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I bend down to sweep the glass into the dustpan, and Zoe answers for me. “Mom, he’s the guitarist for Verduistering.”
“You’re a guitarist?” Now Sara looks up at me. “In a band?”
Zoe’s looking a little pale, and I’m not sure if it’s the small amount of blood on the paper towel Sara’s pulled away from her foot or the sheer mortification over her mom not knowing who I am. “Verduistering won Eurovision last year,” she whispers to her mother.
“Oh, wait. I think I remember Jade telling me about that. It’s like American Idol, right?”
“Mom,” Zoe wails, broken out of her shock by her mother’s lack of coolness. “You’ve been living with one of the members of the hottest rock band in the world, and you didn’t even know! This is so unfair.”
Sara ignores her daughter. “Chris, can you get a first aid kit for me? I think there’s one under my bathroom sink.”
I know there’s one in the half bath off the front entrance, so I grab that instead, and when I step back into the kitchen, Sara and Zoe are having an argument via whispers.
Sara thanks me with a tight smile. “Can you give us a few minutes?”
“Sure,” I say. “It was nice to meet you, Zoe.”
A noise vaguely resembling a titter comes out of her mouth, and her cheeks darken in a blush.
I retreat back to my studio and leave the door open. Sara’s never been in here, but I guess there’s no reason to close it now. I pick up one of the four guitars and play absentmindedly.
I should have said something to Sara before Zoe arrived. It was lucky for me that I went as long as I did without her knowing, but now this is going to be a problem. Zoe’s clearly a fan, and I close my eyes when I realize I should have asked her not to say anything to anyone before I left the kitchen. The last thing I want is to have my location splashed all over social media.
Zoe wouldn’t mean any harm by it, but it would definitely ruin this small, quiet thing that Sara and I have had going here.
There’s a knock, and I look up to see Sara in the doorway. Her gaze roams around the room, taking in the dark wallpaper, the computer, the mixing board, and various paraphernalia I have strewn around, including a lot of scratched-out papers.
“I’m sorry,” I start. “I should have told you.”
She steps in and leans against a bare spot on the wall, her hands behind her back. Her eyes drift down to where my hands rest on the guitar. “Yeah, you should have.” Sara’s voice is tight with confusion and hurt. “And I should have asked you. I feel like an idiot. I assumed it was a visual art. Acrylics or oils or something. Didn’t you say you did paintings?”
“I do. Just as a hobby, though. And not here.”
“But those sketches you did. Those were fantastic.”
“They were just sketches.”
“Well, I assumed. And you know what they say about assumptions.”
“No?”
“It makes an ass out of you and me.”
It takes me a moment to figure it out in my head, and when I do, I want to smile, but Sara’s glowering. “I hadn’t heard that one before.”
“It’s a weird idiom. I bet German is full of weird idioms too.”
“Yes,” I say, and then I try to think of one, but before I can continue, she interrupts.
“Can you play something for me?”
I suspect that Sara will not be a fan of my music, and that’s okay. She listens to mellow songs: Jack Johnson, Matt Kearny, Death Cab for Cutie. I strum a few chords ofPassenger Side,and she smiles at me.
“How about some of your music?”
I look at my guitar, too uncomfortable to meet her eyes, and play a few cords from the song that won us Eurovision. The song I wrote.
When I let it trail off, she’s still watching me. It feels like a judgment being passed, and I know I’ve fallen short. My life here with Sara is not the real world. The real world, in the form of Zoe, has crashed into our little bubble.
