My ex-wife told me once that I was incapable of falling inlove. That I, like my music, was full of pretty lies and broken promises. That I didn't love her the way she needed, the way she thought she'd get from the man who wrote those songs. That's why she had to go find it elsewhere.
It was the last time we had a conversation that wasn’t through the lawyers.
She was wrong about plenty, but I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if she might have been right about me. Whether I was just good at writing love songs but incapable of letting myself feel it for real.
The truth is, my ex was right about me in that moment. The words in those songs had a lot more passion than I ever felt in reality. I told myself that’s just how it is. That art magnifies those feelings, that real life just can’t compare.
But meeting Sadie, turns out those songs I wrote were just waiting for her so they’d make sense.
When we finish the book, I give Jonah a hug and a kiss on the head, and Sadie does too. He wraps his little arms around her neck and holds on a beat longer than usual, like he’s getting more attached with every day that goes by.
This is dangerous territory.
Then I close the door and the two of us stand in the hallway.
We haven't had the chance to talk about what happened at the piano. Not about me touching her. Not about me shutting down when she asked me to play her one of my songs.
She asked me to be vulnerable and I went somewhere cold and guarded inside, the way I've been doing for years, since the music dried up, since I realized I was living a lie.
And I guess we're not talking about it now either.
Because instead of being the adult I ought to be and having the conversation I know we need to have, I just say a low “good night” and head to the main bedroom.
Tonight has not been my finest hour.
I touched her because I couldn't stop myself and then I pulled back because letting her feel good was one thing, but kissing her would have meant something different. Kissing her would have meant I was in this. And I can't be in it, because I don’t trust myself to be able to climb out of the wreckage when she leaves.
I go through the motions of getting ready for bed. Brush my teeth, splash water on my face, stare at myself in the mirror for probably too long. The guy looking back at me doesn't have any answers. He just looks tired and stressed and half-tortured.
I brace my hands on the edge of the sink and drop my head.
Then I pace.
Back and forth across the hardwood until I'm sure I'm going to wear a groove into it. I can't stop turning the evening over in my head. The piano. Her hands on the keys. The chords, the sounds she made. The way she looked up at me after, all flushed and undone, like she'd never felt anything like that before.
She probably hadn't.
I have to talk to her. I'm the older one here. I need to take charge of this situation, even though it feels like it's spiraling rapidly outside of my control. Even though it feels like my emotions are already on a runaway train off a cliff, picking up speed, and she cut the brakes somewhere around the first week she walked into my house.
I head to her bedroom and rap softly at the door. “Sadie?”
“Come in.”
When I swing open the door, I find her already in bed. She's curled up beneath the fluffy white duvet, reading a book, a small lamp throwing warm gold light across her side of the room.
She's in a simple camisole: thin fabric, no bra, the outline ofher nipples just visible. Her copper hair is loose around her shoulders.
Fuck.How am I going to concentrate with her looking like that? How am I supposed to say what I need to say when she looks like my every dream come true? When all I want to do is sink to my knees at the side of her bed and beg her not to go to New York?
I'm a grown fucking man. I can do this.
I sit down on the bed.
“Hey.”
Not the most spectacular opening line. That's about all I'm capable of at this point.
Her eyes flick up from her book briefly. “Hey yourself.”
