“You wouldn’t speak to me,” Kieran said. He stepped deeper inside, and I closed the door behind him to keep out the night air.
“I spoke to you. We spoke tonight,” I said.
“Not the way you once did.”
“I couldn’t talk tonight. I was on a date.”
He glanced around the apartment with a frown stamped on his face and then back to me. “Would you like to come home with me?”
He didn’t seem to like my place. The exposed brick walls weren’t in style as much as they were old, and the cramped living space and lower ceilings made it feel darker, especially at night when my big window only allowed in the orange glare of the streetlights.
“To do what?” I didn’t want to work now. Or talk about music. Or fight. We’d never really fought much. Argued a few times, but I usually let him win. He’d been my boss. What choice did I have?
He gestured around the space. “To have a more pleasant place to speak.”
Annoyance rolled through me. My place was small, but I lived here. “It’s three in the morning. I’m not leaving with a strange man.”
He threw up his hands. “I’m not strange to you. Perhaps you’re the only one with whom that is true. I’ve known you for years, and you know me more intimately than any other person.”
I knew him best. Members of the orchestra and Glory had often come to me to talk to him, or to ask me to reason with him when he’d dug in his heels about something. I couldn’t change his mind, but I could give him a different perspective in a way that would appeal to him. “Your wife. She knows you.” Why I’d brought up that harpy, I didn’t know. Maybe I’d needed something to distract him.
“She’s my ex-wife, and no, I don’t know her well, nor her me. We’re divorced for a reason.”
“A reason you never told me.” They’d divorced about a year after I’d started working for him. The dissolution of their marriage had been in the works for three years, they hadn’t lived together in five, but I’d sat with him while he’d signed the finalized papers.
He forked his fingers through his hair. “It was complicated. A decade-long complication.”
“Did you love her?”
He reared back as if I’d asked if she was really a hedgehog. “We were young. I was infatuated with her.”
“You hang out with her. You listen to her.”
He threw up his hands. “Why are we talking about her? I don’t want to talk about her. I want to talk about you.”
An excited giggle stuttered in my throat, and my chest tightened.
He sat on my futon. I had the urge to rush about and fix him a drink or make him a snack or straighten things up. But I wouldn’t. I wasn’t in his employ, and he’d come to me.
I tugged on my tank top to make sure it met the top of my shorts. “Tell me what you want. Tell me why you’re here.”
Misery shone on his face. “To talk to you. This has been like a cruel punishment. You shut me out and refused to speak to me for a week with no explanation. When you left me, you took my best friend.”
A shock of cold went through me and settled at the base of my spine. I was his best friend? How was that possible? He was adored by thousands and loved by many. “You never told me that.”
“Not with words, but with my music. Surely, my music explains my feelings.”
His best friend. I rolled that around in my head and considered how my actions would’ve hurt him. I had tried to talk to him before I quit. I tried to tell him before the last day, and if it hadn’t been such an emotionally devastating situation, we could’ve discussed it…maybe. He wasn’t a good listener, not usually. “The music doesn’t speak to me as clearly as it speaks to you. You have to use words when you want me to know something.”
He set his hat on my coffee table, an empty food crate I’d scrubbed up in my bathroom tub, dried, and turned upside down. “I’ll not ask you again to come back to work for me. But I need to know why. You left, and what’s worse, you’re pushing me away. When I get near to you, you cringe. You physically pull away from me.”
I couldn’t talk about it. The hurt was too fresh. “It’s complicated.”
“I have all night.”
“I have plans in the morning.” A lie.
His eyes were deep wells of pain. “Will you give me an answer?”
Why did he deserve answers when I had none? Why didn’t he love me? Could he love me? Could he love anyone? “You should know.”
He put his head in his hands. “Always women say this to me. I should know. But if I knew, I wouldn’t ask. I know the music’s hard for people to understand, but it’s how I communicate best. That’s why I love music. Why I hear it all the time. Why the music drives me. But I thought you knew this about me. My fascination with music makes me unaware of other things, and I know that I’ve acted in a way that’s made you angry enough to quit and to force me out of your life. But I don’t understand it. I don’t.” He held out his hands as if imploring me.
I understood how much his music meant to him and how it could become his sole focus, his absolute obsession. “I want a life.”
“I thought we had one together.”
We did. One that was all about him and his needs and his lovers and me trailing along behind him with schedules and sheet music. If I’d been created differently, if I could sleep around too and have that be fulfilling, maybe fall in love with someone else who’d understand my relationship with Kieran and not be threatened by it, it’d be different. “That wasn’t a life. That was work.”
“Then this man you’re with. Being with him is what a life is?”
He made too much of my relationship with Greg. It only had the potential to be something. “It’s a new relationship. I don’t know what it is yet. Maybe something. Maybe a life one day. I can hope and dream.”
Kieran frowned. “To what end?”
We’d arrived at the impasse. Of course Kieran didn’t understand what I’d want from Greg or any man in general. He thought taking a lover was love, and maybe for him, in that fleeting moment, it was.
But I needed it to be more. I didn’t know why Kieran was wired the way he was. The genius in him was special, but it also made him weak in other ways. He couldn’t read my emotions, my feelings. If I were a composer, perhaps I could’ve written the right music to explain it to him. “Someone to live with.”
“You can live with me.”
My legs gave out from under me, and I settled onto the futon, next to him but not touching. He knocked me off my game, and I had to keep reminding myself not to read into his words. He wasn’t offering me forever love. “I need someone to talk to.”
“We talk. I tell you about my life. I tell you my secrets. I tell you everything that happens.”
He did, to some level, and I’d loved learning about the orchestra and the music. I loved his stories about his life and why certain music had spoken to him, and why he loved the violin so much. “I need someone to sleep beside.”
He paused. His eyes affected me most, dark, deep wells of heat and intensity. He steepled his strong fingers beneath his chin, his face in need of a shave, the open collar of his shirt exposing the center of his collarbone. “You want to sleep with Greg?”
I bolted to my feet, a jolt of outrage striking me. I could’ve slapped him. It was impossible for Kieran to see me as a sex object. He would live with me and talk to me, but never sleep with me.
Normally, I’d be thrilled with a man who’d see me for my brains, talent, and heart, but in this case, I knew Kieran saw that. He just didn’t see me as anything more. “Not specifically Greg.” But unless I wanted to die a virgin, I needed to get moving on that sleeping-with-someone goal. I had hopes that the first time, it’d go smoothly, no questions asked, and end nicely. Happily, even.
Kieran stood and turned. He glanced at the futon and shifted it, laying it flat. “Come here, Rae.”
He stepped out of his shoes, lay on the futon, and waited. The black sheet provided the p
erfect backdrop for his sprawled frame. He filled the futon, his feet dangling over the edge of the metal armrest. “Come lie beside me. If you want, we can sleep this way.”
I would’ve passed out if I didn’t know that he wasn’t talking about sex. Because in that moment, if he’d offered sex, I might’ve said yes. Kieran was a kind and compassionate lover. He didn’t keep notches on his belt, didn’t talk disparagingly of his lovers, and the way they seemed to adore him after their affairs spoke to how he respected and honored them.
I lay beside him and then I laughed. He was a genius, but also totally clueless. He didn’t understand what I was saying about having a life with a man. He thought he could do certain things to fill the void, yet he missed one key component. “You really are crazy, Maestro.”
“I know. I’ve been told that for years. I respect you more than any other woman on this earth. You’re not the type of woman a man fucks and then leaves. You’d think about devotion and dedication and forever. I can see that’s what you want. That’s not how I’m wired. I tried it before, and I almost wrecked her. Do you understand?”
I did, and now perhaps he understood why I couldn’t work for him. My throat grew tight. I’d known all this, that he couldn’t be the man I needed, but hearing him say it crushed my soul.
He was aware I had feelings for him, but we were wrong for each other. He wanted his passion in the music hall or with an instrument in his hands. I wanted mine there too, but also in my everyday life.
Then he did something he’d never done before. He gathered me against him. “Hit me or yell at me if you want. I’ve done something terrible here, and even though I don’t understand all of it, I’m heartbroken that I’ve hurt you. A woman’s heart is always more complicated than simple words allow.”
I closed my eyes, and my anger deflated, leaving me exhausted and out of breath. “Are you going to sleep here?” I asked in a whisper, all I could manage.
“I’d like to. I’d like to be the man who sleeps beside you. Fulfill your list, at least in a way, so that one day, I’ll know I did something. I tried my best.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
He cleared his throat. “We’ve traveled all of Europe, but I’ve never taken you to my hometown. I haven’t been back there since my mother died. I was thinking of going next summer. Maybe you’d want to go with me.”
I cuddled close to him and closed my eyes, resting against his shoulder. Even the hard muscles beneath my head made a comfortable pillow. “I’ve never been to Ireland.”
He stroked his hand through my hair. “I should rectify that. I should’ve taken you a long time ago.”
“Why a long time ago?” I asked.
“It’s a big part of who I am. I want you to know that side of me.”
We stayed up long into the night, talking. Not about each other. We were done with that. But about everything else. The entire week of conversations in one night.
When he left in the morning, I felt closer to him, but also sad that it could never be more. He’d given me all he could, and it wasn’t enough.
4
I’d be Kieran’s friend.
To my friends reading that statement, it’s laughable. But let me explain how I’d rationalized it. I wouldn’t have to see him sleeping with other women, because who invites their friends over to witness that? I wasn’t at his beck and call all day, every day. I wouldn’t have to be with him sixty hours a week, and therefore, I could have another life.
He would just be part of it.
Talking with him all night had put a point on a critical piece I’d missed when I’d decided to cut ties. He was my friend too. I valued his friendship. If we were friends, it would take the edge off missing him and suck the air out of my loneliness. The initial awkwardness would pass, and we’d figure out a rhythm, boundaries, and how to interact without hurting each other.
Kieran refused to carry a cell phone, which limited our conversations, but over the next week, he called me to talk twice. I wouldn’t let myself wait for that call, and I didn’t call him. I wouldn’t consider it an option until I was over him. I had to keep working on building my life, and if I started latching on to Kieran, I’d give up on my plans.
During one of our conversations, I learned we were attending the same art opening, him as a guest, me because I was working it for a friend for extra cash. I had dreams of owning a place with a bedroom door that closed, and every dollar counted. Now that I wasn’t eating at Kieran’s most of the time, I had to budget for groceries and my plans for the future. I was trying to make positive changes. Property ownership and bill paying were the hallmarks of adulthood, and I’d embrace them.
My black pants and white shirt were perfect for the evening of carrying drink trays around an art gallery. I slicked my blonde hair back into a low bun and put on red lipstick. I’d dressed the part of a waitress, and serving booze already in glasses was a lot easier than taking orders.
My friend Sarah managed the art gallery. Tonight, they featured a photographer who took racy pictures of women from strange angles. I didn’t understand it, and a lot of the photos made it hard to tell what was depicted, but visual arts weren’t my area of expertise and the mystery might be part of the fun.
I’d been handing out glasses for about an hour, walking around, not making eye contact with anyone to avoid conversation, and refilling my tray as needed. I alternated picking up empty glasses and then passing out fresh ones, finding a good rhythm despite being tired from a week of teaching classes.
Kieran approached in a stylish navy suit and blue button-down, a smile across his handsome face that pulled at the corners of his full lips and his midnight eyes glittered mischievously. Tucked in the suit jacket pocket, he had a white handkerchief folded to a point. “How’s it going tonight?”
His voice rolled down my spine like a shock of heat. “Not too busy. It’s an easy job. Fill up glasses with champagne and walk around, then collect empty ones.” A little bit of guilt nagged at me when I wondered if I was comparing this to working for him.
Nothing in his face gave away a negative reaction. “Is your friend Greg here?”
“No. He’s covering a play tonight for his podcast.”
Kieran made a noncommittal noise. “Are you seeing a lot of him?”
I wasn’t. We lived in the same building and saw each other in passing, but as yet, no heat, no spark. “I’ve been busy at school.”
Sarah peered in my direction, and I extended the tray to Kieran, trying to make a point to both of them that I was sticking to my tasks. “Another drink? I can get you club soda from the back.”
He shook his head. “I don’t plan to stay much longer. A close patron of the symphony invited me, but it’s been a long week. Are you having fun?”
“If my music career doesn’t work out, I might try my hand at art. This is pretty cool.”
He grinned. “I can see that. You take great pictures.”
He meant my side project. I’d gotten the idea to document the behind-the-scenes orchestra practices, and Glory had found out about it and used some of my snaps in a foyer display for the patrons. “I love my work. That’s never been in question.”
His eyes filled with emotions I couldn’t read. He straightened and pulled at his suit jacket sleeves. “I never doubted your love of music. I saw it in your eyes every day. It’s something I admire about you.”
I stamped out the rising hope that bubbled up. The music, always the music, never about me, the woman. “Have a good time. I need to keep pushing these.” I nodded toward the tray and walked away, sure of his gaze at my back and resisting the urge to turn around and check his expression.
Awkwardness arced between us as we tried to find the balance in our relationship. Kieran seemed happy to talk to me, but at some point, he’d date someone, and I’d be insanely jealous and have to put distance between us.
Sarah strode toward me, wearing an amazing black dress that fell below her knees, her long
black hair straight and falling to her hip. How she walked in five-inch heels without breaking her stride, I’d never know. “You cannot believe these lushes. I need another case of champagne. Will you grab Charlie and go to the storeroom and get another crate?” Sarah dangled a silver key in front of me, and I took it.
Charlie was another hire for the evening, a local dancer who wore his greasy, dark hair long around his ears and brushing his collar. By the way he’d pushed his thinning hair away from his face where it hit along his cheek, the length was less a fashion statement and more a testament to not having the money for a decent cut or a great bottle of shampoo. He’d had a sweat-stained headband on earlier in the night, but Sarah had asked him to remove it.
We’d talked while prepping for the night and setting out the tablecloths. We’d crossed paths a few times at the refill station.
I grinned at Sarah. “No problem. Crate of booze.” I deposited my mostly empty tray in the back room.
I found Charlie standing in the corner of the room, his tray empty, probably taking a couple of minutes to breathe and relax his cheeks from the constant mindless smiling.
Carrying those trays got to be heavy on the biceps. I’d be feeling it tomorrow. I held up the keys to the storeroom. “Sarah wants us to haul up another case of champagne.”
Charlie brushed his straggly hair back from his cheek. “And ditch these trays for a few minutes? Gladly.”
We headed to the storeroom.
“Can you believe these people?” He sounded disgusted and smelled like an ashtray.
“That they understand art? I don’t get it either. I’m clueless. I’m learning, though.”
“Not the pictures. Throwing around thousands of dollars for a picture of a woman. I could take the same pictures if I jammed a camera up a girl’s dress.”
The Maestro Page 4