Music

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 28 drawing prompt Music from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

Getting someone to fall in love with you is easy.

All you have to do is to find out what a person needs and then get at it—show them you’re the one who has it. After that, make it clear you’ll give it to them, not just because you want to, but because you want them to have it … because you feel like they deserve it.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if you really feel that way, or even if you actually have what they want. As long as you play this part correctly and well, anyone who wants to fall in love will fall in love with you—or at least the “you” that you present to them.

But getting someone to love you because of who you really are? That’s another story entirely.

After my divorce from a man I devoted my life to pleasing in whichever way I could, I finally learned the distinction. My husband never loved me, never loved Anne, the absent-minded, clumsy girl who always wants to stay up late and leave parties early, who plays trombone, but not well, and who covers her mouth every time she laughs. He loved Anne, the dutiful romantic partner who disappeared herself whenever she was inconvenient to his wants and needs. As soon as the real me clawed her way up out of my throat and told Pete how she never liked cooking dinner and hated it when he joked about how she never graduated college, everything changed.

I felt so stupid for thinking he would care about how I really felt and what I really wanted and liked. All that mattered to Pete was that I was who he wanted me to be, even if that person was a complete and total smokescreen, and phantom of his idealized version of a wife. For years, I blamed myself. How was he supposed to know who I really was when I never told him, after all? Now, though, I’ve figured out what blame lies on which side of the line. Sure, I should have been more honest, but the person you’re married to should certainly care more about your feelings than having their bed made to their exacting specifications. I thought we could work on it, could get to know each other more deeply, to connect over who we were at the heart of ourselves, and grow together.

Isn’t that how a marriage is supposed to work?

Not according to Pete. It wasn’t six weeks after I told him I wanted to work part-time instead of full-time and that he came home and said I wasn’t the woman he married. I wanted to tell him he didn’t marry a woman, but a mirror—a non-existent being that only reflected his better self back to him. But apparently that’s all Pete wanted, and the 19-year-old girl he announced he was getting engaged to was still willing to be more an echo than a person.

So I let him go. He loved someone I wasn’t and he got the chance to love the real person he married, he wasn’t interested. I didn’t cry, I didn’t fight. It hurt, but it was a relief to take off the mask of Pete’s Wife.

It wasn’t until the first Christmas after our divorce was final that I started to feel the pain of it. He didn’t love me, and he didn’t want to. The only way I got someone to fall for me was pretending to be someone else. Pretending to be nothing. A vessel. As soon as he saw who I really was, he disappeared.

Something has to be wrong with me, was all I could think as the snow started to fall and red ribbons and bows went up everywhere. He was the only man that ever showed any interest in me and we got married sophomore year of college (which is why I dropped out in the first place, a fact I never reminded him of even when he teased me). And now, here I am, just about 30, with a nothing job as a data entry clerk in a pharmaceutical company. My office is crawling with men, but they all want the same thing: a sexy receptacle to contain them. After ten years emptying myself to contain Pete’s every whim, I can’t do it again. So I walk around as myself, and everyone whispers.

Apparently, a woman being genuine is akin to a bigfoot sighting to these people. It doesn’t surprise me, almost every other female in this building is a carbon copy of today’s acceptable femininity, all of them constantly giggling. It doesn’t matter what the man talking to them says, as long as he says it in that tone, that, I’m bestowing the honor of being cute with you now tone, she’ll giggle. I sit in my cube with air pods stuffed in my ears trying to get away from the insipid tittering but it doesn’t help. No matter where I am in this office, there’s some girl giggling nearby, and I know from experience that none of these men are anywhere near that funny.

A few of them have tried it with me, which is how I know if my only objective was to Get A Man, I’d have one—or several—by now. But they come by my office and lean against my door jamb with their arms outstretched as if their muscle mass was something worth putting on display, and they make jokes about God knows what and then they lean in with that look on their face, with their eyebrows ups, and I know I’m supposed to titter. And when I don’t, they get flustered, and then they don’t stop by my office any more. And then the next thing I hear is them telling one of the others, Don’t bother being nice to her, she’s a bitch. I don’t giggle and toss my hair when they tell me it’s raining outside and I’m a bitch. Fine. The real Anne’s a bitch, then, if that’s how they want it.

It drives me in on myself, and then I realize it’s been two weeks since I said another word out loud to anyone at work. But why should I? There’s some gigantic stupid game they’re all playing, even the married ones, and they’re mad at me because I won’t follow the rules. I spend most of my time alone and I thought it was fine, but lately I’ve noticed I started talking to myself, which is why I’m standing in front of my full length mirror in my red Christmas dress getting ready to go an office Christmas party with a bunch of people I not only don’t know, but don’t particularly like. But it doesn’t matter, I can’t stay home again. One more night in and I’m gonna end buying a cat. At least then I’ll have something to talk to those people about.

I arrive at the party fashionably late and decide to try being sociable. There has to be somewhere between being a hermit and flirting with everyone who talks to you, right? Maybe I can just be friendly. Near the bar, I see the guys from my floor with the receptionist laughing and sidle up to their group.

“Merry Christmas, everyone!” The music is so loud I practically have to shout.

They smile, but it seems forced. I tell myself to stop being paranoid and reading into everyone’s facial expressions.

“I love your dress, it’s so … red,” Sandra, the receptionist simpers. Okay, I’m not being paranoid about her at least. I know it’ll make the guys standing with her happy and infuriate her, so I spin around and toss my hair.

“Thanks, I just got it!” That’s what you’re supposed to say when another woman compliments your clothes ... unless it has pockets. Then you tell them it has pockets.

One of the guys—Gary, I think—lets his mouth fall open a little, and the other two start issuing compliments of their own. I never dress up for work and the one red dress I have isn’t exactly modest, so I figured these wolfish men would react like this. Sandra’s face sours, which I hate to admit brings a glow of satisfaction to my face, but now all three of these idiots are making the face, that please validate my existence by flirting with me face, and my stomach turns as sour as Sandra. I wish I enjoyed this, I wish I took any pleasure in baiting these men, but I look in each of their faces and just see another Peter. They don’t care about me, they don’t wanna know about the summer I spent driving a mail truck, all they want is someone to laugh when they make a joke and tell them how strong their arms look.

I make an excuse out of stopping by the bar to get away from the little mess I just made. Their group immediately returns to its stasis once I’m gone, Sandra touching Gary on the arm and then the other two guys jostling for a position on her other side, desperate for anything she’ll throw their way. I sip on champagne and feel like a jerk. They all look happy enough, who am I to judge? When Sandra walks off and all three of them lean forward to check her out as she walks away, I decide I’m well within my rights to judge.

“Smooth exit,” a voice that sounds like it’s concealing a laugh perks up my right ear. There’s Benjamin, from accounting, the only person I’ve met at ZenoVast Pharmaceuticals that doesn’t make my skin crawl with irritation. He works six floors down from me so I rarely see him, except at company events like this one. Even so, I completely forgot to wonder if he’d be here tonight and his surprise appearance brings a smile to my face.

“Thank God you’re here.”

“Missed me bad, huh?” He loves teasing me. He reminds me of my little brother, only twice his size and covered in tattoos. I remember when he told me he was an accountant four years ago, the information was so incongruous to the impression he gives off, I accidentally laughed in his face. We’ve been the kind of friends who thrive on giving each other crap since then, though we don’t run into each other very often. I punch him in his shoulder, harder than would be playful if it wasn’t for his muscle mass.

“Yeah, right, nerd. I didn’t even think about whether you’d be here or not.”

He looks a little hurt by that, but again, I tell myself I’m being paranoid.

“Did you get an offer from any of the sales boys? They all watched you walk away, you know.”

“Yeah, right,” I laugh, and he rolls his eyes.

“How’s Pete?”

Internally, I curse at myself. Of course. I haven’t seen Benjamin since we decided to get divorced, or if I had, it was before the process had really gotten started and I wasn’t telling anyone yet. That means I haven’t talked to him for at least half a year, which doesn’t sound right. It always feels like we talk every day, even when it’s been months. I decide it’s best to just tell him outright, bandaid style.

“We’re divorced.”

He spits rum and coke in my face and by the time we calm down from laughing, the music has changed to a slow song.

“Wow, Anne, I’m so sorry.”

“For the spit or Pete?”

He snorts. “I meant about the divorce.”

“That’s okay. The spit was worse.” We laugh again, and then he holds out his hand.

“What? You want me to get you another drink or something? Always knew you were a closet chauvinist.”

Benjamin doesn’t laugh and he doesn't drop his hand. Instead, the biggest smile I’ve ever seen from him spreads across his face. It makes me feel unexpectedly warm.

“Dance with me,”

Without thinking, I put my hand in his and he sweeps me out onto the dance floor. When he pulls me against him and wraps his arm around my back, my senses are completely overtaken with the smell of him, the feeling of his shoulder muscles moving under my hand, and the sound of the music competing with the blood rushing in my ears.

As we spin in slow motion, the world pivots around me.

Every moment I’ve ever shared with Benjamin is replaying in my head in a completely different perspective in light of the way he’s smiling at me, the way his body is pressed against mine, and the way his thumb rubs back and forth over the back of my hand. Everything in my life is about to change and I’m both elated and terrified all at once. I want to laugh and cry and scream and pepper him with a thousand questions ... but all of that can wait.

For now, we just dance to the music.