Frost on My Window by Angela Weaver Page A

fingers and sat down on the couch.
    “Cuz, let me introduce you to Sean Patrick Andrews. Your would-be stalker just happens to be the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of Grammy-winning alternative rock band, Exile.”
    She wagged her finger at me. “See what happens when you talk to strangers.”
    I just stood there looking back and forth between Sean and Rena. He broke into laughter and I followed soon after.
    Sean threw himself into my life like a man drowning. His sorrow and rage about his mother’s death sometimes threatened to overwhelm me. Nights on the beach I’d try to pour my warm happy memories of home into him. Then he would fly like a kite in the wind. His joy was so strong and so deep that I couldn’t breathe.
    He saw many things and felt them with an intensity that showed in his green eyes. In those moments, dressed like a teenager and walking on the sidewalk, I knew what it was to feel like a true actress. I was a lead character and Sean was the tragic hero, my chance to correct past mistakes. I’d save him from himself.
    We would sit in the corner of a small restaurant and I’d place my elbows on the table and put my face between my hands and he would talk. I was captivated by the way he saw life around him. He saw into the marrow, the quick. He heard music in everything. Sean savored music’s richness, the feel of words lapped together and poured out on the strings of his guitar.
    I found myself not remembering when Sean wasn’t a friend, when I didn’t pick up the phone and listen as he put the receiver up close to his six-string guitar and strummed some melody that had come floating up in his ear. Rena would laugh and click her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Some nights he would call while I was sitting on the sofa watching a basketball game. After we finished talking trash about which team was going to win, he would talk about the band and his self-doubts and I’d talk about work and bad dates and serious regrets.
    Only on the nights when both of us were full of life and good food would he mention his mother. She floated like a ghost between us. Clad in oversized cargo pants and a black shirt, Sean would sit on the floor of his million-dollar bungalow in Beverly Hills, a lost look on his face as his fingers swept over the guitar strings. The recessed lighting softened the deepening shadows under his eyes and I would sit quiet, his audience of one.
    He would sing and I could close my eyes and my mother’s face would come swimming up in my thoughts. His deep raspy voice never cracked as memories overflowed into the music. To me it was as if he were singing lullabies.
    One night I crawled towards him on the soft carpet and placed my hand on his head as though soothing a small child. His eyes glowed with unshed tears, yet his fingers kept strumming. His grief seemed to fill up the large living room.
    The night I met him standing next to the cliff had been the third anniversary of his mother’s death from cancer. Each time he left me at my front door after hanging out in the obscure sections of Los Angeles, I’d unsteadily rushed to the phone only to catch myself before dialing home just to hear my parents’ voices. And as sleep came washing over me, all I could do was pray that the Lord would keep me and mine safe.
    * * *
    “You have got to be kidding,” Rena said, barely glancing at the video I held in my hand.
    “What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
    “Can we say ‘white chick flick’?” she replied.
    “Hey!” I put my hand on my hip.
    “Cuz, tonight is not the night to watch blonde women with no intelligence, breast implants, and clothing issues lament over the wrong man, but end up marrying Mr. Wonderful and living in the five-bedroom Colonial house by the end of the film.”
    “Good point.” I put the movie back on the shelf. “So what did you pick?”
    I took a look at the video she held in her hands and shook my head. The first clue was the chalk outline of a body.