Godspeed

Chapter Six

That night, Marley couldn't sleep. Sure, Tessellated was divulging rhymes over a jazz-inspired beat into Marley's ears from noise-cancelling headphones, but it was the boy's thoughts that were much, much louder. His back against his mattress and his head deep-sunken into his pillow, Marley clutched the sheets up to the stomach of his bare chest. Sleeping in his boxers was normal for him, useful even, to help combat the heat but now he was beginning to imagine what Ava might have thought if she saw him like this.

Impressed? Disappointed? He wondered how the skin on the parts of their bodies that weren't hands would feel against each other? Would he over-think and make it awkward, or would his heart push his mind into the backseat of his subconscious and then hit the gas, driving his body into hers, thoughtless and all. Would she like that? Thoughts like these were a little more salacious when the moon was overhead, Marley knew, but the way he felt about her made the temptation feel right. The way he felt about Ava DeLoughery made him feel invincible.

Then Marley regrettably remembered his father's words. 'Yuh can say yuh love a person but neither of you will know how much or how little...until somebody leaves. Love real, Marley, but it is always unrequited.' He exhaled. The chipped paint cracking his ceiling was in the shape of her smile and Marley had to remind himself that this wasn't love. They weren't even dating. They were just hanging out. Marley kept Tessellated in his ears to prevent the silence from creeping in on him. He shut his eyes and pulled his sheets a little higher.

Full disclosure, he didn't know what he was getting himself into when he told Ava DeLoughery that tomorrow should be the day that they go to the beach, but it excited him. It made him forget all the things that were wrong in his life. Things like, the fact that he couldn't talk. That, he would never see his mother again. That, he was stuck in this tiny house whose ceiling kept his head from seeing too high above the clouds. He wanted Ava DeLoughery to feel that too. He wanted her to forget her boredom that drove her into the most foreign restaurant she could find, just so she wouldn't be recognized. Forget the beach house that she was brutally uninvited to. Forget Richard O'Riley. For now, that's all Marley Mason was allowing himself to think about: how he could make Ava DeLoughery happy, and, forget.

And it was all he could think about. Over and over again, until sleep eased him off.

Then the following day, it resumed.

Even despite her figure being absent from her booth, a new group of persons inhabiting it now, Marley still found himself doing things to try to make her happy. When he walked to and from tables, into the kitchen and back, there were no secret glances across the room; no matter how hard he wanted there to be. Nor was there anyone to give the plate of festivals he had accidentally made.

Jah-Jah's Jamaican Jerk Foods was quiet without Ava DeLoughery, and for the first time in too long, Marley Mason found the quiet unbearable.

"Where's your girlfriend?" Tafari Mason asked him once, stopping his son from briskly exiting the kitchen.

Marley huffed and shook his head. But before he could completely leave, his father spoke up again.

"Right. Sorry, not girlfriend. Your," he paused, and Marley knew there was a Cheshire smile carving his mouth open, "friend. How come she not here today?"

Marley shrugged nonchalantly. She'll be here.

Tafari watched the back of the boy he had raised and wondered how many things he didn't tell his father. How much of a stranger was he to his own father, and who was to blame? Because, right now, Tafari Mason could tell Marley wasn't telling him everything.

Marley exited the kitchen and waited for the song of a certain soul to re-enter his shuffled life.

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