Best Kept Secrets: The Complete Series
Page 54
“How are you?” I asked first.
She looked around without moving her neck, as if she was afraid I’d yell at her for taking in the space I lived in.
“I’m well,” she answered, and she glanced toward the living room where her uncle had just set up camp. She stood on the opposite side of the island, hands folded over the granite, everything about her screaming discomfort. “How are you?”
I smiled. “I’m alright.”
She took a sip of the water I’d slid across the counter to her, and I couldn’t help but take a moment to digest her. She was quiet, but in a way only a fire can be. Because though she seemed to only crackle softly, she had the power to burn, to bring light and warmth to a room, or to bring an entire building to the ground.
“There’s no need to be nervous,” I said, taking a seat on one of the barstools.
Sarah’s eyes widened then, her little mouth popping open in a soft O. “I’m not nervous,” she insisted, smoothing her hands down her dress before folding them on the counter again.
I lifted a brow.
She let out a low breath, shaking her head with her eyes falling to her hands. “Okay, I’m a little nervous. I admit, I haven’t worked with a teacher since…” She swallowed. “It’s just been a while, and with the injury… and then of course, knowing who you are…”
“Knowing who I am?” I questioned.
Her eyes doubled in size. “Uh… well, yes. I mean… of course I’ve seen videos of you play… online and everything.”
“Videos?”
“On YouTube…” Sarah lifted a brow at my confusion. “You really don’t know?”
I shrugged. Of course, I’d heard of the videos being posted. My students loved to tease me about being their “famous” music teacher. But I was thirty-seven years old and about as far removed from social media as a person could be. I didn’t tweet, or have a Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever the hell else there was.
“I don’t put them up,” I finally offered. “It’s just the people who tape me at the restaurant, mostly.”
“You have like… hundreds of thousands of views on those videos, Reese,” Sarah said. Then, she cleared her throat. “Mr. Walker.”
“No, it’s okay, call me Reese,” I assured her. “And videos aside, there’s no need to be nervous. This,” I said, motioning between us. “Us working together? It’s about you. I know every student is different, and I’m hoping to take this opportunity of our first lesson tonight to get to know a little about you.”
Sarah nodded, brows narrowing in a confident focus.
“But,” I said, taking a sip of water before continuing. “I want to be clear about one very important thing. I demand excellence from my students, Miss Henderson. Working with me will likely not be your favorite thing in the world. I won’t take it easy on you, and I won’t dance around something just to save your feelings. Piano isn’t easy, it isn’t for everyone, and I won’t be too shy to tell you if I think you fall into that category.”
Her eyes softened at that, like she was afraid she actually would.
I could tell just by the way she carried herself that it wasn’t possible.
I’d always felt like I had an eye for phonies, for people who wanted to play piano for all the wrong reasons. There was a difference between someone wanting to be the center of attention or have a party trick to pull out when someone has a house piano, and someone who genuinely loved music, who had to play it to breathe, to exist.
Sarah was the latter.
“I want to hear more about your injury first,” I said. “Then, I want to know what your goals are — short and long term. Finally, I’ll have you play a piece for me, and then we can discuss how I can help.”
“Okay,” Sarah said, letting out a long breath. She finally took a seat at the barstool across from me, and she splayed her long, thin fingers out on the counter before tucking her hands in her lap. “I was in my last year at Bramlock. I was supposed to be graduating this month, actually,” she said. “But…”
“The injury,” I finished for her.
Her eyes clouded over then, and she sniffed, taking a quick sip of water. “Yeah. The injury.”
“Tell me more about that.”
She swallowed. “It was last summer when it first happened. I was taking summer classes, and there was a performance exam coming up. My professor…” She paused, taking a sip of water again before continuing. “He was riding me really hard. And I don’t blame him,” she said quickly, her eyes snapping up to mine before they fell to the counter again. “It wasn’t his fault I took it all so seriously and played nearly every hour of every day for that whole week.”
I could already feel where the story was going before she finished, and though I applauded her for not placing blame on her professor, something told me he did play a big part in it. Any experienced teacher would have seen the signs, the duress, long before the injury occurred.
But at a university, when there are hundreds of students to look after, it’s harder to do.
“I knew I needed to rest before the exam,” she continued. “So, I gave myself the weekend off before the performance on Monday. I knew my wrists had been hurting, my hands, but… I didn’t realize how badly I’d been pushing. And when I stopped playing…”
“Everything seized up.”
She nodded, eyes glossing over. “Like an old car engine.” She extended her hands out toward me. “My wrists swelled up like balloons, I couldn’t even hold a pen.”
Sarah let her hands fall to the counter again, staring at them like they were someone else’s, like they’d betrayed her the way an ex-boyfriend might have. She started picking at her nails for a second before she pulled them back into her lap. Her eyes had changed, had darkened with her story. And we both knew there were no words I could say to take back what happened to her.
I let her sit in silence for a moment, refilling her glass and waiting.
“So,” she finally said. “I went to the doctor, obviously. Essentially, I had completely shredded the primary muscles I needed to play and then fucked up my secondary muscles, too.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
I smirked. “It’s okay. Trust me, my vocabulary is at least thirty-five percent curse words.”
“Fifty percent,” Randall called from the other room.
We all laughed, and Sarah seemed a bit relieved at that, folding her hand back in her lap.
“Anyway,” she said. “I couldn’t play all fall semester. I was falling behind, and I knew I was about to be faced with more school time if I didn’t figure it out. But there were so many steps before I could even play again.” She counted off on her fingers. “Nerve testing, deep tissue therapy, all these trips to the doctor… it was terrifying. My professor said he could help me, he could keep me on my trajectory to get where I wanted to be if I worked with him…”
Her eyes grew even darker at that, her face stone. I didn’t like the way she spoke about her piano professor, because I knew without her having to say it that she didn’t trust him and he didn’t favor her. Not that a student needed to be favored to be successful, but if all you ever had was someone riding your ass, it was hard to ever feel like anything but a burden and a failure.
And that’s why she’d pushed herself to injury.
“But, we just didn’t mesh well. And in the end, I left Bramlock for winter break and I never went back.” She sat up straighter. “I’ve been working on my own,” she explained. “And I’m finally playing again, but… I’m rusty. And I’m far from where I need to be at this point… to get to where I want to be.”
“And where is that?”
She let out a long breath, and with the most confidence she’d had all evening, with her eyes locked on mine and her back straight, she said the last thing I expected.
“Carnegie Hall.”
It took every ounce of muscle control I had not to let my eyebrows shoot up into my hairline or my mouth flop open on the kitchen island
. Instead, I took a drink of water, letting her words sink in.
“So, you want to be a concert pianist?”
Sarah nodded. “I do. But, I want Carnegie. I want a solo. I want…” She smiled for the first time all evening, hope shooting out of her eyes like visible stars. “I want to be on the Ronald O. Perelman Stage. I want to be one of the greats. I want to be at the top of the entire city’s list when they think of who they want playing their piano for an upcoming concert.”
Right then and there, I wanted to reach over and pet her hand like she was a young girl who didn’t understand what she was asking. But I knew better, because though Sarah was young, I knew just from hearing all she’d endured that she wasn’t stupid. She knew what she was asking. She knew the odds.
And still, she was here.
I stood without another word, draining the last of the water in my glass and wishing it was beer as I considered everything she’d said. It was far from what I expected to walk into, and far from what I felt I could achieve as a piano teacher. Still, I held my hand out toward the room that housed my baby grand piano, quieting my pessimistic thoughts as I looked down at the hopeful girl seated at my kitchen island.
“I think it’s time I heard you play, Miss Henderson.”
***
Sarah
He doesn’t think I can do it.
I knew it before I even sat down at his baby grand piano, feeling the keys under my fingers as I warmed up with his eyes on me. He’d listened to every word I’d said in that kitchen, and he hadn’t said anything that should have made me feel like he didn’t have faith in me.
He didn’t have to.
It was all in the way he watched me, in the way he didn’t smile, didn’t nod or assure me in any way that what I wanted was achievable.
But he wasn’t the first one who didn’t believe in me.
And he wouldn’t be the first one I proved wrong.
A candle burned in the corner of the room with a warm vanilla scent as I got familiar with the piano, my wrists and fingers warming up with each note. My stomach churned a little as I played, just like it had when I sat down at a piano ever since that last night at Bramlock. I used to feel the cool keys under my skin and get a tingle of joy, one that flowed from my neck to my toes. I used to smile, and instantly feel in my zone, in my element.
Now, I thought of what the bottom of the piano looked like from the floor, what the weight of an unwanted man between my legs felt like. I thought of my injury, felt every stiff, sore muscle that surrounded my wrist bones like hot barbed wire cutting me over and over again.
I didn’t just have to work on technique with Reese. I had to learn to love the piano again, to not be afraid of it, to not associate it with that night.
Perhaps that would be my biggest challenge.
Reese stood in the corner, giving me space, but his eyes watched me like no eyes had ever watched me before. I opened my mouth, but the words I wanted to say stuck in my throat. I wanted to tell him that I knew I was rusty, that I knew I needed work. I wanted to tell him that I was one of the top students in my class at Bramlock, and that I had potential. I wanted to tell him that I could do this — with his help.
But instead, I decided to let my hands to the talking.
Once I was warm, I stopped playing and stretched my wrists out in front of me, rolling them a few times before wiggling my fingers. I closed my eyes, cracking my neck once on each side, and I let out a long, smooth breath.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t with Reese.
I was alone, in the house I grew up in with both parents. I was at the piano my mom bought for me on my tenth birthday, the one I’d lost entire afternoons with, the one that still sat in our little apartment in Atlanta. My father was there, too — standing in the corner instead of Reese — and he smiled at me with shining eyes, the same way he had when he was alive.
My heart beat grew steadier, my rib cage loosened its grip on my heart.
And then, I played.
I chose River Flows in You by Yiruma, or should I say, it chose me. I hadn’t planned a piece to play, but it was the first one that came to me, and I felt those beginning notes like a long walk home on a sunny day. It was a more modern song than what I typically played, but one that I felt so deeply every time I brought it to life. And with every new chord, with every second of the melody, I felt myself slip away, into that piano, into the music.
There was a sort of sad hope weaved throughout the song, with prominent rests that seemed to impress that hope into your soul, and it spread over me like the warmest blanket.
It was a short piece, but it showed my strengths, the arpeggios and rests so beautifully connected that I could display my emotion along with my talent. My nerves still fired to life with each stretch of my hands, the recovering muscles reminding me how fragile the human body really was. I used that painful reminder as fuel, letting it flow through me and into the song.
When I played the last notes, I held the keys down, eyes still closed. I didn’t want to open them yet, to see if Reese was emoting with me, to see if he believed me yet.
And I didn’t have to.
I felt the heat of his body take the space next to me on the bench, and I withdrew my hands from where they’d held the final notes, folding them in my lap before finally creaking my eyes open. He was close… too close. I stared at his thigh, just inches from mine, and I prayed he wouldn’t touch me.
Please don’t be like him. Please don’t be like him.
I stared at the black and ivory keys, and Reese stared at me.
“I see you,” he said, his voice low, almost so low I couldn’t be sure I’d heard him right.
I turned, eyes cast up at him as he furrowed his brows. He searched my gaze like I was a puzzle with all the right pieces shoved in all the wrong places, and I’d never felt more pegged down in my entire life.
For a moment, he just watched me, concern etched in his expression. When he finally spoke, his voice was louder, deeper, commanding all my attention.
“Even when you are the most talented pianist at your school, or perhaps in your area of the country, or in the entire country as a whole,” he said, pausing a moment. “And even when you know all the right people, in all the right places…” Reese rolled his lips together, a slight shake to his head. “Being invited to play at Carnegie Hall is still a pipe dream. And being a concert pianist in one of the largest, most artistically competitive cities in the world isn’t an easy job. It’s going to be incredibly difficult, every step of the way, and the truth is… you may never make it.”
I scowled, chest tightening again.
“Look, I’ve gone my entire life having people like you tell me what I can and can’t achieve, and I’m not subscribing to this channel anymore.” I sat up taller, eyes fixed on his. “I can do this. With your help, I can likely do it better, and faster, but make no mistake, whether I have you in my corner or not, I will play at Carnegie.” I swallowed. “And I will be a concert pianist in New York City.”
There was a twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips as he lifted one brow. “If you would have let me finish,” he said, searching my gaze. “I was going to say that though it may be difficult, I’m ready to put in the work if you are.”
“Oh.” I blinked, heat spreading over my cheeks and down my neck. “Well… in that case, yes. I’m ready to put in the work, Mr. Walker.”
He kept his eyes on mine for a long moment, almost as if he was looking for a sign of breakage. Then, he simply nodded, closing the lid on the piano keys and standing.
“Let’s outline this lesson plan, then,” he said, already making his way back to the kitchen before I could stand to join him.
He paused in the open doorway, glancing back at me with a curious look. His hair was pulled back in a low bun, a few strands framing his face, and I traced the hard edges of his jaw and nose as he stared back at me.
“For the record,” he finally said. “I am in your corner.”
***
“He’s just very… moody,” I said around a mouthful of carrot the next evening, already dipping my next one in hummus. “Like, he stares at me a lot without saying anything. And he smiles, but it’s not like a real smile. It’s subdued.”
Mom chuckled, her soft voice soothing me through the phone. “Well, maybe he’s just a quiet man. Or maybe he’s been through hell in his life. I’m sure you’ll get to know him more as you practice together, and he’ll open up.”
I chomped on another carrot. “Maybe,” I mumbled. “But, it’s kind of intimidating.”
“Nothing intimidates my girl.”
“Say that to Captain Moody Face.” I swallowed the bite, waving what was left of my carrot around as I spoke. “I swear, it doesn’t make sense how he doesn’t have the thickest wrinkles in the middle of his forehead. He’s always scowling, especially when he plays.”
Mom laughed again. “What did he say when you played?”
I ate the last of my carrot, setting my plate on my bedside table and leaning back against the mountain of pillows on my bed. Aunt Betty loved pillows, I’d learned, and the room she’d set me up in had at least a dozen if you combined the bed and the chairs.
“He said he sees me,” I said softly, letting those words settle over me once more. “And then, he reminded me how impossible what I want is. But… he also said he was in my corner.” I huffed. “Do you see what I mean? Captain Confusing.”
“Is it Captain Moody Face or Captain Confusing?”
“Both.”
Mom chuffed. “It sounds to me like he sees the potential in you, but he is also a realist. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve always loved to prove people wrong,” she reminded me. “So, just think of it as another chance to do something you’re passionate about.”
I wrapped my hand around the crystal that hung from my neck with a sigh. It was the crystal my mother had given me on my sixteenth birthday, one I’d worn as a necklace ever since.