Small Town Sonata

by Jamie Fessenden

  “I’m sure.” She gestured at Rick. “I got him into the shower and a clean set of clothes, and now we’re working on making this place livable. In a few days, he might even be a human being again.” She shrugged. “Give him a chance, Dean. He’s never laid a finger on me. You know that.”

  No, he just turned into a major asshole. But Dean knew she was right. She was a full-grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. And maybe this would turn out to be a good one for her and Rick both.

  “What he did,” Sarah continued, “well… that’s up to me to forgive, isn’t it?”

  Dean huffed out a breath and turned back to Rick. “Does the newly reborn human being still have his trumpet?”

  “Yeah,” Rick said. “He might.”

  “He hasn’t squashed it flat or shot a hole through it?”

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  “Is he willing to help out someone he used to be friends with?”

  “He is,” Rick said. He looked Dean right in the eye. “He’s willing to do whatever it takes.”

  “Let’s see if we can actually get together for a rehearsal, then. Maybe on Friday?”

  “Anything you want, Dean.” A smile flickered across Rick’s face, and Dean remembered how handsome he used to be—probably still was, once Dean stopped seeing red.

  “Am I included in that?” Sarah asked, beaming now.

  “Damn straight. There’s only four of us, at the moment—we still don’t got a bass—but we can see what kind of damage we can do with the instruments we’ve got.”

  “I’ll be there, Dean. We both will.”

  Feeling self-conscious now, Dean gave them a curt nod and a quick wave, then turned and walked back to his truck. He wanted things to work out for them. He really did. And if Sarah could forgive Rick, he could. He’d just wait and see how things went.

  He climbed into the truck and put it in gear, but then his phone rang. He put the truck back in neutral and pulled the emergency brake before picking it up. His heart did a little flip-flop when he saw Aiden’s name on Caller ID.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Aiden replied. “Um… how do you feel about me claiming some space in your living room?”

  “That sounds kind of domestic.” Not as good as asking for closet space or a sock drawer, but still…. “What’s it for?”

  “You’ll see. When will you be home?”

  “I can go there now, if you want.”

  “Perfect! I’ll see you there soon.”

  IT took an hour for Tom to round up his nephew and load the keyboard onto the back of his truck. Aiden drove ahead of them out to Dean’s place, fretting about whether he’d overstepped himself. His intention was just to give himself a way of practicing if he decided to stay the night again, but in light of the sexcapades of the night before, it would probably look as if he was moving in.

  Well, he’d try to make it clear Dean didn’t have to agree to keep the keyboard at the house. Aiden could always ask Tom to take it to the music room at his parents’ house instead.

  Dean stepped out onto the porch when he pulled into the driveway, but there wasn’t time to exchange greetings before Tom’s truck pulled in.

  “Let me guess,” Dean said as Aiden climbed out of the Tesla. “You bought a grand piano.” He was eyeing Tom’s truck with its stenciled Springhaven Serenade sign on the side, but the electric piano had been wrapped in blankets to protect it, and laid on its back in the truck bed.

  “Close.”

  Dean came down the front steps and helped Tom and his nephew, Joe, undo the bungee cords and blankets wrapped around the keyboard. When he saw it, he gave Aiden a puzzled look. “What’s this for?”

  “Hold on, guys. Don’t unload it yet.” Aiden gestured for Dean to follow him, and they went off to one side. “I was thinking… if I’m going to spend time here this summer, I could use this to practice on. It has a headphone jack, so if I decided to get up in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t have to worry about waking you.”

  “Do you do that often?”

  Aiden nodded. “All the time.”

  “Huh.”

  He couldn’t tell from Dean’s expression whether he’d just made a colossal blunder in their budding relationship, so he asked, “Is it all right? The piano is still in the truck, and there’s plenty of room for it in the music room at my parents’—”

  “Why would you need an electric piano there?” Dean asked. “You’ve already got a grand piano.”

  “I know, but—”

  Dean raised his voice and waved at the men in the truck. “Go ahead and bring it inside. Do you need any help with it?”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” Aiden asked.

  Dean looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Where do you get this crap from? You could bring your whole wardrobe and the grand piano if you wanted to. I have no idea where we’d put the piano, but I’d move the kitchen table out on the porch if I had to.”

  Aiden smiled at him. “Just this. I think there’s room for it near the couch. No major furniture rearranging required. And it isn’t just because I’m a selfish bastard. I’ve been thinking… I might be able to help you out with the septet, after all.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not one-hundred-percent sure. I have no idea how to even play that style of music. But if you have some sheet music, I’d be willing to see if I can learn it.”

  Dean grinned, then grabbed him by both shoulders and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  “Hey, you two! Get a room!”

  They flew apart like guilty teenagers, only to find Tom laughing at them from the truck. Dean flipped him off. “Fuck you, Tom. You’re just jealous.”

  “You’re both very pretty, but I’ll stick to my wife, thanks. You want to give us a hand? This is a pretty expensive piece of equipment, and I’m nervous about jostling it too much.”

  It was a pain in the ass to wrestle the Yamaha up the porch steps and through the kitchen door. Once it was inside, though, it was easy going. Aiden put some coffee on while Dean cleaned out the space beside the couch—it was more cluttered than Aiden had remembered. Mostly newspapers and magazines Opa had stacked in the corner to use when he lit the fireplace. Nothing important. Dean rarely used the fireplace these days, so the stacks had accumulated a layer of dust and a few spiderwebs. But after that job was done, the piano slid right into place as if it belonged there.

  “Would you guys like some coffee?” Aiden asked, once everything was situated.

  “Some water would be better,” Tom said. Then he asked, “Are you up to playing something? I told the kid you were a world-famous pianist, but he didn’t believe me.”

  The “kid” was in his twenties, and he looked uncomfortable being put on the spot like that. “It’s not my fault you’re always pullin’ my leg….”

  “I’ll get you guys some water,” Dean said. As he brushed past Aiden, he said in a low voice, “Go ahead, World-Famous Pianist.”

  “Shut up.” But Aiden took a seat at the Yamaha and jumped into something fast and showy to entertain their guests—Chopin’s Fantasy Impromptu, Opus 66, followed by Liszt’s Transcendental Etude Number Four. Both complicated and very fast. He could tell as he neared the end of the second piece that Joe wasn’t a classical music fan, so he stopped there.

  “Hear that?” Tom asked triumphantly.

  Joe’s eyes flickered to Aiden’s face, and then quickly away in embarrassment. “Yeah. That was really cool.”

  “Cool?” Tom looked scandalized. “Are you sure we’re related?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  Aiden wasn’t offended. His style of music wasn’t for everybody. But when he glanced at Dean, he saw a look of pure adulation in those soft jade eyes. Dean beamed at him and said, “Yeah, it was definitely cool.”

  Aiden glanced away, the heat rising on his face. He was surprised to discover how much Dean’s praise mattered to him now. It would be hard to leave that behind if he resumed his career.
But he knew Dean wouldn’t come with him—couldn’t come with him. He would be miserable in Aiden’s world.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  AIDEN spent the night and went back and forth between his parents’ house and Dean’s for the next few days. To Dean it was as if they’d slipped into a warm, wonderful domesticity—him getting up first in the morning, showering, then making coffee, followed by Aiden getting up and showering, having coffee with him, and then practicing on the electric keyboard. Since Mr. Scott needed his car during the week, Dean dropped Aiden off at the Scotts’ house as he went to work, and then swung by in the evening to pick him up. After dinner they’d rehearse some of the septet pieces with just the two of them or Dean would attempt to make his way through the Mozart clarinet concerto with Aiden accompanying him. The latter was just for fun, if stumbling through a difficult clarinet part like a kid in a high school orchestra—a very bad high school orchestra—knowing your pianist had performed alongside the greatest clarinet players in the world could ever be considered “fun.” But in a weird way, it was their “song,” his and Aiden’s—even more so than the Brahms intermezzo, which was a difficult solo piece that allowed Aiden to shine like a star, beautiful but distant and untouchable. This, they could play together, and Dean loved every awkward minute of it.

  The rehearsals were always followed by mind-blowing sex. Oh God, the sex! Dean hadn’t had sex like that in… well, he’d never had sex like that. Aiden was willing to do stuff Phil had balked at, but it was a hell of a lot more than that. For the first time, Dean’s heart was fully engaged. Every moment with Aiden was beautiful and intense.

  At the same time, there was a sadness underlying it. Dean knew it wouldn’t last. It would go on ’til the end of the summer if he was lucky. Then Aiden would snatch up a job with a famous orchestra and disappear from Springhaven for another seventeen years or more. Maybe he’d never come back. Maybe he’d find some other guy—a musician who understood his world—and travel with him and marry him and be happy and eventually retire to live in Paris. The thought was depressing, but Dean refused to let it ruin the time they had together. He shoved it away whenever it crept into his mind.

  We’re a couple. He said that. For now, at least, he’s mine.

  On Wednesday, while Dean was fertilizing Mrs. Bennett’s lawn, Aiden called his cell during the day and said, “I have a surprise for you.”

  “You bought me leather chaps.”

  “Is that seriously your idea of a good surprise?”

  “It would be a surprise,” Dean responded. “I didn’t say it would be a good one.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Now that you’ve put the idea in my head—”

  “You can just take the idea right out of your head,” Dean growled. “I’ll be done here in a couple of hours. Can your surprise wait that long?”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  By the time Dean had finished spreading the fertilizer over Mrs. Bennett’s ridiculously large lawn—the damned thing had to be at least a few acres—with a rotary spreader, and doing the few other odd jobs she’d asked him to do around the place, he was grubby as hell. Unlike Larry, Mrs. Bennett wasn’t about to let Dean shower in her house, and he wouldn’t dream of asking, so he went to his place first. Then he showed up at the Scotts’ in clean clothes, his short hair still a bit damp from the shower.

  Mrs. Scott met him at the door and said, “Come in, Dean! But please keep your voice down. Aiden’s practicing.”

  Dean could hear the pride in her voice. She liked being the temple guardian, forbidding access to her son, the Chosen One. He had no doubt she’d be delighted if the Queen of England showed up, just so she could deny Her Majesty access… while serving her tea.

  Dean took coffee instead of tea. But he sat meekly at the kitchen table and chatted with Mrs. Scott while they listened to the beautiful music coming from behind the music room door. It wasn’t long, however, before the music stopped, and Aiden opened the door.

  “Dean! I thought I heard you out here, but… I hate to stop in the middle of a piece.”

  “No problem. It sounded great.”

  “Come in.”

  The first thing Dean saw, when he followed Aiden into the room, was a standup bass. It was on a stand beside the piano, and it was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. Well, apart from Aiden in the buff. He grinned broadly. “You got us a loaner?”

  “It’s not a loaner,” Aiden replied. “It’s Ben’s.”

  “Somebody… fixed it?” Dean was pretty sure it couldn’t be the same bass. Even if half of it had been replaced, it was a different shade of brown, and looked a hell of a lot nicer than Ben’s bass ever had.

  “No, it’s a new one. I bought it for him. Though I wanted to surprise you with it first.”

  Dean tore his eyes away from the beautiful instrument to look at Aiden in shock. “You bought it? For Ben? Drunk Ben, who can’t even remember sitting on his old bass?”

  “I’m aware the poor thing may have a short lifespan,” Aiden said, looking at it and shaking his head wistfully. “If he sits on this one, he’s on his own.”

  Dean would throttle the bastard if he did that. “Is this the student bass Tom mentioned?”

  “No, it’s a little better quality than that. Not great quality,” Aiden added hurriedly. “It’s not up to the standards of… well, most of the professionals I know. But it’s a good one. Tom’s friend had some higher-end models, but I hadn’t planned on paying a couple of thousand.”

  Dean drew closer to the bass and ran his fingers lightly across the soft, chestnut finish. “How much did it cost?”

  “Enough.”

  He gave Aiden an exasperated look. “More than Ben deserves.” It had to be more than five hundred, the price of the student bass. Hadn’t Aiden and Tom both said a decent one could go for seven—or eight hundred? That was a lot of money for Aiden to spend on something he’d never use.

  Aiden drew him into his arms. “I didn’t buy it for Ben—though of course he’ll be the one using it, and he can keep it.” He kissed Dean tenderly. “I bought it for you.”

  “You are so getting laid tonight.”

  Aiden stiffened, and Dean worried he might have said something wrong, until he said, “Is there something you need, Mom?”

  Dean turned to see Mrs. Scott standing in the doorway looking contrite. “Sorry. I was just going to ask you if you wanted some coffee.”

  “We’ll be right out.”

  She gave them both an embarrassed smile and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “Welcome to high school,” Aiden muttered.

  “If we were still in high school,” Dean said, “she wouldn’t let you go home with me after your coffee, ’cause she knows damn well what I’m gonna do to you.”

  Aiden grinned. “Glad to hear you’ve still got some of that ‘bad boy’ left in you.”

  “Oh, yeah. I still got the leather jacket to prove it.”

  FRIDAY night Aiden found himself attending a practice session for the septet. He hadn’t definitely agreed to be a part of it, but that didn’t seem to matter. The other members of the band assumed he had, so… he was in the septet.

  It wasn’t so much that he minded helping them out, but… jazz really wasn’t his style. He couldn’t “swing.” He couldn’t even sway. If Aiden were forced to describe his playing style, it might be “stick up the butt”—his posture always erect, his eyes focused on the keyboard, fretting about hitting every note perfectly. There was expression in his performance, certainly, but it wasn’t the same type of expression one found in a jazz performance.

  Still, he could follow the sheet music Dean gave him, and play it well. There were places where he was expected to improvise, and those sent him into a cold sweat. Classical pianists, on the whole, seldom improvised. The best Aiden could manage was to listen to professional recordings Dean had of the songs, and play back some of the passages great jazz musicians had improvised—precisely as they’d performed the
m, or at least as close as he could manage. Dean thought this mimicry was terrific, or so he said, but it left Aiden feeling like a second-rate hack, a talentless lounge pianist providing dull background music nobody would bother to listen to.

  The first night, when Ben was practically dragged in by Lisa Porter, Dean told him, “All right, Ben. We got you a replacement bass. Aiden got you a replacement bass.”

  Ben grunted in acknowledgment. Then when Dean raised his eyebrows, he added gruffly, “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Aiden said.

  “Mention it,” Dean corrected. “Because, swear to God, Ben, if you trip over, sit on, or so much as scratch this very generous gift to you and the septet, I’ll make another one out of your rib cage and spine.”

  “Charming,” Sarah said wryly. Rick shook his head, but probably thought it best not to criticize Dean’s methods when he was on probation in the Cooper household himself.

  Ben’s eyes went a little wide as Dean handed the instrument to him. He took it gingerly, and Aiden feared he might drop it out of sheer nervousness. “Thank you,” he said more formally to Aiden.

  Aiden didn’t want to set Dean off again, so he merely smiled and nodded.

  The rehearsal went surprisingly well, considering Aiden’s unfamiliarity with the material and the fact that the other members of the septet hadn’t performed together in two years. Ben, it turned out, was a skillful performer, if not particularly inspired. He’d performed with a number of jazz bands over the past five decades. The others, including Dean, were strictly amateurs, but they were decent.

  But none of that was important. All that mattered was the way Dean grinned like an idiot when the rehearsal was over, hugging everybody—even Rick, who looked adorably flustered when Dean pulled him into the embrace.

  “Can we get together this weekend?” Dean asked everybody as they were preparing to leave.