Something didn’t feel right to Jeremy. He wasn’t sure what it was, everything should be going fine: Charlie was doing that thing the ladies liked where he winked at them and they fainted, and Tommy was doing that thing that everyone liked where he forgot his shirt, and Tonio looked like an insane person, so that wasn’t different. Conclusion: I’m doin’ somethin’ wrong. So at the end of the song, he said he wanted to try something new for the audience.
The song had felt right that morning, alone in his room in the Reid’s house, but this morning, as alone as he had been, he had been singing to a very different audience. Ben wouldn’t lie to him about his song, or, at least, Ben couldn’t lie to him, with his so easy to read eyes that spilled every false truth that came rushing out to impress upon Jeremy exactly how wonderful his song was. Jeremy had seen his face when he was singing and every moment after. He was lucky he knew what love was, or he might have thought he was going mad.
Jeremy couldn’t see the audience, not fully, only a couple of people in the first row, before the lights came and blinded him to any others, but he could hear them, roaring like ocean. He had never seen the ocean, but Ben had. Ben had given him a sea shell he’d had since he was a child and told him to listen, Jeremy, can you hear it? Hear that rushing - isn’t it beautiful? They say that’s the ocean you can hear, louder on a stormy day and quiet when the sea is gentle.
“Is it really?” Jeremy had replied, enthralled, lost in the faraway look glazing over Ben’s eyes as he spoke, giving the ocean deference, and an importance Jeremy had never imagined it could have. Ben had spun him a story of a day on the beach with Lewis and their parents, playing in the sand, jumping in the waves. Jeremy had never known the Mayer’s to be the way Ben described them, carefree, like nothing could ever trouble them, but Lewis had looked just as puzzled, as though the parents his brother was describing were foreigners from some far flung shore or aliens on a strange planet masquerading as a familiar face. He had been… (not surprised, but perhaps slightly… Jeremy didn’t have the right words. He imagined Ben might say bewildered, or, no - perplexed. That’s what Ben would say, Perplexed. Jeremy didn’t know the difference, but he was sure he was right.) Perplexed when Eleanor, don’t call me Mrs Mayer, dear, it makes me feel old, had given Ben an old look, as though she hadn’t expected him to remembered, put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Well. A lot of things were different before the revolution.” Ben had given her an odd look after that and quickly changed the subject, but Jeremy had kept hold of the shell for the rest of the day and when he tried to give it back to Ben before he left, Ben’s eyes seemed to glaze over again, but it was gone before the expression had settled on his features and he smiled and told Jeremy to keep it.
