Nocturne(59)

I shook my head as I finally raised a fist and slammed it into the door. I was almost ready to walk away. I felt like a stereotype—the young student with a crush on a professor—and it made me confused and ashamed and angry.

After all that knocking, I was startled when he finally stopped playing and I heard the bolts slide back. Gregory opened the door and stood there for a second, his eyes glassy, his breathing heavy. He wore black jeans and a plain white t-shirt, and the faintest sheen of sweat made his forehead and neck reflect the sunlight.

For the barest fraction of a second he stared right through me, as though he didn’t recognize me. Then his eyes darted to the woman across the street, then back to me. “You’re late for your lesson,” he said, loud enough for the woman to hear, then turned his back on me.

I wanted to hit him.

Instead, I followed him inside the house, closing the door behind me. All of my instincts were screaming at me to turn around and leave. He’d been hideously rude to me, and there was no reason for it. None at all. When his eyes darted to that woman and he’d spoken to me in the tone he had, he’d made it very clear. He was ashamed of me.

He turned back toward me when he neared his cello. It was a beautiful instrument, not the workmanlike one he normally carried at the conservatory. He turned toward me, one of his hands moved over the curve of his cello the way a man touches a woman.

I wanted to be touched that way.

Wordless, I unsnapped the case for my flute and began assembling it, trying to still my confused thoughts.

“Shall we begin where we left off Friday?” he asked, softly.

I wanted to snort. Where did we leave off Friday? With his hand cupping my chin. With my entire body trembling in anticipation. With my emotions in tatters.

It was better to take the question literally. “Yes.”

And so we played. And no matter the chaos in my head, the music was anything but muddled or unclear. For the next ninety minutes we played without pause, and with barely a word spoken between us. It was intense, emotional, and brutal. As the melody passed back and forth between us, sometimes alternating, sometimes in unison, our eyes repeatedly met, and each time I felt raw, as if he were stroking the bow across my soul instead of the strings of his cello.

For that hour and a half, I felt as connected to Gregory as I’d felt when we were making love. In truth, I felt as connected to him as I’d ever felt with anyone. What we created between the two of us was so much bigger than what either of us did alone. I literally felt the walls of my ego and isolation fall away, leaving me open, raw ... and vulnerable. I felt ecstatic. Beautiful. In love.

Finally, he signaled enough. And as I placed my flute on its stand, he did the same with his cello and abruptly walked out of the room. I flinched, my emotions suddenly going into a tailspin.

Not a word? Not a sign that he’d felt anything?

Tentatively, I followed him into the kitchen. He stood facing the center island, his arms trembling from the continuous exertion of our practice, his back to me.

I swallowed. I was afraid. I was afraid of what he might say right then. What was going through his mind? And so, slowly, I reached out and put my hand on his back, my fingers splayed out, feeling the tension in his shoulder and back muscles.

“I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What?” I said. Stupidly.

“Savannah ... you’re a student. Can you imagine what it would do … my career... the conservatory ...”

I stared at him. Unable to move. Unable to think. He invited me over here to say that? “I see. Well …” I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. “I’ll, uh, just be on my way then. I’ll see you later this week, right? Wednesday? Let’s go back to the practice rooms, though, if you don’t mind.”

I hurried over to where my flute stood on its stand.

I disassembled it and put it away without drying out the inside first. I would do it later. Right now, I needed to get the hell out of Gregory Fitzgerald’s house without bursting into tears.

“Savannah, where are you going? We haven’t finished.” I couldn’t decipher if his tone had changed to one of arrogance again, or if it had remained the same this whole time and I’d become deaf to it. Either way, it infuriated me.

“We are finished. I’ll see you Wednesday.” Brushing past him and racing to the door and down the stairs, I mumbled, “I can’t believe I was so stupid …”

I grinned just slightly, imagining how up in arms he must feel to have a pissed off woman fleeing his apartment, on the brink of causing a scene. Gregory doesn’t do scenes. The grin didn’t last long though, as the weight of what I was actually feeling pressed down on my shoulders.

“Savannah, wait.” It wasn’t a yell, but his tone was commanding, sending chills down my spine.

I didn’t stop. He didn’t get to give me commands. I couldn’t turn around and face him. Not like this. He’d just made it very clear that what we were doing was an inconvenience. Some sort of a fling. Nothing that matched what I felt for him. He’d told me in Lenox that he was in love with me. And I believed him. Shit. I believed him, when all he wanted was to fool around with me behind closed doors. How did I fall into the pathetic professor/student stereotype? God.

Shit.

After a few minutes, and rounding my second corner, his footsteps were no longer following me. Looking over my shoulder I found nothing but an empty sidewalk. I’d taken the back way around his block and was now at the end of Mt. Vernon St., taking a left onto West Cedar, the school in my sights.