“Such a Georgia boy,” I mock.
“Joke’s on you.” Liam moves past me into the apartment. “These are from South Carolina.”
With curious eyes, he surveys the living space Zara and I share. We’re renting in Old North Knoxville and have a surprising amount of space for what we pay. The living room and kitchen are floored with sun-stained hardwood. Most of what we have in here is thrifted—a blue velvet couch, a fairy-forest watercolor hung ina tarnishing frame, a few ceramic vases we keep filled with farmers market flowers. At the far end of the room, there’s a giant French door with a small crack in the window that leads out to a stone patio.
Zara’s room is more easily visible from where Liam is standing; he glances into it, noting the expansive bookshelves and character prints taped to the wall, then swerves in the other direction toward my room.
Floral bedding, a lavender carpet, plain cream walls. I replaced all the harsh light bulbs that came with the place to give everything a warm glow. A small stack of books is on my bedside table, a pile of lined journals on the floor beside that. Liam observes all this, moving over to my record collection and player. There’s a Taylor Swift special edition on the turntable.
His eyes drift to my bed. The guitar is in the middle of it. Then he glances at my tiny desk where my keyboard sits, protruding over both edges.
“Which one are you teaching me?” he asks.
“Which one do you want to learn?”
“Both?”
“Which one do you want to learntoday?” I clarify.
He thinks about it and says, “Guitar.”
I was worried he’d say that.
Hoping he’d say that.
“Okay!” I say too loudly. I grab the guitar off the bed and walk back to the living room, where it’s brighter and safer, and place it on the couch. Liam follows me, depositing his bag of peaches on the kitchen counter.
“Is Evan a musician?” Liam asks. His eyes find me across the kitchen island.
“No.” I rub the heel of my palm against my hip bone. “He was training to be a sommelier. And, um, I broke up with him last week.”
Liam blinks, says, “Oh, that’s dangerous.”
“What? Why?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Are you okay? Did he do something to hurt you?”
“No,” I promise him. “Well, nothingobvious.” Liam’s eyes narrow. “He was pretty patronizing,” I blurt. “Like, when I told him about you, that we were teaching each other music and baseball, he said he was glad I was finding ways to keep busy since he, Zara, and Maisy don’t have enough time for me. I know it doesn’t soundthatbad, but—”
“Sounds bad to me.”
“Evan’s made comments like that before, thinly veiled criticisms about me not pursuing a higher education. Which is especially hypocritical since we have the same job. Not for long—he’s almost sommelier certified and is moving to Gatlinburg to work at a resort—but anyway. He would always walk that line with me, never saying anything untrue or outright offensive, so even when I was almost certain he was doing something wrong, I could never quite prove it.”
There was also the age difference, which I had begun to suspect he employed to get me to treat him deferentially. The friends he never brought me around. And the fact that I don’t think I ever liked him all that much.
I wish I could say I still would’ve ended things if Evan wasn’t moving, or if Liam hadn’t come into my life as abetterrepresentation of how a man should act, but I’m not actually positive I would’ve had the courage.
I’m used to being left behind, not doing the leaving. I might’ve stayed out of fear of being alone.
Liam walks toward me, and soon I’m wrapped in a bear hug, my heels dangling off the ground. His smell is a combination of eucalyptus and peaches. “Well then,” he says into my hair. “I’m proud of you.”
It’s over in the next breath, Liam releasing me from his arms, taking a step back so I can breathe again. “Thank you,” I say dizzily.
“Thank you for telling me.”
That’s when I realize I was open with him about a hard thing. The same way he’d been open about his dad, his future with baseball. And it feels nice that I didn’t have to think about it first. Instead of telling Liam to even the score, I did it out of trust.
“My mom was a musician, though,” I say, on a roll now. “She played fiddle for this bluegrass band that got small gigs across Tennessee and North Carolina. She left our family before I’d even turned one, so it’s not something I picked up from her directly, but I found one of her broken instruments in our basement one day and begged my dad to fix it for me. He did, and then my oldest sister, Maren, got me enrolled in violin lessons.”
