Nocturne(58)

In the span of the blink of an eye, our lips were pressed together as if by a force outside either one of us. Her hands clenched the sides of my torso as a high-pitched sigh found its way from her throat into my mouth. Needing to feel her hair between my fingers, I slid one of my hands around the back of her neck and through her long, wild, impossibly soft hair. I was lost to her in that moment, and I never wanted to find my way out of that hole.





Savannah


The first thing I noticed the morning after Gregory kissed me in the practice room was that my lips were swollen, and my muscles tense and aroused. But it wasn’t the physical impact ... it was the emotional. Everything had changed. Again. We’d broken all the rules … then set new ones, and then broke those. That afternoon we kissed ... then practiced... then kissed more. The feel of his lips against mine was unexpectedly intense, fraught with tension, and thinking about it the next morning made me moan a little.

I’d gotten back to my room that night after practice, and Marcia immediately saw something was going on. So, in slow, hesitant sentences, every moment thinking I was going to be judged by her, I told Marcia the story.

Instead of the condemnation I expected, I got a hug. And then a near whispered, urgent request for details. We sat on her bed, talking and laughing, and for the first time since all of this started with Gregory, I didn’t feel like I needed to hide. After all, no matter how close we were, Nathan would never understand or support my love for Gregory. He would never approve. Honestly, I didn’t know if I even approved. Of myself. The more we kissed, however, and the more we said we loved each other, the less I cared.

The next day I arrived to practice early. He was already there, and the door was slightly open, so I heard him playing as I walked down the length of the practice hall, my heart thumping with each step. I stopped outside the room to watch and listen. He was playing Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, a haunting and melodic composition.

His back was to the door. I stood watching, my eyes taking in the muscles of his shoulders and the slight sway of his head as he played. For a man who kept his emotions under such tight constraints, the passion in his music was heart stopping. I stood, watching, arrested, until he finished. As I watched him play, I realized I was incredibly unsure of myself. Unsure of what our strange make out session in the practice room meant.

Nothing about our situation had changed. I was still a student. He was still a professor. Moreover, he was still an arrogant, obsessed man who claimed that personal relationships had no place in his life. No amount of kissing could cure that.

My insecurity washed away in an instant when he turned around, his blue eyes meeting mine. I felt his gaze all the way down my spine, and his eyes barely left me throughout the practice session.

When we were finished, he set his cello in its stand and approached me. He lifted his left hand, tenderly cupping my chin.

“Savannah ...”

I swallowed.

“We can’t do this,” I whispered. “Not here.”

“Monday. Practice at my house. Six o’clock.”

I nodded. Monday. His thumb slowly ran along my jaw, and I closed my eyes, leaning my head back slightly, my breath sucking in slowly.

The moment ended too quickly. His eyes darted to the narrow window in the practice room door. We’d taken a terrible risk the previous day. The kind of risk that could end his teaching career and destroy my reputation.

I couldn’t help but ask myself if the risk ... the thrill of that risk ... had enhanced the moment.

Then he was gone, leaving me confused and lonely and unsure.

The following Monday, I tentatively walked up Pinckney Street in Beacon Hill, my flute case in my right hand. It was a beautiful day, the sky clear, everything crisp. The beginning breath of fall breathed the slightest chill into the air. It calmed my nerves, reminding me that he had invited me here. He’d said, “I love you.”

Of course, in the back of my head, his full sentence continued to play out in my mind, because the words he’d said weren’t simply, “I love you.” They were I am in love with you, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m sorry for that.

Who says that?

Gregory f*cking Fitzgerald says that. Leaving me wondering what he was looking for, what did he want? Was he just playing with me? Was he looking for some excitement? Was he planning to have his fun then toss me aside, did he even know what the hell he was doing? Did he even know what love was? Because you don’t tag any stipulations onto the end of I love you. You just don’t.

My thoughts and emotions were completely tied up in knots by the time I knocked on the door of his townhouse on Beacon Hill. Through the door, I could faintly hear his cello ... he was practicing the Kol Nidrei again and didn’t stop. I knocked again a second time, but he obviously didn’t hear me, because he didn’t stop playing. I shifted on my feet, my emotions wavering between irritation that he wasn’t answering the door to ... what?

I couldn’t put my finger on it, until I saw a woman walking a dog the size of a pony down the street toward me. My eyes darted away from her, and I knocked again, harder. I swallowed as I avoided the woman’s gaze, trying to mute the confusion of my thoughts and feelings. Part of me was incredibly excited to be here, because I knew that while we’d practice, we’d likely be doing far more than that. But part of me was uncomfortable that I hadn’t demanded clarity from him, that I hadn’t insisted we explore exactly what those words meant when he said, I am in love with you, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m sorry for that. Because I kept asking myself what my friends would think, what my parents would think.