AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I immediately look up at Lacy, who is still standing in the corner, tears now visibly welling up in her eyes.
“Ben, what the fuck…” Her voice trails off as she gulps hard, choking down tears.
“Lace, I am SO fucking sorry. I was so excited when you came in, I totally forgot I was in the middle of a stream.”
I stride over to her, wrapping her up in a big bear hug. She feels small and vulnerable in my arms.
“How many people were on that live stream? How many of them heard my poem?”
Her voice is muffled as she buries her face in my chest. Fuck, why does she have to be so cute even when she’s upset? But I hate to see her like this.
“Uh, I don’t know. A few thousand?”Try a few hundred thousand.
“They all think I’m a crazy stalker! They said it was a stalker poem!”
“Nah, they know it’s just words. And they didn’t say YOU were stalker.”
“They called it the STALKER ANTHEM!” She practically wails into me. “And that one guy DID say I was a stalker. A CRAZY stalker. Theyhatedmy poem. Who wants to read a stalker anthem?”
She starts sniffling and I can feel the front of my t-shirt getting slightly damp. My heart contracts with pain.Good one, Ben. I can’t believe I was so fucking stupid. Forgetting to turn off the livestream? What a rookie move. I’d just been so pumped to see Lacy in that spontaneous, creative space again. And now? She’s crying in my arms. Because of something stupid I did. Ugh. I’ve got to fix this.
“Lace, look at me,” I tell her gently, nudging her.
“No,” she huffs into my chest. “Now my face is all red. And I’m snotty.”
“I guess just wipe it on my t-shirt,” I say with a little chuckle.
“Ew, why are you always so gross,” she retorts, but she does lift her head up and look at me, finally. Her cheeks are tear-stained, and her glasses are smudged. She takes them off and cleans the lenses on her shirt, before putting them back on and staring up at me.
“Lace, you’ve got a book tour coming up, right?” I ask pointedly, bringing my hands to her shoulders and giving them a reassuring squeeze.
“Yeah,” she replies, looking confused by the pivot in the conversation.“And you’re going to put your poems out there, for the whole world to read.” I run my hands up and down her shoulders and upper arms, comforting her.
“Yeah,” she whimpers, her eyes welling up with tears again.
“No, wait, don’t get upset. Look, all I’m saying is, people won’t always understand your art the way you want them to. That’s a risk you run when you’re in a creative field.”
“Maybe it’s not a risk I want to take,” Lacy says quietly, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
I glance around for tissues. Naïve. Of course, I didn’t stock my recording studio with personal hygiene items. But I can’t watch Lacy keep wiping her tears on her own hands. I peel my shirt off and hand it to her.
“Here, use this.”
She takes it and wipes her face with it, for once not harping on me to keep my shirt on.
“Lace, you love writing,” I go on, continuing to stroke her arm soothingly as I talk. “And you’re great at it. But if you want to make a living from it, you’ve got to share it. You’ve got to get out there.”
“I know,” she says with a despondent sigh. “But it’s so scary. And then something like this happens, and I doubt that I can handle it at all,” she gestures towards the closed laptop as she says the words. “I don’t know how you do it,” she adds, giving me a sympathetic glance.
“I’ve got some years of practice,” I say understandingly. “But it took time to get used to it. Now I know all I can do is focus on creating the best music I possibly can. Then I put it out into the world and let it take on a life of its own. Once it’s out there, I can’t control how people interpret it. And the same is true for your verses.” I reach forward and tuck a strand of hair that’s stuck to her tear-stained face behind her ear. Lacy locks eyes with me as I make this move. Is she remembering the night on the porch?
“I guess so,” Lacy says slowly.
“Look, Lace, we create art for ourselves. But people will interpret that art in the way thattheyneed. That means they might not interpret it the way thatyou, the creator, intended. But they’ll interpret it in the way that theyneedto in that moment. So, it’s an amazing gift, to be able to give someone that.”
Lacy remains wordless, biting her lip thoughtfully. I stay quiet, letting her take in what I’ve just said. That lip-bite is driving me wild, but I know better than to try and kiss her right now. I’m just lucky that our kiss wasn’t caught on camera, or she’d really freak out. Not to mention, my manager would already be calling me, pissed that I went public with a girl without planning out every PR step with him first.
“I guess I never thought about it that way,” she finally speaks up. “I just assumed people would understand my poems in the way that I intended. I never even considered that they might twist the meaning for their own purposes or needs,” she says with a sigh. “Ugh, this makes putting my work out into the world even scarier!” She adds helplessly.
