My voice evaporated. His lips were touching my shoulder. His kiss drew a soft line up my throat and then down again, while his hands found their way under my shirt and around my waist, urging me gently back against him.
I started to reach for one of the neatly written composition pages pinned on the wall, like we were going to keep working—then I gave up and pressed my hand to the rough stucco wall, bracing myself against Oscar as my eyes shut.
“Do you know how much I’m going to miss you?” His voice was so low it made me shiver.
“I know,” I whispered back. “I . . .”
My thoughts gave out. I slid slowly around so I could kiss him, letting my limbs loosen while he held me up, slippery skin and all. I felt his heart beating through his shirt, multitudes upon multitudes shimmering beneath the surface. I pressed my hand there, splaying my fingers, then balling them all into a fist. He drew a sharp breath, leaning back to look at me as if he were about to burst into laughter.
“I love you, Ruby, you know that, right? I’m just . . . gone.”
He wavered, delirious, and I felt dizzy too, from the heat, from hearing those words, from all of this, my skin, my veins, everything crackling inside of me so quickly I felt sure I might fly apart.
Say it, Ruby. Just say it!
“Me too,” I said. Coward.
I stood on my tiptoes to pull him even closer and he glanced at the bed.
“Are you . . . ?” I asked, nervous.
“I am,” he answered. “Ready. So ready. If you are, I’m—”
“Yes.”
A smile flickered over his face, quick as a spark. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I said again, beaming as he gathered me up and walked me to the bed.
Two sweeps of his arm and the pages littering his duvet went flying like frightened pigeons. I took the space they vacated but still felt them fluttering until beautiful Oscar, my Oscar, was above me and everything was us.
And then our world was kissing and hands roving and undressing and sharp need, then reaching for protection and scrambling to open it and awkward giggles, then kissing again while the taste of him changed, undressing more and seeing how we fit, the strangeness of it, the pain, then breathing together, moving together, this way, a different way, ridiculous and serious and better and not quite and perfect and us.
Everything was us and us and us.
33.
the silence here was the loudest thing I’d ever heard—frogs, crickets, palm fronds, dragonflies, a South Carolina audio sampler. Six days in and my mind had gone drowsy, blurred at the borders, body warm to my bones and browner on the outside.
Nothing much was going on, and that was the point. Nothing to grapple with, agonize over, decide about. A break from drama . . . and it was surprisingly stressful.
Peace and quiet had a funny way of putting me on edge, waiting for an explosion to shatter it.
For now, Gramps’s classic country station played faintly from the porch as I watched the tidal river flow past the edge of the long dock. As Dad had suggested, I was out here dangling my feet. I was also checking my phone every twenty-five seconds to see whether any new texts had come in.
One bar turned to no service. Again.
I shoved my phone behind me, replacing it with Something Sweet, the latest in the pile of paperbacks I’d foraged from Grandma Jean’s shelves. After a few days of reading, I’d found myself confusing my actual setting with the fictional ones I was immersed in, wondering whether I was Ruby Chertok or this mom in her mid-thirties reeling from a divorce while trying to get her bakery off the ground.
Was this how real people lived? In small towns and beachfront villages, cities in decline, sprawling suburbs, in jobs that you never thought about until that job was yours. I’d patronized L’Orangerie nearly every week for the past five years, and never had it occurred to me in any active way that “baker” was a job that I could train for and get. There were thousands of things I could do—and it wouldn’t even need to define me. I could show up, get paid, fall in love, have a family . . .
My heart started thudding in answer to that thought, then aching, then bursting apart, dawn-of-the-universe hot. I let the book fall shut in my lap.
Oscar had seen me to the security cut-off.
“Keep your phone on you,” he’d said. “I’m going to be stream-of-consciousness texting.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll be here the day you get back.”
I showed the TSA agent my ticket and she waved me into the line.
“With balloons!” Oscar shouted, side-skipping to follow me down the line. “And a marching band!”
My grin had gone manic with the realization that he might actually do this. Then I saw his face through the moving passengers. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Ruby,” he called out.
I paused, waiting. The businessman behind me looked annoyed, but I didn’t care. My eyes locked on Oscar’s.
Oscar opened his mouth, closed it, blurted, “I’ll see you soon,” then walked away slumping, shaking his head like he was furious with himself.
“I’ll see you soon too.”
I hadn’t realized even then how endlessly distant that soon would feel. How raw and starving my body would feel this far away from him. How horrible the phone reception would be just fifteen miles outside Charleston.
And despite all that, how good it would feel to be out of the snow globe.
So now, day six, vacation. Summer heat, thicker and hazier than New York’s by a factor of ten. Tomatoes from the garden, fish from the river, Gramps trying to “fatten me up.” We talked about college sports more than music, and it was obviously what I needed—except for this pain, the one I was feeling right now. I would breathe, it would go away. I would think of Oscar and it would get worse and better at the same time, like the relief I felt as a little kid, pushing a loose tooth back into the ache.
Our calls were making it worse. We talked on the landline every night, after my grandparents went to bed, and there was no discernable longing in his voice. New York was great, the symphony was shaping up, rehearsals were amazing, he didn’t say I miss you, didn’t attempt I love you, I had to maintain rapid-fire subject changes to keep him from rushing me off the phone, and—
Eight more days. I gazed at the light on the river, shifting endlessly. Peace. Space. Dad pacified, Oscar’s symphony complete, and I’ll be . . . I’ll . . .
I’ll just be.
I nodded. Then I headed back to the house, feeling either completely enlightened or about to faint from heat stroke.
“Your dad’s on TV!” Grandma Jean called down to me as I was rounding the pool. “You’re probably used to it, but come up if you want to see!”
I squinted up at the porch. Dad didn’t have a premiere to promote. He used to host these Welcome to the Symphony network specials, but those stopped airing before I was born.
Then it hit me.
I sprinted into the living room and grinned at the non-Dad close-up on the mounted screen. Oscar. My Oscar. He looked close enough to touch.
“It’s a dream come true,” he was saying, his voice strangely rote.
Grandma Jean pointed past me. “Is that the boy who’s been staying with y’all?”
“Oscar Bell, yeah,” I answered, excitement tugging me onto my tiptoes. “Can you rewind it? Or—”
“I think so. Let me . . .” She stared at the remote.
By the sound of it, Dad had only referred to him in oblique terms—not surprising, given that he’d sent me here to protect Oscar and his delicate creative process from the perils of my feminine allure.
But I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t confessed what he was to me. Maybe because thinking about him hurt enough. Talking about him might have ripped me apart entirely.
“There!” Grandma Jean sat as a c
ommercial ended and the clip began.
It was ATV’s morning news program, a panel of perky hosts sitting around a coffee table with Shawna Wells, who looked like she’d descended from Olympus and didn’t want to stay long.
“I recently had the opportunity to meet a remarkable young man who could very well revolutionize the classical music world,” Shawna started. “He’s the highlight of Lincoln Center’s summer programming and—get this—he’s only seventeen.”
The anchors glanced at each other with a chorus of murmurs, and I let out a squeal, gripping the edge of the sofa to keep from floating off the ground.
The story began with shots of Lincoln Center, then Dad—hi Dad!—strolling to the Amberley side, waving to passersby, while Shawna talked about how white and Asian the classical music world had remained in the past century. A crash of music and . . .
Oscar! In rehearsal! Not his music, a Chevalier de Saint-Georges concerto, which was so perfect and . . .
I slumped into a crouch beside the sofa. Even at the podium, he was wearing that interview outfit—the hoodie and jeans and basketball shoes. He wasn’t conducting with the same gusto as I was used to seeing. But he was magnificent.
Then the interview.
Shawna, smiling indulgently, with more than a glint of let’s be real in her eyes: “How did a kid like you get into classical music?”
My smile fell away as I watched Oscar fighting to hold on to his.
“I always loved it,” he said. “From birth, pretty much . . .”
Then his voice was drowned out by a well-known rap track, face replaced by a POV shot of a car driving through an urban downtown area, Shawna talking about how he’d grown up in DC and his mother had saved up to send him to an elite private school for a chance at—there it was again—a better life.
His father wasn’t mentioned. Etta at Duke, Bri, who wrote fan-fic. Anyone watching would think he was raised by a low-income single mother in the middle of the projects. It made for a wonderful story.
“This isn’t . . . true,” I sputtered. “None of this is true.”
“What’s not true, honey?” Grandma asked.
I bit my thumbnail, waiting for another shot of Oscar. It came in the form of that YouTube video, with a graphic of the views counter going up and up, framed by a blurry Beyoncé video and a baby trying to juggle Cheerios.
Then back to Oscar, thank God. He was smiling for real now.
“This music,” he said, leaning on his knees. “It’s at the heart of humanity. It burns, it tells the truth. I wish more people had the opportunity to hear it the way I do.”
“And the venerated Amberley School of Music is helping to make that wish come true,” went Shawna’s voiceover, cutting to a shot of Nora and Bill sitting with Oscar in Nora’s pastel office.
“Diversity is a huge push for us here at Amberley.” Bill’s usual android expression was replaced with a politician’s thoughtful squint. “We want our student body to reflect our community. And we want the music of the future to breathe the air of this generation—what they experience out there on the streets.”
On the streets? What was he even talking about?
“Our mission moving forward is singular—a diverse student body,” Nora chimed in, patting Oscar’s hand. I knew that gesture well. “But I want to tell you . . . Oscar is not just the vanguard of that, he is a star in his own right.”
I stood again to turn in a slow, stunned circle, too angry to speak. Of course Oscar Fucking Bell is a star in his own right. Nobody would have thought otherwise if you hadn’t said that! What was the matter with her?
I remembered suddenly that little snippet of conversation I’d overheard through the vents, her sister—Don’t let your moment get swallowed up by his moment.
They cut to the most awkward campus tour imaginable—Dad and Bill poking their heads into, one: a rehearsal room where what might have been the summer program’s sole Latina student was practicing the French horn, two: a voice class led by a famous black coloratura I seriously doubted had time to teach, and three: a quartet comprised of two South Asians and two white kids with olive complexions performing a piece that I knew for a fact they’d swapped the wrong instruments in for, just to throw these people together for the photo op.
The piece ended with a too-quick shot of Oscar conducting again, then a link to the school’s fundraising page. I stood, numb, watching the morning news anchors transition to a segment about India-inspired cocktails.
“I’m going to donate,” Grandma Jean said, rewinding to the screen with the fundraising info. “I think it’s wonderful what they’re doing there.”
I watched her, reeling, as she jogged past me to her computer. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Helping those kids. Getting them off the streets and into a better life.”
I bit back a scream. “You really don’t need to donate, Grandma.”
“I’d like to!” She was already typing.
And the dots connected themselves. The costume Oscar had had to wear. The push to make his premiere a fundraiser. The “new agenda” for the school. This was about making the river flow.
The world went white as if from the burst of a flashbulb. Even that visit from Nora, that stack of college brochures, getting me into the symphony choir—it was all designed to keep Oscar on track, wasn’t it? He was their cash cow. And now he knew.
I tried Oscar on the kitchen landline, but it only rang once before going to voicemail. I put the cordless phone on the counter. Then I picked it up and dialed again, heading out to the porch, as if that might improve my luck.
It did. He picked up this time. “Hey gorgeous, how’s it going? Are you tan yet?”
“Hi, um, sort of. You’ll see. Listen—I just caught your interview. Have you seen it?” I bit my lip, heart pounding, waiting for his reaction.
“I have.”
He fell silent. I gripped the porch swing chain.
“Sorry, crossing the street. Yeah, it was pretty dope! Good exposure, right?”
I let out a relieved sigh. He sounded happy. But the slant of that interview, the way they’d packaged him—was it my place to even bring it up?
“Listen, I’m heading into rehearsal . . .” His voice got muffled. “Yo Sammy . . . mfff . . .” He laughed, so he must have been making a joke with someone he was passing. “I might not be able to talk tonight, so could we pick this up tomorrow? Hope you’re having a great time.”
“I miss you,” I said, my voice raw.
“Yeah.” I could hear him drawing a long breath. “You too. I’ll see you.”
And click.
He was fine. It should have been a relief. I should have been celebrating with a lemonade already, instead of clinging to the back of the swing, my eyes shifting between Gramps weeding in the garden and the gray crosshatch mesh of the porch screen penning me in.
That boy in the interview wasn’t Oscar. Neither was the boy on the phone.
One more week.
34.
poolside. Home stretch. Three days left. I could do this. I was on paperback number five, our environmentalist heroine finally having sex with the developer she’d sparred with for most of the book—but my mind kept drifting to another bedroom, my mouth on Oscar’s shoulder, his hands in my hair . . .
Holy hell, it was hot out here. Even a splash in the pool didn’t help. I wrapped a towel under my armpits and started up to the porch to see if there was sweet tea in the fridge.
He’s busy. I’ve left him two voicemails, that’s plenty. He’ll call me back.
He will.
Peace. Quiet. Find your Zen, dammit.
Grandma Jean was in the sitting room, talking to someone in a clipped tone. I sprinted for the kitchen before I could be spotted half-dressed. Halfway into the fridge, reaching for the plastic pitcher, I heard the visitor
answer—and the sound of her voice, plummy, low, sent me staggering into the kitchen island.
Oh my God, how—?
I ran so fast, my towel dropped, tangling around my ankles, discarded entirely by the time I reached the sitting room.
Mom rose from the sofa with a delighted laugh. “Look at you! You’re a Sports Illustrated cover!”
I stood mannequin-still as she reached out to cradle my damp hair in her palms. Then she drew me in for a hug and I grinned so wide it hurt. She was wearing that jasmine perfume she liked. She was soft and warm—the exact temperature of a mother.
“Surprise,” she laughed.
I’d missed her. Oh God, I’d missed her.
I inched back. “I don’t want to get you wet.”
“I’m sweltering, cool me off.” She pulled away, glanced at her outfit, then back at me, sighing happily. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”
“The two of you standing next to each other,” Grandma Jean said, shaking her head. “It’s uncanny.”
Mom smiled softly. “She’s more grown-up than I was at that age.”
I felt a swell of pride, but Grandma Jean looked strangely pained. “I don’t know about—”
The front door opened and I turned to see a man coming through, lugging bags. He was unfamiliar but recognizable, like I’d seen him in pictures before. I spotted a cello case already sitting beside the umbrella stand.
Is that . . . ? I thought as Mom said, “Ruby, this is Victor Durant, the cellist.”
“Wow. Hi.” I extended a hand to shake, then laughed as Grandma wrapped my towel back around me, tucking it in at the edge and pulling it flat.
“Pleasure to finally meet you, Ruby,” Victor said, his voice lightly accented.
Finally?
Mom swiveled to wrap an arm around his waist. My body went very still, numb with understanding.
She patted his butt, pointed him up the stairs. “We’re on the left.”
Before I could ask any questions, Mom turned and started twirling my hair, tucking it behind one ear. “I swear, you’ve grown an inch since I last saw you.”
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