Writing
I. Waiting
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005I am waiting in the foyer of a large expensively-elegant hotel, supposedly at a business meeting, but instead waiting for him to arrive back in London after the band’s tour finally ended. He has been away only a short while, time I had to spend in London working. Time I hadn’t spent with him, hadn’t lain arm in arm talking about everything and nothing. Time when even keeping in touch had been difficult, my schedule at odds with the rigours of a musician’s life. I knew I should expect nothing to be the same. I wasn’t naïve: I knew what musicians were like and the transiency and one-sidedness of relationships they trailed behind them.
I can see him saying hello to people on his way in. He catches my eye, acknowledges me, friendly/not unfriendly, I don’t know, then moves on. My heart sinks. In that one moment I feel all the inadequacies I remember feeling as a teenager: he doesn’t want me, he doesn’t love me, doesn’t even want to know me particularly. I was his secret for a while, now I’m not even that. I feel invisible, I want desperately to be invisible, yet I have to appear to everyone else that everything is fine. They are looking at you to gauge your reaction. They are, aren’t they? They want to see if you look as crushed as you must feel. They all know he’s the famous musician with the money and the big house and the fast cars. You just fell for that, you silly girl. Now you got your come-uppance.
But even I can hear the music change, softly, from minor to major and he looks across to me, at me, really looking at me, handing his music manuscript to a lackey and he starts walking towards me, saying hello to other people on the way but not taking his eyes off me for one second. I feel scared, embarrassed, ecstatic; I can feel my legs shaking. Everyone is watching. I hate attention. But I don’t care when I know that, in seconds, the man I love more than anything in the whole world, this intensely private man, is effectively going to make a public declaration that he loves me more than anything in the whole world.
Copyright © 2005 Ella M. All rights reserved.
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Posted in Writing