Nocturne

by Andrea Randall

  I didn’t regret asking her. If that was the only way I’d ever have happiness, then so be it. What bothered me was ... I’d put her in a position where she had to make the decision. It was that I’d put my desires and needs onto her. The way her eyes widened as she swallowed when I asked. She went silent.

  She’s rarely silent.

  She sat stoically and listened to my slurred reasoning. I meant every word. We needed to seize this time. We’d been given an opportunity to be together, even for a short time. It would be risky, and a lot of people could get hurt.

  I didn’t want her to get hurt. That was my bottom line. I would sacrifice just about anything to never again see the look she had on her face before bailing from the cab and walking down the busy road in Lincoln. Away from me.

  It was approaching noon and I was anxious. I hadn’t seen or heard from Savannah since our talk. It occurred to me that watching her stand and nimbly leave our table could have been the last time I saw her in any context other than the stage. I had to tell her, though. I had to tell her my feelings. My desires. I had nothing to lose, but her to gain.

  Shit. What could she possibly think of me, a married man, asking her to willingly carry on with me this summer as if we were the only two people in our lives? As I paced back and forth, there was a weak knock at my door.

  “Gregory, it’s Savannah …”

  I rushed to the door, swinging it open to find her standing with her arms loose at her sides, eyes cast down and looking swollen, as if she’d been crying. I wanted to take her into my arms in that instant, but I didn’t know if she wanted me touching her anymore. She was wearing a short black skirt and a grey tank top. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a wild nest of curls. Still, she took my breath away. She always had.

  “Come in.” Instinctively, I looked down the hall before closing the door behind her.

  “No one’s out there. I waited for them to clear out before I knocked.” Her voice was flat as she sat on the edge of the bed.

  Pulling my eyebrows together, I walked toward her and sat down next to her.

  “That’s how it’ll be, you know,” she said to the floor.

  “That’s how what will be?”

  “Looking over our shoulders for the rest of the summer. Making sure no one sees you with your mistress.” She stopped and looked at me as I gasped at her use of the word mistress. She started again, still not looking at me. “That’s what this is, you know. I’d be your mistress.”

  I knew that’s what it looked like. It was an affair in the sense that I was married, but Savannah was so much more to me than my mistress. I couldn’t figure out how to say that to her, though, especially when she seemed to refuse to look at me.

  I swallowed hard and tentatively placed my hand on her thigh. She didn’t move it. “Savannah …”

  “What? That’s what you’re asking of me, isn’t it? To be your mistress?”

  I clicked my tongue against my teeth and winced at the word. I wanted her to stop saying it. That’s not what she was … who she was.

  “You mean more to me than that, Savannah. You know that,” I managed. Slowly.

  “Then why …” She shook her head, looking at her manicured toes.

  “Why what?” I asked, stroking my thumb back and forth across the top of her thigh.

  She shrugged. “If I mean so much to you … I’m not saying leave your wife for me. But if I mean that much to you then why not wrap things up in your marriage and then come to me? Why an affair? Why now?”

  I lifted my hand from her leg and ran it over my face. “My marriage … while it hasn’t been a long one, has felt like it. There’s … not a lot of love there, if any. I think it was convenient for both of us. Jesus, I don’t want to sound like a bastard here—”

  “You don’t.” She grinned slightly. “Trust me, I get it. I think.”

  I counted myself lucky that Savannah hadn’t run from the room yet. That she was still sitting there listening to me, and asking questions, gave me some hope that she wouldn’t disappear through that door forever.

  I paused a moment before continuing, trying to consider how to talk about my wife with the woman I loved. “I was looking forward to this tour to have some space, some time to think. Honestly, some time to figure out how to make a clean break and not lose everything. Including my dignity. But something is going on with Karin right now. I don’t have all the details. It’s incredibly complicated, and I don’t feel right talking to anyone about it right now.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t need to know.” Since she’d sat on the edge of my bed she hadn’t lifted her eyes once. They volleyed between her knotted fingers and her feet the entire time.

  “Savannah,” I sighed, “why won’t you look at me?”

  She hesitated before opening her mouth then tucked her lip behind her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut as several tears fell at once.

  “Because if I look at you, I’ll say yes.” She lost it right then, taking a ragged breath as her head fell into her hands and she sobbed.

  “Damn it,” I whispered as I brought her shoulders to my chest, and she let me hold her as she cried. Resting my chin on top of her head, I breathed in the sweet smell of lilies for what I was certain would be the last time.

  She silently cried for a few moments while I tried to string together a few coherent words. I didn’t mean to make her cry. I’d never seen her cry like that before and knew I never wanted to again.

  “Look,” I whispered before clearing my throat. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Savannah. If you want to forget about all of this, we can. We can continue the tour and play together, and be friends. I’d like to be friends with you if we can’t be more. I have to be friends with you if we can’t be anything more …” I trailed off, tears pricking my eyes, feeling the weight of what it would be like if Savannah Marshall vanished from my life, again.

  She shook her head, as her forehead remained pressed against my chest. “I don’t want to forget about it. I can’t forget about it. I don’t … I don’t want to be friends with you, Gregory.”

  “Oh …”

  Savannah lifted her head then and looked at me through a beautiful mess of tears. I was captured in her gaze, waiting for her to speak, praying she wouldn’t leave. Not being able to blame her if she did. She slid her hands up the sides of my arms and across my shoulders, moving up my neck until they rested on each side of my face. Slowly gliding her thumbs across my cheeks as she steadied her breathing.

  Carefully exhaling through her rose colored lips, she finally spoke. “I’m in love with you, Gregory.” She smiled through still falling tears and I was at a loss on how to interpret her emotions.

  “I’m in love with you, too, Savannah,” I whispered.

  “But,” she continued, “I don’t want you to say it anymore. I don’t want us to say it to each other anymore. It will make me want more than I know we can have.”

  “Savannah ...”

  She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she sniffed. “Please, Gregory. You’re already asking a lot of me. I need you to grant this. I know you love me ... but I can’t hear you say it.”

  With a heavy sigh, I nodded once. “Okay.”

  “I didn’t sleep much last night, you know.”

  I chuckled nervously. “I didn’t either.”

  “I’m afraid it’ll break my heart, and yours, if I say no. But … I’m afraid you’ll think less of me if I say yes.”

  I frowned, shaking my head in confusion. “Why would I think less of you?” I asked, bringing my hands to her face and tracing my thumb across her bottom lip.

  “Willingly entering into a relationship with a married man is not a place I ever thought I’d find myself.” She looked down again, shame sweeping over her face.

  Jesus. In my own desire to have her in my arms, and in my bed, and in my heart, I hadn’t considered what asking her might do to her sense of self. What it might do to her spirit—the very thing I fell in love with
.

  “No, I don’t want you to feel bad about that,” she entered, seeming to interpret the look on my face. “That’s … my stuff. I could calmly get up and walk out of this room and smile and see you on stage every day.”

  I nodded. “You could.”

  “But then, no matter what else happened in the rest of our lives, I might look back on this moment and kick myself for not taking a chance with you. Even if our time is limited.” Her voice trembled slightly over the last part, and it sank my stomach.

  “I don’t want there to be any limits with you. I just don’t know …” I shook my head and looked away, internally at war with my own moral code.

  “I know things are complicated with Karin. And, given the last few days I’ve had, I’m in no position to judge anyone anymore.”

  She gently grabbed my chin between her thumb and index finger, turning my face toward hers. “I’m saying yes.”

  I wanted to gasp, shocked by her answer. Three simple letters that changed everything. But, I couldn’t breathe.

  She said yes.

  “You’re saying yes,” I whispered, unable to keep the shocked smile off my face.

  She nodded. “I know we have a lot of details to work out, like how we’re going to handle this without everyone finding out and it turning into a thing.” Sometimes, when she rambled, her hands would wave in the air. It was adorable. “But … I’d rather have a few stolen moments with you over a short time than to live a lifetime wondering what it would have been like had I said yes, but chose to walk away instead.”

  Shaking with an intoxicating mix of nerves and relief, I pulled Savannah into a deep kiss. As her hands ran up the back of my neck and through my hair, I let out a small moan of gratitude.

  She said yes.

  Gregory

  Denver was unseasonably cool for July. In Colorado Springs I suffered from allergies. I don’t remember what excuses I used in Fort Collins, or Casper, or Billings or Bozeman. But as we moved further west, mostly by bus and train, I continued to find myself giving excuses for long disappearances into my hotel room, excuses to not attend dinners, go out for drinks or any other social activities that came along with a tour of this nature.

  Of course, given my reputation, hardly anyone blinked. Ironic. I’d spent my adult life pushing people away, keeping them at arms’ length, never touching, or reaching out. Now all I could do, all I wanted to do, was touch.

  At our stop in Fort Collins, we made love three times before finally collapsing into an exhausted, tangled sleep. When I woke in the morning, she was splayed across me, legs tangled around mine, her hair across my chest. I opened my eyes and watched her. She was … beautiful. Amazing. Mine. In her sleep, she looked so peaceful.

  And then her eyes opened. She locked her eyes on mine, and I watched as her pupils slightly dilated. Her mouth opened, just a little, into a tiny smile.

  “Hi,” she whispered.

  “Good morning,” I replied.

  Then we didn’t speak.

  Each stop was different, yet each was the same. We texted back and forth. Made secret arrangements to visit each other. Depending on whose room, one of us would make our way down the hall, or to a different floor. Check the hall for others from the orchestra. Knock, and then slip into the room.

  The secrecy was maddening. And necessary. Because we could dress it up any way we wanted, the fact was we were having a secret affair. And it would remain a secret until I worked out whatever the hell was going on with Karin. Because that was a lingering question I didn’t know how to resolve. It wasn’t as if I could sit here and even pretend that what I was doing was morally right. And that sometimes devastated me, because I loved Savannah, I’d always loved her.

  I’d asked her to be mine in secret, for just the summer.

  But I wanted so much more.

  And I didn’t know if that was going to be possible. I didn’t know what kind of future we could have when our beginning was founded in a lie. And that ... was my fault. Sometimes I felt as if I’d completely taken leave of my senses. What could I have been thinking? Every time I looked at our situation, all I could see ahead was heartbreak.

  But I couldn’t stop. When I saw her, when I touched her, when I even thought of her, I was lost. And so, we kept on. It was beautiful. Exquisite. And sometimes it broke our hearts.

  Generally, as one of the senior musicians on the tour, I had a room by myself. But not always ... in Casper, Wyoming, neither of us had a room by ourselves. That night we snuck off together, reserving a room at the Sunburst Lodge, a bed and breakfast on the side of Casper Mountain. The drive up to the mountain in a rental car was fantastic, the sun shining through openings in the forest as we rode higher and higher into the mountains. Both of us had been tense, distracted. This chance to get away, to not hide for a few hours, was priceless.

  The lodge was open pine construction, with a huge fireplace in a large open living room where all of the guests gathered in the evening. That night, away from the pressures of the tour, the pressures of our lives, we both succumbed to the fantasy that we could be together. It was beautiful ... and bittersweet. Sitting in overstuffed chairs next to each other by the fire, we drank wine and laughed and felt free. Because, for a few hours, we were out of cell phone range, out of touch, with no connection to our lives.

  “Hey.” Savannah gave my hand a slight squeeze, pulling my eyes away from the flames. The warm amber light reflected flecks of yellow dancing through her irises. It looked choreographed and made me catch my breath and ache to take her to bed.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She tilted her head in a way that told me she was struggling to ask a question.

  “What’s going on? You’ve seemed distant.” She leaned forward and placed her glass on the thick maple table in front of us. Resting back into the brown leather, she wrapped her arms around her legs as she pulled them to her chest.

  I shrugged. “Why don’t we just enjoy our time together?”

  Her now sad eyes met mine. “I enjoy every second with you, Gregory. That’s not an issue.” A quick smile came and left before she continued. “I know that what we’re doing here is … limited. I know that nights like this won’t happen much more, if at all. But, I … I still care about you. I’ll still care about you when this summer is over and … I care about what’s going on in your life.”

  I considered her words with each rise and fall my thumb took over her knuckles. Instinctively, I’d been reluctant to ever discuss Karin with her. My wife occupied a separate part of my life, a distant and sad and lonely part of my life. I’d kept all of that closed off, walled away. But for the last few days the implications of what I’d learned from Madeline had been constantly running through my mind. And I’d discussed it with no one.

  “You can trust me, Gregory.” She misread my hesitation and cast her eyes to our locked fingers.

  “Of course I trust you. That’s not it.” I took a deep breath. Closing my eyes, I said, “I’m just … reluctant to … taint our time together. With all of that.”

  “All of what?”

  I swallowed. Then I said, “She wants to have children. My wife. I do not. I never have. And ... it appears that she decided to take action on that without discussing it with me.”

  Savannah’s eyebrows worked as she puzzled through my awkward wording. Then she said, “Are you saying she stopped taking birth control?”

  I nodded. “Yes.” I realized as I answered the question that my hand was shaking.

  “Jesus,” she mumbled under her breath, throwing her head back against the chair. “How did you find out?”

  I snorted. “She got drunk and told Madeline she was seeing a fertility specialist. Apparently despite her desire to have children, she is not ... she can’t …” I rubbed my hand over my face, squeezing my eyes shut.

  Savannah took her free hand and pulled mine away from my face. “I get it. I’m sorry … for her.” Savannah’s face softened and she looked conflicted. Hu
rt, almost. “What’d she say when you talked to her about it?”

  “We’ve not discussed it. I refuse to have this conversation on the phone.”

  “Wow …”

  “What?” I sat forward.

  “You … you need to talk to her, Gregory. I mean, I know you know that, but …”

  “But what?”

  She ran a hand through her hair and left it resting on the back of her neck. Her head slowly shook side to side as she spoke. “I know this is going to make no sense at all, what does, really? But, I feel just … awful right now. There are reasons why you’re hurting. Angry. And she has things going on, too. I know we’re having an affair, but ... you need to sort this out with her. Not for me. But for you.”

  I thought about her words. About the potential implications of the discussion with Karin. I’d considered it, imagined it, repeatedly. I couldn’t see that conversation going anywhere good. I’d dreaded it, and perhaps that’s why I’d put it off. Because it went to the core of what was wrong with us as a couple. The one thing I’d never wanted was a child. And she knew that. And despite the fact that I was, in fact, betraying her every day ... I still felt ... incredibly betrayed.

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes. I’ll talk with her.”

  “Thank you for telling me about that. I didn’t mean to pry, and I know that was insanely personal. Thank you for trusting me.” Savannah brought her fingers to my cheek and traced her thumb just under my eye, that soft, genuine smile of hers lifting the heaviness from around us in an instant.

  “Of course I trust you,” I said again. “That’s like saying thank you for breathing. Or … thank you for having two arms. You don’t have to thank me. I trust you.”

  “I hate that she did that to you. That’s not fair.”

  I shrugged. There was nothing to say. It wasn’t fair. I hated it, too. One thing I did want was to not talk about it for the rest of the night. “Come here,” I implored with a slight tug of her hand.