Page 52 of Glass Half Full
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s fine. I...I kind of want to talk about it. It’s just hard to explain.”
“Hey.” He waits for me to look up at him. “We have all day, unless someone sets Taverne Toulouse on fire, so take as much time as you need.”
“Thanks.” I brush my finger over his knuckles on the table top, pulling my hand back when my whole arm zings with the rush of the contact. I know I’m not getting any explaining done if I keep that up. “Once the anxiety started, it just got harder and harder to...think like that. It was like all the words were gone. Sometimes I’d feel them. It’s like they were so close, locked behind this door I just didn’t have the key to, and I’d pound and pound on it, but they wouldn’t come out.”
If I was talking to anyone else, I’d be blushing by now and apologizing for sounding crazy, but I know Dylan will understand. He may never have lost them before, but he knows what it’s like to reach for the words.
“It was like losing part of myself, like finding police tape I couldn’t cross wrapped around the best part of who I am. If I’d still had poetry, it would have been so much easier to handle all the things I went through, but no matter how many times I tried to get to that place I’d always been able to find before, I couldn’t. The worry got in the way. Eventually I just...stopped trying. It was breaking my heart to keep losing that fight.”
I’m wearing my blanket scarf again, and Dylan starts toying with the edge of it, letting me know he’s there, that he’s listening, that I can reach for him if I want.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Poetry has always been...I mean, it’s the one thing I’ve always felt like I can turn to, like it can keep me going when nothing else does. I know how much it must have hurt to feel like you were losing it.”
I nod, leaning into his touch when it comes to rest on my shoulder.
“And now?” he asks. “Is it still the same?”
“I think so.” I can’t keep myself from sounding ashamed. I am ashamed. It’s like I lived my whole life with a superpower just to wake up without it one day. If anything could continue to make me feel weak, it’s the loss of my poetry. “I’m almost scared to try.”
“I don’t think it’s gone forever. In fact, I know it’s not gone forever.”
He sounds so sure of himself, so sure of me. It floods my whole body with warmth.
“Can I tell you something?” I ask.
“No,” he jokes. “No, you cannot.”
“Too bad. I’m going to anyway.”
He tugs on my scarf. “How did I know you were going to say that?”
“Because I’m a little shit?”
He shakes his head and puts a hand over his heart, pretending to be overwhelmed by my little shit-ness.
“There have been moments...” I begin. “There have been moments...with you...where I’ve felt it. I’ve felt like I can reach the words again. It’s only ever for a second or two, but it’s like—like this light comes on all of a sudden, like the key turns in the lock.”
“You’ve felt that with me?” He stares at me with wide eyes. I nod. “Renee, I...”
“I know it’s kind of crazy and it’s happening really fast, but...you’re starting to mean a lot to me, Dylan.”
He grabs my hands with both of his and presses a kiss to my knuckles. We might be sitting in a coffee shop in plain view of the whole store, but all I see is him. All I feel is the heat of his mouth on my skin and the fervent tremor of his hands where they’re wrapped around mine. The world goes as silent as the first few seconds of a snowfall. It feels like the most intimate thing anyone has ever done to me, to see his head bowed before me, his lips brushing my knuckles like even just that inch of skin is the most precious thing they’ve ever touched.
“You’re starting to mean a lot to me too.” He doesn’t drop my hands until he’s kissed them again.
We both escape to our drinks after that, filling the silence with long sips as the weight of the moment continues to cling to us. I start to wonder if I said too much, if I should have waited before announcing something like that, but then his foot nudges mine under the table.
I nudge him back.
He nudges me twice.
I nudge him twice.
“Okay, enough!” I protest once I finally manage to swallow. “I’m going to spill this everywhere.”
“Fine, fine. You’re right.”
