Player(26)

He shook it once like he was taunting me. “Toro.”

I giggled, stumbling a little as I brought my hands to the top of my head, pointer fingers to the stars. “Olé!” I cheered as I charged. But instead of running through his jacket, I found myself in his arms.

I didn’t know how it happened. The jacket was there, and then it was gone. But instead of being laid out on the sidewalk like I should have been, Sam’s arms were hooked around my waist, our bodies winding together and twisting from the force of his catch. And then I looked up, and time stretched out in a long, still moment. His eyes on my mouth. Mine on his. His nose millimeters from mine and his mouth so close, if I turned my head just right, our lips would brush. The warmth of him was everywhere.

I wasn’t cold anymore. I was on fire.

So I said the first thing that entered my empty mind.

“Are you going to kiss me, or am I gonna have to lie to my diary?”

The moment broke with our laughter, filled the air around us, stopped my chugging heart. He pressed his lips to my forehead.

I sighed. “I guess that’ll do.”

He hooked his jacket over my shoulders, taking a moment to look over my face, watching his fingers as he tucked a loose curl behind my ear. “Come on. Let’s get you home. You did good tonight, Val.”

“Thanks to your expert advice.”

But he smiled. “Pretty soon, you’ll figure out you didn’t need me at all.”

And I smiled back and pretended like it was possible that statement held an iota of truth.





11





Practical Application





Sam

The melody sang in the air around me, the same melody that had been following me around for days. My eyes were closed, my fingers moving on their own across the ivory keys. Each time I started the phrase over again, I would find another layer of depth, another expression of the music in my mind. It was the truth, uncovered like bone rising from sand.

I paused, snagging my pencil from behind my ear to jot down a few more notes. In my mind, it wasn’t a piano, but a full orchestra, the rise and fall of the music filled to the edges with a host of sound and harmony.

In my heart, it was my dream.

In my life, it was my secret.

It had started in college, an errant thought that had led to my favorite pastime. That pastime had turned into an obsession, hijacking my brain, thieving my spare time. Some people knew I made music—I always had my music notebook on me, and I’d written plenty for the band—but no one knew I was working on symphonies or scoring nonexistent screenplays of novels I’d read.

I set down my pencil and stretched, straightening my spine, arms overhead, glancing around the room. It existed only for music—my black baby grand in the center of the room, instruments dotting the space in front of the wall-to-wall bookshelves. Tall windows with wide molding cut the room in thirds with wedges of light stretched across Persian rugs that were stacked and layered on top of each other, extending to every corner. Mahogany and brass, wool and paper. The room was texture and sound.

I got up and walked over to my guitar, lifting it to my torso, thrumming a few chords as I made my way to the small, low-backed couch. The melody found its way to my fingers again, as if it wanted to be communicated in every instrument, in every way.

My ownership of the music was defensive and fierce. It was mine and mine alone, meant to be hidden, protected. Because no one would love it like I would. No one else could understand it the way I did.

I’d never even considered sharing it.

Sometimes, I wondered why I didn’t feel compelled to put myself out there. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have connections; between Juilliard and successfully working in pit orchestras for six years, I knew almost everyone. Our community wasn’t big, and we’d all worked together at some point or another. It wasn’t even that I was afraid of failure.

No, it was much more complicated than that.

I didn’t like to walk into something I wasn’t absolutely sure I would succeed at. What if I put my heart and soul behind something and couldn’t perform? If I put my hopes and dreams on the line and it fell apart? If I couldn’t meet the expectations? My responsibilities?

What was more terrifying than the failure itself was the damage that failure would do.

Expectations. I was familiar enough with them, duly doled out by my father on the regular. At least this way, I was failing him on my own terms than by my own shortcomings.

If I were being honest with myself, it was one of the reasons I didn’t get serious with anyone. I couldn’t be all things to a woman. I knew my capacity, and I gave what I could. Of course, I was rarely truly honest with myself, which suited me just fine.

Either way, I’d never found a woman who inspired that kind of devotion, and for that, I was thankful.

Things were easier this way. And my life was the life, a life full of art and money and women. My life was full of pleasure, and I couldn’t have wanted for anything more. I was happy and independent, untethered and unbound.

Val rose in my thoughts like a siren. Sweet Val with her doe eyes and bright smile. The realness of her struck a chord in my chest as honestly as my hands on the guitar.

I smiled to myself, thumbing the strings, feeling the vibration in the bones of my hands.

I’d expected Val to falter when it came to picking up a guy at Smalls, but the truth was, it’d been me who ended up agitated. Not only had the guy been a jerk, but the sight of his hand on her waist had had me imagining how many bones on his body I could break. His nose, easy. Jaw, probably. Cheekbone—with a solid head-butt, all things were possible. His hand had so many bones, I could rack up a pinball score with a well-placed boot, especially if he was still on the ground from the head-butt.