Speechless: REWRITTEN

22. Rose

Roscoe

It's two in the morning at a Walmart and I'm buying flowers.

How did I get here, you ask? Great question!

At around ten P.M, I decided that the best way to cope with my sorrows and not develop an alcohol problem is to play them out on every instrument I owned. I placed my guitar on the living room floor and realized that it wasn't enough. So I went downstairs to my storage unit and grabbed my flute, trumpet, clarinet, and bongos, packed them into the car, and drove to a place where I wouldn't get a noise complaint.

I led myself to the beach Gianna and I went to after the karaoke bar.

The idea was a bust. I felt too breathless to play the flute correctly, along with the trumpet. I broke my clarinet reed by biting down on it accidentally. And the bongos just made the song come off as angry instead of sad and conflicted. So I just opted for my guitar at the end.

Absentmindedly strumming, my head filled with words that threatened to explode from my skull at the seams. So I ran back to my car to find some sort of paper and a pen. I found an old Roselake notepad and a mechanical pencil and ran back to my place on the beach, furiously scribbling.

A lot of the lyrics were along the lines of I'm sorry, I'm so stupid, I regret everything, please hit me over the head as hard as you deem fit. And a line that read I have a song inside of my head that only plays when you're around. Now that the words are on paper and my head is a little quieter, I picked up my guitar and run off a random tune.

My throat suddenly grew dry. I haven't tried my hand at singing in literally ten years. Vocalization here and there to help my students find their pitch, but not genuine singing. I've convinced myself that I'm shit at it, and playing music is more my forte. But the very words I wrote on the paper are trying to force themselves out of my throat like bad sushi.

"Okay...let's try not to sound like an alley cat in agonizing pain."

Once I felt content enough, I put everything back in the car, and just sat in the driver's seat for a moment. It makes me reminisce about how we sat here for hours, talking about everything we could, me telling her all my insecurities about my family. Her trusting me for the first time since she moved in. One of the first time we were talking and we weren't on opposite sides of the battlefield.

Did I have to hurt her to realize how I felt about her? Is this really a situation of 'you really don't know what you have until it's gone'? Are we going with that cliché?

Remembering my talk with Cheyenne made me come to a different conclusion than the one I went with that night. Yes, Gianna is logical, and things have to make sense for her. But maybe that's her downfall. Maybe that's why she was so defensive when I confessed to her. How could I, her former teacher and current roommate, develop feelings for her? It didn't make sense, but does it have to? A lot of the things we feel on a daily basis aren't meant to make sense, but that's just what happens. Cheyenne and Mordecai weren't meant to fall for each other, it just happened. And it became something beautiful (well, up until he fucked it up in the end). Why do my feelings for her have to make sense? Why do I have to justify everything I experience?

Why can't I just screw up and be stupid and live my life on my terms? The path has always been so clear for me: find a girl, marry her, have kids, grow old, and die. Be an adult, be a man. She has to fit this criteria and there's no room for discussion. She has to be smart, pretty, professional, classy, and silent.