by Mia Miller
But I’d been studying Liszt’s rendition of the famous Italian song religiously, with the help of my music teachers and only at school for the better part of the last four years. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready. The song was a treacherous lover. It took you from light into darkness with a hypnotizing grace; it sounded plain, but it took everything to offer that plainness with clarity without stumbling.
I went through the introductory waltz again, glancing at her time and time again from the corner of my eye.
When I was younger, she used to smile. In fact, the only times I remembered her smiling was while she taught me. It made our lessons all the more precious. With each of our house moves, with each of my dad’s deployments, her smile had grown more and more faint. She wasn’t smiling then either, but at least her eyes were trained on something other than emptiness, watching my fingers for accuracy.
“Stop. This trill needs more speed,” she told me in her soft voice, her fingers caressing the keys, showing me how.
We played it together until our hands went numb.
“Excellent, baby. I’m proud of you,” she said as she got up, and it was then that I heard the breathing of someone else in the room. Oswald was watching us from the doorway, arms crossed at his chest. He lifted his chin to salute us.
“Have you eaten, Mom?” he asked, and she shook her head. She moved slowly, as if she were floating on clouds, and went between the two of us to place small kisses on our cheeks.
“Hi, baby,” she told Oswald. “No, I’m too tired. I will eat after I sleep for a while.”
“Wait, I can make you something really quick,” Os said, but she was already almost back to her bedroom door, waving a dismissing ‘no’ behind her.
“Congrats on your song, you selfish prick,” Os gritted in my direction.
“What’s your problem, man?”
“My problem is you never help her eat when I’m not around, and your songs take priority,” he shot back and stalked toward the kitchen.
“My songs make her happy,” I told him, going after him and trying to keep it down. “Maybe, if you were ever at home during the day, you’d have time to talk to her about food more often.”
I ignored his scoff. “But no, it’s more important to be out there at target practice, making yourself into the image of a guy who isn’t even around.”
“Dad does his best, Oscar, stop being a mule about it.”
“Hey! I do my best too. You’re almost sixteen, what will she do when you go off to the academy and never sees you anymore? Or is this what you’re training her to do, get used to your absence? That’s part of the problem, smartass.”
“Get off your high horse, man. Not like she’ll see you much when you go off to Julliard.”
“I’m going to NYU,” I told him that new information, feeling instant guilt at the surprised look on his face.
“Well, good riddance.” He let the juice glass he’d been drinking from go into the sink with a clang. “It wouldn’t harm your fingers to do the dishes from time to time, you know,” he spat at me. “Forget it, I’ll do them when I’m back from my run.”
“I just forgot, Os,” I grumbled and grabbed the dishrag.
“You know . . .”
I looked at his back and his face in the profile. He was only half turned toward me.
“It’s a good thing you can sing so well without your eyes, Oscar. Because you’re a blind fool.”
Chapter Fifteen
Delia
Now
Jay Street hosted mainly Interactive Media studies and the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music where Corb and Enzo went. Besides the classrooms, there were mini studios to rent by the hour at special rates for students, and it was always used at maximum capacity. Having a private, soundproof room to practice music in was heaven on a stick for all music majors. I went to the room Oscar had asked me to meet him in and buzzed the small intercom button by the door. He unlocked it almost immediately.
“Thanks for coming, Dellie,” he said, pulling me inside and locking the door again.
He looked like he wanted to kiss me but he was afraid of me at the same time. We hadn’t seen each other in three days and I longed to touch him. I couldn’t explain why these family matters got to me the way they did. It no longer was about the omission of truth about his twin. A feeling that he didn’t want to let me in gnawed at me and ate at my insides, making everything in its wake moot.
“What’s the occasion, Red?”
“For a confession and for an audition.”
I crossed my arms and his eyes fluttered momentarily to my chest. I was nervous all of a “Confession first,” he said, and sat me down on the only chair available, seating himself in front of the piano keyboard. “I read all of your letters last night”
He stopped and searched my face for my reaction, and I shrugged and smiled at the same time.
“I’m not good at delivering meaningful information, am I?” he joked.
“Yeah, no,” I agreed with him, and a small giggle erupted from my chest.
“Maybe I’m better at this,” he said, poising his fingers on the keyboard, but his eyes on me, pleading.
“Okay,” I whispered. God, I hated seeing him so sad.
His fingers fluttered over the notes. Then his hands started banging the melody, in perfect harmony with one another, louder, and louder, then entering a crazy rhythm. His fingers flew around as if they had a mind of their own and his eyelids fell to half-mast. I knew what the song was. It was one of the few classics I could recognize.
I waited in silent admiration until he finished.
“La Campanella,” he explained as the last note faded.
“I know,” I whispered.
“I did learn it, after all. It was one of your questions. Why do you draw, Dellie?”
“To get all of the scenes I keep picturing out of my head . . .”
“To exorcise yourself.”
“Sort of,” I acquiesced, thinking back to Anton’s pleasure at seeing my sky covered in yellow eyes.
He nodded, turning his attention back to the keyboard and stroking them in a seemingly careless caress. The sound brought my whole body to an edge though. He hit low notes, over and over and over again, enshrouding us with hopelessness. He ended on a high note, like a question mark hanging in the air, the very definition of our couple. Like the classical song he’d just tackled, this tune had no words attached to it, but Oscar’s micro expressions told me everything I needed to know.
“What is that?” I asked, when his song quieted.
“It’s something new that I’m working on,” he answered, his fingers wrapping around my wrist. I suddenly felt myself longing to having those fingers drumming the same melody against my skin. “It’s you. It’s us.” Oscar’s voice made my eyes move back from our united hands to his face. “It’s what you inspire in me. My soul speaks with more ease through sound than anything else. But I will try to answer all of your questions, Dellie. Will you let me? Will you give me the time?”
Instead of a verbal answer, I got up and met him at the piano. He didn’t move, watching me with a weary look on his face. When we were just one breath away from one another, he spread his long legs, making room between his chair and the piano, and hugged my waist.
“Of course, silly,” I told him, and he exhaled a breath I hadn’t known he had been holding. I leaned to kiss him, and our tongues danced with the same intensity and playfulness of the song that had just filled the room. The position was uncomfortable, but he got up and took me with him, placing me gently on top of the keyboard with a cling. His fingers splayed on the small of my back, and I moaned. I distinctly remembered having seen the scene in Pretty Woman, but there was a considerable difference between Julia and me, and I stopped us for a heartbeat, pushing him a little backward until he fell on his stool. His eyes fell on my thighs, and I wondered if he thought they were too wide against the black and white of the keyboard.
“I love your skirts,” he told me simply.
I looked down and saw my skirt had ridden up high enough for him to see my pale skin above the nylons. His hungry eyes traveled along the visible sliver of skin, and his thumbs followed the trail soon after, pushing my legs apart. I let him, hissing a little at how he always turned me into putty.
“I love your skin, so creamy, so soft,” he told me with more inflection in his voice this time. His hands moved higher, taking my skirt along with them as if he were trying to distract me from the fact that he’d used the word love twice in this conversation.
It was working. He looked into my eyes as focused as he usually watched his score sheets. I realized he’d used the word ‘love’ in this conversation two times already, just as his fingers brushed against my damp panties. Traitorous body, I thought, on a gasp.
“I love that, too. All these little sounds of yours make me hard. Your little sobs and suspirations. I want to record your moans and use them as background to a song about us.” He was talking, tracing small circles above the material. “Fuck, you’re so wet,” he murmured in that guttural tone that told me he was a goner, filling me with incredible giddiness.
“I don’t know, Oscar,” I said, with great reluctance, taking hold of his fingers and stopping their games. He complied and just watched me. I got up, suddenly feeling like I needed air. The taupe panel-coated walls of the room looked suddenly too close together.
“I don’t like secrets.” I walked to the door, but didn’t open it. I didn’t want to leave him there. I didn’t like our backs-and-forth. My gaze lifted toward the ceiling. That was what I was lacking last night. That was what I needed. Stop the push and pull and just get a sense of direction.
I felt, rather than heard Oscar at my back. His hard, slender body came aligned with my own.
“I didn’t like keeping the secrets.”
“I’m not convinced.” I bit my lip when he placed his hands around my waist, squeezing me into him.
I pushed my ass hard into his groin, feeling him already hard and heated.
“Naughty,” he whispered in my ear, and I heard him through a haze of emotions. I was still upset with him, but I wanted him so badly I felt my legs shake.
For a moment, I thought the lack of visual contact would make this into an empty type of contact, but then his fingers wrapped around my neck, climbing up my chin, clasping me delicately yet firmly and shifting my face to his for a kiss.
“Don’t go.”
His hands were worshiping my body as they slid from my breast to my ribs and over the swell of my hips and back up. They cupped my breasts, and my responding moan came out more like a sob.
“I won’t.”
I pressed my forehead against the door just as his head bent onto the nape of my neck and I could feel his erratic breath dancing on my skin. His knees touched the back of my legs, spreading them apart, and had it not been for his hold on me, I might have collapsed in anticipation. When he placed small kisses on my shoulder and then surprised me with a hungered bite, I had to brace my hands against the door to steady myself.
“I’m sorry about not telling you, Dellie.” His hands roamed to the front of my thighs, fingers spread wide, whispering their secret routes and taunting me.
“No more secrets?”
“No more secrets.” Then his tongue flicked against my earlobe, sending streams of current down my spine. My heart slammed against my rib cage when he pushed the fabric of my panties aside with deft fingers. His fingertips came away wet and traced circles on my heated center, tormenting me. He heaved a sigh.
“You’re so wet.” His fingers sank back into me as he pressed his hard length against my ass. I could swear I felt his dick pulsing through his pants, harder than a rock. I wanted him to possess me; instead, he dropped to his knees behind me. With his hands firm against my buttocks, his tongue and teeth took turns on the skin of my thighs. He made me spread wider, his fingers burning on my body, accepting my body, melting every little piece of me that they touched. I didn’t question the shape of my legs, when he knelt between them like a subject in front of his goddess, devouring me like a man dying of hunger. I didn’t wonder if my ass was too big when his groan of approval filled the room.
I had never felt sexier.
I had never felt more wanted, and my pussy swelled with a need I couldn’t contain.
“Make me come, Oscar, or I’ll make myself come.” God, my voice was filled with the ache I felt.
I closed my eyes and counted the seconds. A grumble. His buckle coming off. A ripped foil. Then he was inside me with a deep sigh, his hands on my hips setting me in place. He thrust quickly, pushing at my walls and holding on to my waist.
“Fuck, you got even wetter,” he said, sliding in and out, and each time his cock touched me deeper, my whole body rocked with pleasure. I leaned forward, my breasts squished against the hard door, and opened my mouth to scream. But when his hand cupped my chin, his fingers sliding past my parted lips to press against my tongue, the sound was caught. The taste of me on his skin filled my mouth, and he pushed hard, thrust faster, and ripped moan after moan from me.
“You feel so fucking good,” he said between gasps, and I answered with another moan. His cock was hitting a delicious spot, over and over and over, and I felt like I lost my ability to breathe as all the nerves seemed to be coated in infinite warmth. I felt the room turn into an incandescent white. I relished in the ecstasy of that burn as his movement became erratic, hurried, urgent, his relief soon following mine. He pressed small butterfly kisses on the nape of my neck, contrasting with his grip on my waist that hadn’t relinquished. He squeezed me into his body like a treasured doll and I’d be damned if I didn’t like that.
“I think you ruined my panties,” I told him while he was putting the condom away in a trash bin and trying to rearrange himself. All that got me was a wink.
Chapter Sixteen
Delia
Now
“A little bit to your right. Perfect. Mark it.”
I listened to Dalton’s voice coming down at me from the speakers and I marked the spot with a small X made in black chalk.
We were in Anton’s studio, and it was late into the evening. The room was huge and we had transformed the majority of it into our stage for our show next day. First, we had split the space into large squares. Then, we colored them in black and white chalk. It was a giant chess board. The white squares would host human statues, and the black ones would be for the spectators.
Next, we assigned seating according to the sign-up forms we had received. Entry might have been free, but for what we had in mind, we needed crowd control.
Dalton then proceeded to play with all the lights and the sound for what seemed like forever, while I readied a “combat” area behind a curtain so we had somewhere to stage the whole thing.
When we were done, we met back in the middle and started marking the middle of each of the white squares. For visual pleasure, as Dalton had put it. He was going to film the whole thing, and he wanted it to look perfect.
We’d been at it for a few hours already and all the caffeine was long gone from my body. I felt weak at the knees from all the squats I’d had to make across our chess board.
Dalton jogged toward me from his far-off corner, where he’d watched everything on his camera.
“Child, you are the greatest!” He flashed me his white smile and pulled me into a hug.
“No, you are! Can you believe that we’re one month into our first semester and we already met all these people through this little project?”
“Yay!”
We would have numerous volunteers, many of them students from higher years and from across multiple disciplines, to perform all the jobs this show entailed: guards, lights, and the statues themselves. It was going to be epic.
Dalton followed me behind the improvised curtain.
“Oh my god!” he shrieked, seeing all the materials lying on the floor. “What is this?”
“Well, after you leave, I’ll prepare all the cans and brushes so I can apply the paint on the volunteers as quick as possible tomorrow morning . . .”
“And you’re going to work all night? Look at the amount of stuff!”
I counted the statues and multiplied it by twenty minutes of preparation time per statue. I covered my mouth with my palms in an involuntary gesture.
“Oh my god, Dalton. Forget about tonight. I’d have to start painting them five hours before the show and we only called them two hours earlier,” I squealed.
“Tsk, you’re in love, Delia.”
“So?” I blurted.
“So, you know what they say, lose your heart, lose your mind,” he teased me.
I paced the room for a little while.
“Oh, I know, I know! I just had that light-bulb moment. With five extras to help me paint in the morning, we’ll be covered. But they have to drop by tonight so I can show them how to do it. Do you know any four people that can be available on such short notice? And they would need to bring me a ton of coffee!”
He’d already started texting.
“Why just four, though?”
“Yeah, I know someone living nearby.”
Chapter Seventeen
Delia
Now
“So, do you care to explain why am I here?” Oswald asked, his fingers roaming through my brushes like they were caressing them.
I smirked. I had asked Oswald to come to the venue and help us set everything up for the show tomorrow, but I had an idea that I wanted to run by him.
“I don’t have time to apply paint on all of the statues tomorrow, we have too many volunteers, and a few of them will come by in a few minutes so that I show them what to do. The volunteers will be here soon and we need to have all the supplies prepped and handy.”
He nodded.
“I thought maybe you can help us with this task?” I asked tentatively. “And maybe even pose? I still have one square open . . .”
He narrowed his eyes. “We’ll see about the latter. But I can help you with the heavy work.”