Correction: my ex, Blake, had made it homey.
I met Blake in New York City shortly after I graduated from Juilliard, and she’d been there in one of the most difficult times of my life. But, we’d always been casual, never more than friends who occasionally hooked up. When she showed up on my doorstep a few months after I’d left New York and come to Mount Lebanon, I’d been shocked.
When she told me she loved me and wanted to be with me, I’d nearly shit myself.
It was the worst possible timing, especially since I was still tied up with a married woman at the time. And of course, Blake found out, and she asked me to choose between her and Charlie.
We both knew the answer even before she asked it.
This was my curse — hurting anyone who ever dared to love me. Even when I didn’t mean to, I still did. I was better off alone, and I knew that now.
Still, Blake had made my little house into a home in her short time staying with me, and I couldn’t walk through the modestly decorated living room or see the paintings hanging on the walls without thinking of her.
I thumbed over to my favorite playlist on my phone, turning on my Bluetooth speaker near the sink before digging in the bag on the counter for my dinner: beer and cigarettes.
At thirty-seven years old, I should have known how to take better care of myself. Maybe part of it was that I just didn’t give a fuck. I wanted a buzz, and a nicotine high, and to think about anything other than Charlie.
Popping the first beer open, I stepped outside onto my small back patio and lit up a cigarette. The smoke filtered up into the purple sky, the sun slowly making its descent in the west as I propped my feet up and kicked back. I listened to the bugs chirping to life, the birds singing their good evenings, the cars passing by on the street out front. They were the quiet sounds of suburbia, and they let my thoughts drift. For the first time in as long as I could remember, Charlie wasn’t the first one they drifted to.
Sarah Henderson.
I let out a long exhale of smoke as her face settled in my mind. She was just a girl, and yet she wore her scars on her sleeve like a woman who’d been through as much hell in her life as I had. Before I’d even known who she was, she’d captured my eye from across the restaurant. And it wasn’t necessarily because she was beautiful — although, she very much was — or because she stood out in the crowd she sat among.
It was because she was haunted.
I knew the shapes of the demons in her eyes, the weight on her shoulders, though she held them back and straight. I saw the way my music moved her — the same way it moved me — and I knew from that alone that she’d been cursed by her creativity, by her inability to see the world like a normal, well-functioning human would.
It was the same curse I bared.
There were people who lived, people who watched movies or listened to music or read books. But then, there were the people who created them, who wrote them, who brought them to life. Those were the poor, unfortunate suckers who had so much going on in their minds that they had to find a way to release it, to breathe life into it, to touch it and feel that it’s real.
Sarah was one of those people, and she was asking me to help her.
The first drink of beer was cold and refreshing, and I sucked down nearly half the can. The more I sat there and thought about my new student, the more I wanted to play.
I tapped out my cigarette in the ashtray, swinging back inside to trade my empty beer for a new one before crossing the house to my piano room. It was a room meant to be a study, or perhaps a dining room, but it held only a casual seating area and the most important material object in my life.
My baby grand.
A photo of my parents and my baby sister stared back at me as I sat, flipping the wood panel up and revealing the ivory keys. Their smiles made my heart warm as much as they made it ache. Their lives were stolen too soon, my sister too young, my parents too in love with too much still left to do.
But the man who shot them didn’t see them the way I did.
I shook those thoughts away, my hands moving over the keys on autopilot as I thought of Sarah, of what working with her would be like.
It was the most money I’d ever been offered to teach, and I knew it spoke both of how Mr. Henderson felt about me and how important this was to him and his family. I didn’t know her story yet, but from what he’d told me, she’d been through something outside of her injury that had her family worried sick. I wondered if that was why she’d shaved her head, if it was her acting out more than a fashion choice.
Somehow, it didn’t strike me that way.
She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who would pull a stunt just to get attention. She seemed pure, genuine, and like she had a plan for everything. After all, it was her who had moved halfway across the country to study with me, because she felt like I could help her.
I didn’t know what I was walking into with her, but for some reason, I was excited for it. Sarah would also be the oldest student I’d had since leaving New York City, and I knew she’d be a completely different challenge than the young kids I worked with daily at Westchester.
She was a walking contrast, it seemed to me, and I closed my eyes as my hands moved over the piano keys, remembering her. She wore oversized, baggy clothes that covered her neck to ankle, hiding whatever curves or lean muscles were beneath. It was unlike any other girl dressed at her age — at least, any who I’d seen. And she sported a shaved head, as if she wanted to disappear, and yet she achieved the exact opposite of what she desired. Her skin, rich and dark, like a night sky peppered with freckles instead of stars, was impossible not to notice. Her eyes were bright golden hues, wide in nature and tilted at the edges, like those of a panther. Her lips were plump and round, bowed at the top, and she carried her tall figure in a way that screamed she was afraid of nothing.
The way she dressed, the hairstyle she chose — they told me she wanted to be hidden. She didn’t want to be seen.
But by her very nature, she was impossible to ignore.
Everything about her seemed to be a warning — dark clothes, eyes that searched the room like she was looking for a reason to bolt, arms that crossed over her chest like a shield.
I closed my eyes, moving with the music my hands created. I’d never played anything like it before, and it didn’t sound great, but it didn’t sound particularly awful, either. The notes clashed together in an unfamiliar way, my hands stumbling over themselves as they tried to find a melody, a rhythm. It was always my favorite part of birthing a new song, of bringing music to life that had never existed before. Nothing was perfect the first time it came out, but it would grow, and change, and one day, stand on its own.
I didn’t know what to make of the music I made that evening, a half-empty beer can the only audience in the room. The song was pained. It was real. It was raw… and new. Fresh, like nothing I’d played before.
And all the while I played it, I thought of my new student.
That should have been my first warning.
Reese
It’d been a shit day.
There just were no other words to describe how I felt when I stepped out of my shower Tuesday evening, thirty minutes before my first lesson with my new student.
I was no stranger to anxiety, but I’d had the worst kind last night — the kind that keeps you up and then invades your dreams when you do finally manage to fall asleep. I’d had nightmares of Charlie all night long, and then I’d had to see her bouncing around school all day just as happy as can be.