Euphony, Jade Aimers

SHOWCASE Euphony

JADE AIMERS

I watched her lips while she spoke.

“Are you up to much today?”

They were deep pink - fl ushed and sweet. I thought the dead skin on her bottom lip would taste like sugar, or honey.

I watched her lips because of the way she formed her words. I like the sweet spot- the millisecond-where I see her intention, before her voice follows. I sometimes imagine that one day, she’ll speak to me, and a new voice will come out. One I’ve never heard before...

I know it’s not fair to put that dream on her, but the voice gets old.

The voice is my voice. The same voice as everyone: packaged up differently, in different people, but the same, nonetheless. Androgynous. Warm. Boring.

“Not much. Just grabbing a coffee then studying.” I smiled. “Usual.”

“I’d rather be studying than making coffee.” She turned her back to me to start making the latte, and asked: “You take two sugars, right?”

Except it could have been anyone asking. The person behind me. The ginger news reporter that came on the BBC every night at 6. Without her face, the voice bounced off the walls and echoed through my memories.

“Brown.”

She turned back around, grabbed two sachets, and smiled. It seemed like that was the default under any of her tiredness or frustration: her dark eyebrows lifted, everything seemed to open up.

Around us, in The Little Cafe, our voice clashed as people chatted at tables and in the queue. It was a small place, right on the main road, but I liked the kaleidoscope of vocabulary that fl uttered throughout. Different languages, different registers. The melting pot of academics, students, and regulars felt like change.

Her voice may have been my voice, and my best friend’s voice, but I didn’t see them in her, which is what sometimes happens with these things, these infatuations. You like a girl and then all of a sudden you hear your mum talking to you- asking you to pick up your laundry, or you hear your ex stating matter-of-factly: “I just don’t love you, James.”

No, not here: not with Cat.

Outside, I could hear the sun humming against the concrete. Unlike us, and our voices, which stayed the same no matter who spoke; the sun liked to change. On concrete, it was numbed and dull. On water, it crackled, like shattering glass. My favourite time to hear it was sunset: it was like you could hear it pulling away from you, the sound being sucked out of the sky.

It was a hot day, and I wanted to get back to the park- to the shade, under the pine tree. I liked to listen to the bristles; and the way they nudged against each other. They had their own euphony in the shuffl e of the woods.

Cat turned back, takeaway latte in hand. I thought about asking her out to dinner. I thought about it.

“Oh well, enjoy the sunshine,” she said, casting a glance behind me to the queue. She handed me my drink. She looked bored of it all already- and let out a breath. “I’ll endure it.”

Her dark hair was falling out of the ponytail: wispy segments curled around her forehead. A long day for her, a lazy day for me.

I said: “You’ll be fi ne”

She replied: “Ah, I know.”

In our exchanges, I knew I could not hear her – a voice that was distinctively hers- under the voice that belonged to both of us. But I heard something. The way her footsteps sounded on the hardwood of The Little Café as I walked away from her– the way her jewellery clinked against the coffee machine as she cleaned. I imagined the sun would sound differently, reverberating around her: like the hum was afraid to touch her, to hurt her.

I left, coffee in hand, thinking about the way her lips puckered when she said endure. Like she was kissing the air; like her skin was a blade of grass, reaching out to dance with the wind.