I’ll Wait For You

Ending the phone call, Elinor slumped in her sofa with a sigh.

Over the course of the week, whilst dealing with messages of emotional support from Tina, Peter, Karen and Catrina simultaneously, Elinor had checked social media platforms to see Aidan’s son, whom he insisted on tweeting about every hour or so. She supposed she should be happy for him, since his life’s ambition seemed to apparently rest on the laurels of being a father, but she couldn’t conjure up any sort of positivity regarding him. She still felt betrayed over the fact that whilst she’d been enduring the fallout of her miscarriages, he’d been sleeping with other women behind her back.

It insulted her. It belittled her and made her feel that all her sacrifices for him had gone unappreciated. Instead of seeing everything she’d done for him, the things she’d given up – he focused instead on her greatest failure.

I made the choice. I didn’t have to marry him. I didn’t need to go through all that. But I did.

Love, Elinor reflected, made people do stupid things. No wonder people still wrote music and wailed their hearts out over it, thousands of years from when they could first put the concept onto paper.

On top of this, she’d also been practicing her singing voice, exercising vocals in the shower or while shaving off the annoying excess hair that grew everywhere, humming when hoovering or doing chores, and sometimes at work, quiet enough so others couldn’t hear. She also listened to short recordings of herself to help tune her pitch, and spent free time, more time than she’d dedicated in months to writing lyrics, and remembering ones she’d composed years ago. An odd sensation filled her when flicking through the notebooks with all her lyrics, a lot scribbled and crossed out, rewritten in messy scrawls.

Wow, I sure wrote a lot… Elinor enjoyed running her hands across the old words, a kind of excitement coursing through her blood. It was like meeting an old friend, one who had slowly sunk under the mud of her thoughts after a long period of neglect, only to pop back, reminding her of what she missed with them.

She went back to work with a fervor, preparing ferociously so she could perform on Friday when her shift ended.

After writing and crossing out lyrics, she finally settled on one after a few days, and spent the remaining four constructing the song to it, memorizing the words.

Friday arrived, and she went through her shift at first as normal, but with mounting excitement, the closer the clock inched to the end.

Karen detected the excitement, and let it infect her. “You’re really gonna sing tonight? Really? No backing out? No last minute doubts?”

“I will if you keep pestering me like this,” Elinor said with a wicked smirk. Karen let out a huff of annoyance.

“That’s unfair. I’m just really curious to know what you sound like! Will you be a high pitched, haunting voice? A soothing, rough murmur? A growl of sound and I’ll regret ever wondering how well you can sing?”

“You’ll see,” Elinor said, though a few slivers of doubt wedged in her soul. She didn’t want to screw things up, and when she got nervous, she hit wrong notes. A lot.

Please don’t let me die of a heart attack before I can even reach the stage.

The nervousness changed into butterflies, when she saw the man with the tattoos walk into the café, go to his usual corner under a soft orange spotlight, sit down and get out his phone. She had been hoping for him to come along, and worried genuinely that he wouldn’t be around to witness her first effort at singing after a long, dry spell. She smiled triumphantly. Emboldened, she decided to approach him before the others, strutting with purpose.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, please. A cappuccino.” The man fixed light blue eyes on her. “You look like you want to tell me something.”

Elinor felt childish the second he said it. The disastrous attempt at their last conversation sprung to mind. Gamely, she pressed on. “I’m going to try my hand at singing on the stage tonight. At the urging of all my friends. Hope you’ll like it.”

The man smiled at her. “Maybe I will. What song?”

“My own.”

His face perked in interest. “Oh? You wrote it?”

Elinor nodded. “Yeah. I prefer trying to compose my songs and then imagine how I’d like them to be sung. That progressed into singing.”

“I see.” He kept his eyes on her like a hawk, which made her feel uncomfortable, and shift her weight. “I’ll certainly be anticipating your performance, then. Miss Elinor,” he said, eyes finally flitting to her nametag – the first time he’d ever addressed her by it.

“Let’s hope,” she replied, meanwhile getting distracted by how mesmerizing his eyes were. They sent little twinges of delight into her skin, made her butterflies flutter more frantically, the sensation more akin to frogs jumping than delicate wing beats. She returned to Karen in renewed enthusiasm, after finally wrenching herself away from him, and the intricate tattoo sleeves on his arms.

“I spoke to him and it wasn’t a mess!” she hissed to Karen, who shared in the success.

“Woo! Did you tell him about it, then?”

“Yeah.”

Richard Strong walked up to her at this point, hands tucked into his belt, groin thrust out in a dominant gesture. “I didn’t know you could sing, Elinor. You never said anything of the sort. Shame on you.”

She smiled at the café owner. “I didn’t want to embarrass myself.”

“Understandable,” he said with a wry smile, tilting his head towards the veiled stage, “Given some of the acts we’ve been forced to endure the past three weeks. Let’s hope you won’t fall to the same fate. Because you may work here, but when it comes to awful singing, I won’t hesitate to bar you from the stage.”

“I’ll try my best, sir,” Elinor said, saluting smartly, prompting giggles from Karen.

All throughout the rest of her shift, Elinor couldn’t help but notice that the man with the tattoo, whom she still didn’t know the name of, ogled her more often than usual. She served him a total of two cappuccinos, and each time, he gave her a warm smile, which made certain lady parts in her lurch. She watched him tapping his watch and glancing toward the stage as well.

“What the hell did you say to him?” Karen said, entertained at the motion.

“Nothing exceptional. Guess he’s as hopeful as Richard is that I won’t be a disgrace to anyone’s ears.”