My stomach twisted, months of unanswered texts throbbing at me like they were alive in my phone. When I’d left Bramlock, I’d left everything and everyone behind — including my roommate and closest friend, Reneé. I’d stopped posting on social, deleted my accounts altogether after a month, and I knew my mom’s heart wasn’t the only one I broke over the winter.
Reneé was my friend, and I’d blown her off. I’d blown everyone off. But, at the time, it felt like the only thing I could do. It felt like survival.
Fight or flight. And I flew.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that…” I whispered.
Mom’s brows furrowed, but she offered a knowing smile. “Okay. Well, I’m here if and when you do decide you want to talk about it. Until then, try to meditate on it.” She gave me a pointed look. “Actually meditate, not overthink.”
I laughed.
“I think it will help.”
“I think you’re right,” I agreed, hand floating up to my crystal. I rubbed the smooth sides of it, thoughts still whirling. “I had a dream about Dad the other night.”
A familiar shade of sadness passed over my mom’s face, one that mine favored more and more the older I got. “Oh?”
I nodded. “I wish he could see what I’ve been working on, that he could hear how I play now.” I paused. “I wonder if he’d be proud of me.”
“He is proud of you,” Mom assured me, a soft smile touching her lips. “And he does hear you. He’s with us, even when we feel alone.”
I nodded, but my heart ached with the yearning to have him actually here with us instead of metaphorically. I didn’t have the heart to tell my mother it wasn’t the same, but then again, I believed she already knew.
“I miss him,” I whispered, still rubbing the crystal.
“I miss him, too.”
A heaviness settled over us, but it was interrupted as Uncle Randall swung through my bedroom door with barely a knock to announce he was coming in. He smiled at me, and that smile doubled when he saw Mom’s face on my computer screen.
“Farah! What a lovely surprise. How are you, my dear?”
Mom smiled, but the edges of it were tight after what we’d been discussing. I wondered if seeing Uncle Randall was as hard for her as it was for me sometimes. He had the same eyes my father had, and the same too-wide smile.
“I’m very well, Randall. How are you?”
“Ah, can’t complain,” he said, rubbing his belly. “Especially after eating three of your sister-in-law’s lemon poppyseed cupcakes.” He turned to me then. “Don’t worry, I left the vegan ones for you.”
“I’m sure that was so hard for you.”
He chuckled. “Very tempting, I assure you.”
Uncle Randall chatted with my mom for a bit as I thought over all she’d said, wondering if her assessment of me having some sort of rebirth could be true. I did feel different, and I did feel more alive than I had since December. Still, it felt like there was this part of me that would always lay dormant, like there was a section of my heart and soul that I would never be able to bring back to life, no matter how I tried.
When Mom ended the call, Uncle Randall hung his hands on his hips, watching me fold up my yoga mat. “So, how have your lessons been going?”
“They’ve been going really well, actually,” I said as I stood, tucking my mat away behind the post of my bed. “I think we’ve really hit a stride.”
“It seems that way. You know, you’re smiling a lot more than you were when you first got here.”
His words manifested a smile in real time. “I’ve noticed that, too.”
“Have you noticed that Reese has also been smiling more?” my uncle asked. “I know you didn’t know much about him when you came here, but, he’s been through a lot. It’s nice to see him not as… moody.” He shook his head. “I swear, that man has a knack for bringing down everyone’s cheer when he walks into the teachers’ lounge. It’s like his gray cloud rains on anyone he gets around.”
I laughed, but couldn’t ignore the sting in my chest as I imagined a literal cloud pouring down constant icy rain on Reese. It might as well have been the truth, for what he’d been through. I didn’t know the details about his family, but I knew they were gone. Add in the fact that he still had to see the woman he loved, the woman who didn’t love him in return, on a daily basis?
I didn’t know how he was still standing.
Realization trickled down my spine like water from a leaky faucet.
Maybe part of my discomfort with my newfound happiness came from it feeling so one-sided.
Reese had helped bring me to life, had given me a new purpose, new goals to chase and new recognition when I achieved them. He’d transformed the piano for me, helping me tap into feelings I’d been trying to subdue, to run away from. And in the process, I’d found joy again in the one thing that had always mattered most to me.
My relationship with the piano was on the mend. And it was all thanks to him.
I wanted to do something for him, too.
A flash of us sitting together at his piano sparked in my mind again, and heat rose on my cheeks as I remembered the way the air had grown thicker, the way I’d felt when I realized how close his lips were, how easy it would have been to touch them with my own.
I almost rolled my eyes, knowing it was a childish thing to desire. It was all too cliché that the first male I fantasized about in months and months of my libido being deceased was my ridiculously attractive and irreversibly broken piano teacher. We were spending all our time together, putting ourselves in vulnerable situations, opening up to each other so we could take that vulnerability and transfer it to our music.
I didn’t actually want to kiss him, I convinced myself. But, maybe I did want to repay him somehow, to help him find a new happiness the same way he’d helped me.
And as my uncle dragged me to the kitchen to indulge in my aunt’s famous baking, I realized I knew just the way to do it.
“You need a dog.”
Reese paused where he’d been pouring me a glass of water, the Brita pitcher still suspended mid-air and glass half full as he glanced at me from across his kitchen island. “What?”
“A dog. You know, the furry, four-legged things that wag their tails and lick your face? You need one.”
He blinked, watching me a moment more before he turned his gaze back to the task at hand, filling my glass to the top. He filled his own next, stashing the pitcher back in the fridge before he acknowledged what I’d said.
“I don’t need a dog.”
“I firmly disagree.”
He chuckled at that. “I haven’t had a pet my entire life, Sarah.”
“What?” I blanched, not bothering to hide the dramatic drop of my jaw. “You never had a pet? Ever?”
Reese shook his head.
“A dog? Cat? Rabbit? Hamster? Fish?”
He just kept shaking his head as I listed off all the possible pets he could have had in his lifetime.
“That’s absurd,” I finally said, still shocked. Then, I held my head higher, straightening my spine where I sat. “And all the more reason for you to get a dog.”