Pickup Notes

by Jane Lebak

  I whispered, “I’ve never been much for predicting the future.”

  “Okay.” He sounded relieved. “That’s why you should trust me, see? Because I can.” He stood. “Let’s go back.”

  I started trailing Harrison up the path, but then I stopped to steal one extra moment with the nighttime. The low lights, the lake, the expansiveness. The silence.

  Inside, the TV babbled pitching statistics. Josh stared through the screen, and based on his scowl, the Yankees were getting their asses kicked. Grabbing my book, I joined him and Shreya in the family room. She was painting her nails blue. I curled up in a throw blanket.

  Harrison flipped a switch on the mantle. Within moments, a fire flared in the fireplace.

  I gaped at him.

  “Oh, it’s a gas log. We installed it during the remodel.”

  The room warmed nicely, but not the residents. Harrison half-sat on the arm of the couch, commenting on the game. Then Harrison shifted to a seat, and Josh went to the pool table.

  Over the course of the next hour, I moved in front of the fire and read eighty pages, Shreya went to bed, and Harrison finished a beer. Josh played pool the whole time. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to annoy Harrison, but the “klok” of numbered balls gave the baseball announcer some competition.

  When the game ended, Harrison showed us how to switch off the gas log. Then, about to leave, he looked at Josh, then at me. “Maybe you two should call it a night. It was a long drive.”

  Josh said, “I don’t need another father.”

  When Harrison seemed worried, I said, “I’m good. At home, I’d still be working.”

  Harrison yielded. Over the next few minutes, I heard running water, footsteps, the click of a door. More clack and tok as Josh cleared the pool table.

  Lying on my stomach, I buried myself back in my book, but I started when I felt his hand on my shoulder. He apologized, and I sat up.

  I was one ball of tension. We were alone. And while my questions wouldn’t have been easy before, after tonight it would be impossible because I’d seen in myself what Josh knew all along. I couldn’t say, “But back then I was only sixteen,” because now I was twenty-four and making all the same stupid mistakes.

  He started to speak, but he blocked. I extended a hand, and he took it, then wrapped his arms around me and rested his forehead against mine.

  Was he drunk? He ran his hand up my hair, tucking his face close so I could feel his breath against my neck, and as I closed my eyes, he pressed me against his chest.

  The rhythm of his breathing fell in with mine. I reveled in the sound of him, the warmth, the scent, the fire before us. Wasn’t this a scene I read in romance novels? What was I doing in one? But reluctant to lose the moment, I kept him cocooned around me.

  He nuzzled my throat, and I snuggled closer. He laughed, a combination of surprise and thrill, and I slipped onto his lap. “You think they’re both asleep?” I whispered.

  “I don’t care,” he murmured.

  He sat back and gazed into my eyes, rapt but disbelieving. I drank in the look, conscious of just how quiet the house had become. Even the fire made no noise. With my nerves alight, I traced my fingertips down his cheekbone, over his jaw, over his lips, and he kissed them. I inched closer. He kissed my hand, then my wrist.

  He guided his hands up behind my neck, gentled my head toward him. I leaned forward, and we kissed.

  This time he lingered, his fingers in my hair, and I moved closer so we were pressed pounding heart to pounding heart. This was not a mistake and not a tease. This was a kiss, two kisses, more.

  I leaned back, as breathless as Josh. “You weren’t kidding.”

  “Of course I wasn’t k-kidding,” and he drew me close to prove it.

  Intoxicated, I murmured, “What are you thinking of?”

  “Anything you w-want.” He kissed my throat, my neck up to my ear, then back to my lips. “Right now, I’m just glad to be rrr-right here.”

  So was I. Shocked, delighted, and more than a little afraid because there was no way I deserved this, and as soon as Josh came to his senses, he would do what Harrison did, would do what my mother did. And then how could we work together, play together, even just be together with my heart raining down in pieces and him seeing right through me and knowing—knowing—

  He ran his hands down my back, over my legs, then back up again to my shoulders. He put his hands behind my hips, shifting me so I was straddling his lap. He leaned back against the couch to take my weight against him.

  I settled on his chest with my cheek pressed to his shoulder, eyes closed, breathing with him. Encircled in his arms, I struggled not think about what happened next.

  My eyes stung, and I clutched Josh’s arms.

  “W-what’s wrong?”

  My throat closed. How could I ask him? But how could I not? Because if he was screwing with my head, if he was thinking he’d cleared it with me that I was shallow and that meant we could have a no-strings-attached roll in the hay…that I couldn’t do. I couldn’t do it for Harrison, and then Harrison had dumped me. And if Josh had me, all of me, and then made it clear he didn’t mean it, I couldn’t bear that. Harrison got rid of me when I didn’t do what he wanted. And what would Josh do to me if I did?

  Without looking up, I said in a broken voice, “Before we go further, I need to know...what changed your mind?”

  “Nothing’s ch-ch-changed.”

  Clearly something had.

  He said, “I’ve wanted this for ten years.”

  I traced my finger over a shirt button. “With a little break in the middle.”

  “No, the ...whole time.” He squeezed me. “You have no idea how often I dreamed about you. And now you’re here.”

  I sat back, squinting at him. That drew him up short, and he flushed. “Uh-oh. Did I just rrr-ruin the mood?”

  Had I fallen into an alternate universe? “How many beers did you have?”

  He shrugged. “Just one.”

  Okay, then. “Didn’t you say you couldn’t date someone like me?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “When did I say that?”

  “After Jenny hit on you, when you said…we were talking in your car, and you said…” I swallowed hard. “You couldn’t count on me.” I ducked my head and hoped he didn’t see my eyes water. “You said that’s how you weeded out the shallow ones.”

  He tilted his head. “I n-never said you were shallow. I said—”

  There’s a joke that there’s no difference between a bomb and a viola solo. By the time you hear it, it’s too late to do anything about it.

  And by the time I realized what he’d been saying back then, he realized what I thought he’d said.

  He got that wide-eyed strangled look he had back when he wanted a trombone and received a cello. Exactly the same.

  There, right there, ended the harmony, and we replaced it with silence. Josh and Joey’s D-minor symphony, third movement, scherzo. Don’t hang around for the fourth movement because it’s over.

  I climbed off his lap, and he tucked back his knees as if to keep me from returning. “W-which was it? You’re d-dating Harrison? Or are you ash-sh-shamed to be seen with me?”

  I looked into the fire, blinking in an attempt to stare myself back into self-control. “It isn’t like that.”

  Naked shock. “You were?”

  “No, but—” I closed my eyes. “Back when we went to that stupid dance, and everyone was staring at me, and you wouldn’t look at me, and you kept twitching, and I couldn’t deal with it. I’m sorry. I just— I thought you realized. I thought you hated me for it. I loved getting your letters.”

  “It’s just me you couldn’t stand.” He angled his body away from me.

  “You stopped writing me!”

  “I thought you www-wanted to do the just-be-friends thing and you were upset that I’d put my arm around you!” Josh shook his head. “I didn’t think you were...”

  His face reddened as he fought the
block. I knew which word had gotten away: “humiliated.” The soft H an EchoChamber couldn’t fix. You can’t cure humiliation. Or hurt. Or a hollowed-out heart.

  His eyes narrowed. “And you st-still think I’m defective?”

  The room went airless. “No! I was sixteen! What the hell did I know when I was sixteen?”

  But I could see him tallying up the times I’d looked away or couldn’t meet his eyes while he stuttered, and what it added up to... I couldn’t argue with the math.

  He got back up on the couch while I stayed on the carpet. It wasn’t a recoil as if he’d touched something hot. It was calculated, like a hiker avoiding an animal carcass.

  Josh looked into the fire, a real fire shooting from a fake log. Then he closed his eyes and kept them closed, his whole face screwed tight. Finally he looked over his shoulder. “You’re not dating Harrison, right? He didn’t b-bring you outside to p-p-pro—”

  I couldn’t let that go on. “No, not tonight.” I stared at the carpet. “We dated for a few weeks back when we started the quartet.”

  He whispered, “Really? And you didn’t say?”

  My eyes flared. “You wouldn’t have joined?”

  “I mmm-might not have.” His eyes fixed on me for a long moment, but it took effort, and then he returned to letting me see the brim of his cap.

  “Then we were right to break it off, because we need you.”

  He looked nauseated. “W-when did you break up?”

  “Ages ago. The group didn’t even have a name yet.”

  “Then why did he th-think he could bed you again this weekend?”

  “Because he’s a jerk?” My voice trembled. “So when you kissed me—? You meant it?”

  He jerked to a stand in one motion. “Well, that was a mistake, wasn’t it?” He glared right at me. “I’m sorry to have forced my presence on you.”

  My mouth quivered. “I’m sorry.”

  He turned away.

  “Don’t do this!” I scrambled to my feet. “I loved you. I screwed up. Don’t go to bed mad.”

  He avoided me when I tried to touch him. “I’m not mad.” His shoulders dropped. “More like—devastated.”

  He left me there in the living room, this gorgeous house, the cathedral ceiling, the fake fire, and me alone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I muted the viola and played for three hours.

  With the fire at my back and my eyes closed, I played all the Bach in my repertoire, did scales until my head ached, and then played past the pain, blurry-eyed and unable to think. Go the hell away: Harrison on the dock, Shreya on the warpath, Josh upstairs with his heart bleeding out into the darkness.

  That left me and Bach, so I did injury to Bach by playing too quickly with a rubber stopper across the bridge, played until pain shot up both arms and down my spine and across my shoulders.

  I did what Shreya said, guessing at key signatures and improvising tunes I’d heard all my life. I did my own version of “Eleanor Rigby.” All the lonely people. Who cared if I got it wrong? Why should my music be different than everything else?

  Finally I struggled with shaking hands to slip Woody’s centenarian body back into the slot, and I strapped everything down and locked it into place because at least I could keep one thing safe in a cushioned coffin where no one could hurt it. And with my hands pressed to the floor, half-kneeling, I screwed up my eyes and struggled not to fall apart.

  With only the light slanting in from a hallway nightlight, I fished my pajamas out of my bag, dropping my clothes like a puddle around me and changing in the middle of the floor. I looked back at the hallway and hesitated.

  Harrison’s door. Josh’s door.

  Keeping silent, I crept toward Josh’s door. I tested the handle.

  Locked.

  I tucked into the bed I shared with Shreya, wishing I could wriggle under Josh’s thick covers, wake him by wrapping my arms around him, have him hug me and then tell me right now, in the dark, that he could forget what I’d done. He’d never forgive me. No one ever had. But maybe when the sun rose, he’d see I was no different than before, and he tolerated me then, so he could tolerate me still.

  I barely slept before Shreya slipped out of bed at 5:15. Light split the room as she moved the curtains covering the window seat.

  I pushed to sitting, and she turned, saying, “Listen.”

  I squinted at the shard of light and then I heard what she had. Birds. A thousand birds, singing for the sunrise with that same cacophony as a symphony orchestra getting in tune.

  She whispered, “That makes everything worthwhile.”

  “I’m not sure.” My voice wobbled. “I’ve messed everything up.”

  Dropping the curtain, she returned. “I’m over it. We’re cool.”

  “We’re not cool. I fucked up.”

  She tucked up her knees. “When did you get to bed?”

  “Three-thirty.”

  “Go back to sleep. It’ll look better when you’re rested.”

  My throat tightened. “It’ll never be okay.”

  She hugged me. “We’ll be fine. Don’t make me drag Harrison out of bed to tell you to trust him.”

  Shreya watched the sunrise over the lake while I lay with self-hatred gnawing at my heart and my stiff hands fingering some wordless tune against my pillow.

  At ten I forced myself downstairs to breakfast. Harrison read his email while I choked down a half-bowl of cereal.

  “Where’s Josh?” I sounded raspy.

  He shrugged. “Out on the porch, drinking coffee.”

  I stood.

  Harrison’s head snapped up. “I’ll get him. We need to practice now.”

  I said, “Actually,” and he said, “No. We came here to practice, and I don’t want you to dig out that schedule again.”

  Aching, I set my bowl in the sink while he fetched Josh.

  With no eye contact at all, Josh tuned his cello, drawn and pale. Harrison fussed with his A string while Shreya debated what we should practice first.

  Harrison tried his A again and adjusted the fine-tuner.

  “Dude, no one cares,” Josh muttered.

  “I care.”

  I figured we’d wait it out, but Josh said, “Seriously, it’s fine.”

  Harrison ignored him until his A was vibrating at 442 rather than 441, then made sure endlessly tuning the A hadn’t thrown the other three out of whack. We started.

  The piece Shreya suggested we practice was, in fact, awful. The viola wasn’t loud enough, the cello too loud, and the violins were in competition. After the tenth failure, Shreya said, “Let’s give this a rest and try something else.”

  Harrison said, “We need to get this right. Josh, play it softer.”

  “I’m barely pl-playing as it is.”

  Harrison shrugged. “We can’t hear the viola.”

  “Maybe I should just not pll-lay.”

  “Or, maybe you should play softer.” He picked up his violin. “Subito pianissimo.”

  We played two bars before Harrison exclaimed, “For pity’s sake, Josh!”

  This time, Josh stared Harrison right in the eyes.

  “Are you trying to drown out the viola?”

  “Are you tr-rying to be a world-class asshole?”

  Harrison stood, and then Josh was standing too.

  “What the hell?” Harrison’s hand tightened around his violin’s neck. “Do you think I like stopping because you won’t follow simple directions?”

  Shreya jumped up. “Guys! Cool it!”

  “I d-don’t need your defense,” Josh snapped.

  I got out of my chair and backed away.

  Harrison rolled his eyes. “By all means, then, explain. If you’re playing softly enough, why can’t I hear the viola?”

  “Maybe the sound of your ego got in the way?”

  Harrison raised his chin. “I’m talking about the music. We can discuss our personal greatness over lunch.”

  “I’m sick of you patronizing everyo
ne just because you’re the rich brat with the rich friends and the rich violin!” Josh stepped closer, making Harrison look up at him. “It’s not all about the money!”

  Harrison’s face hardened. “Which one of us brought up the money? It wasn’t me.”

  “You’ve got everything!” Josh shouted. “You’re the one who’s privileged and good with kids and good with dogs! What’s left for the rest of your defective quartet?”

  Shreya pushed between them. “Enough!”

  I couldn’t breathe. Because those words meant Josh had overheard us outside. And there was no way around that.

  Harrison hadn’t put it together, apparently, because he took a stab at the problem and missed. “Look, you can be pissed off all you want, but you’re the one being stubborn.”

  Josh folded his arms. “And all should bow before the altruism of Harrison Archer?”

  Harrison said, “It wouldn’t be from me.”

  Josh snorted. “Yeah, I forgot. Fix the defective st-stutterer courtesy of the Jackass Medical Consortium.”

  Harrison’s eyes blazed. “That’s my father!”

  “And apparently the one who gave you all your asshole lessons. You were a great student.” Josh put the cello in its case. “I hope this is quiet enough.”

  He stalked up the stairs. He wasn’t halfway up before Shreya said, “Nicely done, Harrison.”

  Overhead, Josh slammed his door.

  “He needs to get a grip,” Harrison was saying, and Shreya shot back, “And that wasn’t the way to do it. What’s wrong with you?”

  Biting my lip, I went to the bottom step. Because I wanted to go up. And I knew I should stay down.

  Shreya put away her violin. “You saw he was tense. I told you to drop it. This whole trip was a mistake.”

  A wonderful house. A beautiful lake. I wanted to go home. I wanted these two days never to have happened.

  Shreya came up behind me. “You need to talk him down.”

  “I talked to him last night.” My eyes stung. “It didn’t go very well.”

  Harrison said, “He needs time to cool off.”

  I went into the kitchen and hunted until I found a kettle. I set it to boil, but then I couldn’t turn up any hot chocolate. It would have to be tea instead. Josh did that for me when I was upset. If I did it for him, would he acknowledge the peace offering? Would he listen long enough for me to apologize?