Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
The second he’s off the stage, Frankie introduces me, and it’s my turn to be talented. I approach the lone microphone set up at the center of the stage, then face the audience confidently. By this point in the night, they have gotten braver, and I hear individual people calling out. “You’ve got this, you sexy man!” “We love you!” “Marry me, Cole!!” “You’re amazing!” “Mr. Picture Perfect!”
I grip the microphone and smile at the crowd. “Thanks,” I tell them, my voice booming. “Spruce, Texas is sure appreciating your support, whether you’re from around here or traveled in from out of town.” Even now, my eyes dance around the crowd, or however much of the crowd I can actually see through the slightly dimmer and moodier stage lights, looking for Noah. “I thought I’d sing a little song for you guys.”
“Hell yeah!” “Sing your heart out, baby!” “Yes!!”
I don’t know if Noah’s out there. Somehow, a significant part of me doubts it. If I can’t see him, I’ll just have to imagine his face.
“This is a song that has … a lot of recent meaning to me. Hope you enjoy it.” Then I glance at the side of the stage where Tamika awaits my cue. I give her a nod. She whispers into her headset.
From the speaker comes the gentle, moody guitar strokes for my backing track to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”.
The second it comes time to sing, the music cuts off.
I look up at the speaker, confused, then glance at Tamika, still in the wing offstage. She shrugs at me, then starts hissing into her headset, trying to solve the problem. Her whispers become more and more frantic until she returns her gaze back to me and shrugs with more exasperation, shaking her head, at a loss.
The audience is starting to murmur among themselves.
The speaker for the music may have gone out, but with the sound of my measured breaths rolling through the pavilion like ocean waves, it seems apparent that my microphone still works.
I close my eyes.
I imagine the pavilion completely empty—save for one face, right in the middle. The only person to whom this song is for.
Then I sing: “So, so you think you can tell, Heaven from Hell …?”
The audience draws quiet at once as my voice rings out, sans any backing music. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I feel Noah right there across from me in that Country Lovin’ restaurant—his bright and happy eyes as he scarfed down those crepes, his smile, his gentleness and sensitivity. I sing to that face and no one else.
The lyrics pour out of me with the passion I’d put into a kiss right now, right on his lips, a kiss pleading him to come back.
A kiss of music, pleading for him to be here, to appear before me like an answer to all my questions.
I sing until every last lyric drifts from my lips with hope.
I run out of lyrics to sing sooner than I expect, then open my eyes as the last note echoes out into the night air, then dissipates like the wind, leaving nothing but silence.
Silence … and Noah’s face in my mind.
When the audience roars with their applause, shattering the silence, I don’t even notice at first. My eyes are lost to the sea of unfamiliar faces. As good as it felt to sing that song from my heart, it’s meaningless if Noah isn’t here.
What if I’m fooling myself, hoping he’s here?
What if Noah left because he really was awake and heard me confess that I love him? What if he doesn’t return my feelings?
What if it’s over?
“Thank you,” I say halfheartedly, then walk off the stage.
The music continues to play on loop inside my mind, but now instead of inspiring hope and beauty, it only rings bells of sadness. Tamika tells me she has no idea what happened with the music, but thinks my a cappella version was ten times more beautiful than what was rehearsed. I thank her, though I can’t be sure what exactly I said, as I’m lost in my feelings as I head back to my chair.
Are my suspicions right? Have I really lost Noah for good?
Is that the cruel truth I’ve been avoiding to accept ever since he left me yesterday morning?
“Shit, I’m such a fuckin’ idiot,” sobs Anthony.
I look up to find Anthony standing in front of me.
With a dark red streak running down his forehead to the slope of his blunt nose.
A dark red streak of blood.
“Yeah, the damned hammer hit my face hard enough to make a gash,” he says, noting my frozen reaction. “It’s a toy, a fake, and it still cut me like this?”
The second I see his wound, I turn away. It’s to a blank wall that I stonily say my next words. “They loved you out there.”