by Ali Parker
CHAPTER 14
PIPER
We were nearly halfway through August. Time was passing as it always did this year: too quickly. Levi and I had hit our stride ever since the other night on his rooftop where we spoke openly about his addiction, his brother, and how I felt about the whole thing.
It had been a freeing conversation. Prior to him inviting me to join him up there, I’d been seriously considering bailing on him.
This process had been trying. Each and every month brought its own struggles and rewards. But the drugs and the drinking were too far out of my wheelhouse for me to stick around for it. I’d been prepared to call Jackson Lee the following morning and ask him to send me home.
But then dinner had happened.
And we’d talked.
And then he’d fucked me within an inch of my life, and now, it would be impossible for me to leave because despite how much I didn’t want to admit it, I wanted that sex again.
And again, and again.
Not only that, but home wasn’t all that inviting of a thought either.
Sure, I had Janie and Phillip, but I wouldn’t be able to return to my normal life to get through the month because as far as I knew, my parents still didn’t want to talk to me.
I hadn’t heard from them in two weeks. I’d been hoping that they would take the first step and reach out to me when they were willing to talk, but I was starting to think they were holding a serious grudge against me for lying.
If that was the case, I understood. My deception hadn’t been a minor one.
I’d lied about where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing. And who I’d been doing it for.
Them.
Apparently, that didn’t make it any less bad.
As I sat on my bed early in the morning on Tuesday, the thirteenth of August, I stared down at my phone and contemplated calling my mother.
Of the two of them, I knew my mother would be the most likely to hear me out. My father would likely still be furious. How he’d responded at dinner the night I told them about the Casanova Club promised that much. And when he was angry, he needed time and space to sort through that anger.
It couldn’t be good for his heart. Not at all.
But if I called my mother, then I might be putting her in a bad position.
I concluded that it would be best to leave the two of them alone and reach out to someone I knew without a shadow of a doubt would answer my call: my brother.
As expected, he answered right away. “Pipes. What’s up? How are you?”
“Hi,” I said, smiling at the sound of his voice filling up the line. “I’m good. You?”
Phillip cursed under his breath a millisecond after a toaster popped somewhere in the background. “Fucking toaster burns everything. Damn it.” I heard the cupboard under the kitchen sink at the family house open and assumed he was throwing out his piece of toast. “I’m good. You know. Same old. Keeping busy.”
I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek and considered asking him about our folks. It seemed unfair to cut straight to the chase. He was covering for me at the restaurant after all, and he deserved more of my attention than just being someone I called to get the lowdown on our parents’ level of fury.
“How’s the restaurant doing?” I asked.
Phillip chuckled. “Come on, Pipes. You know how it’s doing. The same as always. It’s dead. Nobody comes in. It’s a black hole greedy for more and more money.”
I sighed. Of course. “Sorry. I can’t help it.”
“It’s all right. I get it.”
I fell backward onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Phillip chuckled softly into the phone. “Are you going to ask me about Mom and Dad, or what?”
I propped myself up on one elbow. “I didn’t want to cut to the chase like that. I wanted to talk to you about you.”
He scoffed. “Come on, Pipes. Don’t be like that. I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
I licked my lips. “Okay. So then… Mom and Dad?”
“Are still pretty pissed.”
I frowned. “Right.”
“I test the waters every couple of days to see where Dad’s rage-O-meter is sitting. So far, it hasn’t moved very much. I’m sorry, Pipes. But don’t worry. He’ll come around. He always does. He’s just taking his sweet-ass time wrapping his old-fashioned mind around his baby girl serial dating twelve dudes.”
I grimaced. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
Phillip chuckled. “Don’t be so modest, Piper. You haven’t done anything wrong. Mom and Dad are just old fashioned and prideful. You know that. The fact that you’re doing this for them probably makes it sting a little more. That’s all.”
“That’s not what I wanted.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t know how to make it better.”
“I know,” Phillip said again. “But can I be honest with you?”
“Please.”
“I don’t think it’s your job to make it better. You’ve done what you can. The ball is in their court now. They love you more than anything. They will come around to this. I promise. And in the meantime, I’ll do everything I can to normalize this situation and push them toward forgiving you. You trust me, right?”
“Of course,” I said without even having to think about my answer.
“Good. Then let me hold down the fort here. You just do what you have to over there.”
I smiled up at my temporary bedroom ceiling. “You’re the best little brother a sister could ask for, Phillip.”
“You didn’t think that when we were teenagers.”
“That’s because you were an annoying little shit, and you were always in my space.”
Phillip laughed. His laughter reminded me of our father’s. “I thought you were cool.”
“I was cool.”
He laughed again. “Yeah. For a nerd.”
“Hey!”
“All right, all right, I take it back. But look, I have to go. I have to make something to eat before I head over to the restaurant. Keep your head up, okay? This will all blow over. You’ll see.”
My heart sank as the moment of reprieve and laughter fell away. “Okay. I love you, Phillip.”
“I love you too, sis. Be safe out there.”
The call ended.
I continued gazing up at the ceiling, my heart heavy with the knowledge that my parents still didn’t want to talk to me. Or think about talking to me, for that matter.
No matter how many times Phillip said things would get better, I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe it. Even if they did forgive me, could things ever go back to what they were? Or were they always going to suspect me of lying?
What if I’d broken their trust?
My eyes burned, and I willed the tears to stay at bay. If they started, I wouldn’t be able to stop.
So I sat up, wiped at my eyes, and left my bedroom. Being alone was the worst thing I could be right now.
I moved down the hall to the top of the stairs, and a gentle, musical sound reached my ears. The melody was soft, sweet, elegant, and unlike any music I’d ever heard being played in this house.
And it was extremely unfamiliar. A tune I’d most definitely never heard before.
I made my way down the stairs.
The swell of the music grew as I went to the open door of Levi’s in-home music studio. I paused at the door, looked in, and saw him sitting at the piano with his back to me. His fingers floated over the keys, drifting back and forth like they had a will of their own, striking keys and creating the beautiful melody that I could feel in my heart.
This music was entirely different from the music he’d played at his show the other night.
It wasn’t rock. It wasn’t party music or dance music or road-trip music. It wasn’t wild or fun or chaotic.
It was sad.
I was about to knock on the doorframe to let Levi
know I was there, but I froze, knuckles hovering inches from the wood as Levi’s voice filled the room in a bittersweet melody.
* * *
“I’ve been walking alone all this time,
Face turned to the stars and the white powder,
Falling,
Spiraling,
Waiting for something to break my fall.
But there’s no one there.”
* * *
I knocked.
His fingers fell still, the words died on his lips, and he twisted around on his piano bench.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“It’s all right.”
I stepped into the room and went to stand beside him. I put a hand on his shoulder. “That was beautiful, Levi.”
The tears I’d kept at bay upstairs had reappeared to cling to my lashes at the sound of his voice and his words.
He reached up and wiped one from my cheek with his thumb. Then he took my wrist and guided me down onto the bench beside him. “It wasn’t meant to be heard,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“It’s not ready.”
“How do you know when it’s ready?”
Levi smiled. “You don’t, I suppose. But a song like this one isn’t for my fans.”
“Who is it for?”
Levi shrugged. “Me I guess.”
CHAPTER 15
LEVI
Piper stared down at the piano keys as I stared at her.
Things had changed since that night on the roof. We were closer, connected.
And I was scared.
I’d known full well before we took things to the next level that night that I was stepping into uncharted emotional territory. I’d also known it was going to hurt. But I’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
Now I was writing and composing fucking melodies like a love-sick wretch.
Piper pushed the last four keys on the right down in succession: F, G, A, B.
“How long did it take you to learn?” she asked as the last note hung in the air around us.
“I started when I was six. It’s not something you really finish learning, I guess. There’s always new music to write. New tunes to play. New arrangements of notes to create.” I feathered my fingers over the keys, giving way to a flourish of whimsical sound.
Piper smiled. “You make it look so easy.”
And you make looking so dangerously beautiful effortless, so here we are.
“It’s thousands of days of practice,” I said.
Piper rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse and set her wrists to rest below the keys. When she looked over at me, there was a playful smile on her lips and a curious glint in her eye. “Can you teach me something?”
Even if I’d wanted to say no, I wouldn’t have been able to.
She could have anything she wanted from me. Any time. Anywhere. All she had to do was name her price, and I would match it.
I reached across her to press down the far-right key. “B. The highest note. And on this end,” I pushed down the far-left note, “C. The highest note.”
Piper’s brow furrowed. “And what are all the notes in between?”
I chuckled. “A, D, E, F, and G.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” I nodded.
She frowned. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to make a lick of sense to me?”
“Because it won’t.”
She shifted in her chair and eyed me. “Play me something then.”
“Play you what?”
“Anything.”
I pursed my lips. After a moment of thought, I lifted my hands over the center keys, and just as I was about to start playing, Piper put a hand on my wrist. I looked over at her.
“Play me what you were playing when I walked in,” she said.
“It isn’t finished.”
“Does it have to be?”
Me saying “it isn’t finished” was code for “it’s not something I ever intended someone else’s ears to hear, let alone yours.” But as I’d already concluded, Piper James could get anything she wanted out of me.
So, I swallowed down my fear and looked back down at the pearl-white keys.
In all the trials of my life, they’d been the most constant thing for me. On the dark days of youth amidst bullying and hormones and a mother who favored her younger son over her older one, my piano had been a place of refuge. Even though it was an old model with hollow-sounding notes and always required tuning, it offered me a solace nothing else could.
A safe place.
I’d been well aware for a long time that I’d used the piano like a therapist growing up. I let it into my soul, and the music and the notes shaped me. It filled me with aspirations and dreams, and nothing else compared to playing it. I pursued other interests like soccer and baseball and all the things boys my age were supposed to be into, but everything was dull and lackluster compared to the music.
So my mother pulled me out of sports and had a straight conversation with me one day. She’d pay for music lessons. And vocal lessons. And she’d bend over backward to get me into the rooms with the best mentors and the most influential people in the industry.
But she would not settle or compromise.
If I wanted to play music, then I’d better play it damn good.
And my thirteen-year-old self shook her hand and struck a deal.
With my own mother.
Jake never understood it. The things he wanted came easy to him, and there weren’t conditions or strings attached. He was free to be an average boy without the pressures of success resting heavily upon his shoulders. He indulged in sports, and when we got older, he had a hell of a lot more free time on his hands than I did.
Naturally, that made me jealous. And by the time I was seventeen, the deal struck with my mother seemed so far away that a little bit of rebellion seemed to be a logical step.
I dropped out of my professional vocal classes and never told my mother. She didn’t find out until three months later when she received her post-dated check back in the mail from my teacher with a slip informing her that I hadn’t come to any classes for the last ninety days.
My mother blew her top.
When she found out I’d started up a band with a few of my buddies, she became even more frazzled.
Even now as a grown man, I wondered at the incredulity of it all.
Why had me pursuing music been such a heavier burden for my mother than Jake playing sports? The cost was the same. The time demands were the same. All of it was the same.
It was just a little less ordinary. Not unorthodox. Just less ordinary.
“Are you going to play?” Piper asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
I cleared my throat and shifted on the piano bench, setting the toe of my shoe upon the pedal below. I took a deep breath and welcomed the calm that settled in my lungs.
And then I began to play.
The song started slow, like a soothing lullaby mothers might sing to their slumbering babies on cool summer evenings. Then as the tune rose and the notes quickened, it invoked a sense of urgency and un-sureness.
I gave my words to the song, and Piper listened, her eyes fixed on me. I could feel the heat of her stare as I played, and I willed myself to keep going. Stage fright hadn’t affected me in my entire career. I couldn’t let it affect me here in my own home beside the woman I—
I stopped that line of thinking before it went too far, and I focused on playing the song.
When the notes died and the room settled into still silence, Piper let out a breath. “It really is beautiful. I can’t believe you don’t want people to hear it.”
That was because she had no idea how vulnerable the song made me feel. It was a song about addiction and loss and hatred. Not hatred of others. Or things. Or circumstance. But hatred of self.
It was about loneliness and isolationism and the crippling fear of being alone until I died, at which
point I would still be alone.
No. It was a song for my ears alone.
And Piper’s apparently.
She put a hand on mine. “Thank you for playing it for me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The woman in the yellow sundress,” Piper said slowly, recalling a line from my song. “She wore a yellow dress to hide the darkness in her heart. Who is she?”
“No one.”
Piper’s fingers curled around mine. “It didn’t feel like you were singing about no one to me. She felt real.”
My mother only wore sundresses in the summer. In the winter, she opted for long skirts with thick nylons underneath and ankle boots and heavy scarves that hid her throat and shoulders. I always saw her clothes as layers that kept prying eyes out of her affairs.
Maybe I was the same way.
Maybe the alcohol and the drugs were my way of putting up a wall to keep people out.
“It’s my mother.”
Piper nodded slowly. “You and her had a rocky relationship?”
“For the most part, yeah.”
Piper’s mouth twitched. “Would she be happy to know she was one of your muses? They say art and words, poems and songs, are the closest we can get to immortality.”
“I don’t think she would like her immortality to be written the way I write her.”
Piper nudged my shoulder with hers. “Then she should have behaved better when she was alive, don’t you think?”
I surprised myself by laughing.
Piper didn’t seem surprised at all. She beamed at me, red in the cheeks, joyful in the eyes.
“You’re wise for your young years,” I told her.
She shrugged. “I’ve always been a firm believer that if people want to be remembered in a favorable light, then they better have led a favorable life. Don’t you think?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
“It’s simple math, really. Behave like an asshole and be remembered as such after you die by the ones you leave behind. Behave as a kind, compassionate, loving person, and those are the things your loved ones will recall of you. Maybe if your mother had been kinder, you would sing a happier song of her in her yellow dress.”