment, but at least my teacher seemed amused. “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s really no excuse for them.”
Mr. Treager laughed. “It’s okay. A lot of people don’t realize what kind of programs are available to them.” He smiled at my brothers. “You should stop by the main office on your way out and get some information. If you’re half as talented as your brother and love music as much as he does, you might want to consider joining our program.”
More shocking than their presence here was the way their eyes grew huge, and they promised they’d look into it while staring at my teacher with total hero worship. Mr. Treager turned his attention to me. “Nate, your brothers told me they had a mishap with your laptop?”
“That’s one way of putting it. I had someone look at it. It’s completely destroyed. I have to go get a new one after my classes today.”
Mr. Treager winced. “Ouch. I’m sorry to hear that. Listen, it’s not generally my policy, but your brothers explained how hard you’ve been working and that it was completely their fault, so I’m willing to give you an extension just this once. I can give you until the end of the week. It’ll be hard to finish it, but if you’ve really already done it once, you should be able to recreate your project in that time.”