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RomanticSadistLL:
Turn off the music, tell me when it's done, keep your head down like you're looking at your laptop, close your eyes, and just listen. I'll come tell you, then I'll leave.
No, princess. The drink *I* am drinking isn’t healthy.
I don’t have the mental capacity to even decipher what the second message says, so I hope it’s not important at the moment. All I can focus on are the orders he gave and how I have the compulsive need to follow them, even though I’m freaking petrified. My fingers unfreeze, apparently, because I feel them plucking along the keys of their own accord. I don’t even know what I’m typing. I’ll just apologize for the stupidity they’re probably spewing when I can finally brain again.
WillDive4Plants:
Oh God.
OK.
Fuck.
Imma faint.
I can't feel my face.
Somewhere between those messages, my right hand reached up to turn my headphones off. The music stops, but everything is still muffled. While the noise-canceling feature isn’t active, just the shape of the headphones—the kind that fully encompasses your ears with thick padding—shuts part of the noisiness of the world out. But still, the switch in auditory stimulation and just the adrenaline the situation is causing to pump into my system is downright startling. Especially as a body suddenly appears on the bench next to me, only separated by the foot-wide piece of wood that acts as a table to set one’s drink on that’s built in between us.
He told me to close my eyes and just listen, but I can’t. Closing my eyes feels too vulnerable, like it would leave me too exposed. So I stare at the bottom of my screen, hoping from his angle and height it looks like my eyes are shut.
“Hello, princess.”
Oh my God. His voice.
Even with my headphones on, the two-word greeting sends a tingle up my neck, and I’m not sure what percentage is because of his voice alone versus him calling me yet another sweet nickname.
“I’m so happy I get to see you in person finally. It feels like I’ve known and been talking to you for a lot longer than reality.”
I try out a small smile, and my cheeks twitch, so I attempt to relax my face instead, but that just makes my lips tremble, the corners fighting to pull downward into a frown as I try to keep them in a perfectly straight line.
What the fuck is wrong with my face? I ask myself once again.
I’ve been nervous to speak in front of people before—interviews, author panels, those sorts of things. My voice might quiver a little in the beginning, and then I relax and it gets easier the longer I speak until I’m not at all worried and end up chatting like we’re lifelong friends. It’s my nature to be an oversharer.
But I’m not trying to talk to this man. I’ve been directed to just listen. I’m not even supposed to look at him—eyes closed, in fact—yet all my senses seem to be shutting down except for one—my ears. As if my body is taking his demand to “just listen” literally—flipping the Off switch for all my other systems.
I’ve had full-on panic attacks before, and not even during those did I lose control of my facial expressions.
Am I having a stroke?
He’s speaking lower now, so low I can’t hear him through my headphones, and my heart aches at having missed a single word from this man’s lips. The ache is enough to bring control of my hand back online. So without taking my eyes from where they stare unseeing at my word counter at the bottom of my document, I lift my right hand once again and move the headphone just slightly behind my ear canal, the pad still resting on my cartilage. Instead of dropping my hand completely, I slide it down my jaw to cover my mouth, propping my chin on my thumb. I do it so I can stop focusing so much on my twitching face, as if I didn’t have enough things to be self-conscious about. My lips press to the center of my palm, my fingertips pointing toward my uncovered ear, where I can hear him perfectly clear now, his deep voice so close, so crisp. And just in time to hear words I’ve longed to receive.
“I’m very proud of you for coming today to write. I looked you up on Amazon, finally gave in to my curiosity, and I saw so many people look forward to your books. They bring your readers happiness and comfort, which makes your hard work so important. You like to make light of the books you release. But I know you put so much effort into your research and your stories, and your readers can tell. What you do, what you bring to the world, means more than you realize, little one,” he tells me, his voice unwavering. His speech isn’t broken up by a bunch of pauses, ums, or likes.
