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"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."
"Damn, you take up a lot of that space." Her eyes go to the window. She watches the night sky for a minute, then her eyes are back on mine. "When I was in high school, I got suspended for telling a teacher to go fuck himself."
"Which teacher?"
"English. I asked him why we didn't read any female authors and he started going off on how they only wrote about women's stories, and I just lost it."
I can see a teenage Violet cursing out a teacher. In fact, I can see twenty-three-year-old Violet doing the same thing.
She continues. "That was fine. I was proud. But my parents had to come from one of Asher's piano recitals. Both of them left, right before he performed. When Asher got home, he told me I was a bitch for screwing up his performance. He looked out and he didn't see Mom and Dad and he missed a bunch of notes, and then he didn't get into the right college. He had to go to Cal State Fullerton. It has a good program but it was his third choice. It was this whole thing and it was my fault."
I pull her closer.
"It was supposed to be us versus our parents. It wasn't that they'd done anything wrong. It was the usual high school why do my parents have rules I have to follow thing. But after that day, it became him versus me. And we never went back to being on the same team." Her eyes go to the floor. "It wasn't just him. It was me, too. I pushed him away. If I hadn't…"
"You couldn't have saved him, Vi."
"Maybe." She lets out a heavy sigh. "I know you're right, but I don't feel it yet."
"You will."
"You promise?"
