Jacy spent her mornings doing mundane things, chores, errands and the like, and her afternoons in the bookstore. She always sat at "their" table, always ordered vanilla caramel latte, and always sat on "her side" of the table. She missed Taylor. She missed the way he always gave her a puppy-eyed gaze until she had to laugh and hand over her notebook. She missed the sound of his voice and his immediate reactions to whatever she'd written. Most of all she missed his smile, they way he looked her in the eye when they sat across from each other and listened when she talked. He made her feel real. The last few weeks seemed to have her in a weird funk. She felt as if she was swimming through a thick, dingy gray haze. She felt like a shadow, moving through the grayness in danger of being swallowed up, the thickness of it would muffle her cries if it ever truly took hold of her. She feared disappearing without a trace and what hurt even more was the knowledge that there would not be anyone to miss her once she was gone. She might actually believe there would be not one person to miss her while she was gone, except the longer Taylor was on the road, the more full her e-mail box became. When she was not writing, working hard on getting things published and getting her novel finished, she was constantly checking her e-mail. Every time she got the urge to check there was something from him, even if only a note to say "I miss you" or "sleep well and I will see you soon." Jacy tried to follow which cities he was in, and read every review she could find, but mostly she looked forward to his letters and his descriptions of how shows went and new people he'd met. She missed him, though and sometimes she indulged her wild imagination. She let herself remember what it felt like to be close enough to hear his heartbeat, and what his hands felt like as he held her close, even though it was just for a moment. She briefly thought about what it would have been like to feel his lips on hers. Taylor made her feel real. She wanted out of the thick gray funk, to be able to breathe and to feel real. Taylor was exhausted, and felt like he was moving through life in a vat of thick liquid. He thanked the powers that be, for every single response in his e-mail from Jacy. He came to rely on her calming tone, he could hear her soft voice as he read her letters, telling him how happy she was that the tour was going so well and how she'd read the latest review. He could hear her chuckle as she wrote that she could do so much better than some of the established writers who wrote the reviews. He was grateful for the distraction of some of the writing she shared with him in her letters and was overjoyed when she started an on-line journal. He found himself reading her entries over and over again, wanting to know what she was doing, what she was thinking. He missed her. He missed her sweet smile, the way she tilted her head as she listened to him, how she was always brushed errant curls out of her face and swept them behind her ears. Sometimes, as he lay in his bunk in the dark, he wondered how her dark rose colored lips might taste, what her dark curls might feel like, if he could dig his hands in. He missed Jacy. He missed her laugh, the way her eyes sparkled in the sunlight and he missed what she felt like in his arms, even though he'd only felt it for a moment. He was ready to get out of the hazy mist he'd been swimming through and be real again. Jacy made him feel real. Suddenly all he wanted was to feel real. |