And then there’s how I always see him watching me assist Lisa’s class. Not for the entire session, but at least once a class I feel those golden eyes on me and I pretend I am not affected at all by him watching me teach. When I do chance a look up, it’s always the same. A mixture of intrigue and appreciation. I hate that look.
Today, there is silence in the room next to mine. It’s odd because Asher should be having a class about now. I peek into the room and see it is, in fact, empty. On the white board there’s a note stating the lecture was moved to the first floor performance space.
I turn around and look back toward my office. The notebook with today’s rose is nestled sweetly inside. It’s a yellow rose with red tips. I walk back to the desk, grab the book and walk it out of the room.
My feet move down the hallway, taking me down the stairwell, two at a time, curious about what awaits me downstairs. My hair flips as I round the stair landing and go down another flight. I hear music pouring through the walls.
I’m not the only one interested in what is happening in the performance room. Almost everyone who works in the building or who attends a class tonight is making their way down as well. They must hear the music coming through the doors or word has spread throughout the building that something special is going on.
I pull the heavy door open and walk through it. My pace quickens and then slows as I approach the performance room. I make my way through the people, slipping inside. And I see something I’ve never seen before.
An orchestra. A real life orchestra is in our building. The room was built to host concerts by the students, the capacity maxing out at two hundred and fifty. The orchestra on the stage is easily made up of fifty people, many performing from the rows as there’s not enough room on the stage.
The first violin section is in the walkway to the left of the stage, the cellos are on the right. The second violins and the violas are on the floor in the front. In the back of the stage are the harp, horns, percussion, trumpets, and basses set from left to right. In front of them are the clarinets, flutes, bassoons, and oboes.
The people playing the soft chords aren’t students. They’re adults. Classically trained adults. This is when it hits me. He brought the New York Philharmonic with him.
They’re playing a soft hum of a tune, a prelude if you will. I’m able to make my way to the front of the room, taking in the sight before me.
In the center of the stage is a black grand piano similar to the one I played on the yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean. The one I was playing when the most beautiful man walked in and caught me in my most vulnerable state.
And that beautiful man is on the stage, seated at the piano in the middle of a real life orchestra about to play a song . . . for me.
His fingers start to play the notes and the string section around him picks up as well, causing my soul to soar before they all quiet down to a low hum as Asher continues to play.
I open the notebook and look down at the words he has written.
All around me, people are mesmerized not just by the orchestra and the song they are playing, but by the man in the center. The man in the center who is staring at no one else but me. Honey wheat eyes and staring down at me, his fingers playing the chords from memory.
My stomach drops and my breaths become deep to still my nerves. With every glide across the ivory keys and pump of the pedal, I feel my resolve for Asher wavering. I wanted him to give and for two weeks he has been giving me words and meaning. And today he is giving me that honey-wheat soulful gaze I once fell in love with—and it is destroying me. I stare down at the words on the pages.
This is a song about someone leaving. It can’t be to me, because I never left him. To the contrary. He left me. This song isn’t about me.
It’s about him.
Scanning the page, I run my fingers over the words, over the smoothness of the page. There is no song title. There is no author. It’s a song I’ve never heard of before yet I feel like I know it by heart.
He said I should be taking notes and I am. But what if I’m taking the wrong notes? Songs can be interpreted in so many ways. What if I’m reading this all wrong?
When the song is over, the crowd erupts in applause. People shout admiration for Asher’s playing and some of the students ask him to play something else. He obliges and asks them if they have any requests.
I take this as my cue to leave and let him wow his audience. I suppose that really was what this was all about. A lesson for the students.
I turn around and make my way through the crowd that has subsided. I walk through the lobby and am on my way back up the stairs when the stairwell door opens and Asher calls my name.
“Emma.”
I stop and turn around, looking at the man who went from ruining me to asking me to save him to making me want to fall in love with him. I know I should say something about the performance but I don’t know what to say. Instead I clutch the notebook to my side and stare at him, giving him the control because right now, I don’t know what I should do.
“I never got a chance to ask you. What happened to the shoes?”
I stare at him for a second before realizing he’s talking about the bouquet of Top-Siders he bought me. I consider lying, more for the fact I don’t want to appear crazy, then decide against it. “I burned them.”
Asher tilts his head, his face contorted as he tries to decide if I’m lying.
I answer him matter-of-factly. “Leah and I had a bonfire when we got back to Ohio. We doused them in limoncello and lit them up.”
His lips curl up on both sides as he shakes his head. “Well, that seems like a perfectly good waste of limoncello.”
I laugh at his response and let my shoulders release the tension I was carrying so tightly. I’m a wreck. He ruined me. But by God he owns me.
“I’m getting marrriieeedddd!”
Leah squeals from her place on a white bed in the middle of a Manhattan male strip club that caters to celebrations just like this. Instead of tables, there are several white beds big enough for ten girls to sit in and enjoy the show on display.
After the last few weeks—hell, the last few months—I’ve been having, Leah’s bachelorette party is a welcome reprieve.
“Your sister is crazy!” Crystal screams in my ear over the loud music. A man wearing a piece of dental floss and what can only be described as a banana hammock has Leah’s friend Suzanne in the air, wrapped around his waist as he simulates thrusting into her. Leah is throwing money at the stripper to give all her friends a lap dance.
It’s all in good fun. Leah is fully clothed in jeans and a silky halter-top. She has on her favorite black Stetson with a veil we taped to the inside. She wanted a Magic Mike–themed bachelorette party so Crystal and Lisa helped me orchestrate tonight’s event.
And from the looks of it, Leah approves.
Despite her outward persona, Leah likes to look but she’d never touch. She says Adam is enough for her. Instead, she’ll spend a week’s salary making sure each of her friends – Jessica, Suzanne and Kimberly - who traveled with her from Cedar Ridge has the time of her life.
“She’s a class act, that one,” I say to Crystal, then back up when I see the naked man is heading my way.
I place my hands up in the air and push the man away from me. “Oh no. No way, no way, no way!” My efforts are in vain as Leah and her friends Suzanne, Kimberly, and Jessica push the stripper toward me.
“Oh, come on, do it for your sister!” Crystal places her hand on my back and pushes me forward into the arms of a very oily, very sweaty man. He is attractive—dark hair and dark eyes. He looks like Eric Bana. Earlier he was dressed in a doctor’s costume and did a performance on stage where he cured one of the bachelorettes by stripping and then dry humping her up and down the stage.
I look over to Lisa for help but she just shakes her head from the corner.
The doctor-slash-stripper has his hands around my waist and I squeal when he slides t
hem around to grab my ass lifting me up so my legs dangle as he whirls me around and slams me onto the bed Leah and her friends are sitting on.
“I’m going to kill you!” I say, with a laugh, when I catch Leah’s eye.
She howls and waves her hands in the air. “Enjoy it Emma!”
I start to smile and laugh at her happiness when the stripper, who was standing on the ground in front of me, leaps from the floor, up in the air and lands on the bed with his knees on each side of my waist and he is straddling me.
Oh, dear God. I hope he doesn’t . . .
Yeah, he is.
The stripper dances and moves up my body, gyrating his pelvis. I raise my hands to cover my face, blocking out the sight of what he’s doing and the awful smell of stale oil and stinky boy that he is dripping all over me.
The girls love every minute of it. Lisa is the only one who looks slightly uncomfortable for my sake. I’m starting to question my judgment of asking my work friends to come out.
I turn my head to the side to avoid the banana hammock from coming anywhere near my face. The stripper sits straight up and I am instantly relieved, thinking the show is over, when he does a mock push-up over my body and then pretends he is penetrating me.
“Okay, that’s enough!”
I push my hand out and shove him away. Rising from the bed, I push past him, ignoring his fake hurt look—puppy-dog eyes, a stuck-out lower lip, and hands over his heart. When Leah pushes a twenty into his G-string, all is forgotten and he moves on to his next victim.
“You’re a good sport.” Lisa pats me on the back and hands me a drink. It’s pink, girly and just what I need.
“Yeah, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Crystal asks, helping me readjust my halter-top. “Aren’t you glad I told you to wear pants!”
I take a sip of my Cosmo and release the straw. “Thank God. I would have died if he did that while I was wearing a skirt!”
“Now that you got that over with, let’s dance!” Crystal beams and the three of us dance to the Calvin Harris song playing. It’s nice having Crystal and Lisa here. Turns out they were in need of a girl’s night.
Looks like I did too.
My life was always about music and perfecting my craft. I did go to a few keggers and house parties in high school. But not all the time. More often than not, I had a competition or recital to go to. Then in college I met Parker, who shared my passion. Instead of getting rip-roaring drunk, we went to dinner, art galleries, and the theater. My time in Pittsburgh was about culture. It was what Parker and I wanted to do.
I can’t say I never had fun. When I was back home, I was at the bar with Leah. Before she opened McConaughey’s, she worked there as a bartender when it went by another name. Amstel Light was my drink of choice and I sang along to the silly karaoke tunes.
My Pittsburgh life and my Cedar Ridge life were complete opposites. When I was home I could let go. Leah and Luke were always getting me to do crazy stuff with them. But when I went back to Pittsburgh, I morphed back into the polished violist. It seems the longer I stayed in Pittsburgh, the more I lost the fun me.
My arms rise above my head as I dance, getting a little closer to Crystal and moving to the rhythm of the music. The beat is traveling from my fingertips down through my hips and into my toes. When you dance, you not only hear the music but you feel it. Maybe it’s the pink elixir working through me but I am feeling it—and it feels great.
The other girls, including Leah, join Crystal, Lisa, and me on the dance floor and the seven of us dance, forming a circle. We dance for a few more songs, twirling each other, some girls rubbing up against another in an attempt to be sexy and others just dance and enjoy the company. Exhausted, we all take a spot on the bed.
“This is the best night, ever!” Leah says, swaying slightly with her words. She has easily drunk double the amount I have. She turns to Crystal, her finger losing traction in the air, “You are awesome! I’m so glad Emma found you!”
Crystal puts her arm around me, “I love Emma. She’s amazing!”
“That,” Leah says with a hiccup, “is very true. My sister is amazing!” Her words rise in a high pitch at the word amazing.
Lisa and I exchange a look at my sister’s obvious intoxication. She’s not in the danger zone, just yet. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get too smashed. Right now, she’s giddy drunk.
“What is it like living in Manhattan? Is it like Sex and the City?” Jessica asks.
“Yeah, do you, like, hook up with guys all the time?” Kimberly directs her question to Crystal and me. She learned earlier that Lisa is married.
Crystal and I both scrunch our noses at her question. “No.”
“Emma does not do one-night stands. She’s a good girl,” Leah says, leaning to the side before catching her weight and righting herself.
I take a big sip of my drink, trying not to think about the last time I was with a man.
“Except for the asshole,” Leah adds and I nearly spit my drink out.
“Leah.” My tone is reprimanding. When I told her Crystal and Lisa were coming tonight I asked her not to mention Asher. No one at the school has any idea what happened this summer. Perhaps Leah is tipsier than I thought. I’m giving her a serious scowl, telepathically reminding her of our conversation.
“What asshole?” Lisa’s interest is piqued.
Shit.
“No one.” I shoot the Ohio girls a similar look to the one I am giving Leah, but no one seems to be getting the hint.
Suzanne leans forward, not noticing that her necklace I dangling into her drink. “The one who spent their entire trip pretending to be a ship captain and bedded her in every port along the Amalfi coast.”
Huh?
“That’s not exactly what happened—”
“Oh, are you talking about the guy from Italy?” Kimberly joins in as I offer Leah a death stare. “Emma, you are so lucky he didn’t turn out to be some crazy person and dump you in the ocean.”
“Could you please not—”
“Or given you a disease,” Suzanne adds. “You know how those sailors are.”
I throw my head into my palm at the realization my blabbermouth sister told all of Cedar Ridge about my Italian rendezvous. At least they don’t have their facts straight.
“Are you kidding me? I saw his photo. I would have fucked him up and down the coast and then some. Use me, please, Mr. Asher!” No sooner are the words out of Jessica’s mouth than my head pops up, my eyes dart out of my head, and my stomach drops so low I may never be able to retrieve it.
“Asher?” Crystal asks and Lisa immediately follows with a similar look of confusion.
My head slowly rotates toward the girls and I’m met with looks of exasperation. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Leah raises her hand. At first, I think she’s about to vomit and I’m quickly realizing she is . . . with words. “I should have known better when I saw him going at it. It was so damn hot. I was like, damn, there’s a man who knows how to work a woman. That’s what my sister needs!” Leah says, pointing her finger out into the open air like she’s making a monumental statement.
I have no idea what she is talking about. But Leah continues her tirade. “He had a body like Abercrombie but, like, way nicer. He was Kama Sutra all over that boat.”
Her words are sloppy but I’ve heard her say them before. She told me this about someone once. My body goes rigid as I think about what Leah is saying.
Or is it what she’s not saying that has me worried?
When we were in Italy, we saw a man and a woman having sex on Asher’s boat. Leah watched them long after I went to sleep. When I thought the boat was Devon’s, I assumed he was also the man we saw having sex on the boat. Leah said it wasn’t.
“Are you saying the man you saw having sex on the yacht, the day we arrived in Italy—Leah, did you know that was Asher?” I ask, even though I should be shutting this conversation down. My words are very controlled for being a m
ix of nerves and hurt.
“Of course not, of course not.” Leah waves me off. “Neither of us knew who he was. We’d never heard of him.”
I sink back into my seat, relieved my sister hadn’t handed me over willingly to someone she knew was lying.
“But when I saw him in person, I knew the guy giving us a tour was the same one giving some bow-chica-wow-wow,” Leah says with a thrusting motion, then continues, with the finger pointing in the air like she’s making a declaration. “And I said to myself, ‘Self, there is a hot as hell man here who only has eyes for your sister. And she’s been so sad. She needs something to help her forget how sad she is. Even if it’s just a flirt or maybe a little something else . . . she needs to feel beautiful. And this guy . . . this guy is going to do it for her.’ But did he fix her? Noooooo. He used her. And, therefore, he will forever be known as the Asshole.” Leah falls back into her cushion.
The Ohio girls are all shaking their heads, pissed for me that I was used. It’s not until Kimberly looks at me with pity in her eyes that I nearly lose it.
“You’re telling me that instead of warning me that he could be a player, you made it so I was trapped with him?”
“Uh-huh,” Leah says, her eyes starting to slope down a bit.
“And when he asked me on a date, you didn’t think it was important to tell me about the connection? You didn’t think I might get used or, more importantly, get my heart broken?”
“Emm-hmmm” is all Leah can muster.
Now I understand why Leah was so upset when we learned who Asher really was. She wasn’t upset for me. She was upset at herself.
I don’t know if I actually believe what is happening right now. I have a right to be royally pissed, right? I’m not overreacting. Am I?
I turn to my New York girls and assess their reactions. Lisa looks like she’s in shock, and Crystal is stoic when she says, “I think it’s time we put your sister to bed.”
Crystal helps me wrangle Leah and her friends into two cabs. Since we seem to be the most sober and know our way around town, we split up. I hail a cab with Leah and Jessica. Crystal hops in another with Kimberly and Suzanne. Lisa has to get home so she says good-bye and whispers in my ear she has no desire to share any of my story with anyone. She never cared much for Alexander Asher anyway, even if he did create the school she works at.
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