𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 (𝙵𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝙱𝚡𝙱)

Track 66 | 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗺

⏭

I love listening to his heartbeat. 

Though he's careful and precise with what he chooses to reveal to me, his heart is the easiest route to understanding him. It's his tell; his Achilles heel. 

In the moment, he'll pretend he's not fazed by my affectionate gestures, but when I press my ear to his chest, his BPM tells an entirely different story.

And although I do enjoy making his heart race, there's something equally comforting when it's calm and patient.

It tells me what I need to know: he feels safe with me.

With my head collapsed into his chest, Ari's gentle heartbeat greeted me with kindness as I awoke from the unexpected nap I seemingly fell into. His earthy scent and wrinkled clothing provided a soft bed for me to rest, offering a peaceful reunification with the material world.

Second to the heartbeat was the faint scratching of a pencil against notebook paper. Picking my head up from Ari's chest, I peered back over my shoulder to see a page painted in graphite, lines and lines of writing, scribbled out in a poetic structure, marked with Ari's eccentric but assured handwriting. Ideas and references spilled over the page, spun together fluently with rhymes and stanzas.

We lay together in his bed, his right arm busy with songwriting while his left cradled me like a child. Ari held the notebook against his lap, folding his legs in to give himself a sturdy surface to work against. Beside him, lying flat in the bed like a neglected third to our relationship, his acoustic guitar sat.

"...Did I fall asleep?" I croaked groggily as Ari's hand combed through my hair, his eyes remaining fixed on the page.

"Only for an hour," he said, locked in on his writing, though he wasn't bothered or distracted by me in the slightest. My presence in his life was so apparent now that I've become a set piece in his everyday world.

"I'm so sorry," my wistful voice whimpered into his shirt. Every surface of his body, whether obstructed by clothing or not, felt so natural against my own skin. 

"No, don't apologize," he excused in a polite, affectionate tone, guiding my head back down onto the "pillow"—his chest. "If you're tired, you should sleep."

With his permission, I snuggled in. My arms curled around Ari's torso, his tight edges lying firm in my grasp. His body and figure: a mass of bubbling pleasure.

"What are you writing?" My voice rasped.

"Just some song. An old one."

"Can I hear it?"

"It's not done," he lightly shook his head, tapping his pencil against the notebook with wavering concentration. "I've been working on it for a few years now, actually. I started writing it sophomore year, I think."

"You're trying to finish it?"

"Yeah. I'm trying to... finish a bunch of unfinished songs before..." He glanced in my direction, leading me to finish the sentence for him in my head. "...I like this one the most, though."

"More than 'moon'?"

He placed the end of the pencil in his mouth and thought for a moment. 

"I can't really rank them."

His voice was like honey. Sweet, sticky, soft.

An airplane soared past Ari's open window, a gust of fresh summer breeze washing over us and the walls of Ari's bedroom. It was quieter this afternoon than it usually was at Ari's house—something that would normally make him twitch with discomfort. Instead, he was still and calm, like the room. Like our tangled bodies. Like the soft rubbing of blanket fabric against my ears or the scribbling of the pencil.