RUSH (City Lights, #3)(33)

“Very funny.”

Melanie held up her water glass. “In any case, to your new job, that has provided us a lavish feast. In theory. If a waiter ever decides to take our order.”

I held up my glass, silently toasting the fact we were no longer talking about Noah’s hands and my boobs in the same sentence.

“I do wish Noah would go outside, though,” I said after a moment. “I guess it’s too nerve-wracking for him. Hell, his own house must be a mystery.”

“How’s that possible? I though you said he’d been living there for months.”

“He has, but he hardly leaves his room. He wants nothing to do with learning to be live as a blind man.” I toyed with my water glass. “I mean, I tried to open some drapes and he bit my head off.”

Melanie shrugged, more interested in our non-existent waiter now. “Sounds like a lost cause.”

I frowned, turning over her comment over and over. Noah wore his pain like a spiky set of armor. Mine was buried down deep where I could pretend it didn’t exist and so get through the day, but in the end, it was the same thing, wasn’t it?

I thought of Melanie’s silly Good Will Hunting speech. I was lucky to have a friend who wasn’t willing to give up on me. Aside from Lucien who was too busy, Noah didn’t have that. He didn’t have anyone.

But me.





Chapter Twelve


Noah

Since the accident, time had a way of oozing past me without me being able to distinguish one day from the next. But as April ended and May came around, I had a greater grasp of the passage of days after a month of schedule-keeping that never varied.

Some woman named Lola came to clean up after me once a week. That was one marker. She came on Tuesdays, and she was my idea. For Charlotte, though I never told her that, and it was Charlotte who mostly ordered the black sameness of hours and minutes of my life with a routine that never wavered. How or why she persevered when I gave her no reason to stay boggled my mind. Other assistants had had the same salary and never seemed to do their jobs with the same kind of thoughtful diligence as she did.

We rarely spoke. I couldn’t trust myself. The rage and pain that coiled in my heart was like a viper, ready to strike. I was afraid it would snap and hurt her in a way that couldn’t be forgiven, that I would poison her inherent sweetness with my venom. Or maybe I had already done that when I cursed her out over the stupid drapes.

She was different after that. More aloof. I felt the shame and regret of that incident for a week, like a stinging sunburn that only faded when I realized it had kept her away from me. Kept her safe from my vile tongue and temper. She said nothing to me now beyond what was required.

And slowly, over that month, it became a horrible way to live. I don’t know what made her different, but I wanted to talk to her. There was something about her that I felt drawn to—a pain that shadowed even her most cheerful words. She was living with something heavy inside, and it was weighing her down somehow. I wanted to know what.

Or maybe I just wanted a normal conversation, but any step I took toward a ‘normal’ life felt like defeat. It meant accepting my fate, the blindness, the loss of everything I’d had and everything I had yet to do.

Fuck. That.

I kept my mouth shut and the rage locked behind clenched teeth, and just listened.

Afternoons between three and five p.m. were my favorite time of day. I would listen for the sound that her practice time had started, and then creep down to the top of the stairs on the second floor. Normally she was diligent about closing the door to her room, so as not to disturb me. I could still hear her play—my hearing was borderline bionic—but sometimes she’d forget to shut the door. Those days felt like little gifts, as if she were singing to me, filling the house with the voice of her incredible talent.

I found myself on the verge of telling her that it was okay to leave the door open if she wanted, but the words stuck in my throat. Then she’d know I was listening. Maybe she’d become self-conscious and not play the same way. Or maybe she’d feel creeped out by the poor blind * lurking on the stairs. I couldn’t take that, so I just listened; even the closed-door days were better than nothing.

She played one piece more than others. I didn’t know its name; classical music was never my thing, but she played it over and over, and I came to realize she was searching for something too. Some slice of perfection, I guessed. She was hard on herself. Demanding. She didn’t know how good she was and that, I think, was part of her frustration. But holy hell, she was talented.

And to think, she was just walking around with that gift, and you’d never know it. At three o’clock she’d play, and I’d have to remind myself that this was the same person I’d just sent to fetch me lunch. It didn’t make any sense. I had already hired someone to clean for her. I wondered if I should get that same person to do the laundry. Was laundry bad for the hands? I didn’t think so, but it bothered me anyway that Charlotte was forced—for whatever reason—to work for me. Charlotte Conroy belonged in a huge music hall somewhere, bringing the house down.

And so that’s how it went for an entire month, each day growing more painful for the both of us. It couldn’t have been easy for her to live in fear of pissing me off. I added another layer of disgust and repulsion to my strata of self-loathing. It was already miles deep, layer upon layer, with a molten core of rage at the center that erupted now and then.