Page 65 of Play Me

I take a bite of some bread and chew it for a few seconds.

“Just like me?” Sebastian asks.

“Just like you, except that, I don’t think he quite meant it. We didn’t have luggage or passports or anything. Anyway, as we’re driving into the airport there are those signs advertising places, and I saw a picture of Uluru. So we walk up to the sales desk and they ask, how can I help you, and I say ‘Uluru!’ And five hours later, here we were. Well, not here here, we weren’t millionaires... but yes, here near Uluru.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, it was an amazing trip.” I nod and smile, even now remembering stepping off the plane and feeling so glamorous and world travelled. Having that power to just pick a place in the world, it made me feel a like a princess. And Sebastian had recreated that for me. A moment he didn’t even know was one of the best of my life.

“Sounds like it.”

“He was an amazing dad.”

“Was?”

I take another sip of wine, savoring it in my mouth for a moment before I speak again. “Yeah, he, er, he died when I was fourteen years old.”

“Oh, Cadence.” Sebastian sighs, sensing the loss it was for me at such a young age.

“He was the one who taught me to play piano. It took me a long, long time to find another teacher after he died.”

“He’s be so fucking proud if he could see you now.”

“What about yours?” I turn the questioning back to me.

“He’d be proud of you too if he knew you.” Sebastian winks and grins, and I almost let him get away with it, the way his mouth curls into that irresistible cheekiness. But I don’t.

“Hey, I shared...”

“I don’t have any romantic lovey stories to tell you about my dad. He’s a rough, tough guy.”

“He’s not proud of what you’ve achieved with the band?”

He pops a chip into his mouth and crunches for a moment, thinking the question over. “I guess not. You know, I think it might have to do with his pride. Growing up, we didn’t have fuck all, sometimes not even a roof over our heads, and he could not stand me not just leaving school and going off making money as a laborer or something. When I got the scholarship to Guildhall Music in London, he couldn’t use the tuition as an excuse to make me leave, and we pretty much stopped talking for years.”

The thought of having such a relationship with your father is so foreign to me, and I wonder how that must affect him now.

“Do you talk now?”

“Not really, some, I guess. I go home to visit my mom. And he always brings out these fucking scrapbooks with clipping of the band and making comments about how we dress and the songs we pick for our performance, and how we could always do better. Like he knows. Nitpicking over interviews and everything!”

I smile at him, listening to him rant. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“What?”

I lean over the table between us and he meets me halfway, pressing a gentle kiss to my lips.

“Sometimes you have to read between the lines.”

A blank look spreads across Sebastian’s face and I can’t help but feel a thrill as I get to embed a whole new series of expressions of his into my Sebastian Face Bank.

“You say he has scrapbooks of clippings of your shows and interviews...” I say, nudging him towards his own revelation.

“Yeah, tens of them, we’re in the paper? You name it, he’s found it and cut it out. To point out everything that’s fucking wrong I’ve done.”

“Sebastian, sometimes people express love...and pride in different ways. But I don’t see a father who couldn’t give a fuck about his kid cutting out hundreds of clippings, do you?”

He goes quiet and I pour us each another glass of wine.