The smile back wasn’t the same as the one I saw this morning. Nor the one from the bookstore.
It was the safe one.
He dropped his touch and waved to my parents, then left.
I bowed my head. The prickle in my eyes didn’t make sense. It was just a bit of fun. All it should have been. All I’d done in the past, if I was honest. Julian had been one of the rare long term men I’d ever had in my life.
Most were a moment.
Just like what Tate and I were.
It was better that way.
I sat down at the kitchen island and pulled out the cards Laverne had supplied. My phone buzzed. I usually left it on silent, but I had a buzz notification when I got something from my manager.
Stevie:
It would just be an hour special. Then you’re off the hook. If you give them this, they’ll leave you alone longer.
An hour special wasn’t just an hour.
It was an entire production. It was rehearsals, it was choreography, it was invasion.
Bringing it to my hometown would bring so many people into the one place I could usually hide away in.
I flipped the phone over on the counter.
“What’s going on, honey?”
“It’s nothing.” I gave her a bright smile, then grabbed one of the jute baskets that held a bunch of blankets, dumped them on the couch, and loaded all the white boxes into it. “I’m just going to put these in the music room.”
I left the room before my mother could ask any more questions.
I closed the door on my music room. I’d soundproofed it a long time ago. I left the basket beside my piano and sat down on the bench.
When I was unsettled, the piano always helped.
I rested my fingers on the keys, the familiar worn marks eased the ache in my chest. It wasn’t a sweet or sad song inside of me. It was a storm. The crash of chords of an old song that I rarely played flowed into something different. Sometimes it was that way for me. A song flowed out of me and never returned.
The melody discordant and twisted as the emotions trapped in my chest.
When it was over, my chest was heaving and my fingers ached with it.
I dropped my head back and let out the breath that had been tamped down by the responsibilities always sitting on me like a boulder. To the record label. To the fans who would probably love a new Christmas special.
To the machine that never quite wanted to let me go, no matter how much rest I needed.
I closed the top of the keys and left behind the gifts. Instead of going in to talk to my parents, I ran upstairs to my room. Still too restless, I took a shower and tried to de-stress with a long skincare routine, but my mind kept spinning.
To the concert.
To the orchard.
To Tate.
I slammed the face roller into the pile of tools in my makeup bag.
I crawled into bed even though it was barely dinnertime. The shorter days made it easy to sink into the dark. To escape into sleep where there were no dreams.
