Heaven's Ablaze - Chapter 7
Title:: Heaven's Ablaze
Genre:: AU Vam Fanfic
Rating:: R
Summary:: His heaven is ablaze in my eyes
Notes:: This story is based on the album Dark Light. All lyrics are taken from that album, and are copyright of Ville Valo. I do not know or own the characters in this story. The storyline itself is property of me and me alone. This story deals with the themes of religion and a degree of pedophilia. If you have a problem with the themes, dont read it.
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Accident
Chapter 2 - Pot Luck
Chapter 3 - Warmth
Chapter 4 - Joseph on Wheels
Chapter 5 - My First Christmas
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 6 - Beginnings
Chapter 7 - Music
The job as Ms. Harolds’ assistant basically entailed me playing piano, guitar, or singing when she needed help with any of that. I had to help organize papers. I had to help observe the classes as they worked together on compositions. Had to offer advice, give tips, and tell them to shut up. I wasn’t employed as a normal teacher, so I could get a little bit closer to the students. Be a little bit rawer with them. And in that school they needed it. Bam and his hellion friends were angels compared to some of the other kids.
Ms. Harolds was, as Bam had said, very pretty. But I just wasn’t interested. I think she appreciated that a lot; I also think she had me figured within the first 10 minutes I was in her classroom.
She was also a lot of fun. I could see why the students liked her class. I wished I had had teachers like that. I might have actually stayed in school.
The first day, she asked me to play something on the piano for her.
“Um… okay; but I haven’t really played much in a while.”
“That’s okay. Just play something. I need music while I work.”
I sat and played some random tunes that I’d made up once a long, long time ago. I don’t know how I still remembered them. She looked at me.
“I’ve never heard those before.”
“That’s because I wrote them.”
“When?”
“12 years ago? More. I haven’t played a piano in… 12 years.”
“Huh,” she said, blinking at me. That was all she said. Huh. In this amazed kind of disbelief. She was a little bit younger than me, I think. Maybe about 27. I felt a little weird being under someone who was younger than me. I felt weird because she was so much more mature than me.
The whole situation was weird.
I'm so afraid of life
“Good work today, Ville,” she said to me once, at the end of a particularly difficult day a few weeks into my time there.
“Um, thanks.”
“The kids like you a lot. Especially those kids in 10th grade. You know. Bam Margera’s gang.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. That’s cuz they know me.” I shrugged and kept on organizing some papers into their respective folders.
“Oh? How?” She seemed interested, and this was a novelty, so I couldn’t resist telling her.
“Bam hit me with his car learning how to drive. Broke three of my ribs and scraped up my whole side. I was in hospital for a while.” She blinked at me, and then started laughing her honeyed, harmonious laughter.
“You’re kidding?” I shook my head, smirking a little.
“No. Actually I’m pretty good friends with Bam.” She looked at me.
“How? He’s in 10th grade.”
“Sure. But… I dunno. I guess I never really grew up. We’re on the same wavelength.”
“You and Bam Margera? The same wavelength?” She laughed again, and I grinned.
“Weird but true. He got me this job, you know? Or at least, I suspect so. He probably bugged his mom into it. He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah but he’s a kid. A crazy kid. And you’re so…. Not.”
“Who says I can’t be crazy?” Of course, she was right, I was probably the most boring person alive at that point in time.
“But you’re older than me!” I shrugged again. I didn’t really want to analyze it. It was just the truth. I’d realized it, watching him in class. He was so similar to me sometimes. It was almost uncanny. We’d never have been friends if he was in my old school. He was the kind of person I avoided like the plague. I’d have been friends with his brother, but not with Bam.
But now… I preferred Bam to Jess. I don’t know why. Maybe because I knew Bam more. Maybe because he was, I realized, everything that I wished I could have been. He was also the picture of perfection that my parents had wanted me to be. Not that that mattered; they obviously didn’t care enough to pursue the cause after they first realized it was lost: in about 5th grade.
“So who else are your friends? Besides the 10th graders, I mean.” She grinned and chuckled at me. “Cuz, I’ve never seen you around. And I thought I’d at least seen everyone in this town. But I’ve never seen you. Not at any bars or restaurants or clubs… and you say you’ve been here 10 years? There must be a whole gang of people I’ve never met then; I imagine you’re quite… popular.”
I shook my head.
so afraid of life…
“I… no.” Shrugging, I went back to my papers, struggling to read the handwriting on the top of one of the write-ups from one of the kids in Bam’s class. I rolled my eyes when I realized it was his friend Raab, and that he’d written it like that just to throw me off. “Raab, you little…” I sighed and put the paper in the right folder.
“Come on, that wasn’t an answer. I’m curious now.”
“No, seriously, Ms. Harolds…”
“Cindy. Please.”
“Cindy. Whatever. I don’t have friends. Haven’t had friends, I mean. Whatever.”
“What do you mean? Everyone has friends.”
Tears have turned from sweet to sour and hours to days
You're hiding yourself away
From our cruel world's embrace
And as your days turn to weeks
You'll cry yourself to sleep
In the cage you’ve locked yourself in
She was smiling at me, small town girl innocence and naivety emanating from every pore. I doubted she’d even been to the city; she’d probably gone to the community college for her teaching degree and that’s the farthest away from home I’d warrant she’d ever been.
“Well, I don’t. Didn’t. I don’t know.” I sighed and bent my head down to the papers again. Honestly, my handwriting was better than some of these kids’. And that was saying a lot.
“You don’t seem too troubled by that.”
“By what?” I asked, a little shortly. I hated when people pried into my life. “By the fact that I’ve been alone for most of my life? That I’ve never had a real friend? No, I’m not troubled by it. I don’t like it but I can’t do anything about it so I deal with it. It’s not troubling.” I sighed at her rather shocked face.
blinded by the fear
Of life and death and everything in between
“I’m sorry, um… Cindy. I’m a … well. A bit of a bitter mess, really. I’m kidding myself with all of this.”
She shook her head at me. I could just tell that a lecture would follow on how I was wrong, how I could go so far, how I was a good person, how I just needed to have faith in myself.
I was right.
The moon kissed the sun and now we hold her in our blood
I ignored it as best I could, and smiled at her when she was done with her monologue, none of which I remember because I listened to about 2 words of it.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. Look, I better go, I have to drive Bam home, and you know what happens when he’s left outside for too long.”
She chuckled; Bam had left black marks all over the concrete benches, walls, and stairs of the front of the school from the many hours of waiting for various rides from his mother, or, more recently, me.
“Ville, can I just ask you something before you go?”
“Sure.” I really didn’t’ want her to. I wanted to run away.
“Why… no. Nevermind.”
“What? Look you can ask me anything. If I answer or not…” I tried to look friendly, because I could tell something was eating her up.
“Why … why have you been alone?” I sighed.
hide behind the crimson door
“See, now, that’s the one question that I can’t tell you the answer to. Have a good evening.” And I was out of there.
I had to play the polite, nice guy all day; had to play fun yet strict with the kids - most of whom I hated with a passion, kids were such twits, but the pay was good and it was worth it to get to watch Bam in his natural environment; his antics had me rolling with laughter when I got home and remembered them in the safety of my own house - had to play decent and repentant with Ms. Harolds, had to play thankful and docile with April… it was only with Bam that I really felt I could be myself. Bam and Ben; but Ben was a busy businessman, where as Bam was a 15 year old with nothing better to do, and no other way to get home.
“Finally,” he said, skating over to me, as I burst through the doors of the school, my jacket thrown over my shoulders along with my bag, gasping for the cool, fresh air.
“Goddamn, I hate that place,” I said under my breath as I opened the door to the car that Phil and April let me use to get to and from work as long as I took Bam with me. Jess had his own ride.
“That bad?”
“You have no idea.”
“Hey, I’m the one stuck in there every day of my life from now until I’m 18.” I looked at him; he had a point.
“Ah, it sucks. Let’s go get a coffee and drown out our school blues,” I suggested. “You don’t have homework, do you?”
“Um… well I do but … I’d rather have coffee.” I stayed my hand on the key in the ignition.
“Promise you’ll do it as soon as you get home?”
“Dude, you sound like my mother. Yes, I’ll do it when I get home. Can we go now?”
“Well come on. If I don’t do things right your mom’s going to realize what a fuck-up I am and then where will we be?”
“Ville come on, you’re not a … fuck-up. You’re doing this job just fine. I can’t see that you actually do much, but whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it well.”
“Thanks Bam, that really makes me feel great.” I raised an eyebrow at him; he just grinned at me and buckled his seatbelt.
“Just drive. Or I’ll kick you out and drive myself.”
“Um, okay, no. I’ve had bad enough experiences with you driving, thank you very much. You stay where you are.” I started the ignition and, very carefully, drove us to the coffee shop. I was still unused to driving; I’d never done much of it at all, I hardly even remember getting my license. I think they might have made me get it so I could run errands for the club in Vegas. But who knows. I certainly don’t. The old license was definitely from Nevada though, so that can’t be far from the mark.
It was about 20 minutes to my favorite coffee shop, and Bam, knowing this well, started digging around for a CD to fill the empty silences that were always bound to happen when I was around.
“Hmm, I figure you don’t want to listen to Songs Of Praise, do you?” he asked, holding up one of his mom’s CD’s. I turned to look at him quickly and then looked back at the road.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hmm… okay. There’s Songs of Praise, Psalms in Songs, Praise Him, Amy Grant’s Christmas CD, 6th Chapter of Acts, … Lady Smith Black Mambazo…”
“Jesus Christ, Bam. You’re not serious. That’s all that’s in here?” Bam bit his lip and frowned.
“I’m sure… hmmm… I swear Jess left a demo CD from his band in here somewhere. It’s better than that other stuff anyways. Hymns get boring after a while.”
“No, Bam, hymns are just fucking depressing,” I said, bitterly; I regretted it right away. Bam looked a bit awkward. It was only too late that I remembered finding several CD’s of hymns in his room once. He obviously didn’t object to them as much as I did.
“I can’t find the demo. We’ve got P.O.D though. Comprimise?”
P.O.D. Christianity’s answer to Rock and Roll.
The oxymoron actually hurt me. But I let him put it in, and endured it quietly for the remaining 15 minutes of the ride.
We got to the coffee house, I placed the order, got the coffees, and brought them over to the table that Bam was actually having to guard with his life. I glared at people and, in pulling off my coat, flashed my multiple tattoos, and they scurried away.
a moth into a butterfly…
“Well there you go. Ville Valo, instant people repellent.” I sighed, and plonked his coffee in front of him, blanching as I watched him pour God only knows how much sugar into it. I settled myself with grabbing the tiny flask of whisky that I carried around for moments such as these out of my bag and pouring some in the coffee. Bam noticed though, and frowned at me.
“You going to be able to drive?”
“Oh, come on, Bam. It’s like 2 drops. Trust me, I need it.”
“You don’t need anything like that, Ville.” I sighed. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Of course not. I was a bit of an addict. I knew it. And I dealt with it.
“I hope you never understand Bam.” It was the truth.
I never, ever wanted to see him turn out like me. Ever.
Drunk on shadows and lost in a lie
After that we drank our coffee in silence.
“Where’d you learn to play all the instruments you can play, Ville?”
“What?” I snapped out of my trance. “Oh. Finland.”
“Really? But I thought you left when…”
“Yeah. But… I’d learnt it all before.” I shrugged. I’d had a band and everything. They were all really good; probably famous by now. But of course whoever’s famous in Finland would never have been heard of in America, so I had no idea.
“And you still remember it?”
“It’s not something you forget.”
“Did you miss it though?” I thought about this one. He was the only person I allowed to ask me things about my past. Because he wasn’t interested in it really, he was just asking innocent questions.
“Honestly?” He nodded. “I hardly even realized I wasn’t playing anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because of this stuff.” I held up the little flask and sighed. “Long story. But no, that’s not the only reason. I gave it up. For a reason. Which I’m not telling you.”
“Why?”
“Because then I would have to explain. And I’m not doing that.”
“Oh. Right.” He looked a little bit disappointed.
“It’s nothing to do with you Bam. It’s me. But really, it feels good to be working with music again. And I owe it all to you. So here’s to you.” I raised my cup of reinforced coffee in salute to him and his rosily blushing cheeks, and then took a deep swig, and smacked my lips loudly.
“Enough about me. How was your day?” It was all he needed; I sat back in the comfy chair and watched him talk animatedly, smiling to myself. His incessantly chattering voice was all the music that I needed.
I’m killing loneliness
Genre:: AU Vam Fanfic
Rating:: R
Summary:: His heaven is ablaze in my eyes
Notes:: This story is based on the album Dark Light. All lyrics are taken from that album, and are copyright of Ville Valo. I do not know or own the characters in this story. The storyline itself is property of me and me alone. This story deals with the themes of religion and a degree of pedophilia. If you have a problem with the themes, dont read it.
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Accident
Chapter 2 - Pot Luck
Chapter 3 - Warmth
Chapter 4 - Joseph on Wheels
Chapter 5 - My First Christmas
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 6 - Beginnings
Chapter 7 - Music
The job as Ms. Harolds’ assistant basically entailed me playing piano, guitar, or singing when she needed help with any of that. I had to help organize papers. I had to help observe the classes as they worked together on compositions. Had to offer advice, give tips, and tell them to shut up. I wasn’t employed as a normal teacher, so I could get a little bit closer to the students. Be a little bit rawer with them. And in that school they needed it. Bam and his hellion friends were angels compared to some of the other kids.
Ms. Harolds was, as Bam had said, very pretty. But I just wasn’t interested. I think she appreciated that a lot; I also think she had me figured within the first 10 minutes I was in her classroom.
She was also a lot of fun. I could see why the students liked her class. I wished I had had teachers like that. I might have actually stayed in school.
The first day, she asked me to play something on the piano for her.
“Um… okay; but I haven’t really played much in a while.”
“That’s okay. Just play something. I need music while I work.”
I sat and played some random tunes that I’d made up once a long, long time ago. I don’t know how I still remembered them. She looked at me.
“I’ve never heard those before.”
“That’s because I wrote them.”
“When?”
“12 years ago? More. I haven’t played a piano in… 12 years.”
“Huh,” she said, blinking at me. That was all she said. Huh. In this amazed kind of disbelief. She was a little bit younger than me, I think. Maybe about 27. I felt a little weird being under someone who was younger than me. I felt weird because she was so much more mature than me.
The whole situation was weird.
I'm so afraid of life
“Good work today, Ville,” she said to me once, at the end of a particularly difficult day a few weeks into my time there.
“Um, thanks.”
“The kids like you a lot. Especially those kids in 10th grade. You know. Bam Margera’s gang.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. That’s cuz they know me.” I shrugged and kept on organizing some papers into their respective folders.
“Oh? How?” She seemed interested, and this was a novelty, so I couldn’t resist telling her.
“Bam hit me with his car learning how to drive. Broke three of my ribs and scraped up my whole side. I was in hospital for a while.” She blinked at me, and then started laughing her honeyed, harmonious laughter.
“You’re kidding?” I shook my head, smirking a little.
“No. Actually I’m pretty good friends with Bam.” She looked at me.
“How? He’s in 10th grade.”
“Sure. But… I dunno. I guess I never really grew up. We’re on the same wavelength.”
“You and Bam Margera? The same wavelength?” She laughed again, and I grinned.
“Weird but true. He got me this job, you know? Or at least, I suspect so. He probably bugged his mom into it. He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah but he’s a kid. A crazy kid. And you’re so…. Not.”
“Who says I can’t be crazy?” Of course, she was right, I was probably the most boring person alive at that point in time.
“But you’re older than me!” I shrugged again. I didn’t really want to analyze it. It was just the truth. I’d realized it, watching him in class. He was so similar to me sometimes. It was almost uncanny. We’d never have been friends if he was in my old school. He was the kind of person I avoided like the plague. I’d have been friends with his brother, but not with Bam.
But now… I preferred Bam to Jess. I don’t know why. Maybe because I knew Bam more. Maybe because he was, I realized, everything that I wished I could have been. He was also the picture of perfection that my parents had wanted me to be. Not that that mattered; they obviously didn’t care enough to pursue the cause after they first realized it was lost: in about 5th grade.
“So who else are your friends? Besides the 10th graders, I mean.” She grinned and chuckled at me. “Cuz, I’ve never seen you around. And I thought I’d at least seen everyone in this town. But I’ve never seen you. Not at any bars or restaurants or clubs… and you say you’ve been here 10 years? There must be a whole gang of people I’ve never met then; I imagine you’re quite… popular.”
I shook my head.
so afraid of life…
“I… no.” Shrugging, I went back to my papers, struggling to read the handwriting on the top of one of the write-ups from one of the kids in Bam’s class. I rolled my eyes when I realized it was his friend Raab, and that he’d written it like that just to throw me off. “Raab, you little…” I sighed and put the paper in the right folder.
“Come on, that wasn’t an answer. I’m curious now.”
“No, seriously, Ms. Harolds…”
“Cindy. Please.”
“Cindy. Whatever. I don’t have friends. Haven’t had friends, I mean. Whatever.”
“What do you mean? Everyone has friends.”
Tears have turned from sweet to sour and hours to days
You're hiding yourself away
From our cruel world's embrace
And as your days turn to weeks
You'll cry yourself to sleep
In the cage you’ve locked yourself in
She was smiling at me, small town girl innocence and naivety emanating from every pore. I doubted she’d even been to the city; she’d probably gone to the community college for her teaching degree and that’s the farthest away from home I’d warrant she’d ever been.
“Well, I don’t. Didn’t. I don’t know.” I sighed and bent my head down to the papers again. Honestly, my handwriting was better than some of these kids’. And that was saying a lot.
“You don’t seem too troubled by that.”
“By what?” I asked, a little shortly. I hated when people pried into my life. “By the fact that I’ve been alone for most of my life? That I’ve never had a real friend? No, I’m not troubled by it. I don’t like it but I can’t do anything about it so I deal with it. It’s not troubling.” I sighed at her rather shocked face.
blinded by the fear
Of life and death and everything in between
“I’m sorry, um… Cindy. I’m a … well. A bit of a bitter mess, really. I’m kidding myself with all of this.”
She shook her head at me. I could just tell that a lecture would follow on how I was wrong, how I could go so far, how I was a good person, how I just needed to have faith in myself.
I was right.
The moon kissed the sun and now we hold her in our blood
I ignored it as best I could, and smiled at her when she was done with her monologue, none of which I remember because I listened to about 2 words of it.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. Look, I better go, I have to drive Bam home, and you know what happens when he’s left outside for too long.”
She chuckled; Bam had left black marks all over the concrete benches, walls, and stairs of the front of the school from the many hours of waiting for various rides from his mother, or, more recently, me.
“Ville, can I just ask you something before you go?”
“Sure.” I really didn’t’ want her to. I wanted to run away.
“Why… no. Nevermind.”
“What? Look you can ask me anything. If I answer or not…” I tried to look friendly, because I could tell something was eating her up.
“Why … why have you been alone?” I sighed.
hide behind the crimson door
“See, now, that’s the one question that I can’t tell you the answer to. Have a good evening.” And I was out of there.
I had to play the polite, nice guy all day; had to play fun yet strict with the kids - most of whom I hated with a passion, kids were such twits, but the pay was good and it was worth it to get to watch Bam in his natural environment; his antics had me rolling with laughter when I got home and remembered them in the safety of my own house - had to play decent and repentant with Ms. Harolds, had to play thankful and docile with April… it was only with Bam that I really felt I could be myself. Bam and Ben; but Ben was a busy businessman, where as Bam was a 15 year old with nothing better to do, and no other way to get home.
“Finally,” he said, skating over to me, as I burst through the doors of the school, my jacket thrown over my shoulders along with my bag, gasping for the cool, fresh air.
“Goddamn, I hate that place,” I said under my breath as I opened the door to the car that Phil and April let me use to get to and from work as long as I took Bam with me. Jess had his own ride.
“That bad?”
“You have no idea.”
“Hey, I’m the one stuck in there every day of my life from now until I’m 18.” I looked at him; he had a point.
“Ah, it sucks. Let’s go get a coffee and drown out our school blues,” I suggested. “You don’t have homework, do you?”
“Um… well I do but … I’d rather have coffee.” I stayed my hand on the key in the ignition.
“Promise you’ll do it as soon as you get home?”
“Dude, you sound like my mother. Yes, I’ll do it when I get home. Can we go now?”
“Well come on. If I don’t do things right your mom’s going to realize what a fuck-up I am and then where will we be?”
“Ville come on, you’re not a … fuck-up. You’re doing this job just fine. I can’t see that you actually do much, but whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it well.”
“Thanks Bam, that really makes me feel great.” I raised an eyebrow at him; he just grinned at me and buckled his seatbelt.
“Just drive. Or I’ll kick you out and drive myself.”
“Um, okay, no. I’ve had bad enough experiences with you driving, thank you very much. You stay where you are.” I started the ignition and, very carefully, drove us to the coffee shop. I was still unused to driving; I’d never done much of it at all, I hardly even remember getting my license. I think they might have made me get it so I could run errands for the club in Vegas. But who knows. I certainly don’t. The old license was definitely from Nevada though, so that can’t be far from the mark.
It was about 20 minutes to my favorite coffee shop, and Bam, knowing this well, started digging around for a CD to fill the empty silences that were always bound to happen when I was around.
“Hmm, I figure you don’t want to listen to Songs Of Praise, do you?” he asked, holding up one of his mom’s CD’s. I turned to look at him quickly and then looked back at the road.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hmm… okay. There’s Songs of Praise, Psalms in Songs, Praise Him, Amy Grant’s Christmas CD, 6th Chapter of Acts, … Lady Smith Black Mambazo…”
“Jesus Christ, Bam. You’re not serious. That’s all that’s in here?” Bam bit his lip and frowned.
“I’m sure… hmmm… I swear Jess left a demo CD from his band in here somewhere. It’s better than that other stuff anyways. Hymns get boring after a while.”
“No, Bam, hymns are just fucking depressing,” I said, bitterly; I regretted it right away. Bam looked a bit awkward. It was only too late that I remembered finding several CD’s of hymns in his room once. He obviously didn’t object to them as much as I did.
“I can’t find the demo. We’ve got P.O.D though. Comprimise?”
P.O.D. Christianity’s answer to Rock and Roll.
The oxymoron actually hurt me. But I let him put it in, and endured it quietly for the remaining 15 minutes of the ride.
We got to the coffee house, I placed the order, got the coffees, and brought them over to the table that Bam was actually having to guard with his life. I glared at people and, in pulling off my coat, flashed my multiple tattoos, and they scurried away.
a moth into a butterfly…
“Well there you go. Ville Valo, instant people repellent.” I sighed, and plonked his coffee in front of him, blanching as I watched him pour God only knows how much sugar into it. I settled myself with grabbing the tiny flask of whisky that I carried around for moments such as these out of my bag and pouring some in the coffee. Bam noticed though, and frowned at me.
“You going to be able to drive?”
“Oh, come on, Bam. It’s like 2 drops. Trust me, I need it.”
“You don’t need anything like that, Ville.” I sighed. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Of course not. I was a bit of an addict. I knew it. And I dealt with it.
“I hope you never understand Bam.” It was the truth.
I never, ever wanted to see him turn out like me. Ever.
Drunk on shadows and lost in a lie
After that we drank our coffee in silence.
“Where’d you learn to play all the instruments you can play, Ville?”
“What?” I snapped out of my trance. “Oh. Finland.”
“Really? But I thought you left when…”
“Yeah. But… I’d learnt it all before.” I shrugged. I’d had a band and everything. They were all really good; probably famous by now. But of course whoever’s famous in Finland would never have been heard of in America, so I had no idea.
“And you still remember it?”
“It’s not something you forget.”
“Did you miss it though?” I thought about this one. He was the only person I allowed to ask me things about my past. Because he wasn’t interested in it really, he was just asking innocent questions.
“Honestly?” He nodded. “I hardly even realized I wasn’t playing anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because of this stuff.” I held up the little flask and sighed. “Long story. But no, that’s not the only reason. I gave it up. For a reason. Which I’m not telling you.”
“Why?”
“Because then I would have to explain. And I’m not doing that.”
“Oh. Right.” He looked a little bit disappointed.
“It’s nothing to do with you Bam. It’s me. But really, it feels good to be working with music again. And I owe it all to you. So here’s to you.” I raised my cup of reinforced coffee in salute to him and his rosily blushing cheeks, and then took a deep swig, and smacked my lips loudly.
“Enough about me. How was your day?” It was all he needed; I sat back in the comfy chair and watched him talk animatedly, smiling to myself. His incessantly chattering voice was all the music that I needed.
I’m killing loneliness