Page 60 of Only After We Met
“Your parents seem like good people,” he said distractedly.
“They are, more or less. I don’t have any complaints. Don’t you miss your folks, Rhys? I mean, if you hadn’t had a fight with them, would you still be living this way…?”
“I don’t know. I always liked traveling.”
“Did you travel much before?”
“No, I was home more.”
I looked down at the sidewalk as we headed toward the Tube station. I remembered when we’d done something similar in Paris almost a year before. Sitting together. Our legs rubbing every time we took a sharp turn. Him pensive. Me nervous.
It was already getting dark when we were out again and walking across side streets on our way to see Big Ben. Rhys stood there looking around, leaning on the wall in front of the bridge across the Thames.
He glanced over at me. The wind shook his hair. “You never asked me about your gift…”
“I thought this was it,” I replied.
He turned and rested his hip against the wall. “This?” He looked confused.
“You. Being here with me.”
He smirked. “I know that’s every girl’s dream, but…”
“You’re about to make me scream.”
“Sorry. I won’t make you wait anymore.” He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out his cell phone and earbuds. He untangled the cable, slightly frustrated. Nervous. I could tell then that this moment was important to him. He looked up. “It’s a song.”
“For real?” I came closer to him, excited.
“Yeah. ‘Ginger’ is the title.”
“You wrote a song for me?”
Rhys nodded and pushed my hair out of my face, putting one earbud in my right ear while I slipped the other into my left. I got lost in his eyes as the first notes sounded. It was bass. Just bass. A rhythmic thumping, constant and clean, and then more sounds, more notes joined it. It sounded sad and happy at the same time. Like avine climbing some solitary forgotten place, covered in flowers, but also in thorns.
No one had ever given me such a beautiful gift.
When it was over, I asked him softly to play it again. He laughed and pulled out the earbuds.
“It’s yours. Forever.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was in LA, someone offered to buy it, but I decided not to sell. You can listen to it till you get tired of it. I’ll send it to you. Promise.”
“You really turned down an offer for it?”
He shrugged. “There are famous DJs out there who buy other people’s compositions. They’ve got the reputation; other people have good material. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll put it out on my own.”
“Why this song?” I asked.
“It’s based on your heartbeat. Your pulse.”
I remembered it then, his fingers on my wrist on that long-ago night, searching for my pulse, memorizing it in the darkness.
We stared at each other in silence.
He was so close…and, at the same time, impossible to reach.