by Calia Read
A burst of laughter came from inside, snapping us out of our haze. We both backed away from each other like we’d been burned by fire. With his body steps away from me, the wind brushed against my skin. I felt chilled and wanted him up against me, shielding me.
We didn’t say anything else after that. Mathias stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. The smoke wafted up in the air, slowly, before it disappeared altogether.
Now you see it. Now you don’t.
It was just like Mathias and his emotions. One minute they were in his eyes, the next they were gone, making me question if I had dreamed up the way he said Katinka in an intimate purr. Or the way he leaned in, staring at my lips as if he wanted to taste them.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as he walked back into the house.
“Yeah,” I said into the air. “See you.”
M A T H I A S
After Katja and her grandparents left, I found myself in the living room, staring at the picture of Laurena.
Calling her mom seemed like an insult to all other mothers. Throughout my life, she had came and gone. I could count on one hand the amount of good memories I had with her and even those are a stretch.
Laurena didn’t want to be a mother or a wife. If she did, it was unbeknownst to me. My brothers’ memories of our parents may be vague, but mine were not.
I’d been old enough to hear the awful things they screamed at each other. Old enough to know that just because you’re married doesn’t mean you’re in love.
I remembered the day she left. As I stood in the doorway, she took her time, packing up her suitcases like she was going on a vacation, not leaving us for good. From a bystander’s point of view, she was beautiful. Posed. Contained. Simply put: she looked like she had it all.
But behind closed doors she was a black widow. Sucking the life out of us and smiling at us while she did it.
If someone ever crossed her, she wouldn’t forget it. She fought dirty, finding people’s insecurities and vulnerabilities and playing on them.
I asked her where she was going. She turned my way and told me she was going out.
She talked to me like I was a small kid that didn’t know any better. My hands were balled into fists, shaking so bad at my sides.
I told her I hated her.
“Why do you hate me?” she asked.
I lifted my chin. I was the oldest and I had to stand up for my brothers because no one else was going to. “You’re leaving us.” I didn’t accuse her. My words were matter of fact.
“I’m doing what’s best for me.”
What was best was for her to stay and try to be a mother for my brothers. For me. A wife for dad.
I didn’t say a word and she sighed, as if I was wasting her time. Maybe I was. Maybe there was already a car outside, waiting to take her away.
“I tried, Mathias,” she murmured. “But you know your father. You know how terrible he is to me.”
Words were her poison. She wielded them so expertly and with such finesse, the pain was never felt until later. Until you least expected it. She told us awful things about Dad. Things that I didn’t believe were true.
I accused her of not trying.
“Genügend!” she hissed. That calm expression she always wore slid from her face. She stood in front of me. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. You need to learn that this world is ugly, Mathias. But it’s uglier for you.” She patted my cheek and smiled, as if she was about to impart wise words. “Your dad’s an alcoholic, and I can’t commit myself to anything. Chances are, you’ll become one of us. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll be both.”
She stood and walked back over to her suitcase. “The odds are stacked against you.”
I stood there rigid; trying to look so tall and proud, when inside I was really dying. I would never, never be like her, I vowed. Never.
Yet, I had to give it to Laurena. She was right on one account. The world was, is, and would always be ugly.
I stared at my right hand. From my pointer finger and curving down to my inner wrist was a white puckered scar. If I ever needed to think about the ugly, I just had to look at myself.
“What are you doing in here?”
I turned away from the picture and looked over at Antonia. Unlike Laurena, I called Antonia by her name because she preferred it that way. She hated titles. Said it made her feel old. She, too, was looking at the picture. I gestured to it.
“Why do you still have this up?”
“She’s my daughter, Mathias.” With a frown she stepped into the room and stood next to me. “Believe it or not, she was once a good person.”
I didn’t say anything. Antonia crossed her arms. Her eyes remained glued to the photo. “You and Thayer look so much like her.”
To me that was the highest level of an insult out there. I bore a resemblance to the one person I hated.
“Don’t say that,” I muttered.
“You forget that your mother looks just like me, mein Junge.”
She was right about that. Laurena was a spitting image of Antonia, with razor sharp cheekbones and a straight nose. But Laurena didn’t have the warmth in her eyes like Antonia. And if she did it was because she wanted something.
“She always wanted something bigger than what we could offer. When she met your dad, I thought she was in love.” She sighed heavily. “But now I think she saw him as a way out of here. When she changed her name to Laurena,” she spat out the name as if it was poison, “I didn’t speak to her for a month. I didn’t understand what my Liesel was trying to chase after.”
Chances were none of us would.
We stood there silently. Antonia sucked back into a past I would never see, especially with me trying to shove down my past as far as it would go.
“It looked like you had a nice conversation with Katja outside.” The change of subject threw me off balance. My shoulders stiffened. “It was just a conversation.”
“What did you talk about?”
With anyone else, I would ignore their question. But Antonia had always been this direct. “Nothing important.”
“It didn’t look like nothing.”
I didn’t know why, but I wanted to protect our conversation. Tonight, the roles had been dropped and I was able to talk to Katja how I wanted to every day. Yet, on the flip side, I found myself standing too close and chances were, if we’d been outside any longer I would’ve done something I’d regret. I felt out of control around her. Almost powerless.
I felt uneasy at the thought.
“Why?” I asked.
“No reason.”
“Are you worried about her? Are you going to tell me to keep my distance?”
“Of course not. I think you forget that I’ve watched that child grow up. She’s stronger than she appears.”
She didn’t have to tell me that. One look at her and it was easy to see that Katja lived in a white-coated world where everything was wonderful and perfect. Her smiles were freely given, showing that the harsh realities of life hadn’t touched her.
Every day that I was around her, I struggled not to look at her. And if I did, my mind would show me all the ways I could touch her. Fuck her. Keep her.
That made me harsher than I intended. My tone was acerbic. Words cutting. But it was better that way.
In the end, she would thank me.
“She can be very quiet. The times where I’ve been around her, she barely says a few words.”
I snorted. “No, she’s not.”
The Katja I knew was a firework—dangerous at her worst and beautiful at her best.
“To most people she is,” Antonia said softly. “You must bring out another side of her.”
I could say the same for her too. One second she drove me crazy, and the next I wanted her pinned against the wall with her legs wrapped around me and bring out the wilder side of her. The one that I saw the first time I met her.
“I think she does the same to you.”
Antonia shrugged, her eyes shinning brightly. “Maybe. But I could’ve sworn I saw you smiling at her once or twice tonight.”
“It was just a smile. People do it every day.”
“For you, someone who always keeps people at a distance, it wasn’t just a smile.”
K A T J A
I had my doubts at first. Starting over? It couldn’t be possible for Mathias and me.
Yet the weeks started to go by, and Mathias was noticeably … less gruff. He was still unrelenting with my sessions, always finding my errors and not afraid to point them out.
But I could take them better than before; all I could think was that he thought I could be extraordinary.
Extraordinary.
It was becoming my new favorite word.
The shift in his attitude did help my playing. As my fingers glided across those eighty-eight keys, I tried my hardest to pull from every emotion inside me. I chased after them, tried to trap them, but they were too fast. So I kept playing, kept chasing, and by the end of each song my entire body thrummed. Exhausted and spent, but so proud.
Behind the piano, I watched the unbearably hot summer temperature fade away. I watched the leaves lose their luster. I watched them fall to the ground.
My T-shirts were traded for cardigans. It was early October, and I couldn’t help but think that I would blink and my time with Mathias would be up.
I tried to push that fact away, though. If I didn’t think about it, maybe, just maybe it wouldn’t come true.
Garmisch was filled with tourists, and as the days got colder, more and more people would show up until this small town didn’t resemble itself. I loved and loathed this time.
“Why are you stopping? Keep going.”
Mathias’ words jerked me back to reality.
Blatantly ignoring him, I slouched forward and watched him. “Sometimes I think you’re a robot,” I said abruptly.
“What?”
“Don’t you ever just enjoy life?”
“I do,” he admitted slowly. “When I’m not on the clock.”
I rolled my eyes and continued to play. Even though we had reached an understanding, we still sparred. More than I cared to admit. Interactions between the two of us were an intense game of fencing—he thrust his blade forward. I struck back. He lunged. I moved to the side.
It was crazy, but I loved these interactions. Mathias kept me on my toes. And I couldn’t prove it, but I swore Mathias felt the same way.
“I’ve seen how you are ‘off the clock’. It doesn’t seem like you enjoy life then, either.”
Exhaling loudly, he finally looked at me. A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Katja … just play.”
I got a sick thrill over the way he said my name. When he said it I could pretend, just for a minute, that I was something more to him than just a student.
He hadn’t called me Katinka since the dinner.
He could never let those lines blur. No, he was determined that we would never, ever cross them again.
Someone knocked on the door. I turned, expecting Oma or Opa—they were the only two people who ever came up to visit.
Instead, I saw Lukas Kaiser—one of my closest friends.
He told me he was coming back to Garmisch soon. Just last week I’d talked to him. He’d said then that he was coming home soon. I just didn’t know that soon equaled now.
He smiled and I finally gathered my senses. Before I could think twice, I jumped out of my seat, ran to the door and hugged him tightly.
“Good to see you too,” he said against my shoulder.
I pulled away and smiled at him. He was the polar opposite of Mathias. Black hair and coffee brown eyes. Lukas never had a five o’clock shadow. His shoulders weren’t quite as large. He never scowled at me. He didn’t have an aura of danger around him.
None of these attributes used to bother me. But they did now; my heart beat to the words: Not Mathias.
Not Mathias.
Not Mathias.
“When did you get back?” I asked anxiously.
“Last night.”
I poked him in the ribs. “Thanks for telling me!”
He feigned pain and rubbed the area. “It was too late. I figured I’d wait until today.”
“I’m so glad to see you,” I said.
He nudged me back playfully. “I’m glad to see you too.”
Behind us someone cleared their throat. My body froze in place. I could feel the weight of Mathias’ gaze burning a hole straight through my shirt. I had forgotten he was here. Slowly, I turned around.
Mathias was furious.
His arms were crossed over his chest, making him look more opposing than normal. His jaw was clenched so tightly I’m surprised bones didn’t break. In a rapid pace, his eyes volleyed between Lukas and me. He looked as though he was trying to solve a math equation. He looked defensive, almost combative.
I expected maybe some annoyance because Lukas had interrupted us but not open hostility. I smiled and pretended to be completely unfazed. I gestured toward Mathias and awkwardly cleared my throat.
“Lukas, meet my piano instructor, Mr. Sloan.”
Neither one said a word. The tension became so thick that I wanted nothing more than to leave this room. I grabbed Lukas’ hand and dragged him across the room. When we were in front of Mathias, he took the same stance as Mathias. To me they looked like they were getting ready to face up. Mathias ignored Lukas completely and just stared at where my hand rested on Lukas’ arm. My first instinct was to snatch my hand away, but I didn’t. I saw the anger slowly festering in his eyes.
Could he be jealous?
Call me sick, but I felt a thrill rush through me at the thought.
I kept my hand there. A rebellious gesture. I wanted to show Mathias that it worked both ways. He couldn’t draw the line between us, refuse to cross it, and then hate what he saw on the opposite side.
“Mr. Sloan,” I gritted out. Mathias’ eyes flashed to mine. “This is my friend, Lukas Kaiser.”
More silence. At this point, I was ready to give up when Lukas spoke. “Good to meet you.”
Mathias dipped his head in acknowledgement.
We all stood there in a semi-circle, saying nothing. I felt like I was a little kid in a sandbox sandwiched between two boys that refused to share their toy.
“Lukas is one of my closest friends,” I explained.
Mathias finally, finally pulled his eyes away from Lukas. He gave me a humorless smile. I flinched. Why did he look so ... betrayed?
“Is he really?” he said in Bavarian.
I nodded, unsure. I went to answer, but Lukas spoke up. “I am. I just got back home from Strasbourg, visiting my father’s side of the family.”
Nothing. Not a word.
“It’s in France,” I said dumbly.
Mathias’ gaze was unwavering. “I know where it is.”
“How long have you been Katja’s teacher?”
Mathias’ shot an annoyed glance at Lukas. “Since May.”
I glanced at Lukas. “We’re focused on my concert coming up in December. I’m playing-”
“Does he always interrupt your sessions?” Mathias interjected.
Lukas tensed up beside me. I was visibly taken aback.
“Well, no,” I replied. “But he just got back and-”
“He can visit you later,” Mathias cut in. Abruptly he gave us his back. “Right now you need to be playing, not talking.” He pointed to my Steinway.
Challenging Mathias would be useless. I gave Lukas a helpless look and shrugged. Lukas wanted to say something. I could see it in his eyes that he wanted to challenge Mathias. I shook my head, not wanting another uncomfortable exchange, and pointed toward the door.
Lukas reluctantly moved, and when the door was opening and he was blocking the doorway, I leaned in. “I’ll see you later, okay?” I whispered.
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I felt like a teenager girl sneaking in a boyfriend or one last minute conversation after my bedtime.
Lukas leaned in and whispered into my ear: “Who is this guy?”
“My new piano instructor.”
“Ja, ja. I got that,” Lukas replied in rapid Bavarian. “But where the fuck did he come from?”
“Can I tell you later?” I whispered back.
Lukas gave me a hard, probing look before he nodded. “Count on it.”
He left the room, and I quietly shut the door behind him. I turned, my back sagging against the heavy oak. My eyes narrowed on Mathias’ back.
He was standing in front of the window.
“What was that?”
He turned around. “What was what?” His voice was deceptively low.
“You were so rude to Lukas.”
“No, I wasn’t. He shouldn’t have come over here. You’re busy.”
“He just got home. He wanted to say hi.”
“Like I said, he can come and say hi when you’re not supposed to be practicing.”
I wanted to call him out. I wanted to tell him I knew he was a liar and I knew that he was jealous.
Oh, I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
It felt like all that hard work we put into being friends had been blown to smithereens.
We were back at square one.
Mathias gave me a challenging look. I swore he knew what I was thinking and he was just dying for me to say the words out loud. Sometimes I thought he wanted me to cross those boundaries he’d erected between us. Sometimes I thought he wanted me as much as I wanted him. Sometimes I thought he had the same forbidden lust I struggled with.
He cleared his throat. “Can we get back to work now?”
I nodded and sat down on my piano bench.
We didn’t talk for the rest of the day.
M A T H I A S
I overreacted.
I knew it.
I knew it the minute I opened my mouth. My words came out more harshly than I intended. But this guy took me off guard.
During all the hours spent with Katja, it never occurred to me that there might be someone here in Germany for her. A fuck buddy, romance interest, fiancé ... none of it. And now that the idea was presented to me in the form of Lukas ... I was angry. And fuck if I knew that I had no reason to be.
