“Divine geometry,” he said.
Yeah, as if I was supposed to know what that meant.
He noticed my raised eyebrows and said, “There are patterns in everything. When you look closely, you realize it’s the same shapes, repeated over and over, everywhere. When you look even closer, it’s the Pythagorean theorem. Everything in nature, right down to the quantum mechanics of the universe, exists within the bounds of that theorem.”
“Like octave equivalency?”
“Yup.” He ran his hand down my thigh and back up, over my back. “Actually, I figured you’d have some ink. Lyrics or notes, or something special to you.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems so . . . permanent. What happens when I find a new favorite song? I can’t imagine loving something enough right now to want it in thirty years.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his gaze heavy and indecipherable. “Never?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Once, I thought about getting an eyebrow ring. Ellie has two and they look so good on her, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to be left with a scar if I ever took it out.”
“That kind of scar would be nearly invisible,” he said. “Aren’t most scars worth the stories associated with them?”
“Yeah,” I conceded. “I don’t know. Even if it was tiny, I’d always see it, and I’d regret it.”
“Okay, Sunshine,” he murmured. Yawning, he tucked me into his side and kissed my shoulder. “We’ll talk about the rest tomorrow.”
We fell asleep quickly, and though I slept soundly, early rays of sunlight had me stirring from Sam’s iron grip on my waist.
Looking around, the first thing I noticed was the shortage of walls. What I’d thought of as a bedroom last night was actually wide, open space with a row of brick arches running down the center. They created the illusion of doorways, and in certain spots, Sam filled the arches with shelves or furniture.
I grabbed his discarded tank and pulled it on before fetching some sweats from my overnight bag. The house was quiet and I tiptoed from Sam’s room into a cavernous kitchen, stopping to count the number of seats at the long table. Eighteen. When I looked closer, I realized it was a single slab of wood, irregular on the sides and finished to a lustrous shine to bring out the rings.
There was an area outfitted with a sectional and television, and a garage packed with tools and wood. Sam always talked about using real wood for his projects, but it was still startling to see actual branches, stumps, and segments of tree trunks lining the brick walls.
Another turn brought me to a spacious bank of open-air showers, just like the ones from my high school locker rooms. Morning sun streamed in from tall, ocean-facing windows along the ceiling line. I stepped to the center of the room and tested my pitch. The acoustics were perfect, and I dashed back to Sam’s room to grab my instrument.
I’d basically packed my entire life when Sam told me to bring what I’d need for the weekend, and that always included Jezebel.
He was still asleep, and after drawing the blankets around his shoulders, I returned to the showers. I’d been wrestling with several pieces, and stood there, waving my bow back and forth until I could decide which to work on this morning.
Instead of playing any of them, I decided to experiment with ‘Moondance,’ an old Van Morrison tune I’d been lusting after for months. While I firmly believed that damn near anything could be adapted for strings, some Van Morrison songs weren’t the easiest matches.
I hadn’t brought any sheet music with me, and since I hadn’t intended to attack this song, I was going from memory alone. I ran through it in my head several times, getting tempo and movement down, and then lifted my instrument.
The first couple of attempts were objectively terrible, but somewhere around the eleventh take, it started sounding less like an electrocuted cat and more like the jazzy sway I wanted. I kept going, scratching away for another thirteen iterations until I felt the notes coming together, bending, softening, melting.
Nodding in moderate satisfaction, I opened my eyes and saw Sam seated against the faded yellow tiles, his arms folded over his bent knees.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you had to hear that,” I said. I straightened my arms and shook out my wrists. “It was such crap. I actually thought to myself at one point, this sounds like an electrocuted cat.I’m sorry. I should have gone outside.”
He tilted his head with that adorable, squinty expression he pulled whenever he was particularly amused and perplexed. Like most things he did, I wanted to throw myself on him and savor every morsel.
“You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding, because that was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
I lifted a shoulder and offered a noncommittal sound while I set my instrument back in the case. “It needs work.”
Sam popped to his feet and approached me, his head shaking. “I’m my own toughest critic, too, but believe me when I say that was remarkable. I could watch you for hours.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up. I really should have gone outside,” I said.
“It’s December. It’s twenty fucking degrees,” he said. “Don’t even joke about doing that.”
“I used do it all the time,” I said. “My family could not stand listening to me practice, so I cleared out a section of the garage. I probably lost some brain cells to huffing gas fumes, and the acoustics were shameful, but it worked for me.”
