The Walsh Brothers

by Kate Canterbary

  Another turn brought me to a spacious bank of open-air showers, just like the ones from my high school locker rooms. Morning sun streamed in from tall, ocean-facing windows along the ceiling line. I stepped to the center of the room and tested my pitch. The acoustics were perfect, and I dashed back to Sam's room to grab my instrument.

  I'd basically packed my entire life when Sam told me to bring what I'd need for the weekend, and that always included Jezebel.

  He was still asleep, and after drawing the blankets around his shoulders, I returned to the showers. I'd been wrestling with several pieces, and stood there, waving my bow back and forth until I could decide which to work on this morning.

  Instead of playing any of them, I decided to experiment with 'Moondance,' an old Van Morrison tune I'd been lusting after for months. While I firmly believed that damn near anything could be adapted for strings, some Van Morrison songs weren't the easiest matches.

  I hadn't brought any sheet music with me, and since I hadn't intended to attack this song, I was going from memory alone. I ran through it in my head several times, getting tempo and movement down, and then lifted my instrument.

  The first couple of attempts were objectively terrible, but somewhere around the eleventh take, it started sounding less like an electrocuted cat and more like the jazzy sway I wanted. I kept going, scratching away for another thirteen iterations until I felt the notes coming together, bending, softening, melting.

  Nodding in moderate satisfaction, I opened my eyes and saw Sam seated against the faded yellow tiles, his arms folded over his bent knees.

  "Oh my God, I can't believe you had to hear that," I said. I straightened my arms and shook out my wrists. "It was such crap. I actually thought to myself at one point, this sounds like an electrocuted cat. I'm sorry. I should have gone outside."

  He tilted his head with that adorable, squinty expression he pulled whenever he was particularly amused and perplexed. Like most things he did, I wanted to throw myself on him and savor every morsel.

  "You're kidding, right? Tell me you're kidding, because that was the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen," he said.

  I lifted a shoulder and offered a noncommittal sound while I set my instrument back in the case. "It needs work."

  Sam popped to his feet and approached me, his head shaking. "I'm my own toughest critic, too, but believe me when I say that was remarkable. I could watch you for hours."

  "I'm sorry I woke you up. I really should have gone outside," I said.

  "It's December. It's twenty fucking degrees," he said. "Don't even joke about doing that."

  "I used do it all the time," I said. "My family could not stand listening to me practice, so I cleared out a section of the garage. I probably lost some brain cells to huffing gas fumes, and the acoustics were shameful, but it worked for me."

  "Don't care." He glanced at me before yanking me toward him. "Why does my wrinkled shirt look so fucking good on you?"

  "I'd argue it looks decent on you, too," I said. "But I have to tell you—this room has the most incredible acoustics and sunlight. I don't feel like I'm playing in a dungeon. I've never been so happy in my life."

  Sam laughed, shaking his head at me. "Consider it yours."

  What the fuck did he just offer?

  "What?"

  His lips moved over my shoulder, kissing, teeth scraping, sighing, and he said, "Riley and I didn't know what to do with this space. He wanted to rent it out for porn shoots, but I vetoed that one. If it works for you, it's yours. Come anytime. Stay. Stay as long as you want. Stay…forever."

  I glanced up expecting to see a glimmer of humor in his eyes, some indication that he was joking, but I couldn't find it.

  "You wouldn't have to book pre-dawn studio time," he said, his hand sliding under my sweats and over my ass. "You could keep your instruments here, and not have to cart them all over town. We could paint or…do whatever you wanted."

  "Did you just ask me to move in with you?" The words ran out in a screechy rush.

  "Um, I don't know." Sam's brow furrowed and he released a tight, self-conscious laugh. "Do you want to move in with me?"

  He was being nice. This was his version of generosity, and he simply failed to think about what he was saying.

  "We're all good," I said, patting his chest. "Don't worry about it."

  He had an empty room that matched my needs, and he was being a gentleman by offering it up. Nothing more.

  "Didn't you say there was a fireman's pole around here somewhere? That's something I have to see."

  20

  Tiel

  If I could have destroyed my phone with some evil glares, I would have. I knew the call was coming, and as always, ignoring it only delayed the discomfort.

  "Tiel, hello," my father said.

  "Hi, Dad." I hated the fake tint in my voice, the impatient cadence that refused—even after all these years—to stop wondering how I became irrelevant and expendable to my own parents. "How are you?"

  "Such a busy time," he said. "Always busy, and we're happy to be busy."

  "Well that's good," I murmured.

  "And you?"

  "All good," I said. "The semester is nearly finished, and I'm up to my eyeballs with grading this week. I was actually reviewing some term papers just now…"

  We did this dance every December. He'd call, tell me I should visit for the holidays to meet my cousin's fiancé or congratulate my sister on her new home, and I'd dance around the request with some semi-legitimate reasons to stay in Boston.

  Last year, I teamed up with a bunch of friends and college students to visit the area hospitals and nursing homes to play Christmas carols. The year before that, Ellie and I went to Disney World. One of my first holidays in Boston, I was working with a particularly challenged kiddo, and his parents asked me to join them on their ski trip to Killington.

  I knew Sam's family was having a get-together on Christmas Eve, but he was careful to mention it casually and never attach expectations to it.

  "You should know we think this might be Yaya's last Christmas," he said, sighing. "She'll be ninety-seven next summer, and she hasn't been healthy. Her heart is giving her trouble, and she can't get around well."

  I always wished I could be one of those people who cut negative things from their lives and didn't look back, but I never learned how to make that cut, not all the way. My family wasn't good for me; they didn't respect my choices or values, and though my father was attempting to broker some peace, that didn't alter their opinions of me. But I couldn't stop caring about them.

  "The least you can do is see her at Christmas," he said. "I know Yaya would appreciate it."

  "I need to look at my schedule," I said. "I'll let you know."

  "You should be able to do this, Tiel," he said. "It's important. You'll regret it if she passes and you didn't say goodbye. For once, think about someone other than yourself."

  My eyes squeezed shut, I took a deep breath and convinced myself it wasn't worth getting into an argument. It was easier to deal with this now than pretend I needed to consult some jam-packed schedule, only to call back later and agree to visit. Because of course I was going; I would always love my family, and I wouldn't let my grandmother go without a proper goodbye. "I can take the train down on Christmas Eve."

  It was the right thing to do even if it was the most uncomfortable option available, and I groused my way through the week on that point of frustration. I shopped for Christmas gifts (angrily), graded exams (no generosity to be found), practiced (only the ranty tunes), and dreamt up (bitchy) ways to handle the barrage of questions I'd get when I arrived in Jersey.

  The saving grace was my time spent with Seraphina and Lucas. She was getting good with her One Direction acoustic guitar, and she consistently said 'hi.' I didn't know the trauma that caused her selective mutism, and I probably wouldn't. My sessions only provided an outlet to manage her emotions and express herself through a medium that made sense to her. That she could
find solace in songs was the win.

  Lucas and I worked through complex pieces, attempted some new approaches, and sampled some holiday music. It was something of a breakthrough, considering he preferred the hard lines of Beethoven, Bach, and Tchaikovsky. He didn't smile when we played 'Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer' but he didn't immediately revert to the Fifth Symphony either, and that was progress for us.

  His mother, Beth, even texted me this morning to say she'd overheard him playing 'Jingle Bells' before she got out of bed.

  I was meeting Sam for dinner tonight at a tiny organic bistro near Porter Square, and I was determined to end all complaining. It was the first time we'd managed to connect in several days. He'd been tied up with unexpected issues on some of his projects, and I missed him.

  We still talked and texted, and when I'd asked one too many times whether he was actually working and not blowing me off for a swanky club, he sent me a picture of himself in a hard hat with a dozen contractors poring over blueprints behind him. He'd been sending selfies with his texts ever since. Some were funny: his annoyed expressions when things weren't going the way he wanted at jobsites, Riley's coffee-stained pants, vague images from the Turlan project captioned "top secret." Others made me want to run across town and throw my arms around him: his groggy, adorable face when he first woke up, his reflection in the mirror with a question about whether he was adequately spiffy for my tastes, his frown when he had to report he'd be needed for another late night.

  He knew I was going home for the holiday, and he knew I wasn't thrilled about it. We hadn't gotten much beyond those points.

  Sam was running late again, and I sat alone in the bistro, waiting with my glass of wine. It felt oddly sophisticated to be sitting in a bistro and drinking wine, but I wasn't about to fight Sam on restaurants. He was particular about food, and I'd eat just about anything put in front of me.

  He waved from the door, quickly shaking out of his coat and scarf before heading toward our table. Bending, he placed a kiss on my lips and sighed, his forehead leaning against mine. "Hi, Tiel."

  "Hi, Sam," I whispered, edging forward for another kiss.

  His finger traced the neck of my sweater dress, and I felt him smile against my lips. "You are so fucking gorgeous. What are you wearing under this?"

  "Not much," I murmured. He growled, his fingers pressing against me in a sharp, urgent manner. My hands on his chest, I pushed him toward his seat. "So which crisis were you solving tonight?"

  He sat across from me but made a small production of adjusting himself in the process. "No crises tonight, actually," he said. "I was at Lauren's board meeting, and it ran a couple minutes over."

  "You were where?"

  The words flew out and I watched as they cracked over him, the unintended anger and betrayal in my voice obvious as his eyes turned from playfully aroused to confused. "I'm on the board of directors for Lauren's school," he said. "I think I've told you about that."

  "You have not," I said, powerless to rein in my tone. I looked away, desperate to find some of the affection I had for Sam under the irrational jealousy I was feeling right now.

  "I have mentioned that she's very happily married to my brother." He shook out his napkin and draped it over his lap, focused on the place setting in front of him. "To me, she is a friend. Her, Andy…they're the women in my brothers' lives."

  "I understand that," I said. "I do. I really do. But…it's hard for me to figure out this whole family thing for you."

  We ordered and Sam gazed at me after the waitress left our table. He was quiet and cool, and I could almost hear him drawing down his words and placing them in a strategic order. "This isn't about me, and I don't think it's about my family either. It's just a convenient argument because the other explanation is a tad more complex."

  He reached across the table, his fingers circling my wrist. Our freckles lined up when his thumb stroked my palm, those big brown splotches, and I smiled.

  "You might be right," I said.

  "You're pretty cute when you're feverishly jealous," he said. "You're all 'I'll cut a bitch' and I just want to get you naked and lick your nipples and fuck you for five or six hours."

  I snorted, choking on my wine and laughing until tears streamed down my face. Sam shifted his seat closer, his hand moving up and down my back in large, serene circles while I recovered.

  "Are we pretending that isn't what's happening right now?" he asked as I dried my eyes with his handkerchief. "Is that who we are tonight?"

  I shook my head and tapped a fast, frantic segment of Paganini's Caprice Number Twenty-Four on the table. "I didn't mean to snap like that," I said.

  Our entrees arrived but Sam stayed beside me with his arm over the back of my chair. "You know I won't do that, right?"

  I nodded, but I didn't know what to think. There was always this lingering doubt, the suspicion that he'd quickly discover I wasn't as amusing or sexy or adorable as he once thought, and this would end. He'd be the next in a terribly long line of people who cut me loose over the years, and I'd survive like I always did.

  He shared his recent construction woes while we ate, offhandedly mentioning a small, methodological difference of opinion that catalyzed a debate between him and his brothers. Then he rattled off a list of restaurants he wanted us to try when we visited Arizona next month, and it was quite possible I'd never seen him so excited about food before.

  "So when do you leave?" he asked, edging the assortment of French macarons the waitress delivered with his coffee toward me.

  I lifted the mint green cookie and ran my tongue along the middle where chocolaty cream peeked out. "Friday morning. Christmas Eve trains will either be packed tight or totally empty, but it will give me a chance to clean up my syllabus for the spring semester."

  "And you're good with spending the holiday there?"

  I wasn't—not even close—but I needed to see my grandmother. "It'll be fine," I said. "It's just…ugh, I don't know how to talk about this."

  "Start small. Explain why you don't want to visit," he said.

  "I've told you—my family doesn't like me," I said. "And before you interrupt because I see you trying, please know that I'm not exaggerating. They refuse to accept that life exists beyond the family industrial complex."

  Sam chuckled and stirred his coffee. "I don't know that I'm supposed to laugh at that, but you have me envisioning some kind of gyro factory run by children."

  "And that wouldn't be inaccurate," I said. "When my sister got married, she had fourteen bridesmaids, but I wasn't one of them."

  "Shannon and Erin haven't talked in—hmm." He glanced at the ceiling. "I want to say six or seven years. Erin did some…some terrible things, and Shannon retaliated, and I often wonder whether there's enough salt in the world to thaw that ice. But I know for a fact that Shannon would drop everything if Erin ever truly needed her, and Erin would do the same."

  "Yeah, no," I laughed. "That isn't even close to the case with my family. Sam, they're embarrassed by me, and not just the stupid teenage marriage thing. I'm convinced they believe I play on subway platforms and survive on the loose change I earn there."

  "And you know that's bullshit, right?" he asked. "Families don't make for the most objective witnesses."

  "I just have to survive a few days," I said. Sam folded the napkin in half, then folded it again, leaving it in a smooth rectangle on his thigh.

  He gestured toward me, confused. "I still don't understand why you don't call it out. Put it all on the table."

  "Because it won't solve anything, Sam. It's just standard family dysfunction, and there's no sense stirring up drama."

  "I'm all for conflict avoidance," he said. "But I really believe you should try to work it out. You have two living parents, and it might not seem like a blessing when they're openly intolerant of your choices, but I know there are a lot of things I'd say to mine if I could spend the holiday with them."

  The crumbs wiped from my fingers, I reached for another
macaron. "I understand that. Really. But their passive rejection is easier to handle."

  He watched as I tasted the cookie. "I'm not trying to make it worse."

  "You know that saying, 'you can never go home again'? There are times when I realize how frighteningly accurate it is. Whatever home once was, it can't be that anymore, and it makes me wonder if it was ever there to start with."

  Sam nodded, his gaze still trained on my mouth. "There's a Welsh word for that," he said. He reached for his coffee, his expression moving between pain and pleasure with each sip. "You know, I'm trying to be mature and have a fucking conversation with you but you're sitting there, licking that thing like it's the head of my cock. I swear to you, I'm going blow in the next minute if you don't stop."

  I glanced at the cookie and smiled. Sam and I enjoyed a lot of sex, but he stopped me every time I moved to taste his cock. There was always a mediocre excuse—he wanted to be inside me, he wanted to come on my breasts, he wanted to lick me—and he'd gone so far as to bind my wrists to the headboard after I tried to wake him up that way.

  I had to wonder whether there was a bigger reason for the oral lockout. Maybe he only liked blowjobs when they came from random girls in semi-private settings. Or, despite his commentary, he wasn't excited about getting head from me. I wanted to know, and if eating these cookies forced his hand on the topic, I was going to keep on licking.

  "A Welsh word? I thought you only tossed around archaic English."

  "Hiraeth," he said. "It's the homesickness you feel for places of the past."

  "Yeah. That," I said, and reached for the last cookie. "So now you just know random Welsh words?"

  "I saw it a few years ago, one of those paintings with typography overlaid. It just summed up everything I was going through, and I contemplated getting it inked somewhere."

  I thought about all his other tattoos. The assortment of Celtic knots. The doves. Those shapes that related to some equation. The cluster of trees just below his waist. The Iron Man helmet under his watchband. "Really? You don't have any other words."