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The first time he hears the words Play me a song, he’s almost nineteen.
Okay, so not the first time. Rose had said it a few times, there might have been a couple people before he was eighteen, before he got his tattoo, but this is the first time it counts.
He’s leaned up against the side wall of a tattoo parlor in Texas November, which is like normal November but it’s warm enough he can wear a t-shirt while he strokes out high notes on his violin.
Every now and then someone would drop something into the case at his feet but rarely did they stay for more than a minute. In between songs he’d glance around and there’d be a couple people watching him from a distance, but very few people gathered close. She was one of those people, on a bench across the street, and he didn’t know how she could hear him over the cars passing but she watched for ten minutes before she crossed to come see him.
At the time, he doesn’t think she’s beautiful. He thinks, she looks kind of like a hippie and oh, this should be good because her hand is clenched up and he thinks maybe she’ll request something. From the faded shirt proclaiming a band no one’s listened to since the sixties, probably nothing he can actually play. He stops caring when she stops in front of him, sets some bill in his case and says, “Play me a song?” Her head tilts and she looks a little shy, staring at him.
Her words register like the notes he had been waiting to hear of a song he knows like his hands, like hearing his name called in a crowd, like a crack of thunder when it’s two AM and he can’t sleep. They don’t register as normal words-he doesn’t think about her request, that he should be doing anything other than staring at her-just as his words.
Now he thinks she’s beautiful, because of course she is. She’s his soulmate.
She still looks a little shy, but now with an added bonus of unsure. “You take requests, right? I mean it doesn’t really matter what you play, I just wanted to hear something more.” Without thinking about it, he’s smiling.
He remembers what he played her. He remembers every song he played for her, every thing that they listened to together, laying in her bed or one time sitting on the hood of his car. Some of those songs he can listen to and idly think of her, and it’s okay. Eight months later he found the sheet music to this song and tore it to shreds.
He asks her to get coffee with him, says he needs a break. Walks with his violin case in one hand and makes some stupid comment like Isn’t this so exciting? and forgets the way she gets confused, brushes it off because he just hadn’t spoken clearly. He buys her iced coffee and they talk about his music, then her writing. When he doesn’t want to listen anymore he distracts himself with memorizing the parts of her face. They leave with promises to meet up again, and they do.
He buys her dinner. First once, then ten times. He goes to see her recite poetry and it’s boring and Dave thinks there’s no one in the room that looks interesting, but it’s okay. She doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as she’s there and she loves him. Which she doesn’t, yet, but that’s okay too. He doesn’t either, but he knows he will.
He takes her driving, out of Houston into a place where nobody lives and they can see every star in the sky, and they listen to old music on the hood and he kisses her. First once, then a thousand times.
They’re doomed to fail from the start, and it’s his fault. Because he spends almost every day with her and learns everything about her and trusts her with everything, with his eyes and his family and his heart. He talks to her all the time and falls in love with not just the idea of her but her, with the girl who isn’t what he expected and isn’t someone he’d normally talk to and isn’t quite perfect, but he never asks to see her tattoo.
Why would he? She’s his soulmate, and he trusts her with so much, trusts her to be his even if he has no proof, even if they never talk about it and she doesn’t want him to see her naked, looks away if he’s not wearing a shirt.
He can feel himself changing because of it. Things he’d normally never do-showing her his eyes, for example-he does immediately. And when panic grips him for a second because what am I doing I shouldn’t be doing this, he tells himself his old ways of thinking don’t matter now.
Everything’s changed, but it’s okay. Everything’s okay.
(They never have a single fight. Dave doesn’t let them.)
He can’t think about it, ever. Can’t look to closely at himself, at their relationship, at the little things she does that irk him. Instead he develops perfect methods, learns to play his mind like it’s another instrument so that every time he thinks her eyes are the wrong color or stop talking I don’t care he immediately finds something better to do. His first bet is to call her. Then it’s to work. He fills a CD with remixes of her favorite songs, learns an entire new book full of sheet music, even tries writing the poetry she loves. He tells himself (she’s beautiful, she’s my soulmate) over and over and over until he can’t remember anything else.
He never worries about how much he trusts her. He is utterly certain this is who he’s going to spend his entire life with, and that changes a lot of things. He never worries about anything, really. Because if he so much as stops to think about any of it, if his faith falters for even a second, it will destroy him.
Sixth months later he’s in the apartment and Dirk’s not home and he’s not expecting her, she has work today so he’s doing school work in between issues of Spiderman. He’s not wearing pants when she lets herself in and he jumps when he sees her in the doorway. Then he smiles, asks her if she got off early or maybe just what’s up, while he looks her over. Her face is a combination of excited and remorseful, and she doesn’t answer him.
She doesn’t meet his eyes when she says Dave, I found him. My soulmate.
It’s like she doesn’t know how he’ll react, like she’s hoping maybe he’ll be excited for her because they live in different worlds, never talked about it so she has no idea what’s going on with him and vice versa. When she does look at him, though, she draws away, because he’s not excited for her.
He wishes he had reacted differently. At first he was just confused. I’m your soulmate. And she didn’t say anything at first, and he kept thinking it, I’m your soulmate, until the doubt crept in and he face softened.
No, Dave, you’re not. And I’m not yours. This was always going to end, I thought you knew.
It was going to end. It was ending. Right there. She was leaving. That’s the thought that broke him, that she was leaving him. All he could do was tell her to get out, GET OUT, and she went, and he was alone.
For six months afterwards, it destroyed him. One year later and he still hasn’t fit all his pieces back together.