Some Part of Me is You, page 34
“Hi,” Kristen said, utterly captivating in the dark blue gown Ali had helped zip up a few hours earlier. The color reminded her of sheets on a New York bed and the way Kristen’s eyes looked at her at the end of a full set, seconds before their bodies collided up against the nearest solid object.
Those were summer memories of the best kind, and as Ali undid the skinny tie around her neck she smiled back at Kristen, maybe with a little too much suggestion... but they were alone, in dimmed lighting, and it wasn’t just her; Kristen's eyes were checking out her arms in a way that was more suggestive than her smile ever could be. “Hi. That went pretty well, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s a pretty okay song,” Kristen responded, eyes softening but with a hint of tease, and just like that, it felt like they were the only two people in the world. “For one that was written music before words, anyway.”
“Wow,” Ali exclaimed, mock-scandalized, making Kristen's dimples pop out and making the urge to kiss her surge abruptly. But they wouldn't. Not even in what felt like a bubble, this darkened corner of the wings, without a single person in sight.
What they had wasn't worth stupid risks, and they both knew it.
Instead, Ali tugged a stray strand of Kristen's up-do behind her ear and murmured another soft, “Hi”, and the look Kristen gifted her with in kind made her feel like she was the night's big winner, Kristen's bags of swag and all.
Tomorrow, she’d be making coffee in the morning as Kristen got an extra five minutes of sleep, and she'd make her pose with her new collection of statues while making stupid faces, and they'd kiss until the hot water ran out in the shower, and there wouldn't be any goodbyes, because they'd be together in all the ways that mattered even before Kristen made it back to New York. And in the afternoon, she'd be playing her own music with her family, and letting her best friend edit her guitar work and her brother try new and ridiculous ways to use his falsetto, and giving any new finished ideas to her writing partner, who swore he wasn't getting tired of the relentless wave of intense and happy music she was feeding to him... and when they had a rough cut, she'd send it to her life partner, who would listen to it and get it and let her know exactly what was missing, if anything was.
“Hi,” Kristen replied, lips curving around the word into that smile that all the cameras in the world never did fully capture... or maybe it was just a smile that nobody else brought out in her.
“Have a good night, you,” Ali said, slipping past her on the way to the bar with a small quirk of her lips that promised Kristen the best possible end to an evening of work:
Falling asleep next to someone who did know what was left standing at the end of the show, and who loved every part of it completely.
Acknowledgments
Like any book, this wouldn’t have existed without several key people giving me the time to write it and setting aside their own time to help me work through it, with anything ranging from general suggestions and brainstorming to nitpicky editing. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own; only a real jerk would blame the legends who copyedited this thing for free in their own limited free time.
A big thank you to those in my life who’d never read anything I’d written but were enthusiastic about the prospect of it; a bigger thank you to those who have read things I’ve written and have for the better part of a decade now told me that I probably could pull off this whole ‘novel’ thing if I applied myself. Writing is a lonely pursuit, but less so when have you a small but enthusiastic support network that learns to care about what you are producing almost as much as you yourself do.
To those who helped, and especially Laura — drinks on me, eternally.
Adrienne Marsh, Some Part of Me is You
