One True Loves(28)

You think you know who you are, you think you have your identity down pat, signed and sealed in a box that you call “me,” and then you realize you’re attracted to musicians—that “dexterous” is sexy to you—and you have to rethink everything you know about yourself.

He stopped playing. “All right, now you go.”

“Me?” I said. “Do that? I don’t even know where to start.”

He pressed down on a white key in front of me. I, dutifully, put my pointer finger on it.

“Try this finger,” he said as he pulled my middle finger onto the key.

I nodded.

“Now, hit that key like this.”

He hit another key in a rhythm, six times.

So I did the same with my key.

“And now hit this one,” he said as he pointed to another.

I followed each of his instructions, just as he told me. I was supposed to be looking at the keys, but half the time I was looking at him. He caught me once or twice, and I turned my head back to my fingers and the keys beneath them.

I played slowly and unmelodically. My fingers hesitated and then moved too quickly, sort of panicked and squirrelly. But I could recognize a faint pattern in my own movements.

His body brushed up against mine as we sat on that bench. He kept touching my hands with his.

“All right,” he said. “Think you can do that fast now? I’ll play the other part as you do it.”

“Sure,” I said. “Yeah, I got it.”

I rested my finger on the first key. He put his hand, gently, on the one just below it. “On three,” he said. “One . . . two . . . three.”

I hit mine.

He hit his.

And there it was.

Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh . . .

“Chopsticks.”

We only played for a few seconds before I had hit all the notes I knew. Feeling shy, I pulled my hands back into my lap. A part of me hoped he’d continue to play. But he didn’t. He stopped his hand in place and rested it gently on the keys. He looked at me.

“So now that you know ‘Chopsticks,’?” he said, “let’s go get a beer.”

I laughed. “You’re smoother than you think,” I said.

“My dad says it’s best to be persistent,” he said, joking. He looked confident. Hopeful.

I thought about it for a minute.

I thought about how nice it would be to order a gimlet and sit and talk to someone who was both a handsome man and an old friend.

But as Sam looked at me, waiting for my response, I suddenly felt a very sharp sense of fear. True fear.

This wouldn’t be dinner with an old friend.

This would be a date.

I couldn’t just throw myself into something like that.

I looked at Sam’s smile. It was fading as I made him wait for a response.

“It’s a rain check,” I said. “Is that OK?”

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “Totally. Of course.”

“I really want to,” I said, reassuring.

“No, I get it.”

“I just have a thing.”

“No worries.”

“I’ll give you my number,” I said, wanting him to know that I did want to see him again, that I was interested. “And maybe we can go out next weekend.”

Sam smiled and handed me his phone.

I called myself, so his number showed up on my phone, too. I handed his phone back.

“I should get going,” I said. “But we’ll talk soon?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sounds good.”

“It was really nice to see you,” I said.

“You, too, Emma. Seriously.”

He reached out his hand and I grabbed it. We shook but then let our hands hang there for a moment. The effect was somewhere between shaking and holding.

As I drove back to my apartment that afternoon, with a keyboard in the back and Sam’s number in my phone, I found myself wondering whether I could be with someone like Sam, whether Sam could mean something to me.

I had always had a tender spot for him, always cared for him. And maybe it was time that I went out on a date with a nice guy. A nice guy who had always been good to me, who I might have even said yes to back in high school if things had been different.

Good things don’t wait until you’re ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you’re almost there.

And I figured when that happens, you can let them pass by like a bus not meant for you. Or you can get ready.

So I got ready.





I thought about it all night. I tossed and turned. And then, the next morning, on my way into the store, I texted Sam.

Drinks on Friday around 7:30? Somewhere in Cambridge? You pick.

It was before nine. I didn’t expect him to answer.

But my phone dinged right away.

McKeon’s on Avery Street?

And there it was.

I had a date.

With Sam Kemper.

I had never been so excited and so sick to my stomach at the same time.

What was I going to do if I started to have feelings for someone?

Maybe it wouldn’t be Sam. Maybe it would be years in the future. But realizing you want love in your life means you have to be willing to let love in.