Don't Say "I Love You"

Don’t Say “I Love You”


1 – Average Day


Danielle sat down at the piano and sighed, resting her fingers lightly on the keys. The practice room was slightly crowded, most of them were being so small, but she somehow found it cozy with the piano, bench, chair, music stand and her backpack and french horn all in one tiny room. Spending her afternoons in the music hallway was always somewhat of a pleasant experience for her. There were no pressures, no tests, no parents, no gossip, nothing to take her mind off of the melody. Her fingers pressed down on the keys and she played through a quick song, slow and slightly depressing. It mirrored her life in a way: discordant most of the time, rising, only to plummet farther down, only to stop without the final note sounding. The listener was always left waiting, hoping for the final fall of the key that never came.

She was an average girl, with an average life. Brown hair with bleach-blonde chunky highlights and bright blue eyes lighter than the sky weren’t beautiful, but passed simply for pretty. Her clothes were almost androgynous with the skater fashions most with a board and the ability to ride preferred to wear. Dannie wasn’t too good with the tricks of skateboarding, but when it came to getting from one end of the campus to the other in ten minutes flat (usually a twenty minute run) she could fly by. At least, when she wasn’t carrying her horn, which was every other day.

After the song on the piano was done she pulled the horn out and put some music, covered in pencil scratches with notes written out, some crossed out, dancing across the page. She buzzed on the mouthpiece, her mind going over the notes as she eyed the page. Going over scales she started playing, the flowing melody sliding off of the page like snowmelt in the spring time. Stopping a few times her hand would reach behind her head and pull a pencil out of her hair, roughly pulled back, to scribble down some more notes. After a while she heard a buzzing noise and looked down at her cell phone. Flipping it open she held it to her ear.

“Hello?” she said nonchalantly.

“Hey, are you coming over today?” said a familiar voice.

It was James, her boyfriend. They usually spent Wednesday evenings together since she didn’t have to be home until later, but recently James had been getting back into bad habits a lot. Now their Tuesdays were spent, instead of cooking dinner together or watching a movie or going out, with Dannie watching James get stoned or drunk, and sometimes both. But she supposed somewhere in her heart that she loved him. They’d found each other in the worst part of the other’s life and had somehow saved the other from spiraling downward any farther.

“Do you want me to?” she asked. It was a pointless question, as she already knew the answer.

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought we could make dinner.”

Danielle raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised. They hadn’t made dinner together in almost two months, and she hoped that he would stick to his word. He’d never led her astray before, and he’d never lied to her so she supposed he honestly wanted to spend the evening without outside influences. “Sure,” she said, trying not to sound to excited. He usually ended up teasing her when she was upset or overly excited because her southern-accent would start slipping into her speech.

“All right, when’ll you be here?” His voice sounded funny, almost as if he was trying to hold something back.

After a moment of thought Dannie sighed and said, “In about an hour. I need to pack up here and I’ll be over, okay?”

After saying their goodbyes she glanced at the music and sighed, pushing it back into her music folder. As of late she’d been trying to make the piano piece have a french horn counter-melody, but so far it just wasn’t fitting right. She was slowly losing her touch with the creativity that flowed through her veins. With a sigh she picked up all of her things and headed out to her car. The parking lot was almost empty, as it should be at three in the afternoon at a community college, even one as big as Sierra. In fact the campus was large, and the parking lot almost the same size, as it took Dannie about ten minutes just to walk out to her car, her skateboard strapped to the back of her backpack. She never took any chances when it came to her instruments.

Spotting her car she felt an odd mix of guilty pleasure and resentment. It was a brand new 2005 Mustang GT with a V8, and a custom paint job. The sound system was her own from her old ’92 Foxbody, she’d saved up and gotten the best money could buy. She loved muscle and sports cars, loving the Mustang line like thousands of rabid fans across the USA, but she hadn’t paid for this car, her father had. That was where the resentment was coming from. The man hadn’t looked at her for two seconds for a solid three years of her life, and now he was trying to buy her affections. Well, he could spend all his money, but she still wouldn’t talk to him.

Steering her mind away from such angry thoughts and opened the trunk and slid her backpack and horn in easily. Sitting down behind the wheel she popped the faceplate onto her CD player and sighed happily as the later-half of the parking lot was filled with overly-loud punk rock music. After putting on her seatbelt she pushed in the clutch and moved the car into first gear, roaring out of the parking lot with a relaxed feel. She loved to drive, especially with the windows down. It gave her a sense of freedom and a sense of flying that she couldn’t achieve naturally on her own.

Taking a left instead of going straight she headed down Downtown Boulevard, which was nowhere near downtown though if you followed it long enough you’d get there, and headed towards James’ house. When she got there she parked in the driveway behind his clunker SUV and hopped out of the car. Opening the door Dannie walked straight in, not bothering to knock at all. She’d grown out of that habit a long time prior. On instinct she sniffed the air was while she sensed the lingering presence of marijuana it wasn’t prominent in the air. In fact the air smelled like cookies.

“James?” she called out, poking her head into his room.

“In here Lady,” he called out, using his pet name for her.

Heading to the kitchen she looked at the pictures plastered along the wall in frames. They were all mix-matched and none of them professionally taken, but they all seemed to fit. About one third of them were of Dannie and James together, laughing, smiling, and a rare one or two of the couple drinking together. She stopped to look at the picture of them at last year’s New Year’s Eve party, where he’d finally asked her to go steady with him. The picture was of the two of them kissing in front of a gigantic clock that read “12:00” in glowing red numbers. They each had a drink in one hand, and you could see other couples kissing around them, as well as people taking shots. Their one-year anniversary was in a little over a month and Dannie sighed, wondering what to do for him. James was a hard person to shop for, but anything she got him he was ultimately happy about.

“Hey, whatcha lookin’ at?” he asked, sneaking out of the kitchen to stand behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she leaned against him automatically. It was such a familiar feeling being in his arms. She couldn’t imagine being this close to anyone else.

“Just our first picture together as a couple,” she said quietly, still thinking to herself.

“Well, come on into the kitchen Lady,” he said, kissing her neck quickly. “Cookies are done, and we can start on dinner soon.”

He slipped his arms from around her and dragged her into the kitchen. On the counter was an arrangement of cookies with a multitude of different colored sprinkles on each one. Sugar cookies were her favorite, and when she went to pick one up to eat it he laughed and bopped her hand politely, telling her to wait until after dinner. With a huff she turned around to go to the fridge to get a drink of water and stopped, staring at the table. It’d been set for two people with three roses in the center. He’d even set the silverware out in the correct patter.

“What’s all this?” she asked, rounding on him. “The table and the cookies? What are you trying to do?”

James smiled and shrugged a little. “I haven’t been as romantic to you as I should be, so I’m trying to make up for it,” he said a little sheepishly. After eyeing him a little closer he sighed and shook his head. “Okay fine I’m also leaving town tomorrow and I need you to take notes for me in History class.”

Dannie wanted to hurt him. Their anniversary was this weekend. Of course, their one year was a little more important, but that wasn’t for another month and he’d promised her that he’d be home to spend the time with her. Well, she’d just have to get over it. If he wanted to spend time in his home-town for the weekend then that’s what he would do. She couldn’t run his life and she refused to start. A couple of her friends liked to do that to their boyfriends and it always gave Dannie and ill-taste in her mouth.

“Fine,” she said shortly, giving in.

“Excellent,” he said, giving her a huge hug. “Now, let’s start on dinner.”

They cooked and ate together, talking about classes and their jobs. He asked her how her music was coming and she smiled falsely and told him that as usual it was wonderful, and that everything was coming along beautifully. She’d never told him that she’d dropped out of band, given up her scholarship in the process because she hadn’t gotten along with the band director. Then again, what can you do when the man gets upset when you tell him to fuck off when he makes an unwanted advance? James would just get upset with her. She was supposed to move out with him into their own apartment in the summer and unless she worked two jobs to help pay for classes and bills.

They spent the rest of the evening watching what Dannie called “stoner movies,” the kind of thing that was funny on it’s own, but hilarious when you were drunk or stoned. James lit up halfway through the movie, but didn’t bug Dannie to join him. She’d long since told him that she was working on getting a better job (lied is more like it, she was trying to find a second job) at a bank or office, and drug testing was always a factor. It irked her that he couldn’t go one evening without altering his consciousness, but he was sweet and gentle and never forced her into anything, so she didn’t honestly mind it.

When the last movie was done they kissed and Dannie left to drive the twenty minutes halfway across town to her home. James lived out by the campus which was out on the beaches and she lived in the middle of suburbia with nothing but houses all around. The occasional business parks and shopping strips were set up, and of course a mall and a lot of grocery stores and gas stations, but other than that it was mainly houses. Parking in the long driveway she made sure to make room for her parents to leave in the morning when it was time for them to go to work.

Walking inside with her things she heard her mother call out a hello and answered back before trotting down the hallway to dump her things in her room. She sighed and looked around happily. Posters were plastered across the ceiling and the walls. Three bookcases, a desk with her computer on it, a small set-up with a TV and a PS2, a dresser and her bed occupied the room. And a lot of clothes, books that couldn’t fit onto the shelves and some blank sheet music. She set her horn down next to her closet, which she’d long since ripped the doors off of to make her room look bigger.

There was a knock on her door, and her mother poked her head in. “Hey Dannie, sweetie,” she said. “Remember you’ve got a dentist appointment tomorrow all right? Did you get tomorrow off of work?” she asked.

“Yeah, I did,” she said, sitting down in her computer chair.

“How’s James?”

“Same as ever.”

“Still getting stoned on a daily basis?”

Dannie rolled her eyes. She told her mother everything (well, almost everything) and loved the woman for listening without judging or getting too upset. “Yeah, but I think he might be calming down on it a bit,” she said, flipping her PC on.

“That’s good,” her mother said with a smile. Blowing the brown-and-blonde haired girl a kiss she said, “I’m running to bed, I’ve got a board meeting tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow night for dinner!” and promptly shut the door and shuffled off.

With a sigh Dannie opened her buddy list and immediately had two conversation windows pop open.


Blazed4Now: Love you. Thanks for taking notes for me. Night.


And with that James promptly logged off. He wasn’t really one for online discussion, but he always wanted to make sure she got home all right if she ever left late. Even though she hadn’t left his house late she figured he just wanted to remind her to take notes for him the next day. The other window was her best friend Tonya.


GothicPhrase42: Hey, hey. How’s guy?


Guy was Tonya’s name for James. Dannie typed in a response, her fingers clicking fast over the keyboard with long-practice made easier by her ambidextrous nature since she played the double concert french horn and marching horn, the first requiring the left hand for the keys, the second the right.

Punkd4Horn33: He’s fine. He only lit up once. He made me dinner with roses and he even made me sugar cookies.

GothicPhrase42: … what does he want?

Punkd4Horn33: He’s leaving town tomorrow to go back to Y-ville.

GothicPhrase42: All weekend?

Punkd4Horn33: Yeah.

GothicPhrase42: What an ass. He better be here on the 31st for your anniversary.

Punkd4Horn33: He will be.

GothicPhrase42: If you say so. He’s your bf.

Punkd4Horn33: I say so. How was work today?

GothicPhrase42: I’m gonna kill Chris.

Punkd4Horn33: What’d he do this time?

Once Danielle had steered Tonya away from bitching about James (she was starting to disapprove of what she called his “extra curricular activities”) and onto the happier subject of wanting to kill her boss at the studio she worked at she relaxed a bit and started absently reading the chapter required for History the next day. After a while she told Tonya and the few other people she’d started conversing with goodnight and signed offline. She stripped of her clothes and lay down in bed, ignoring the loud TV noises from the living room.

Her father was still awake and hadn’t said a word to her all evening, even though she’d stepped out to the kitchen twice to get something to drink. It figured really that he didn’t talk to her unless he wanted something. That’s how it usually went with him. With a grunt she tossed over onto her side and tried to sleep, but she had too much to think about. With James gone on their anniversary and her thoughts of her father ignoring her, topped with her worries about her creativity slipping through her fingers, she had a hard time falling asleep.

When she woke up the next morning for school she looked rough, and felt it. Since she didn’t have to go to work that day she pulled her hair back, trying to get it to lie flat with little success and tugged on a looser pair of jeans that she usually wore and a tank top that said Speedway Superstar. Zipping up her black hoodie she put her cell phone in one pocket and her keys in the other, grabbing her backpack and leaving the horn. She trotted out to her car and got in, turning it on with a roar and leaving the neighborhood in a wake of alternative music in the early hour. Her parents were already gone for work and so was half of the neighborhood, so no one ever really complained as her dark red ‘stang zipped through.

Getting to campus around 8:40 she went ahead and walked to class, intending to sit outside even in the fall chill until the start time of 9am occurred. There were a few others present who were early, but she wasn’t in the mood to speak with them yet, not being a morning person and getting little sleep the night before didn’t help too much. When Courtney walked over and sat next to her she realized it was almost class time, but didn’t check her clock. The blonde girl always showed up ten minutes till.

“Geeze, you get plastered last night or what?” she asked, looking at Dannie’s frumpy outlook.

“No,” she croaked before clearing her throat. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Where’s James?”

“Probably in Y-ville by now.”

“Ahhh. Hey Juan, Mike, how’s it going?” she said, directing her last words at the two boys who were walking over to sit next to the pair of girls.

One was of Hispanic origin, the other a classic Apollo white boy with the blonde hair and blue eyes that made most girls stutter. Too bad they were still in high-school and dually enrolled in the college classes and dating. They would have broken a lot of hearts if only they’d been free to play the field. Sitting down opposite of Dannie, Mike looked just as tired as she knew she did, though he still had that perky upbeat to him. Juan, as usual, was a hyper ball of energy.

“We played a show last night, so we’re kinda tired,” Mike said simply.

“Yeah, but it was so awesome! Our highest showing yet! So many people were there,” Juan said positively.

Courtney asked them questions which the boys fired answers back at, and Dannie just stayed silent. She’d never heard them play, although she’d like to. Usually the nights that their band performed she was either working or with James, so that ruled out the main stream of their stage appearances.

“Hey, didn’t you have a concert last night too?” Courtney asked, suddenly putting Dannie in the spotlight of the conversation.

Frowning she furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”

Courtney rolled her brown eyes. “Hello! Band! I thought you guys performed last night.”

“Court, we’ve been over this. I dropped out,” she replied dryly.

“Didn’t you have a scholarship?” the other girl asked, slightly surprised.

Dannie’s cheeks burned. While she’d told several people about her leaving the college orchestra she hadn’t really told anyone why. And while she felt she could tell Courtney without the girl blabbing about it to everyone she felt odd with Juan and Mike watching, their brown and blue eyes looking at her so very calculating. “Yeah, I did,” she said quietly. “But, full scholarship or no, it wasn’t worth putting up with that man.”

“You’re that good?” Juan asked innocently, sipping on his drink he’d gotten from the local café near campus.

Dannie stuttered, not knowing how to answer. She’d been in the local youth symphony orchestra which by right was elitist, first chair in her high school for two years and had gotten offers from universities state wide to come play in their organizations. Too bad she’d failed her second French class or she’d be at one of those universities right now, instead she was stuck at Sierra Community College. “I guess,” she finished lamely.

“What do you play?” Mike asked. His voice was solid and she felt almost commanded to look at him. His eyes, a darker shade of blue than her own burrowed into hers. He was searching for something, what she had no idea.

“French horn,” she said, suddenly feeling intruded upon but without reason. “Why? What does it matter to you?”

Courtney took that moment to haul Dannie up, unceremoniously and quite awkwardly, to her feet and shove her into the classroom so they could all take their seats. The four were scattered around the room, and the teacher was showing a video that day about King Henry the Somethingth. Dannie wasn’t paying too much attention, as the seat next to her was empty, the seat that James usually occupied. She could also feel someone watching her, and not the video, from her left and back a little ways. That would either be Juan or Mike, since they sat next to each other. She shifted uncomfortably and didn’t look back, trying to ignore it, and after a while she felt the feeling of eyes leave her.

At the end of class she pulled her backpack on and headed out the door, taking a left to head to her chorus classes. While she’d dropped out of band because the director was a total dick she’d stayed in Chorus because the man who ran that specific program was a much more respectful man, though he still ran things with an iron fist.

“Hey! Danielle! Stop!”

She kept walking, lost in her own thoughts. During class she’d taken notes, and was wondering if she could spare the dollar to copy them via machine or if she should take the time to laboriously copy them again by hand for James.

“Dannie! Hey! DANNIE!”

At that she did stop, everyone around her staring at her. Turning around she saw Mike running towards her, trying to keep his own pack from falling off of his shoulders. He slowed down when he got near her, but left his hands on the straps. Raising an eyebrow she moved her weight from one foot to the other, waiting for him to start with whatever he was saying. They didn’t usually talk, but recently they’d started conversing more and more since Courtney and Dannie sometimes rode to school together due to Courtney’s car dying randomly and without cause.

“Listen, I want you to come to practice,” he said simply.

“Practice?” Dannie said, raising an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

He grinned, knowing she was suddenly intrigued. “My band, I want you to come to a practice tonight.”

“I don’t play guitar,” she said, turning away from him. “Sorry.”

He put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. Mike might have been two years younger, but he didn’t look it, and by the strength of his hand he could probably pin Dannie down without a second thought. “I know. You play horn, and that’s what I want to add to the sound we’ve already got.”

Dannie raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?” she asked, slightly stunned. “French horns are classical instruments though, they aren’t meant for rock music.”

Mike’s blue eyes twinkled. “I know, and that’s what’ll make us different. That’s the sound I’ve been looking for Danielle, and hopefully you can give it to me. Will you come tonight and at least listen to us?”

Dannie thought about it for a moment. “I’ve got a dentist appointment,” she said lazily, trying to ignore the stirrings in her stomach at the opportunity Mike was giving her. It was a crazy idea though, no one would ever really like it. No one understood how hard horn was, no one would appreciate it enough. Or would they? At the moment she was confused and still tired from lack of sleep. Or maybe she was still dreaming.

“We practice every Thursday night,” he said, pressing a sheet of paper into her hand. “This is my cell number, call me when you’re ready to play.”