Short Stories (bxb)

The Art of Feeling Small Pt. 5: Payne's Grey

6 months later hellooooo

xxx

Somewhere through the fog in my mind, I processed the distant sound of tapping.

No . . .

The not-so-distant feeling of tapping.

After the first bleary blinks of my eyes were met with the foggy pink of the campus lights, I remembered that Ezra and I had come outside to the grassy hill in Century Plaza we had long since claimed as our own. I was getting pretty skilled at reading Ezra's tells when it came to his precarious relationship with his art, and this was where we ended up whenever he needed to be far from the paintbrush threatening to snap in his clenched grip.

It cleared his head, coming out here. Mine, too -- so much, apparently, that I had fallen asleep.

"Can I ask what you're doing?" I said, turning my eyes as far upward as I could without moving my neck, just enough to see the edge of his hand as it rose and fell against my forehead to an erratic beat.

In lieu of an answer, Ezra started to mutter, "Baby we're the new romantics, come on come along with me, heartbreak is the national anthem, we sing--"

"That really doesn't answer--"

Ezra raised the pointer finger of his free hand, effectively shushing me, and continued his mumbling (singing?). Through an automatic roll of my eyes, I recognized that he was tapping against my forehead (which I still believed deserved an explanation) to the words of the song. Accepting that he intended to see this through, I occupied myself trying to poke his hovering finger with my tongue without moving enough for him to notice. It was just out of reach.

"Baby we're the new romantics, the best people in life are free."

The tapping and muttering stopped. I waited. After a solid count of five in my head, I deemed it safe to speak. "Ezra . . . what."

"New Romantics, Taylor Swift 1989 -- Deluxe Edition."

"That is really, truly not what I was about to ask you," I said, internally bemoaning the lifelong Taylor Swift obsession I had learned about last week and hadn't been able to escape since.

"You were asleep," Ezra said, like it explained everything. Next to him, Appa lay curled in a ball, and I wondered bitterly why the dog got to sleep but I didn't.

"You couldn't have just shaken me? Said my name?"

"Alexander, I was halfway through the chorus before you even stirred."

"That is . . ." I didn't want to say fair, because that might encourage future use of poorly-sung Taylor and forehead percussion as a waking strategy, but I had been told more than once that I was a heavy sleeper.

"Alright," Ezra said, landing two final taps at my hairline for good measure, "Let's go."

"Hold on," I said -- whined, maybe, if you asked Ezra -- "Why are we leaving?"

Ezra's eyebrows judged me palpably. "You were asleep," he said again, drier this time. "It's late."

"It's not late."

"Okay, well I'm cold."

"You're not cold."

Ezra heaved a long-suffering sigh and flopped back against the grass, resigning wordlessly to his fate. The pout magically slipped from his face when my sweatshirt landed in his lap, though, and he wasted no time in sliding it over his head. His content hum turned into a tittering, airy laugh as he flicked his wrists up and down a few times, apparently fascinated by the flap of the sleeves past his fingertips, and said, "Smells like strawberries." He tugged the collar up to his nose. "And you."