Let's Leave it Here p2

I remember one lazy afternoon, shortly before graduation when the four of us went to our field and fell asleep in the sun. When we woke it was a perfect sunset. The sky, bright as fire lit up the houses West of campus. I remember looking at Tess as she leaned into Paul, her head on his shoulder and thinking about how happy I would make her.
I knelt down and whipped out my journal, eager to write a story towin her heart, something to distract her from Paul's good looks and charismatic voice. I wrote a story of love denied, complimented it with rudimentary pen drawings. The last cigarette we had dangling from my lip as I wrote. They looked back at me, Tess' eyes stony and grey as usual, Paul unimpressed by my sincere inspiration and Jake ready for the next event. I waved them ahead and finished my story. I finished the walk alone, concerned with myself and how we would live together after high school, what college would be like, if I would get a chance to tell Tess all my stories. When I got there they already took up the backroom of the local coffee shop.
It was in that coffee shop that we were most free to imagine our future selves. Here, amidst the trappings and legacy of faux bohemia, we could pretend like there was something profound to our aspirations. We could pretend like we wanted credibility not fame. Tess sipped a cup of coffee from a ceramic mug, her eyes studying all of us intently, lumping us together with the slobs that patronized the place. She was destined to be a muse and she knew it. We three boys sipped our coffees from paper cups, none of us bold enough to ask for the mug. We took pride in our docility, only letting it out to play in private, when we were free to fight amongst each other like young wolves.
As was our habit we talked about nothing for hours. Tess sat above us all, some rich countess with her jesters in a line. We were her entertainment. I know that whenever I looked at Tess, then, I imagine myself the humble poet ready to snatch her from her undeserving lover. In youth we all thought of life in the context of art. Paul always envisioned life a song to rival the greatest. He saw the world in notes and measures. Jake saw everything as a storm of chaos. He was a writer too, but not of ordered stories and predictable plots. He was our soul, our heart, he was the Beat-child born to the wrong era. He would lay down the pattern and we had to try our hardest to catch up. I saw everything as an outdated romance. I dreamed of Victorian dresses and corsets wrapped around women. I dreamed of linen suits and thick cigars. I saw life in tones of silver and sepia. Tess was the phantom in our troupe. She was the ghost at the edge of our frame. Nothing about her affected any art stereotype. She, like her turn-of-the-century counter parts was of the nouveaux riches. She hovered above us all with this detachment that we found infectious, inspiring even.
The way we dreamed it she would be the matriarch, the benefactor of our artists lives. She would preside over us delivering yeas or nays and fostering our creativity. If only we knew then what our lives would actually be.