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Violet looks over every nook and cranny—both plush couches, the half a dozen equally plush seats, the TV, the minibar. She barely notices the pilot and co-pilot enter the plan and announce thirty minutes to take off.
I have to grab her and strap her into a seatbelt for takeoff.
She reaches over the wide aisle to take my hand—Violet's always been nervous during takeoff and landing. I squeeze tightly until the pilot announces that we're at cruising altitude.
Violet undoes her seatbelt, then mine. She slides into my lap, hooking her arm around my neck. Her fingers p
lay with my hair.
She tugs my t-shirt down enough to trace the lines of my tattoo. "Baby, do I have the key to your heart?"
I nod.
Her green eyes go wide. Her voice gets soft. "Really?"
"You always have."
"You never talk about yourself, Ethan. About the things that hurt you. Even back in college, well, when I was in college." She runs her fingertips over my neck. "Tell me about something that hurt you. Something that didn't involve me."
My heartbeat picks up. I don't like talking about myself. Not the real shit. There are too many ugly things.
"Please," she whispers.
"Anything that hurt me?"
She nods.
"If you'll go second."
"Okay." She curls up against my chest like it's her favorite place in the world.
I run my fingers through her hair. Nobody has ever asked me to talk about something that hurt me. I have no idea where to start.
I go with the first thing that comes to mind. "I started playing guitar when I was twelve. Wrote my first song as soon as I could figure it out. I played it for Mal a hundred times. I played it for Piper two hundred times. Both of them loved it, though you know Mal, even then, at fifteen, he was nonchalant about his encouragement."
"I can imagine."
"He made a point about getting our parents to sit down to listen one night after dinner. I was excited to play it for them. As soon as I got home from school, I practiced all afternoon. Then after dinner, they said they had to work. They didn't have time to hear it. I was still excited to play for them, to make them proud. But they had to work the next night. Then they had a two-week trip to study the gorillas. I wrote another three songs, even a duet with Mal. Our babysitter loved them, but when Mom and Dad got back, they didn't remember about the song. They didn't care."
"That must have hurt."
"Yeah. I held out hope for a long time. A few times, Mal got them to sit still long enough to listen to one of my songs or our songs, as we started writing together, but they never really listened. They never came to our talent shows or, once we really started performing, our actual shows. Fuck, I guess I'm still holding onto hope. Sometimes, I expect them to show up backstage to tell us they're proud. Something."
"I'm sorry." She rests her head on my chest. "For whatever it's worth, I'm proud of you."
"Yeah?"
She nods. "You're amazing on stage. Not just the way you play—though you play very well—but the way you engage with the crowd. I'm sure you remember all the other bands I saw at your shows, the openers or the headliners. So many of them looked at their feet or each other. But you… you're really there, in that moment, playing your heart out."
Now I'm smiling.
She presses her forehead to mine. "I want to be that good at something one day."
"What about, what was it called?"
"Differential geometry? I'm good, but not that good." She looks up at me. "I guess it's my turn, huh?"
"Yeah. Something that hurt you, besides me."
