Finding Yvonne

by Brandy Colbert

  I don’t know why I said that last part, and Omar laughs at the face I can’t stop myself from making.

  “It’s okay. You still live at home—you should let your parents pay for whatever they will for as long as they can. Parents are supposed to take care of their kids.”

  I grin. “I’ll remind him of that the next time I ask for money. So, what are we doing?”

  “Are you hungry? Best burgers in Venice are just down that way on the boardwalk.” He pauses, then squints at me. “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

  I shake my head. “I’m vegan.”

  His eyebrows shoot so high I burst out laughing.

  “Kidding. My dad’s a chef. That’s not really allowed at my house.”

  He nudges me good-naturedly in my side and I can’t stop smiling and then we’re heading down to the part of the boardwalk where I rarely go, palm trees lined up along one side like fifty-foot statues.

  The burger place is small, crowded, and hot. It smells like grease and fried cheese and my mouth waters as soon as we step through the doorway. The space in front of the register is so tight that Omar and I have to stand with our shoulders touching. I try to pretend that I don’t notice as I gaze at the chalkboard menu behind the counter.

  “There are only four choices?”

  “See, those fancy burger spots are a scam,” Omar says, shaking his head. “This is all you need. Meat, bread, cheese.”

  My father has always said simple food is better, and Lou preaches the same philosophy. So maybe Omar is right, but I must appear skeptical because he laughs.

  “I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

  We both order cheeseburgers and split an order of crinkle fries. I offer to pay, but Omar waves at me like “forget it,” pulling a beat-up leather wallet from his back pocket. The girl who takes his money says someone will bring out our burgers as she gives us our drinks.

  We find an empty table, squeezed into a corner. And what seems like barely a minute later, a guy with shaggy blond hair shuffles over in Birkenstocks, carrying our order.

  “My man O!” He sets the food on the table. “Didn’t know you were stopping in tonight.”

  Omar stands to greet him and they give each other one of those half-hug, half-handshake things. “Yvonne’s never been here—had to show her the best grill on the beach. Yvonne, this is Calvin. He owns the place.”

  Calvin gives me a friendly hello, then looks at Omar again. “No Keely today?”

  Omar’s voice is friendly when he responds, but something changes in his eyes. A tenseness that wasn’t there before. “No Keely.”

  “Ah… right.” Calvin’s neck turns red: the confirmation I needed that Keely and Omar once had something going on. “All right, man, you better get to that burger before it gets cold. Don’t want you making any complaints to the kitchen.” He turns to me. “Nice meeting you. Stop in anytime—any friend of Omar’s, you know?”

  “Nice meeting you, too.”

  We eat silently for a couple of minutes, and Omar is right. The burger is simple but also one of the best I’ve had in a long time. It’s juicy with gooey, melted cheese and a perfectly toasted bun. Every bite is a little piece of heaven.

  “Ketchup?” I hold the red squeeze bottle over the basket of fries.

  He nods. “I’m glad you’re here. That you called. I don’t always remember to tell people that my phone doesn’t get texts.”

  “Probably half the people I know wouldn’t talk to anyone if they couldn’t text.” I don’t admit that vodka punch was the only reason I got up the courage to call.

  “Keely hates how basic my phone is,” he says. “But I don’t need it for anything except calling people.”

  Keely again.

  “So.” He leans back with one arm draped over his chair. “You gonna tell me about this music thing?”

  “How much do you want to hear?” I am suddenly shy. Even though this is the reason we’re supposedly here in the first place.

  “It’s usually best to start at the beginning,” he says with a smile.

  I tell him how I was good enough for Denis to take me on as a student when I was seven years old. Good enough to represent our school at local competitions. Good enough to think I could play professionally—even if I knew I’d never be the best in the symphony—until I was forced to confront the reality that I don’t have enough talent or passion.

  “So now everything’s fucked,” he says when I stop talking.

  I finish chewing and set down the little bit left of my burger. “Yeah. I have no idea what to do. I think about quitting the orchestra so I can give it up altogether, but then I don’t know if I can. I’ve been playing for eleven years. How can I just give up something that used to mean so much to me?”

  “I know exactly how you feel.” Omar wipes his mouth with a napkin and crumples the wrapper from his burger, tossing it into the empty fry basket. “And I think we’d better discuss it somewhere else, because those people across the room are staring us down for this table.”

  Back on the beach, we cross the lumpy sand to walk close to the water. The air is cool and the moisture in the breeze settles over my arms and face like a second skin, but I don’t pull out the sweater I brought.

  “So, you know I went to Berklee,” Omar says, picking up where we left off.

  “Did you love it?”

  “I hated it. Dropped out after my first year.”

  “Did you go somewhere else?”

  “No. I realized school—and classical music—weren’t for me. It wasn’t Berklee. I really liked it there.”

  “But how were you able to quit? You were on your way to being a professional. The people who trained me don’t even think I’m good enough to audition for music programs.”

  He sticks his hands in his pockets as we wander slowly down the beach. “It wasn’t easy. But I knew that I was doing what I loved every day next to some of the best musicians I’d ever heard and I was deeply unhappy.”

  “So you just quit?” I’ve been thinking about walking into Ortiz’s office and doing the same thing, but I can never go through with it. Maybe because I’ve never quit anything, but I think it’s deeper than that. I know what it’s like to be left behind, and even though my violin is an inanimate object, I feel guilty when I think about giving it up forever—abandoning the one thing that’s always been there for me.

  “Yeah, I traveled around, checking out some places I’d never been. And I kept noticing all the street musicians…. How no matter where I went, a lot of them were just as good as the people I’d been in school with. Some of them were better. There are people out there playing everything you can think of—cellos, saxophones, accordions and shit.”

  “You knew that’s what you wanted to do right away?”

  “Nah. Even if they were better, I was still trained to think I was too good for that, you know?”

  Before I heard him playing with Keely, I felt the same way about street performers. I wondered why they didn’t just take their talent somewhere legitimate instead of busking for loose change.

  “But I started talking to some of them, and then, before I knew it, I was bringing my fiddle with me. Eventually I started to play with some of them and…” He spreads his arms out in the direction of the boardwalk as if to say “here I am.” “I teach, too.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Cooper Youth Center, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The pay barely puts a dent in my rent money, but it’s worth it.”

  “Cooper Youth Center? The one downtown?”

  His eyebrows go up. “You know it?”

  “Yeah, my dad did a program with them last year through his work.” The kids are mostly from low-income families, and he had some of his employees teach a few cooking classes at the center. He even showed up himself one day, and a community paper did a small piece on the partnership. He brushed it off like it was no big deal, but I saw the pride in his eyes when he read the paper.

  “I like it t
here. The kids are great. But this is my favorite place to be.”

  “How did you meet Keely?” I don’t look over because I don’t want to see his eyes change the way they did when he was talking to Calvin.

  Neither of us said this was a date, but walking along the quickly emptying beach next to him sure makes it feel like one. And maybe he’s just a generous guy, but he paid for my meal, too.

  “She was here first,” he replies. “But I actually saw her at a show she did at the Hotel Café.”

  “That’s kind of huge.”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t her show, but she played strings for another act. I stuck around to talk to her and we vibed really well so we played together to see if we were any good. She was already set up here on the boardwalk. She asked if I wanted to join her, and we’ve been together ever since.”

  “You sound so good together,” I say, even though I don’t want to acknowledge that anything about them together is good.

  “Thanks. Listen, Yvonne, I don’t want to be weird or anything, but I thought you should know…” He pauses. “Keely and I used to date. And we’re still roommates, and obviously we still work together. But we’re not together together. We still have a good vibe, musically, and people know us as a team. So it didn’t make sense to split up. But I don’t want to be with her. Just so you know.”

  “Oh.” I hesitate, trying to think of something mature or profound or breezy to say, but all I can think of is, “Okay.”

  He stops and touches my arm so I’ll look at him. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but I’m kind of an up-front guy.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable.” A sharp, cold gust of air blows through. I shiver. “I wanted to know, I just didn’t want to ask. Or assume something was here that isn’t….”

  When he sees I’m still shivering, he reaches out and rubs my arms with his hands. They’re callused, but dry and warm. Soon I’m shivering from his touch alone. It’s been a long time since anyone but Warren has touched me in a way that made me feel like this—that makes me want more.

  “I didn’t want to assume anything, either,” he says, his hands moving slower and slower. They stop at my elbows. “But I know that I like talking to you. And I’d like to get to know you better.”

  I can’t hold back the smile that breaks out, and I can’t keep it from growing as I respond that yes, I would very much like that, too.

  “I’m glad,” Omar says in a low voice that makes me shiver again—this time down to my toes. He reaches out to push a few braids behind my ears. When he leans forward, I think he’s going to kiss me, which seems too soon… except it’s not when you feel what I am feeling. Something electric. Even if the person was a complete stranger weeks ago.

  His mouth stops by my ear. “If you want to quit violin, make sure you’re quitting for you. Don’t ever let anyone tell you there’s a right or wrong way to feel about your music.”

  I exhale into the cool, salty air.

  11.

  I’ve never gone this long without talking to Warren.

  I thought maybe he’d forgo Sunday breakfast because of the tension, but the doorbell rings right on time, just as I’m savoring my first cup of coffee. Dad asks me to get the door, claiming he’s too busy prepping his frittata.

  I twist my braids up into a topknot and take a quick look in the entryway mirror before I open the front door.

  Warren looks good, and I hate that.

  We stand there looking at each other for a long moment until he finally says, “Can I come in?”

  I close the door behind him.

  “How’s it going?” He’s standing awkwardly when I turn to look at him, as if he hasn’t been in this house or in my presence hundreds of times before.

  “Fine.” I pause, but I don’t have anything else to say to him right now. “Dad’s in the kitchen.”

  Warren nods and heads down the hall without another word. After a couple of seconds, I follow.

  He immediately rolls up his sleeves and washes his hands so he can help Dad. I think it’s instinct now—like he can’t not get involved when he’s in the kitchen. Dad doesn’t mind, but only because it’s Warren. He spends way more time at work than here, but he won’t let anyone near his kitchen. I think I get the privilege only because I live here.

  “Hey, Sinclair, got any tips for this interview I have coming up?” Warren’s back is to my father as he shaves ribbons of asparagus off the stalk. “I’m talking to that reporter from SoCal Weekly in a few days.”

  “Don’t say anything you don’t want to get out,” Dad says right away. He’s chopping scallions into superthin slices on a thick wooden cutting board. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching his knife work. He’s not particularly flashy, but he’s fast and consistent and he always makes the precision look so easy.

  “Oh, yeah? You speak from experience?”

  Dad glances over at me before he responds, but I don’t look up from my phone.

  “They started asking a bunch of personal questions,” he says gruffly. “I got defensive and that gave them more to write about than if I had told them to move on to something else.”

  They must have been asking about my mother. Dad is private, but he wouldn’t have been defensive if they had asked about me—he’s talked about me in the few interviews he’s granted.

  “Noted. Is it normal to be this nervous? I—shit!” Warren drops the vegetable peeler and holds one of his knuckles up to his face.

  Dad turns around. “Bad one?”

  “Nah, but I should put something on it.”

  I stand before my father can look at me again. “We have a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Come on.”

  Warren holds his finger under the faucet in the bathroom sink, sending pink water swirling down the drain. Next to him, I open the kit and pull out antiseptic wipes, bandages, and gauze.

  “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t think I’ll need gauze.” He holds up his knuckle so I can see the nick.

  I unwrap the wipes and bandage and watch him clumsily clean and cover up the wound.

  “Looks like I’ll live,” he says as I put away the kit.

  “Lucky you.” I toss the wrappers into the trash and am about to leave the bathroom when he touches my shoulder.

  “Yvonne.”

  I turn around to face him, unsmiling. “What?”

  “I miss you.”

  “Warren—”

  “I do. I’m really, really sorry about what happened.”

  “You don’t need to keep apologizing. I hear you.”

  He lets out a breath. “Then what can I do to make it up to you?”

  “I don’t want you to do anything. I just want to forget about that night, okay?”

  “Does that mean you’ll let me make you dinner sometime soon?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “I didn’t say all that.”

  Warren laughs. “Fine. Then will you start answering my texts?”

  “Maybe.”

  But when he leans in to hug me, I let him, and I know that regardless of how hard I try, I can’t stay mad at Warren. Which is comforting, knowing someone that well. But it’s also terrifying. How badly would he have to disappoint me to irreparably damage whatever is going on between us? If I forgive him so easily, will he keep finding new ways to hurt me?

  After we devour our first servings and graze over second helpings and drink all the coffee in the pot, we peel ourselves out of our seats. Dad goes off to the sunroom for his postmeal smoke, leaving me alone again with Warren.

  “What are you doing today?” he asks.

  “Making a cake.”

  “I thought you hated cake.” He gives me a wry smile.

  “It’s for Lou,” I say, ignoring his dig, because we haven’t discussed the cake I smashed into his kitchen floor, and I’m not feeling up to it right now.

  He frowns. “Sinclair’s Lou?”

  “He’s my Lou, too.”

  “Why are you making him a cake?” />
  “Because he and my dad are trying to get my mind off the whole violin thing.”

  “Oh. You’re nervous about auditions?”

  That’s right—Warren doesn’t know. I was too embarrassed after talking to Ortiz, and then the whole birthday thing happened. And it seems so ridiculous. I just told a guy who’s hardly more than a stranger exactly how I was feeling. Warren should know, too. He always knows everything that’s going on with me. But it’s different this time.

  “There aren’t going to be any auditions. And no offense, Warren, but I don’t really want to talk about this.” I get up to take my plate and mug to the sink.

  He follows me. “You’re not going to audition at all?”

  I drop my dishes in so carelessly, I’m surprised the porcelain doesn’t crack. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

  The more I talk about it, the more I feel like a failure. Did I grow so attached to the idea of playing violin that I truly didn’t understand my love had faded? Or was I dishonest with myself, shoving the truth down deep when I realized it probably wasn’t the path for me?

  Warren is behind me and then his hands are on my waist, his cheek against mine. “It’s me, Yvonne. You can talk to me about anything.”

  I whip around, pushing on his chest. Pushing him away from me. “I’m serious, Warren. I especially don’t want to talk about it with you.”

  “So things aren’t okay with us,” he says quietly.

  “It’s not that.” I shake my head. “It’s—you’re really great at what you do. You always have been. You didn’t even go to culinary school!”

  “You make it sound like I came out of the womb winning James Beard Awards. I still have so much to learn.”

  “But you’re great. Not just good sometimes, or generally okay. That’s the difference between you and me.” My breath catches at the back of my throat. “So I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you about this, Warren.”

  The hurt that flashes in his eyes cuts me. It’s just a couple of seconds and then they’re back to normal, but I don’t miss it. I think of how easily I was able to talk to Omar about all of this. And of course it’s different, because he knows what it feels like to hold a violin, to spend so much time with the instrument that it’s like an extension of you. But I don’t know him, no matter how comfortable I feel with him. And it seems like I’ve known Warren forever.