“I’m right here,” Dr. Jacobs whispered, just loud enough for her to hear. He raised his baton, nodded to the accompanist and the music began. “It’s just you and me.”
And she sang. Everything else faded away – the accompanist and her castmates and the remnants of the whiskey smell – all of it was gone. All of it except Dr. Jacobs. The intensity of his gaze supported her where she stood, and each movement of his baton moved her like a bow on a cello, guided by his expert hand.
The earth tilted a fraction of an inch beneath her feet, but she was steady, held in place by Dr. Jacobs’ grey blue eyes. The pressure behind her sternum released. She was no longer being crushed, but instead split open, flayed apart by the penetrating gaze from the podium. From the jagged edges in her chest, the music poured, bleeding out purples and reds. The colors washed over her until she was dripping with them, drowning in them, floating on them. Thick like paint, coating everything. Light as silk, easy to move through as air.
She sang until there was nothing left, until every last drop of color had been wrung from her, placed like an offering on an altar at the feet of Dr. Jacobs. And where the colors once were, there was now a gaping hole in her chest, a hole immediately filled in from a wellspring she never knew existed, bubbling and clear and filling in all her broken places.
When Dr. Jacobs lowered his baton, his eyes were bright, eyelashes wet. He pressed his palms together like a prayer, raised them to his lips and bowed his head to her. She climbed down from the stage knowing his eyes followed her, grateful for the ways he’d patched her together, not with tape and string but with something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something she didn’t have a name for. And though the flames still flickered at the edge of her vision, she no longer felt it. She was enveloped in the balm of Dr. Jacobs’ music – oftheirmusic – and, for the first time all day, she breathed freely.
Chapter Eleven
At last it was performance day, and their last day in Italy. As Dr. Jacobs and Min walked to the boarding house that morning, Min walked slower than usual, trying to draw out their last few minutes together.Thiswas what she would miss most about their summer together. There would be no morning walks and conversations about books when they returned to campus.Will there be conversations outside of class at all?
“How’s Hemingway?” Dr. Jacobs asked, breaking the silence. He was as on edge as she was, like he was also counting how many minutes they had left together, how many more steps.
“Depressing,” she chuckled. “But beautifully so. I finished it last night.”
“Good. Now you can move on to something better,” he said.
“Better than Hemingway?” she asked in her most scandalized voice.
Dr. Jacobs rolled his eyes with a smile. “The man spends 300 pages telling us the story of two people who continually hurt each other.” He waved a hand dismissively as he took a bite of his croissant. She couldn’t help but watch the flaky bits of pastry that clung to his lips, to follow the movement of his tongue as it wiped them away.
“It’s about how much they love each other,” she said.
He stopped and looked at her, the corner of his mouth turning up in amusement. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
She smiled despite herself at how effortlessly he quoted the last line of the book. Not only was Dr. Jacobs a brilliant musician, coach, and professor, but he could also quote Hemingway.No,she told herself,you have spent all year tryingnotto fall for your professor – don’t give in now. No matter how sexy and charming and erudite he is.
Who was she kidding? She fell for him long ago.
The smile slid off his face and he tilted his head so that he was somehow still taller than her and yet looking up at her through his eyelashes and a furrowed brow. “The way those characters treat each other… Min, that’s not love.” He scanned her eyes for understanding.
She nodded and they continued walking.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked, the question surprising even to her as it slipped out.
Dr. Jacobs ran his fingers through his hair and huffed out a grunt. “I thought I was.”
“What happened?” She had to know. Like picking at a wound you knew would bleed, she couldn’t help herself.
“We wanted different things.” He kept walking, not looking at her, but she didn’t miss the tension in his jaw. “In the end, she wasn’t the person I thought she was, and I wasn’t interested in being the person she wanted me to be.” He gave a little half smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Do you still love her?”
He stopped walking and turned to face her. The air between them thickened. He smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear, his hand brushing her cheek as it fell away, her skin tingling in its wake. She resisted the urge to chase his touch.
His eyes were an inferno, swirling pools of molten color. Min licked her lips and swallowed hard, finding her mouth suddenly dry.
“No,” he said at last with a smile, his eyes sparkling.
She nodded. She was vaguely aware of passersby moving around them, of the way their standing on the sidewalk staring at each other was an obstruction to the foot traffic. But she didn’t care. She couldn’t stop staring at him any more than she could stop the next sentence from tumbling from her lips.
“I’ve never been in love,” she said, softly. “Do you think that means-?”
“No,” he cut her off, his voice firm, his eyes narrowing.
She scoffed. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
