“Thank you, Reese,” she whispered, and it wasn’t until she spoke those words that I realized how close we were, that I felt her presence like a weighted anvil pressing down on me from every angle. “Thank you.”
My hands were on her lower back, and I swallowed as my fingertips brushed the small sliver of skin exposed by the back of her dress. It was the most skin she’d ever shown, and I hadn’t even noticed it until that exact moment that our skin connected. I swallowed, hands splaying over the bare space, reveling in the smoothness of it.
Sarah stiffened in my arms, and her reaction snapped me back to reality.
I pulled my hands away, clearing my throat as we both stepped back from the hug, Sarah’s arms immediately crossing over her chest once they were no longer around my neck. Her eyes flicked between mine before falling to the ground between us, another blush shading her cheeks.
“I haven’t felt that good playing in a long time,” she said. “I think we’re making progress.”
“We are,” I assured her. “You are. And now that school is out, we’ll have more time to work on the areas you’re struggling with. Which, if I’m being honest, aren’t that big.”
“If I want to play at Carnegie, they are. You and I both know it.”
I sobered at that, because as beautiful as her performance had been, Carnegie Hall was a whole other ball game.
“We’ll work on it. Like I said, we have more time now that school is out.”
Sarah’s eyes floated somewhere behind me then. “Are you going to miss it?”
I followed her gaze, a knot the size of a rubber band ball forming in my throat at the sight of Charlie. She had her hands clasped together near her smiling lips as she watched the performers on stage. Even being a mother of two now, she was still so slight, so small, like the birds she loved so much. A familiar pain zipped through my chest, but somehow, it didn’t hurt the way it had even four weeks ago.
When I turned back to Sarah, I tried not to question why.
“Not at all,” I answered.
And it was the truth.
I’d never been much for routines.
When I was studying in New York, I’d often skip classes to wander aimlessly around the city, convinced that watching the people who lived there and taking in that concrete jungle for all that it was would have more of an impact on my piano playing than listening to some stuffy professor would. And after, though I had a steady job, I never filled my time outside of work in the same way. Every day was different. To me, routines were synonymous with comfort and complacency, and those two C words were the death of artists.
Of course, after the actual death of my family, everything changed.
I slipped into a routine in Mount Lebanon because I had no other choice. If I didn’t get a grip on something in my life, I was going to float out into space and never come back to Earth. I believed that as much as I believed there was no religious entity that could save a shitty soul like mine. And so, Westchester became my routine. And it wasn’t until last summer that I realized without it, I found myself slipping into old bad habits.
Like drinking before noon and well into the night, or sleeping until most people were eating lunch.
But this summer was different.
This summer, I had Sarah Henderson.
After the recital, we fell into a routine, and I found myself depending on it just as much as I did the one I had during the school year. Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday I was with Sarah. Every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, I was at The Kinky Starfish. If I wasn’t playing piano, I was teaching it. And if I wasn’t with Sarah or at work, I was preparing for the next time I would be.
My time was filled with purpose, and that’s exactly what I needed.
Not seeing Charlie was the icing on that routine cake. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her, that I didn’t want her to be happy, or that I didn’t want to spend time with her family. But something over the past few months had helped me realize that I was far from healed, far from moving on from what had happened between us.
As much as I wanted to be her friend, I wasn’t ready to be her friend. That was just all there was to it.
Still, I wasn’t exactly ready to get out there and start dating, either. Jennifer Stinson was no stranger to my text messages, making sure I remembered that I’d promised her an evening together once school was out. But I’d tried dating in the aftermath of Charlie, and all it’d done was enhance my depression and make me want to throw my phone into a dumpster and set it on fire.
Filling my summer with piano was much more appealing.
So, I kept pushing off the date, telling Jennifer I was wrapped up, but that we’d make it happen. Eventually.
Non-commitment suited me well.
And as for my time with Sarah, it was becoming more and more specialized. We’d still work on technique and tension, on scales — though those were becoming almost obsolete as I gave Sarah more challenging pieces to play. The truth of the matter was that we’d reached a point where it was less about what I could teach her, technically, and more about what she still needed to learn musically.
It was becoming a matter of sensational versus Carnegie Hall phenomenal.
And it was almost impossible to explain the difference until she got there on her own.
“Ugh!” she screamed one afternoon, tossing her hands up in the air before her elbows landed hard on the keys, her face burying between her hands. “I suck. I suck, I suck, I suck.”
I chuckled, taking a seat next to her at the piano. “You do not suck.”
It was a beautiful day outside, the sun shining and a cool breeze cutting through the heat that big star in the sky brought. We had all the windows open, the fresh air sweeping in, but it did nothing to calm Sarah in that frustrating moment.
I’d been there.
She removed her elbows with a pouty lip as I started to play the piece we were working on, one that challenged her reach. “We only have ten fingers to play with,” I said as I played, Sarah’s eyes on my hands. “You know the scales. You know how to get to the notes that need to be played, but sometimes, that knowledge works against you. Sometimes, you have to play a little unconventionally to achieve what you desire.”
Her little mouth popped open as my fingers moved across the keys like ice skaters on speed, hands hopping over one another in a way that would have made any piano pedagogue cringe.
“The way I’m playing right now is wrong,” I said, foot tapping on the pedal below us as my fingers stretched and curled. “But no one sitting out in that audience gives a fuck about technique. They care about the music, what they’re hearing, and what they’re feeling.” I nodded toward her. “Close your eyes.”
She did, inhaling a long breath through her nose as she relaxed.
“Listen,” I commanded.
I worked through the piece, taking artistic liberties in my favorite sections, and when Sarah opened her eyes again, they were wide with wonder. She watched my hands to the finish, and kept her gaze on them even after I’d pulled them back into my lap.
“You’re a freak,” she whispered.
I barked out a laugh. “Wow. No need to abuse the teacher, Miss Henderson.”
She rolled her eyes.
“The difference between what you just did and what I just did has nothing to do with me being a freak,” I said, still smiling. “It has everything to do with me playing the piano, versus the piano playing me.”