I didn’t stand a chance.
I had no time to waste on dreams and pain. I wasn’t twenty or even thirty, with time on my hands. I was forty, and I couldn’t let myself forget that. Framing it, letting myself go for another night, was somehow okay, but tomorrow, this would have to end.
It would be better for him, too. Even if Angelo honestly thought he wanted me, I wouldn’t do that tohim. ExactlybecauseI loved him. He had his entire thirties to enjoy ahead of him, and I wasn’t exactly rock ’n’ roll.
Reality had a cruel sense of humor. Just when I had given up on love and settled on finding someone I could have a future with, I found love with someone I couldn’t have a future with.
28
Angelo
“Hold it like this. Put your fingers here, not too tight. Yes, all three, just like that.”
June sat on the edge of the bed in her T-shirt, the blue of my Strat contrasting beautifully with the white fabric and matching perfectly with her eyes whenever she lifted her face to look at me.
After a round on the kitchen counter and another in her bed, I wanted to see my two loves together and offered to teach her how to hold a guitar and two easy chords.
I bent over her, helped her place her fingers on the fretboard, then handed her the purple pick. “With that, you strum all six strings with this hand.”
“Oh. It played.” She smiled brightly at me, surprised at the first sound she’d made that sounded like something rather than just a run of her fingers on random strings.
“It did.” I couldn’t help but laugh.
She repeated the chord. “How do you change from this position to another so fast?” she asked, holding her fingers tight against the relevant frets.
“It takes practice.”
I sat next to her and moved her fingers to form the C chord. “Now just five strings down, not all six.”
She used the pick and played the strings gently, as if she were performing a dangerous surgery. “It’s beautiful. But how do I go back to the previous one? I already forgot where each finger goes.”
“Here.” I helped her back into the G chord position.
“I think I’m too old to learn.” She looked at me, gliding the pick along the strings.
“Some things, you’re never too old to learn. Playing the guitar is one of them.”
She bit her lower lip, looked at her fingers on the fretboard, and played again. She then put the guitar gently on the bed and pivoted toward me. “Angelo, there’s something we need to talk about.”
“It’s one a.m., June. Are you hungry?” I cut in and got up. Now it was me avoiding conversations because I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say.
She remained sitting as I began walking toward the kitchen. Then, as if she, too, decided that not talking about things was the best course of action at one a.m., she got up and joined me.
Neither one of us could sleep. The interview tomorrow, everything between us, the things we’d said, the things we didn’t. It was like we had opened a set of brackets and decided that everything would be inside them until after the interview.
Despite what I’d said, I knew that June wasn’t mine yet, even though it felt like she was, even though she let me hold her and fuck her like she was.
“Iamhungry, but I’m cooking.”
“Will I want to eat it?” I chuckled.
“You will! It’s my green beans sauteed in soy sauce—a kind you never tried—with a touch of sesame oil, garlic, chia, and sesame seeds. I can throw in tofu, too.”
“I’m willing to try tofu.” I sat at the breakfast bar and watched her quite expertly cut garlic and throw everything into a large wok, sauteing it. The sizzling noise spared us from talking.
Except for holding her hand against my chest and hoping she’d take it as a hint earlier, I hadn’t said out loud the words I knew would scare her even more. I’d whispered them internally, but I didn’t let them spill out loud.
I had tried the head-on attitude, but now I had to tread carefully. I was still learning to navigate the uncharted waters of June.
