Louder Than Love || Chris Cornell

The Notebook

Seattle Washington,
February 6, 1991

Chris presses his lips to mine once again,  feeling his soft lips move with mine while he holds me to him. His hands trail from my hips up to my back under my shirt while I suck his beautiful bottom lip. He sighs against my lips flicking his tongue at my top lip when  suddenly the phone rings. His lips stop moving with mine for a moment, as we open our eyes and the phone rings again.

"Weird... I wonder who the fuck that could be..." He says when he pulls his lips away from mine. I shrug and the phone keeps ringing. He taps my thigh to signal for me to move and I gracefully move off of him and close up my blue plaid shirt of his while he gets up off the floor and pulls up his underwear. I watch his tall frame walk out of the room as he flips his beautiful curls out of his face.

While I hear his voice low and deep coming from the living room I turn my attention back to his guitar that lay on the floor beside where we were. I smile to myself as I reach out and trace my finger along its curves again. I can't fucking help it. That is one sexy guitar.

I then get myself up off the floor, pick up the guitar and set it back on its stand.  I then continue to look around his room and notice a black book open on his side table. As I walk over to the side table I realize it's his song book. For some reason I was so curious as to what he's written in there I look back to the door to check if he could see from here. I still hear his voice muffled a little by the living room and I turn and as discreetly as I can, take the book off the table, climb up on the bed, sit crosslegged and start flipping through the pages.

There were so many song ideas and lyrics, it was a beautiful thing to see inside the book. Some were pages of complete songs, others were just random scribbles and little drawings that he would do if he was stuck. I glance up at the door and see that he was still out in the living room on the phone and then I turn my attention back to the book.

I flip the page and I come across the song 'All Night Thing' that he wrote when we met and I see a picture of him and I, taped to the page. The picture was of the night in Brooklyn, backstage. It looked like it was Matt who took the picture. It was of Chris and I on the couch, Chris leaning into me looking like he's whispering something in my ear and I just have this goofy laugh on my face. I don't even remember this being taken. It was the night we found out Andy was in the hospital. I flip the page over and see 'Island Of Summer' written on the other side, the last song he wrote with Andy before...

I suddenly started to remember that night and I almost felt weird looking in his book now.
I look up and see Chris coming back in from the living room and I quickly close the book and slid it under me.
"What was that?" He asks me with his eyebrow raised.
"What was what?" I ask startled.
"Whatever you slid under yourself... what was that?" He laughs and glances over at the side table to see his book was gone. He looks back at me and raises his eyebrow.

"You have my book don't you?" He says and I can't tell if he's mad at me or embarrassed or what.
"Um...no?" I say innocently feeling like I've been caught. I shouldn't have looked.
"Andi..." He looks at me. I look down and slowly pull the book out from under me and set it in front of me.

"I'm sorry..." I say.
"It's ok..." He says and walks over to pick up the book and sets it inside the table drawer. He stands there for a moment and I look up at him, and I still can't tell if he's mad or not.

"No... wait... here," He says and takes the book back out of the drawer and then climbs up on the bed with me to sit in front of me with the book between us.

"Go ahead..." He says as he looks at me and flips his curls out of his face while I look at him confused.

"You can look through... I have nothing to hide... most of it was when Andy was alive anyways... and why not reminisce a little bit..." Chris says as he looks at the book and gives me a grin.

I open the book back up and he moves beside me showing me each note, lyric and song he ever wrote from before him and I were together and when we started, right up until Andy died.
I look over at him while he looks at the pages and I feel so ridiculously stupid about pushing him away for all that time.

"I'm sorry..." I say to him and he looks at me.
"For what?" He asks. I close my eyes for a second to fight the tears that are stinging my eyes.
"For pushing you away and..." I say shakily as I look down at myself. I have to tell him, I have to tell him about Eddie, but I can't.

"Baby... shhhh...it's ok..." He says as he cups my face and turns me to look at him. A tear escapes and runs down my cheek and he wipes it away with his thumb.

"Hey... I love you... I love you more than anything... I'm not going anywhere..." Chris says and I touch my forehead to his. If he only knew.