My Butterfly

Chapter Thirty-Seven The Song

“You ready, Will?”

The muffled voice hit my ears as if it were asking me if I were ready to go into battle or something. There was a weariness in the tiny recording studio. But it wasn’t coming from the thin man or the thicker, bald man who moved buttons up and down on the other side of the glass window in front of me. And it wasn’t the fact that they were staring at me either. I had somehow gotten used to them over the last couple of years. What I hadn’t gotten used to, though, were the big headphones that swallowed my ears and the weird microphone that threatened to devour my face. They were still strange, but they also weren’t the cause of my anxiousness. No, the anxiousness wasn’t a guest of the present — but of the future, I guessed, as I stepped closer to the mic. It was more like that uneasy feeling of not knowing if you’ve spent the good majority of your life doing the right thing or the wrong thing. It was that feeling of finally having reached the top of that river bluff but then not knowing what to do when you got there.

I nodded my head in the direction of the thin man behind the glass.

“I’m ready,” I said into the mic.

My eyelids slowly fell shut then, and I lowered my head. I had one chance to tell her what I should have told her years ago. In my head, I recited a silent prayer: Lord, get this to her ears. Then, I heard the music, and gradually, the words of her song began to instinctively fall off my lips:

I sang the last words of the song and then lowered my head. And eventually, the music faded back into my headphones.

“That’ll do it, Will,” a voice hit my ears then. “That’ll make the girls happy.”

An anxious smile slowly found its way to my lips.

“I’m only concerned about one,” I softly said to myself.