Page 58 of A Wish for Us

“I can walk if we go slow.”

Cromwell walked slowly beside me. “Do I get any clue yet as to what we’re doing here at the museum after hours?” I pulled on his arm. “You’re not gonna break us in, are you?”

Cromwell’s dimple popped again. A single dimple on his left cheek. The sight pulled at my heart. “It’s the tattoos, isn’t it?” he said.

I fought a laugh. “The piercings, really.” As if on cue, Cromwell rolledhis tongue and his tongue ring came between his teeth. My face set on fire when I remembered how it had danced so close to mine. I hadn’t kissed him enough yet to feel its full effect.

I couldn’t let that happen at all.

“Don’t worry, Sandra Dee. I’ve got permission to be here.”

The security guard must have expected us, because he let us straight through. “Second floor,” he said.

“I’ve been here this week already.” Cromwell led us toward the stairs. He quickly looked back at me, then took us to the elevator. I melted a little.

As the elevator doors closed, Cromwell stayed right by my side. “Any clue yet?” I asked, when the proximity and strained silence got too much.

“Patience, Farraday.”

We got out of the elevator and stopped in front of a closed door. Cromwell ran his hand through his hair. “You said you wanted to know what it felt like.” He opened the door and led me inside a dark room. He pulled me by the hand to the center then moved to the side. I squinted, trying to see what he was doing, but I could barely see in front of me.

Then Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor flooded through speakers hidden somewhere in the walls. I smiled as the music filled the room.

And then I sucked in a quick breath. Lines of color started dancing along the black walls. Reds and pinks and blues and greens. I stood, mesmerized, as with each note another color burst against the walls. Shapes formed on one wall, triangles, circles, squares. And I let it wash over me. As the music poured into my ears, colors flared in my eyes.

I drank it all in. This was synesthesia. It had to be. Cromwell had brought me here to show me what he saw. When the piece ended and the walls faded to black, Cromwell came over to me. I turned to him, wide-eyed and filled with so much awe it was overwhelming.

“Cromwell,” I said, and a line of bright yellow splashed along the walls. I threw my hand over my mouth, laughing when it happened again.

Cromwell brought a couple of beanbags over from the side of the room. He placed them side by side and said, “Sit.”

A flash of pale blue darted across the walls as he spoke. I did as he said, grateful for the reprise. I stared up at the ceiling; it too was painted black. Iturned to Cromwell, his face already watching mine. He was so close to me. Our arms already touching. “It’s what you see, isn’t it?”

He looked at the lines of color that flickered in tune with our words. “It’s like it.” He studied the blue that came when he spoke. “It’s based on someone else. My colors are different.” He tapped his ear. “I hear Requiem differently. My colors aren’t in tune with this one.”

I tilted my head to the side. “So y’all hear colors differently?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Cromwell lay back on the beanbag. They were put here, I guessed, for this reason. So you could lie back and see the colors colliding with the music. A full sensory experience. I watched Cromwell. Watched as he caught the dying embers of the colored lines. This was how he lived. This was his norm.

“You said before that you didn’t just see colors when music played…” I left the sentence hanging there.

Cromwell put his arms behind his head. He rolled his head to me. “No.” He became lost in thought. “I can taste it too. It’s not strong. Certain sounds or scents leave tastes in my mouth. Not really specific, but sweet or sour. Bitterness. Metallic.” He laid one hand on his chest. “Music…it makes me feel things. Certain types of music make my emotions more heightened.” His voice was clipped as he said the last part, and I knew without asking that there was something more behind that.

Then I wondered if it was classical that made his emotions heightened. Maybe too heightened to cope with. Or if it somehow reminded him of something painful. I wondered if that’s why he ran from it.

Cromwell rolled over to face me. I lost my breath as he studied me. I had just opened my mouth to ask him what he was thinking when he said, “Sing.”

“What?” My heart began its unmelodic beat.

“Sing.” He pointed up at the ceiling, at the black walls, at small microphones planted in the ceiling’s crevices. “The song you sang at the coffee house.”

I felt my face light with fire. Because the last time we sang, Cromwell had been behind me, his chest to my back. “Sing,” he said again.

“I don’t have my guitar.”

“You don’t need it.”