Our Song

[nsfwords]

This story is set in the world of Eloquent Souls created by ysabetwordsmith/Elizabeth Barrette and posted with permission. It was originally inspired by the “Our Song” prompt from my February 2021 Valentines Bingo Card, but the idea had a long way to go before I really had a grasp on all the threads. It was further inspired by the “Loss” prompt of my January Story Sparks Bingo Card, and finally made sense when I saw the “Opportunity Knocks Twice” prompt from ysabetwordsmith during the January 2022 Crowdfunding Creative Jam. 1,861 words, it was delightful and sad to write. CW: Loss of a Soul Mate.

Our Song
 

    Arley Cooper was peaches and cream with a beautiful sienna soul mark all along his left forearm when he left for college. It held the lyrics to an old Gladys Knight song, which he researched extensively when it came in, and found his first love in the aptly named Soul singers. The lyrics read,
 

                     He's leaving

                     On that midnight train to Georgia, yeah

                     Said he's going back

                     To a simpler place and time, oh yes, he is

    To Arley the soul mark was only made more beautiful when the golden glister was added when he first heard those words sung by Rashod’s deep rumbling baritone. It happened in November, on his 21st birthday, while he entered a gay club in Athens, Georgia. After the set finished Arley approached the unknown singer and said to him, “If you keep dreaming, even if it takes doing things the hard way, we’ll make all your dreams come true.” It was a twist to the middle lyrics of the song and Rashod wore it over his heart in a fascinating sky-blue with a gunmetal glister at the end. 
 

    Rashod continued to sing in the night clubs as Arley worked in the student union, and they both pursued their education at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at University of Georgia. They had an incredible six years of love and music together. It was ended during a summer thunderstorm, when Rashod left a club late after a paid gig and was hit by a drunk driver while walking to the bus stop.

   
    Arley Cooper’s beautiful soul mark blurred at the end, “oh yes, he is” an indistinguishable mix of tarnished gold and umber. For awhile his whole world blurred, and he left Athens with his degree in Composition & Theory, but his life in tatters. He moved back home with his mom. For over a year he sank into the grief of losing his soulmate.

 

    His mother, Charlotte Cooper, had had enough of her child’s suffering, and maybe it was the ungodly August heat that made her prop him up on the couch one day for a hard discussion about grief, dreams, life, and loss. It worked, even though it hurt them both for a while, and the atmosphere in the house was strained. But Arley got back up and tried to take steps towards finding the rest of his life. He started by getting a tattoo around his soul mark. Sky blue and gunmetal grey music notes ringed the words, Rashod’s words, and it soothed something in Arley’s bruised heart.
 

    He saw a doctor a few times, mostly at his mother’s request, to determine if he was dealing with normal grief or if Arley’d slid straight into depression. Doc believed deep lingering grief over losing your soul mate was a perfectly valid reaction, and that Arley had every reason in the world to feel the way he did; but did he want to feel better? Since Arley replied “Yes,” the Doc said it didn’t matter which it was (what was “normal” grief anyway) and that they should focus on that desire to feel better and leave the label for his medical chart. If the next steps Doc recommended didn’t help, then they’d discuss medications later.
 

    Next, on the Doc’s urging, he joined a grief support group for soul mate survivors. It was brutal in the beginning, the outpouring of his and other’s loss more than he could take, and he’d go home and shake the whole night through. But talking it out slowly began to feel better than keeping everything clenched tight inside. The counselor running the group was the first to suggest Arley put some of his grief into composing. Journaling was frequently recommended as a grief coping strategy, but she felt Arley would gain more benefit if he channeled his emotions into song.
 

    Music burst from him like a waterfall. At first it was brackish, choked with the salt of the tears that rained down his cheeks. Charlotte wrung her hands, but didn’t intervene, as she watched Arley hunched night after night at their upright piano in the living room, feverishly penning and erasing notes on music paper. Like all his storms, this one calmed eventually, and the music coming from the piano turned quieter, sweeter, haunting.
 

     It was an old friend from school, who called to check on Arley periodically, who begged to hear some of his new songs. Charlotte encouraged this, strongly, by bundling him out the door the week after New Years for a night out with friends at a coffee shop. Sighs of relief were expelled on both sides of the door as Arley took off for a night of fun, almost 18 months exactly following Rashod’s passing. 
 

    The friends had all met while studying different music degrees, and it was thrilling and terrifying to share his new compositions with them. It was also so gratifying to watch their ghosting fingers as each silently played his songs as if they held their instruments in concert together. Rashod would have fluttered his hand in the air as if feeling the notes leave his throat to fly. The sudden memory choked Arley up, the tears that came making him feel embarrassed, but his friends embraced him around the table. They told him how incredible they thought he was faring, and how much they loved him. The night was a success, and Arley had many more, finding it easier to accept their invitations now.
 

    Grief support group, composing, and an evening out with friends about once a month had Arley feeling closer and closer to “okay” all the time. He was the one to initiate a talk with his mom this time. He brought her a bundle of spring blossoms and discussed wanting to try going back to work, to save up some money, and get a little place of his own again. Charlotte was proud, and anxious, but decided Arley only needed to hear about how proud her son made her in that moment. 
 

    The job wasn’t excellent, working as a bank clerk, but it was tolerable and Arley had his own place again by the two-year anniversary of losing Rashod. He toasted to Them the first night in his new apartment and didn’t cry more than a few bittersweet tears. This wasn’t the dream Arley had told Rashod they’d make come true when they first met, and that still hurt in a way Arley couldn’t release.
 

    His mother paid to have a moving company transport the family upright piano into his new apartment as a housewarming gift. He’d hugged her so tight she’d laughingly told him he’d crushed her ribs. His mother had been a gift during his whole ordeal, and he wouldn’t soon forget all the ways she’d shown she loved him. The safe place to recover for two years, and even that unhappy time when she pushed him back towards living life again.
 

    So, he continued composing. He didn’t believe anything would come of it beyond a way to process his grief, and a way to honor his mom and her generosity, but a few months later he discovered he was wrong. On one of those friendly coffee shop visits Arley had shared a song he’d both composed and wrote the lyrics. Lyrics had always been more of Rashod’s thing, but this song had flowed from Arley in that magical way music sometimes made happen. He'd been proud of the composition and delighted by his friends gushing that it was fabulous. What he didn’t know is that one friend, who was starting to gain some recognition as an indie producer, had copied the song to share with his team. Arley got the call a few nights after the coffee shop hangout – the record label his friend was building wanted to license the song for one of their R&B singers. Arley dropped the phone. Then scrambled to pick it up, said yes, and set a meeting to hammer out the details.
 

    With the sale of his first song Arley had made another step towards reclaiming his dreams. He worked with his producer friend to get his name out in the industry and make connections. It was all going well until one frosted morning Arley woke up to what felt like the universe’s greatest betrayal. New lines, in a tawny brown, scrawled across his right forearm,
 

              My world, his world, our world, mine and his alone

                      My world, his world, our world, mine and his alone

 

    The aftermath of the new soul mark’s appearance wasn’t pretty. Arley nosedived back into his grief for Rashod, his conviction that those word’s he’d first said to Rashod (that had formed that beautiful sky-blue soul mark) were a terrible lie, and a guilty panicked wish to find a new soul mate. He flirted with alcohol as a coping mechanism for about a week, but it left him feeling even more morose than ever before. About a month into this new low Charlotte invited him back home, but he resisted the temptation to completely rely on her again. Instead, he set an appointment to see the Doc, he returned to attending the grief support group several times a week, and he begged a female friend to come spend some time living with him. He leaned heavily on the positive ways he'd learned to carry his grief and tried to find ways to also cope with hope. 

 

    Arley didn’t find his new soul mate that winter or even the following spring. It was in the third summer after Rashod’s death, many months after the words from that fateful song had settled on his arm, and just a few months before his 30th birthday, that Arley heard a new voice singing as he entered the recording offices of his friend’s music label. Singing Gladys Knight’s song, singing his and Rashod’s song, now to be shared again by Arley and another man as their song.

 

    “My world, his world, our world, mine and his alone. My world, his world, our world, mine and his alone,” rang from the recording booth in an easy tenor, a higher gentler voice than Rashod’s baritone, but Arley eagerly moved towards it anyhow. He watched the younger man in the booth as he breathed after completing the final lines of “Midnight Train to Georgia” and marveled at how incredible fate had been to him. The other man was somewhere in his mid-twenties maybe, warm brown skin and a wild tumble of black curls down to his shoulders. As the man looked up towards the other guys in the recording studio his eyes caught on Arley and he gave a friendly wide smile.

 

     When they were introduced, Arley cleared his throat carefully before saying the lines he’d been rehearsing since he accepted all that the new soul mark might mean.

 

     “I’ve loved, then mourned, then hated that song for so long. Thank you for bringing it back to me.” He watched as the other man, who’d been introduced as Derrell Johnson, clutched a hand over his heart, and knew his own words rested once again, precious and perilous, over another souls wildly beating heart. 

 

Comments

[labelleizzy]

*applause* damn, I love a well done soulmate trope.

[nsfwords]

Thank you very much for the kind words. I’m glad you enjoyed Arley’s story. :-)