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Author's Chapter Notes:

My friend Gillian recommended this song to me and the first time I heard it I was completely taken with it. I can see it being a song Pam listens to on repeat late at night on some of her more angsty nights. I mean she must have a playlist of wallowing songs, right? Well if so, I think this would be on it so its here, all in italics. If you have time I really really recommend checking the song out. I downloaded it at http://www.myspace.com/lizdurrett. Oh and there is a fanvid with this song too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehdP44iXs4w. Ok. Enough with that. The Norah Jones comment was taken from Pam's itunes playlist.

 

Disclaimer: These are not my characters. This is not my song. Enough on that too.

How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say


She likes being able to play her own music, to control her own mood by proxy. She always wakes up to a song by Norah Jones, “Those Sweet Words.” Roy hated it. He used to complain about all of her chick music, until she got tired and gave up, only listening at work when she could. She’d kept a couple of cds guiltily stashed away in the car, just in case she ended up getting to drive home alone, taking perverse pleasure in blasting her music from his pick up.

I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you, I’m always thinking of you
But my words just blow away, just blow away
It always ends up to one thing, honey
And I can’t think of right words to say


She likes the companionship in a soundtrack and finds herself gravitating to certain songs on certain days, until she realizes she has a mix cd for a life. She has about fifteen companions and they are mostly sad, a few angry and two optimistically happy, which serve her mainly in the morning or really late at night -when she is far enough on either end that she feels more prepared than before.

Wherever I am, I’m always walking with you
I’m always walking with you, but I look and you’re not there


It had been an odd summer, to take so many steps forward at once. They hadn't always seemed forward, some just seemed away. She had only known to keep constant, to move towards next. It wasn’t until late fall that she turned around to retrace those steps and commit them to memory. She had kept herself too distracted to consciously realize most of her movement and whenever she looks back she is mostly surprised at herself, and proud. But then she can see him there in all of it too. She decides determined comes next.

Whoever I’m with, I’m always talking to you
I’m always talking to you, and I’m sad that
You can’t hear, sad that you can’t hear
It always ends up to one thing, honey,
When I look and you’re not there


The first few months she keeps waiting for the solitude of her situation to sink in, for her to start talking to herself or start giggling inappropriately at shadows. But she doesn’t. She can go all night comfortably without saying anything aloud. Only, one night she is on track 7 when she realizes she is always, always, talking to him. She mentally makes a note to stop cataloging things to share with him, since anyway, now he'll only politely hear them.

I need to know you, need to feel my arms around you
Feel my arms around you, like a sea around a shore


At night when she closes her eyes it is all she feels -His arms around her, like a sea around a shore. Sometimes she just stays there, tides rising and falling faster, breath in and out, hands drifting. Other nights she has to open her eyes right away.

And -- each night and day I pray, in hope
That I might find you, in hope that I might
Find you, because hearts can do no more
It always ends up to one thing honey, still I kneel upon the floor


She doesn’t believe there can be words to possibly translate the way she feels. Over the summer she learned from a magazine article, sent by her mother with yet another batch of cookies, that the Portuguese have 14 words for love. In the process of a prank once, involving a French phone sex hotline and a hollowed out German dictionary, he had mentioned that there are words in German and French that don’t have an English equivalent. She decides her thoughts must be a combination of both of these things, of too many possible explanations and of the perfect one remaining somehow elusive still.

How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say
I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you
I’m always thinking of you....
It always ends up to one thing honey
And I can’t think of right words to say


She likes to have a glass of wine with dinner sometimes. It makes her feel thoroughly grown up in this new home she has made as her own. She likes white wine but is now trying to cultivate more of a taste for red, even though it always gives her a headache. On some nights when she lets that one glass become two or three, she ends up playing track 7 on repeat, feeling the haunted voice echo inside her head. She turns the volume up louder and louder until she can't separate her own thoughts from the words around her, wanting to crawl inside them, hoping their two desperate voices can come together and find the words he needs to hear.

How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say…


 


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