Frankly Told: Love Notes
The room was quiet. Warm with nothing but the sun dressing the walls in a beautiful orange glow. African afternoons, they so fondly called it. He lay spread out across the bed with her on his chest.
In his mind, he etched the memory of the moment like it would be the last, knowing it just might be. He had been thinking about it for a little while longer than he would like to admit. Every time he had attempted, he looked into her eyes and found every other reason not to. Moments after he had pushed the idea from his mind, the desire came back… Maybe this wasn’t the relationship he had in mind.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked softly.
“Hmm… Nothing really,” he replied.
“You always say that,” she scoffed and gently caressed his chest where she had unbuttoned his shirt just enough to leave some skin exposed.
“Because there is hardly ever anything I am thinking about in such moments,” he continued. “I’m here, with you and nothing else.”
“Fair enough,” She readjusted herself so she could gaze at him directly.
“What?” he asked her wide eyes.
“Nothing,” she smiled slyly.
He kissed his teeth and playfully hit her arm. He hated how she had this way of pulling him back in with the most nonsensical things. Things that had never worked before and he was terrified by the thought of how much she had him in her hand. With one twist, he bent this way. Another and he bent the other way.
“You are such a clown,” he smiled and she blushed.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” she expressed after a beat of silence.
“If it is whether I’d love you if you were a worm, I swear…” he started.
“No, no,” she interjected. “It isn’t that. I am curious to know… How come you never write any songs about me?”
“How do you mean?” he paused. “All my love songs are for you.”
She huffed and contorted her face in disappointment. He was powerless to her puppy-dog eyes and it was like he became a puppet to her every demand for so long as she could look at him like that.
“But they are,” he emphasized. “Every word applies to you.”
“They were written before me,” she shot.
“Doesn’t mean that they can’t be about you,” he tried to persuade.
“You had other women in your head when you wrote them,” he insisted.
“True-” he started.
“See!” she exclaimed. “I want my own.”
His words left him. She held him captive with unbroken eye contact, he feared she would read him like a book. Inside, he knew this was the line. It was there where it was either forever or he could get out before he was too late. He had spent months trying to untangle himself from her affection so he could leave in peace and enjoy his youth and run through all the options that presented themselves. After all, he was a precious commodity in the eyes of the masses.
“Do you not want to write songs about me?” she asked in a near whisper.
“It’s not about ‘want” here,” he fumbled about his words.
“Then what is it about,” she sat up.
“Uhh..” he backed himself into a corner. “Why do you want a song from me?”
“Because I hear the things you sing and I would like to be the object of your art,” she packed in the answer fast. “Is that so wrong of me?”
He cussed. She knew his every move. Every avoidant card up his sleeve, she had written out and knew how to move about it. She read him like the back of her hand. He knew it was too late, the wild one had been tamed into submission. A piece of him was saddened by the idea of being a predator looking for the next kill slowly slipping away. A bachelor in his prime, just a dream fading into a mum delusion.
“Fine,” he surrendered and sat up.
Sighing heavily he got up from the bed and walked over to his desk where he pulled the bottom drawer from which he pulled out a stack of envelopes. He turned and she gasped when she saw what he was holding.
“I’ve tried,” he said. “I tried to keep these to myself because maybe they’d come of use for my next projects at some point. In my opinion, I never felt any of them good enough. So when I wrote one, I just put it away and tried the next one. Then the next, the next, the next and the pile kept growing.”
He walked back over to the bed and chucked the stack in front of her.
“To be honest, I understood that every time I wrote this out, I got a larger image of just how much I feel for you,” he said. “This was supposed to be my decade of playing hooky. I was supposed to detach from matters of the heart but then I met you.”
“I’ve tried to run away,” he continued his verbal diarrhoea on her puzzled face. “I haven’t written a song about you because I know the moment I string those words together, two things will happen.”
He held up his fingers and put one down.
“One, I will have to marry you,” he said with shaking confidence, she smiled. “I fear this is the end of a phase I romanticise in my head. Maybe I am just a one-woman man but damn, God ain’t giving me the chance to know that without testing out options.”
She laughed. He smiled, filled with the warmth of her laughter. The rays of light gave her a halo around her crown of copper-dyed kinky hair and she looked like a dream to him. She slowly got up and sauntered over to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“What’s number two?” she asked.
“I won’t ever release what might just be the greatest thing I ever write,” he lowered his last finger.
“Because I know you’ve written it many times over,” she pulled him closer. “What would you call it?”
He smiled sheepishly and rolled his eyes.
“Love Notes.”
