I know I need to talk to him today so I make my way to theboys’ house next to let him know of our new relationship status. Charlie and Jake are in the living room watching football when I walk in. They don’t even turn around to see who just came into the house. I could be anyone—a cop, a burglar, a murderer—but they don’t even spare me a glance. Thank god they aren’t in my journal; they would be goners. I walk upstairs and stop short at the bottom of the next set of stairs that leads to Asher’s room in the attic. The door is ajar and through the crack comes the faint echo of keys on a piano. I put my ear closer to the door, drawn in by the sound. The melody is light and slow, perfect for a Sunday morning, and I just can’t picture anything so pure and good coming from Asher’s hands. Opening the door farther, I sit at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve heard Asher play the piano only one other time last year, when Dani and I were up here in Sam’s room hanging out with him and Charlie. Sam said they always knew when Asher had a girl over because they’d hear him play on the keyboard he had in his room.
“And that actually works?” I laughed.
“Every time,” Charlie said. “We know because not long after the music stops you’ll start hearing the headboard smacking against the wall.” The boys grinned at each other in the way boys do. Dani and I only crinkled our noses in disgust.
I close my eyes to listen as each strike of the keys seems to bounce down the stairs and land in my lap. The melody quickens and then slows again. I almost don’t realize when it’s over. I open my eyes and there is silence. I quickly but quietly rise from the stairs and shut the door behind me before I have to listen to what Charlie said would come next.
I join the boys in the living room and it isn’t until halftime that Charlie looks over and realizes I’m there. Eventually Sam and Wesboth come home and join us, but Asher is still upstairs. I ask them all questions about the football game because I never bothered to pay attention to it in high school and they love to mansplain it, so I indulge them.
After a handful of questions Wesley speaks up. “Weren’t you a cheerleader?” he teases.
And when I finally ask a question that has him stumped, I say, “Weren’t you a football player?” He smirks and lobs a pillow at me. I toss one back, and it hits him in the face.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that.” Wes playfully pins me down. Sam and Charlie don’t even glance our way.
A door shutting upstairs has Wes sitting back, until a petite girl with jet-black hair traipses down the stairs and out the door, without so much as a hello or goodbye to everyone in the living room. It takes everything in me to stand up in front of the guys, in front of Wes, and go upstairs to Asher’s room right after another girl just left it. I knock twice from downstairs, and I hear him say, “Come up.”
He’s shirtless, digging around in his dresser across from his bed, when I get to the top of the stairs and I clear my throat to let him know I’m there. He looks over his shoulder, genuine shock on his face to see me in his bedroom. He puts a sweatshirt on and I try to block out the image from my brain of what he just got done doing with the small, raven-haired girl. Does he prefer girls with dark hair? Why am I even wondering?
“What’s up?” he asks.
I walk around his room, marveling at how large it is compared to the other boys’ rooms. It’s carpeted and even has a private bathroom. I see the piano on the far side of the bedroom, below theone window. It isn’t a little keyboard like I had imagined in my head, but more like an actual piano. A dark rosewood digital one, and all I want now is to witness him playing it.
“Just came to regroup, remember?”
“Right,” he says. “You should’ve texted me. I would’ve come to you.”
I sit down at the piano bench. “Why? So I wouldn’t have to wait for a girl to leave before I can talk to you?”
Asher runs a hand through his hair. “Something like that.”
I turn the piano on and mess around on the keys. Don bought Sofie a piano when she started taking lessons, so I’m not unfamiliar with it. I had taught myself some basic melodies but nothing as complex as what I had heard him play.
“Aren’t you going to play something? I hear that’s a thing you do when you have girls up here.”
He huffs a laugh and walks over to the keyboard. “Girls I’m trying to sleep with, Sawyer. Not ones that I’m trying to catch a murderer with. Where’d you hear that anyway?”
“Your roommates.” I hate that I feel disappointed that he won’t play for me.
He crosses his arms and leans against the wall. “What else did they tell you?”
“That it works every time.” I look up at him. “Though I find that hard to believe.”
When I finish playing through everything I know, which isn’t much, nor is it impressive, he says, “Who taught you those? A five-year-old?”
“An eleven-year-old actually,” I say back, thinking of how sometimes Sofie would try to teach me the chords. I stare back upat him from the seat until he gives a resigned sigh and tells me to move over. I scoot to the edge of the seat so that he has more room and bite the inside of my cheeks to stop from smiling.
Asher places his hands over the keys and pauses, likely thinking of something to play. When his fingers begin to move, the sound is slow and melancholy. Not like what I heard a few hours ago, but the opposite. This one feels like rain, and loneliness, and it makes me ache for something, though I don’t know what. When the melody picks up and his fingers move across the keyboard with ease, it sends chills all over my body. I’m thankful I’m wearing a sweater so that he can’t see it. I watch him in awe; I have never seen someone play a piano like this before, and it’s extraordinary, beautiful, and somehow so sad. And when he’s done he looks over at me but I don’t have any words, only the resolute understanding of why any girl would jump into his bed after witnessing that. He starts to give me that knowing smirk and I’m certain he can hear my thoughts. I take a breath and stand, needing to make space between us.
“See?” I say. “It doesn’t work every time.”
“Okay, Sloane,” he says, still grinning. He turns himself around on the bench, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking up at me. “Let’s regroup, then.”
Still feeling a little flustered, I smooth out my top. “I mainly just came to tell you that Annica and Dani think we’re full-on dating now.”
“And why would they think that?”
“Probably because I told them that.” He arches a brow at me and I continue on. “They were grilling me about where I was yesterday and I couldn’t really tell them I was breaking into Miles Holland’s house looking for my journal, so.”
