Title: The Sound
of Serendipity
Author: Cynthia
A. Rodriguez
Release Date:
April 14, 2016
So
many things can happen to a person on a Central Park bench. For Emerson
Kingsley, falling in love happened, despite her broken monster of a
heart.
Emerson knows more about
listening than she does about love, whether it’s listening to artists
as a music producer or listening to stories as she people
watches.
Months of watching Maddox
Bailey from a park bench are to blame for her infatuation. In her mind, the
moment they meet will be spectacular if she ever finds the nerve to speak to
him.
But when the two share an
awkward cab ride, she realizes that maybe fantasies are meant to stay that
way.
The only problem is, now that they’ve
met, he keeps popping up in her life. Each time he does, Emerson finds the
real-life Maddox to be better than anything she could’ve
dreamed—sexy, passionate, and sweeter than his chocolate brown
eyes.
A woman in love with
possibilities meets a man determined to make them happen.
My eyes water and I blink in
order to keep myself in check, but I can’t help the way I react to
him. He sings all of his parts, skipping over mine, and I’m jealous
that his first run through is without fault. He knows exactly what his voice
needs to do to compliment the music. Not a second is flat and nothing is
anything less than perfect.
When he exits the booth,
I’m pretending to be unaffected. My wine glass is back in my hand and
I’m smiling.
But can he see the fading pink
in my cheeks, the glassiness of my eyes, the way my hand clenches around the
glass to hide its shaking?
“Your
turn,” he announces before he sits down beside me. Inside, I’m
a zoo and my heart is the main attraction.
“Really, you could
sing the whole—”
“Go,
Emerson.” I sigh and he takes my wine from me. His hand brushes mine
and I look down at where our skin met. “Go.”
My eyes crawl slowly up to his
face and then his eyes and he gently nudges me, his face telling me to go. I
can’t say no, so I slip off my heels and I’m a good three
inches shorter. I pile my hair on top of my head and rub my hands together,
hoping it helps them steady. He’s looking at me, and I feel like I
have to tell him why I’m so hesitant and
afraid.
“I don’t
sing in front of people,” I explain.
“The good thing is,
I’m only a person.” He turns to face me and leans his elbow
against his desk.
Have you looked in
the mirror?, I want to ask him. Only a person? Pfft. Only the most
beautiful man I’ve ever stood this close to and I’ve been
around some of music’s finest. I walk inside the booth and all I can
hear is my breathing. Because I don’t want to worry him, I get right
to it and place the headset on and listen to his verse. Then the hook begins
and I’m harmonizing with his already laid down
singing.
And I’m
left defenseless.
I want to tell myself not to
cry, but I can’t because of the wine and because of the words. This
song means too much not to cry. I only worry that I’m going to sob so
hard that the words are unintelligible. Now would be a good time to look at
Maddox and see if I’m doing all right, but I can’t do that
either. I keep my eyes closed as I sing my love letter to no one and to
him.
The songs ends but I
don’t want to leave the booth. Thankfully, my tears are gone with one
swipe under my eyes. I look down and wonder what comes next because I can see
all of the secret pieces of me scattered before me in this small closet. If
Maddox sees them, I don’t know what that’ll mean.
It’ll likely mean my embarrassment because there’s no
way….
“You can come out,
Em,” he says, and I figuratively pick myself up off of the floor and
join him. “Where the fuck did that come
from?”
I grab my glass and gulp it
down. My hands are steadier by the time I’m through, and I take that
as a good sign.
“Don’t
tell anyone,” is all I say. He nods and I don’t think he
knows that I’m not just talking about the singing. Then again, why
would he? I want to take every small moment we’ve shared and hold them
to my chest. I want to go home with them in my arms and lock those moments in a
safe, and on days where I feel like I need more, I’ll look back on
the many almosts we shared.
“Yeah? Well, what the
hell do we do with the song now?” I hear something in his voice and I
can relate to it. I wonder if other artists feel this way after they create a
masterpiece. A little empty, a little shaky. Like somehow their life source is
depleted. Like sharing a bit of your soul leaves you with less and less each
time.
“Nothing?”
I need to sit and rest and maybe try to get back what I lost. But the more time
that passes, the more comfortable I am with this piece of myself existing
outside of my body.
“No, no. This is too
much to keep it to ourselves.” He hands me a copy of the song on a flash
drive and I toss it in my
purse.
He’s so intense right
now, and I just want to lie on the floor and breathe him in. So I do. I squat
down near his couch and let my butt hit the ground with a thump before
spreading my limbs out. The floor is hard beneath my back, but I feel a little
saner down here.
He plays the song, and I
can’t help but shudder when our voices sing together. How could
anyone not feel something when they hear music?
“You talked so much
tonight. You do realize I’m never going to let you go quiet on me
again, right?” I look forward to his
coercion.
He sits beside my body, and I
want him to touch me so badly. Always wanting when it comes to him only to be
disappointed when nothing happens. I’m drunk on his presence more
than I am on the wine, and before I know it, he’s lying next to me on
his hardwood floor. All of this space and he chooses right here, nearly
touching me. Does he feel the world slowing? Is he reaching out for my
hand?
“I love this. It
feels so honest.” I hear the way he gulps after he says this, but he
doesn’t know how honest it is. He doesn’t know that
he’s gotten something from me that no one else has. We were at it for
hours, the music making us numb to time, so I’m not surprised to see
that it’s nearly three in the morning when I look at the digital
clock on his wall. He’s relaxed beside me as the song plays on
repeat, and we talk about random things.
I can feel his body heat and I
wonder, as he tells me he’s a Leo, if he knows that his pinky is so
close to mine, I can almost taste the way it’d feel to touch him. I
try to remember if it felt like this before, but the same way Maddox demands
every part of me belong to him without ever even knowing, he erases what used
to be. Funny, it took nothing from him to erase everything from me.
I searched high and low for a
way to forget the pain, and he was here all along. All I needed to do was sit
in his presence.
Maybe it’s the wine,
but I could lay here forever.
Cynthia A. Rodriguez
hates writing her own bio. In her down-time, you can find her watching movies,
ranging anywhere from classic movies to action flicks (she has a weakness for
Marvel adaptations), and reading steamy novels. She is stationed in North
Carolina, where she lives with her husband and their Miniature Pinscher, Winnie
(as in Pooh).
