As we’re packing our things up, still not speaking, she slides something across the table to me, then walks out. I debate throwing the note in the trash without reading it, but my curiosity gets the better of me. I wait until I’m seated in my next class to open it.
Will,
You may not want to hear this, but I need to say it. I’m really sorry. Breaking up with you is one of my biggest regrets in life so far. Especially breaking up with you when I did. It wasn’t fair to you, I realize that now-but I was young and I was scared.
You can’t act like what we had between us was nothing. I loved you, and I know you loved me. You at least owe me the courtesy of talking to me. I just want the chance to apologize to you in person. I can’t seem to let go of how things ended between us. Let me apologize.
Vaughn
I fold the note up and put it in my pocket, then lay my head down on the desk and sigh. She’s not going to let it go. I don’t want to think about it right now, so I don’t. I’ll worry about it later.
***
The next night, I don’t think about anything other than Lake.
I’m picking her up in an hour, so I rush through my homework and head to the shower. I walk past Caulder’s bedroom on my way. He and Kel are playing video games.
“Why can’t we go with you? You said yourself there wasn’t an age limit,” Kel says.
I pause and back step to their doorway. “You guys actually want to go? You realize it’s poetry, right?”
They seem excited at the possibility of actually going.
“Fine, let me make sure it’s okay with Lake first.” I head out the front door and across the street. When I open the door to her house, she screams.
“Will! Turn around!” I turn around, but not before I see her. She must have just gotten out of the shower, because she’s standing in the living room completely naked.
“Oh my god, I thought I locked the door. Doesn’t anyone knock?”
I laugh. “Welcome to my world,” I say.
“You can turn around now,” she says.
When I turn around, she’s wrapped in a towel. I walk over to her and wrap my arms around her waist, pick her up off the floor and spin her around. “Twenty four more hours,” I say as her feet touch the floor again. “You nervous yet?”
“Nope, not at all. Like I said before, I’m in good hands.”
I want to kiss her, but I don’t. The towel is too much, so I back away from her and ask her what I came here to ask her. “Kel and Caulder want to know if it’s okay if they go with us tonight. They’re curious,” I say.
“Really? That’s weird…but I don’t care if you don’t care,” she says.
“Okay, then. I’ll tell them.” I walk back toward the door. “And Lake? Thanks for giving me another preview.”
She looks slightly embarrassed so I wink at her and shut her front door behind me. This is about to be the longest twenty-four hours of my life.
***
We take a seat in the back of the club with Gavin and Eddie. In fact, it’s the same booth Lake and I sat in on our first date. Kiersten wanted to come, too, so it’s a tight fit.
Sherry must trust us a lot. She asked a lot of questions about the slam before she agreed to let Kiersten come, though. By the end of the question/answer session, Sherry was intrigued. She said it would be good for Kiersten to see a slam. Kiersten said doing a slam would be good for her portfolio, so she brought a pen and a notebook to take notes.
“Alright, who’s thirsty?” I take drink orders and head to the bar before the sac is brought on stage to perform. I explained the rules to all the kids on the way here, so I think they have a pretty good understanding of it. I haven’t told them I’m performing though. I want it to be a surprise. Lake doesn’t know either, so before I take the drinks back to the table, I go pay my fee.
“This is so cool,” Kiersten says when I get back to the booth. “You guys are the coolest parents ever.”
“No they aren’t,” Kel says. “They don’t let us cuss.”
Lake hushes them as the first performer steps up to the microphone. I recognize the guy; I’ve seen him perform here a lot. He’s really good. I put my arm around Lake and he begins his poem.
“My name is Edmund Davis-Quinn and this is a piece I wrote called Write Poorly.”
Write poorly.
Suck
Write awful
Terribly
Frightfully
Don’t care
Turn off the inner editor
Let yourself write
Let it flow
Let yourself fail
Do something crazy
Write fifty thousand words in the month of November.
I did it.
It was fun, it was insane it was one thousand six hundred and sixty seven words a day.
It was possible.
But, you have to turn off your inner critic.
Off completely.
Just write.
Quickly.
In Bursts.
With joy.
If you can’t write, run away for a few.
Come back.
Write again.
Writing is like anything else.
You won’t get good at it immediately.
It’s a craft you have to keep getting better.
You don’t get to Julliard, unless you practice.
If you want to get to Carnegie Hall, practice, practice, practice.
…or give them a lot of money.
Like anything else, it takes ten thousand hours to get to mastery.
Just like Malcolm Gladwell says.
So write.
Fail.
Get your thoughts down.
Let it rest.
Let it marinate.
Then edit.
But don’t edit as you type,
that just slows the brain down.
Find a daily practice,
for me it’s blogging every day.
And it’s fun.
The more you write, the easier it gets. The more it is a flow, the less a worry. It’s not for school, it’s not for a grade, it’s just to get your thoughts out there.
You know they want to come out.
So keep at it. Make it a practice. And write poorly, write awfully, write with abandon and it may end up being
really
really
good.
When the crowd starts cheering I glance at the kids. They’re all just staring at the stage. “Holy shit,” Kiersten says. “This is awesome. That was incredible.”
“Why are you just now bringing us here, Will? This is so cool!” Caulder says.
I’m surprised they all seem to like it as much as they do. They’re relatively quiet the rest of the night as they watch the performers. Kiersten keeps writing in her notebook. I’m not sure what kind of notes she’s taking but I can see she’s really into it. I make a mental note to give her some of my older poems later.
“Next up, Will Cooper,” the emcee says. Everyone at the table looks at me, surprised.
“Are you doing one?” Lake says. I just smile at her and nod as I stand up and walk away from the table.
I used to get nervous when I would perform. A small part of me still does, but I think it’s more the adrenaline rush than anything. The first time I ever came here was with my father. He was really into the arts. Music, poetry, painting, reading, writing. All of it. I saw him perform here for the first time when I was fifteen. I’ve been hooked since. I hate that Caulder never got to know that side of him. I’ve kept as much of my dad’s writings as I could find, even a couple of old paintings. Someday I’ll give them all to Caulder. Someday when he's old enough to appreciate it.
I take the stage and walk up
to the microphone, adjusting the height of it. My poem isn’t going to make sense to anyone besides Lake. This one’s just for her.
“My piece is called Point of Retreat,” I say into the microphone. The spotlight is bright, so I can’t see her from up here, but I have a pretty good idea she’s smiling. I don’t rush the words of the poem. I perform it slow so she can take in every word of it.
Twenty-two hours and our war begins.
Our war of limbs
and lips
and hands…
The point of retreat
Is no longer a factor
When both sides of the line
Agree to surrender.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost…
Or is it how many times you’ve won?
This game we’ve been playing for fifty-nine weeks
I’d say the score
is
none
to
none.
Twenty-two hours and our war begins
Our war of limbs
and lips
and hands…
The best part of finally
Not calling retreat?
The showers above us
Raining down on our feet
Before the bombs explode and the guns fire their rounds. Before the two of us collapse to the ground. Before the battle, before the war…
You need to know
I’d go fifty-nine more.
Whatever it takes to let you win.
I’d retreat all over
and all over
and over
again.
I back away from the microphone and find the stairs. I’m not even halfway back to the booth when Lake throws her arms around my neck and kisses me. “Thank you,” she whispers in my ear.
When I slide into the booth, Caulder rolls his eyes. “You could have warned us, Will. We would have hid in the bathroom.”
“I thought it was beautiful,” Kiersten says.
It’s after nine when round two gets underway. “Come on kids, you guys have school tomorrow. We need to go,” I say. They all whine as they slide out of the booth one by one.
***
Once we get home, the kids head into the houses and Lake and I linger in the driveway, hugging. It's getting harder and harder to be separated from her at night, knowing she’s just yards away. It's become a nightly struggle not to text her and beg her to come crawl in bed with me. Now that our promise to Julia has been fulfilled, I have a feeling nothing will stop us after tomorrow night. Well, other than the fact that we're trying to set a good example for Kel and Caulder. But there's ways to sneak around that.
I slide my hands up the back of her shirt to warm them. They’re freezing. She apparently thinks so too and begins to squirm, trying to get out of my grasp.
“Your hands are freezing!” she laughs, still trying to pull away from me.
I just squeeze her tighter. “I know. That's why you need to be still so I can warm them up.” I rub them against her skin, attempting to keep the mental images of tomorrow night from overtaking my thoughts. It's so distracting, so I remove my hands from underneath her shirt and wrap my arms around her.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” I ask her.
She shoots me a dirty look. “Do you want me to punch you in the face or the nuts?”
I laugh, but prepare to defend myself just in case. “My grandparents are worried the boys will get bored at their house, so they want to keep them at my house instead. The good news is, we can’t stay at your house now so I booked us two nights in a hotel in Detroit.”
“That’s not bad news. Don’t scare me like that,” she says.
“I just thought you would be a little apprehensive about seeing my grandmother. I know how you feel about her.”
She looks at me and frowns. “Don’t, Will. You know good and well it’s not how I feel about her. She hates me!”
“She doesn’t hate you,” I say. “She’s just protective of me.” I wrap my arms around her tighter and try to push the thought out of her mind by kissing her ear.
“Well, it’s your fault she hates me anyway.”
I pull back and look at her. “My fault? How is it my fault?”
She rolls her eyes. “Your graduation? You don’t remember what you said the first night I met her?”
I don’t remember. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I try to remember, but nothing comes to mind.
“Will, we were all over each other. After your graduation when we all went out to eat, you could barely talk you were kissing me so much. It was making your grandmother really uncomfortable. When she asked you how long we’d been dating, you told her eighteen hours! How do you think that made me look?”
I remember now. That dinner was really fun. It felt great not to be ethically bound from putting my hands all over her, so that's all I did all night long.
“But it’s sort of true,” I say. “We were only officially dating for eighteen hours.”
Lake hits me on the arm. “She thinks I’m a slut, Will! It’s embarrassing!”
I touch my lips against her ear again. “Not yet, you’re not,” I tease.
She pushes me away and points to herself. “You aren’t getting any more of this for twenty-four hours.” She laughs and starts to walk backwards up her driveway.
“Twenty-one,” I correct her.
She reaches the front door and turns and goes inside without so much as a goodnight kiss. What a tease! She’s not getting the upper hand tonight. I run up the driveway and open her front door and pull her back outside. I push her against the brick wall of the entryway and look her in the eyes as I press my body against hers. She’s trying to look mad, but I can see the corner of her mouth break out into a smile. Our hands interlock and I bring them above her head and press them against the wall. “Listen to me very carefully,” I whisper. I continue to look her in the eyes. She listens. She likes it when I try to intimidate her. “I don’t want you to pack a damn thing. I want you to wear exactly what you were wearing last Friday night. Do you still have that ugly shirt?”
She smiles and nods. I don’t think she could speak right now if she wanted to.
“Good. What you’re wearing when we leave tomorrow night is the only thing you’re allowed to bring. No pajamas….no extra clothes. Nothing. I want you to meet me at my house at seven o’clock tomorrow night. Do you understand?”
She nods again. Her pulse is racing against my chest and I can tell by the look in her eyes that she needs me to kiss her. My hands remain clasped with hers against the wall as I move my mouth closer to her lips. I hesitate at the last minute and decide not to kiss her. I slowly drop her hands and back away from her and make my way back to the house. When I reach my front door, I turn around and she’s still leaning against the brick in the same position. Good. I got the upper hand this time.
Friday, January 20th
Lake will never read my journal, so I should say what’s really on my mind, right? Even if she does read this, it’ll be after I’m dead when she’s sorting through my things. So technically, maybe one day she will actually read this. But it won’t matter by then, ‘cause I’ll be dead.
So, Lake…if you’re reading this…I’m sorry I’m dead.
But for right now, in this moment…I am so alive. So very much alive. Tonight is the night. It’s been worth the wait. All fifty-nine weeks of it. (Over seventy if you count from our first date.)
So, I’ll just say what’s on my mind, okay?
Sex.
Sex, sex, sex. I’m having sex tonight. Making love. Butterflying. Whatever you want to call it, we’ll be doing it.
And I can’t freaking wait.
Chapter Six
I want today to be perfect, so I d
ecide to skip school, clean the house and finalize our plans before my grandparents arrive. I can’t believe how nervous I am. Or maybe it’s excitement. I don’t know what it is; I just know I want the day to hurry the hell up.
On my way home from picking the boys up from school, we stop at the store to get a few things for dinner. We don’t have plans to leave until seven so I text my grandfather and tell them I’m cooking for them. I’m baking basagna. Julia said to wait for a good day to bake it again. It’s definitely a good day. I’m running behind when I see their headlights through the living room window. I haven’t even showered yet and I still need to cook the breadsticks.
“Caulder, Grandma and Grandpa are here, go open the door!”
He doesn’t need to-they open the door anyway. Without knocking, of course. My grandmother walks through the door first so I walk over to her and kiss her on the cheek.
“Hi, sweetie,” she says. “What smells so good?”
“Basagna.” I walk to my grandfather and give him a hug.
“Basagna?” she says.
I shake my head and laugh. “Lasagna, I mean.”
My grandmother smiles at me and it reminds of my mom. They were almost identical. She and my grandfather are both tall and thin, just like my mom. A lot of people find my grandmother intimidating, but I find it hard to be intimidated by her. I’ve spent so much time with her; it feels like she’s my own mother sometimes.
My grandfather sets their bags down by the front door and they follow me into the kitchen. “Will, have you heard of this twitter?” He brings his glasses to the edge of his nose and looks down at his phone.
My grandmother looks at me and shakes her head. “He got one of those intelligent phones. Now he’s trying to twit the President.”
“Smart phones,” I correct her. “And it’s tweet, not twit.”
“He follows me,” my grandfather says, defensively. “I’m not kidding, he really does! I got a message yesterday that said ‘The President is now following you.’”
“That’s cool, Grandpa. But no, I don’t tweet.”
Point of Retreat (Slammed Series) Page 7