Shon

Some romantic prose I've been working on. Totally fictional.

    Shon has the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen.  I first saw them when I caught them staring at me, Shon seated across from me in a room full of acoustic guitars.  Being the only female working at a guitar shop, I got a lot of stares from guys: stares of disapproval, jealousy, or lust, but Shon’s stare was different.  He wasn’t looking at me as an inferior being who probably couldn’t play or as a piece of a*s; his eyes were instead captivated by my fingers that moved effortlessly down the fret board of a four thousand dollar Taylor guitar I could never afford.  I was too mesmerized by the gorgeous tone of the guitar and too occupied by the fast tempo of the solo I was playing to look up.  As soon as the complicated interlude of the song was over and my fingers reverted back to more familiar chord positions, I looked up and caught him staring at them.  It wasn’t until my fingers stopped moving that he looked up at my face.  When our eyes met, his darted away, down to the acoustic bass on his lap.

    “I love that one,” I started, trying to make the situation less awkward.  “Great tone.  Gorgeous body.  It’s actually not as overpriced as most of the s**t here.”

 

    “At least you’re honest,” he laughed, still visibly embarrassed.  His voice was low and breathy, masculine with a hint of feminine cadence.

 

    “Not a lot of people buy acoustic basses,” I laughed, “so that is probably why the markup isn’t four-hundred percent.  Take Four G here…”

 

    “Four G?”

 

    “Yeah.  That is what I named this Taylor, because of the price.  I really want it, but I’m not going to pay three thousand to this guitar shop.  Plus, I don’t get a commission when I sell something to myself.”

 

    Shon laughed heartily.  I couldn’t help but smile.  My boss must have seen my flirtatious look through the glass window of the soundproof acoustic room, and since he looked for any excuse to humiliate me into quitting or steal my sales and commissions, he pulled open the door and traipsed over to me with a visible swagger of chauvinism.

 

    “Sage, I pay you to sell things and polish guitars, not to sit trying to play them while flirting with customers,” he jeered.  He turned to Shon.  “Sir, I apologize.  Can I help you with something?”

 

    I glared at him not wanting to show my frustration and embarrassment in front of Shon, but I couldn’t help but radiate heat, and my boss basked in the warmth.

 

    “I…”

 

    Shon shot me a gaze and interrupted me. “Actually, she was helping me,” he said authoritatively, defending me.  I sat aghast, almost angry that he might be protecting me because he thought I couldn’t stand up to my boss, but I dismissed the thought since I was mostly overcome with gratitude and pretty damn smitten by his chivalrous display.  

 

He nodded toward Four G and continued, “I asked her to play a song with me so I could hear how the bass would sound with accompaniment.  I play with my brother and he has a Taylor like that.”

 

    “Oh,” my boss sighed.  “What…”

 

    Shon stopped him by starting to play the bass line of the song I was playing when he was watching my fingers.  I came in and started playing with him, the sound of the guitars meshing together perfectly.  We played a few more bars and finished.  “Good song,” I whispered.  My boss turned on his heels angrily and walked away.

 

    “Somebody just got OWNED!” Shon laughed after my boss was out of earshot.  I wasn’t laughing and he could tell I was still upset.  “What an a*****e,” he offered.

 

    “Oh, he is,” I agreed.  “He always does that to me in front of customers.  I can’t decide if he just likes humiliating me or if he just wants to starve me into quitting.  I wish I could count all the times the f*****g guys around here have stole my commissions.”

 

    “They’re just jealous,” he laughed.

 

    “Jealous?”

 

    His smile faded as he realized the implications of what he said.  “Yeah, because y-you know…you play really well, and you’re good at your job…and y-you’re hot.   You definitely one-up them on that,” he said, motioning at my unfortunate looking co-worker outside the glass window.

 

    We laughed.  “Aww, aren’t you cute?”

 

    “I try,” he said, blushing.

 

    There was an awkward silence.

 

    “Were you lying?”  I realized by his deer-in-the-headlights look that he didn’t follow my mental tangent.  “About playing, I mean?  What you said, about how you play with your brother?”

 

    He looked relieved that I wasn’t the type of girl that got insecure and accusatory when someone called her hot.  “Well, kind of,” he said.  “My brother doesn’t have a Taylor.”

 

    We both laughed.

 

    “Sage, huh?”

 

    “What?” I said, taken aback.

 

    “That’s what your boss called you.  Sage, like the flower?”

 

    “Yeah,” I smiled.

 

    “That’s a cool name.  It sounds badass…like it’s a flower, but it’s not all girly and stuff, like, ‘Hi,

I’m Daisy.’  It’s a…” he must have noticed my gazed over, amused look and he stopped.   “I’m Shon.”

 

    “Shon like Sean?  You know, SEEN?  Or do you spell it the right way, S-H-A-W-N?”  I was half poking fun at his analysis of my name, half curious.

 

    “Actually it’s neither.  S-H-O-N.  My mom couldn’t spell, so she just sounded it out.”

 

    I laughed.

 

    “I’ve been saving up for this thing,” he said, looking longingly at the bass, still in his lap.  He picked it up gently, scrutinizing the entire body of the instrument.

 

    Decidedly, he put the bass back down on his knee. He looked up and asked, “You ready for a big commission?”

 

    I was a little bit shocked by his seriousness.  He looked about my age, around nineteen, and he was going to actually buy a two-thousand dollar instrument.  For a moment I just sat and wondered how he could possibly afford it.  Most customers that are my age just come in to look around, play the guitars, and maybe buy a music book before they leave.  Just from our short interaction and my intuition, I knew Shon didn’t make his living as pimp or a male prostitute, so he must have worked his a*s off to make enough money to buy this bass.  I had to hook him up somehow.  I couldn’t let the guitar shop profit off of someone this charming.

 

   “You know, now that I know you, I kind of feel like it’s stealing,” I said.  He laughed, but I wasn’t kidding.  “No, seriously.  Why don’t you come back tomorrow around three o’clock and ask for Tom, then buy it.  He didn’t work today so he doesn’t know we just met, and my boss won’t be here either.  Just say you’re my brother and you can get my employee discount.  It’s twenty percent off.”

 

    “Are you serious?  I can’t do that!” Shon gasped, like I just asked him to put the bass under his coat and steal it.

 

    “Oh come on, you did me a favor, I have to do something for you or my karma will be bad.”

 

    “How about you do me a favor and let me take you out for coffee after your shift?” he smiled.

 

    “But, I…”

 

    “Hey, hey,” he interrupted, “It’ll do wonders for your karma…” His piercing blue eyes pleaded with me. They were impossible to resist, so I agreed.

Author's Note

Do you think I should keep going or is the story good as is?

Reviews

[alternative_be]

Please keep on writing! You could leave the story as it is now, but then we will never now how things took off from where you left them. I like your style of descriptive writing and using dialogue in a story. It works really well.
One remark however: in the beginning of the story you write you were too memorized.
I think you mean mesmerized ... or maybe hypnotized a little... The verb is derived from a German doctor Mesmer who lived in the 19th century and engaged himself in magnetism and hypnosis. Apparently it is also the name of a band ...
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mesmerize
Reading this, I can understand you got mesmerized, which tends to blur your sense of spelling!