Page 44 of Glass Half Full
There’s no going back. There’s before that kiss, and there’s after.
“I meant what I said.” Her gaze doesn’t waver from mine. I see fear there, but I also see courage. Determination. Passion.
She’s a lioness.
“I want this,” she tells me, her expression softening, displaying the barest flash of vulnerability.
I mean it as much as her when I answer, “I want this too.”
She reaches for the handle, and we step through the door.
Thirteen
Dylan
CADENCE: The natural rhythm of speech or poetry without an intentional rhyme scheme
Chance the Rapperblasts through my speaker as I rinse the shampoo out of my hair. I’ve been listening to his discography nonstop since that day Renee had ‘Same Drugs’ playing at Taverne Toulouse. He’s one of those artists I always find myself coming back to. The guy’s got talent. Like Renee said, he’s got thatthing.
I step out of the shower, singing along to the chorus as I dry off my hair. I’d say one of the benefits of living alone is getting to sing as loud as you want in the shower, but I’ve pissed off every roommate I’ve ever had by getting full-on operatic with my shower serenades.
It’s been a few years since I finally had the money to start renting a place on my own. The trade off to construction work sucking the soul out of me was that it paid pretty fucking well. I still live cheap, but I have a half decent one bedroom all on my own, just a few blocks from the bar.
I head into my bedroom to track down some clothes, but a missed call notification on my phone halts my progress. It’s rare for any of my friends to call instead of text; voice messages are almost exclusively from the bar. I’m technically off today, but managers don’t really get days off; I’m still on call if anything goes wrong.
“And here I was thinking I could get through a ten minute shower in peace,” I mutter to myself as I check the call time—three minutes ago—before queuing the message up to play and continuing my hunt for clothes.
“Um, hi, Dylan.”
I pause in the middle of pulling a drawer open, my other hand pressing the phone to my ear even harder as her voice comes through the speaker.
“I hope it’s not creepy that I got your number off the list at work. I hope it’s also not creepy that I noticed we both have the day off today.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “Okay, so it’s probably pretty creepy. I just wanted to call because, um, we need to talk.”
I tense up; it’s a known fact of life that nothing good ever follows the ‘we need to talk’ line. To my surprise, Renee just laughs again, this one genuine.
“Oh my god, who am I? ‘We need to talk?’ That sounded way too dramatic.” As on edge as this message has me, I’m still grinning like an idiot from just the sound of her voice. “I just meant, um, considering everything that happened on Saturday, we probably should talk, right? I’d like to see you today, if I can. We could meet somewhere, hang out for a bit. I’m free all day. Very cool, I know. Absolutely zero plans for my day off—except calling you. That I planned on...and now IknowI sound creepy, and I’m just rambling anyway, so I’m going to hang up. Goodbye.”
God, could she be any fucking cuter?
It’s been two days since I kissed her—since I kissed my employee—but somehow the fatal collision with reality I was expecting hasn’t hit yet. I can’t get her out of my head. I don’twanther out of my head. I’ve got her lips and hips and smile and skin on repeat, and I don’t want to skip to the next song.
When we walked back into Taverne Toulouse after What Happened In The Alley—it’s deserving of mental capitalization—it was all I could do not to throw my arm over her shoulders and saunter into the room with my chest puffed out. I wanted everyone to pay attention to this brave, brilliant, and beautiful woman. I wanted to walk into that room like we were together, like we were taking the world on as a team.
And Renee thinks she’s the one who needs to worry about being creepy.
One kiss in, and I’m already imagining what it would be like to have a life with her. It’s like she’s this light that’s getting closer and closer, but instead of blinding me, I’m starting to see the world a little more clearly through her rays.
The phone rings four times before I realize I have no idea what I’m going to say in a message. Hell, I have no idea what I’m going to say if she picks up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Renee. It’s Dylan.”
I do my best to keep my voice from cracking like a pubescent boy asking a girl to go to the movies for the first time. I just end up lowering my tone so much I might as well be doing a very bad Batman impression.
“You sound different on the phone,” Renee comments. “You’re not sick, are you? Did my call wake you up?”
“Oh, no.”
