It was the way everything was ending. The way everything was over before I could fully appreciate the beauty of it all. The lights, the stage, the audience, the way they hung on every word. Over. Time to return to the underlying hum of the everyday.
I stood in the hotel room for the last time. The weeks and months spinning around me like the color of old paper and I breathed in every dust mote. I tried to grasp every emotion that had made me want to write and share in the first place. I had written a novel. I had written a novel that people wanted to read. I had written a novel that people wanted to read and I taken it on a tour. And people had come to listen as I gave voice to my own words. They had stepped up to tables with the book cradled to their chest like a precious memory and I had listened as they gave my words a new voice. Listened as they told me how the story had moved them to tears. How it had settled into their bones and inspired them to make something of their own. To create something with their hands. To put their own piece of something out to the world. I had hugged them, held their hands, wiped away tears, watched their eyes light up when they talked about their own art. I had seen their art for myself. Carried carefully in folders and notebooks and read from screens. And I had cheered on every one. From the shockingly bad to the earth shattering good. Each one was a masterpiece and an homage to my own work, which I had only dreamed would light a spark when I was alone in a dark room with only the words to guide me.
Weeks and months, tables and rooms, stages and hotels, and now… quiet. There had been friendship. Seven authors on one tour of book conventions across the country, across the globe. Seven people with different stories and styles and reasons for putting their words in order. Seven friends. Some better, some worse, but all becoming something to each other in the months of travel, exhaustion, elation and wonder. What now? Would these new friendships carry into the everyday? Would they survive the heartbreak and joy and breakfast and writer’s block of the day to day? Living on separate coasts, separate continents?
Survive the introverted, focused life of a writer all alone at a keyboard playing out the lives of people having much more exciting existences than the writers themselves? Typing all of the things they could never be or say onto a little screen in a little room in a little life? For months these seven strangers had been someone else. We had lived the lives we had only dared to write about. And now… would there be enough to hold us together?
I thought about all of this as I stood in a white room full of white furniture. White flowers on the white tabletop. I was a bruise of black clothing in this perfect room. I was a bruise of black moods in my other life. Every pure thing that came along was left stained by the sadness I wore like rainwater on my skin. The fact that I had managed to write a book that made people better instead of sad was nothing short of a miracle. My life was empty and black and the only place I felt I fit was in that small dark room in front of that screen writing about people who were infinitely happier than I was. I was an imposter on this book tour. I had laughed with the others and listened to their fears. I had leant a shoulder for tears and I had somehow, I still have no idea how, held onto my own. For once I hadn’t been the sad girl. I had been the inspiration. I had been the happy. I had been the joy. I had felt the joy. Away from everything familiar that made me feel like darkness, like night moving in, like a black spot in a white room. Which one was real? The person I had always been or the one I had become in a few short months? Who would I meet when I got back home? Who would the few remaining people see?
What had he seen? Late nights when we sat in each other’s space, among the things that only meant something to us. Me in his room among the ink and color and storyboards. Listening to his soul pour from the speakers when he played the music that pushed him to draw his stories. Among his holy sweaters and ill fitting t-shirts. What had he seen? When he came to my room, a bottle in hand, a sheepish grin, a shrug when I mentioned our early morning. When he sat among my fresh book purchases, when he listened to the sadness pouring from my speakers. When he looked right at me and I was sure he saw the darkness and didn’t care, maybe even found comfort there. What had he seen? Did it matter now that it was over? Tomorrow we all boarded our own flights to be scattered to the winds, and this would only live in
us as a remember when.
I didn’t even know if he saw anything other than a kindred spirit in an awkward situation. The other five were real humans. Real people who could discuss stocks and interest rates and where they were vacationing next summer with their real life families. With their real life friends. They were solid and alive. But he was more fluid, more hazy, more ghostlike, more like the darkness that drifted into my brain when I was alone with my words for too long. Was I just a drinking buddy distraction for nights he’d had enough of the solid people? Was I the only one who felt there might be more? Would I board my plane tomorrow and someday write an ending that sold a book but left me empty?
Back to the white room, to the bright day, to the glare of tomorrow shining in the window that dominated the room and brought the strange city right to my feet. A view that brought me right to my knees. How could I go back to my tiny life, alone with the darkness? Maybe I could just keep boarding planes and living in sterile rooms while I wrote about people in love. Maybe I could hold the reality at bay with my pointed words.
A knock jarred me out of my mind and back into that too white room. A turn of the doorknob, a peek around the door, a breath of relief that it’s just him. No bottle. No sheepish grin, no shrug at the late hour. Just the sunlight on his hair and a genuine look of worry over his face. Come in, how was your last day, are you packed, are you ready, what will you do next, can you believe this view?
Until I let one drop of the despair escape. Just one drop of overwhelm running over a cheek and he’s there. Arms wrapped around the black bruise in the too white room. There in solid form with a whisper of comfort and a hint of darkness hidden well beneath his holy sweater. A smell like old paper and ink and the coffee he must have just finished before he knocked on my door. A smell like ancient places I dreamed I had once walked in other lives I couldn’t confirm. I couldn’t let go. Even as he whispered that it was ok and that he wasn’t going anywhere, I couldn’t let go. Even as he promised we would stay in touch, as he promised those late nights hadn’t just been about loneliness. Even as he
echoed my fear of what came next, I couldn’t let go of the place I had arrived after so many miles. He stood steady, arms only holding tighter, sweater only getting wetter, the white room only growing darker as the sun dipped behind the city.
What’s next?
Whatever we want. Wherever we want. Look at me.
I can’t. I can’t let you see me.
I see you. I have seen you for months. I see you. Look at me.
{ Slowly, eyes meeting eyes. }
I see you and I only want to come closer. I only want to sleep in your night.
I only want you to stay in my reach.
I only want to love you.
Can you?
I already do.
And there in his grey eyes was a hint of moonlight meeting my night. There in his lips was the promise of just a hint of light to guide me. There in his touch was the healing of the bruises. The city rose up to meet us as we sank into the too white bed, two ink stains on fresh paper.
Disclaimer: I have obviously never been on a book tour, but I’m sure it’s nothing like the scenario I’ve presented here. Let’s allow ourselves a break from reality for awhile.