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They might have been innocuous words on any other night, but after Fiona’s abrupt analysis of my sexual habits, I read something into his words. He didn’t mean sleep. He never did, nor did we. We fucked then slept.
I put the glass down. “Why don’t you just come out and say it? Let’s go fuck. Or how about get your clothes off and spread your legs?”
He froze on the spot. “What’s the matter? What did you and Fiona talk about?”
I moved out of the kitchen, detouring around the grand piano, keeping my distance from him. “She thinks I’ve moved in with another version of Micah.”
“Micah? I don’t understand.” He edged his way about the piano and we stood at either end of the musical furniture.
My voice betrayed my fractured nerves. It wavered as I spoke. “We fuck. End of story. And yeah, I’d not thought of it quite so clinically, but she’s right, you do have similarities to him.” I touched the piano lid with a trembling hand.
His face descended into a picture of horror with widening eyes and gaping mouth. “God, no. You think I’m only interested in you for sex? How…after all these weeks, everything we’ve done together? Things we spoke about in Germany? You come back to this—my dominance.”
“No, not that. That’s your preference, but it isn’t the issue, not for me. I worry that you have shown no interest in anything else. Everything is so…superficial between us.” I stared at my feet, unable to acknowledge his aghast expression.
“You didn’t want me to be involved, Callie. You accused me of stomping all over you, telling you to study, so I backed off. It’s what you wanted. I gave you the space to make your own decisions. You were adamant.” He ran both his hands through his hair. How quickly it had grown back, reforming his unruly mop. “Please tell me you want more than sex, because God damn it, I do!”
I lifted my head and he reached out both hands to me, a pose of supplication.
“Of course I do,” I mumbled. What a mess I’d conjured up, and it was all my own making. Men were such literal creatures. Back off, so he did. Folding my arms on the lid of the piano, I buried my face in them and sobbed.
He covered the space between us in a millisecond then pulled me up and wrapped his arms about me. “What on earth is going on?”
“I’m pushing you away, that’s what I’m doing.” I hiccupped. “Because that is what I do when I fear I’m failing.”
“Failing? At what?”
“Us!”
“Why do you think that? Because we enjoy a healthy sex life? We cook together, play together, curl up on the sofa and watch bad television. We laugh at the same jokes, tease and… Isn’t that how it should be? Being in love?”
A shiver shot right up my spine. My heart jumped out of my chest wall. “Love?” I repeated softly.
He tilted my chin up. “I’ve been holding back. I want to show you something.” He wiped away my tears. “Something good, so don’t panic. It’s nearly finished.”
He led me to the dining table and the pile of papers. He cleared his throat. “I realize I’m not good at showing you my feelings. I’m not a romantic. Not in words. In music, things I struggle to express take shape easily.” He moved the pile about and extracted a few sheets. “I’ve held back from imposing on you and you’ve grown, found your own feet again.”
“I can’t do it on my own, the diploma, I need a teacher, I know that now.” I pressed my hand onto his, halting his rearranging.
“Thank you,” he said. “I will try to help in a way you won’t resent.”
“I shan’t ever do that,” I hurried to say. “I’ve watched you teach, and why I thought you’d trample over me, I don’t know. You’re a fantastic teacher. I’m going to do a diploma and you’re going to help me.”
He smiled and pressed a kiss on my lips. “Good. No—more than good. Bloody brilliant.” He picked up a piece of paper and turned it over.
I leaned over the table and looked at the notes and words written across each stave. A piece for clarinet and voice. I traced a finger along the notes, singing the tune in my head. “You wrote this for me?”
“For us,” he stated. “I’ve been writing it for a while, but it wasn’t until we went to Lake Starnberg that it came together. Originally, I was going to do clarinet and piano. Then, I thought, voice. A baritone, and weaving about it, your clarinet.”
He placed a trembling hand on the sheet. Strange to see him overtly nervous.
“See? I wrote the words in German, I plan to translate them. They will fit well with the rhythm and mel
ody in English, as well as German.”
The notation had captured the influences of a contemporary composer—the mixture of time signatures, the odd flurry of discord and changing tempo. As I hummed the tune, I heard a beautiful melody in the vocal part, then passed to the clarinet and ending with the two instruments combined in harmony. “This is us?”
“Oh, yes. Imagine I’m the sailing boat, below you—the baritone—setting the course and keeping you safe. You above, the bird in the sky—Nettie—darting about, diving down to touch me and soaring high again.”
