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I twist on the bench to look at Valtu with his hands together and he’s staring at me with such awe and respect that I want to burst into tears. It takes everything in me not to leap to my feet, run over to him and kiss him, tell him that I love him and that I need him back. God, I need him back.
But that feeling of love stays in the back of my throat and I have to choke it down until I can breathe again.
“Did you like it?” I manage to say, my voice coming out in a whisper.
His eyes widen appreciatively as he walks over to me. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised since I know nothing about you, but yes. I liked it very much.”
“Did you used to play the organ? When you were a teacher?”
He nods and slowly walks over to me, seeming to think as he goes. “Yes. I did. It was one of the classes I taught in Venice. Not always the most popular class, mind you.”
“Perhaps you could teach me,” I tell him.
He laughs and comes over to the bench. I scoot over and he sits down beside me, and I breathe him in deeply, the scent of him, of smoke and oranges, giving me goosebumps. “Teach you? Looks like you could teach me a thing or two. I wasn’t kidding when I said I haven’t played for a very long time.”
“How long?”
His brows come together and he stares blankly at the keys. “Nineteen years ago, maybe.”
This surprises me. I would have thought Valtu would have played long after I departed this realm. “And yet you put an organ in here? In the rock?”
“Oh, I didn’t do that,” he says, staring up at the pipes. “This place used to be a monastery before I bought it.”
“A monastery?”
He nods. “Believe it or not, they had a hard time attracting disciples. Something about the location…”
I can’t help but laugh. “You don’t say.”
He returns my smile, his eyes lighting up, and my heart does cartwheels at the sight.
God, he is so fucking beautiful.
Please, please be mine again.
I feel the wish so acutely that for a moment I fear I projected it into his head. But his attention is back to the organ again. He tentatively sticks out his hands and presses down on a few keys, notes ringing out. The organ comes to life, as if it’s been waiting forever to be touched by him. I have to say I can relate.
Then he snatches his hands back as if the keys burned his skin.
“I don’t think I have it in me,” he says, trepidation in his voice. “I don’t remember.”
“Sure you do,” I assure him. “You just need a little practice, that’s all.”
I reach over and grab his hands, gently placing them back on the keys, putting my fingers over his in the correct formation. The feeling of his large, strong, cool hands below mine makes me feel dizzy and I have to close my eyes. “You can manage your feet,” I whisper. “My legs aren’t long enough.”
He adjusts himself beside me on the bench, putting his feet on the pedals, and then I move his hands across the keys to the beginning position of Moonlight Sonata. I push down slightly, the keys depressed, and the pipes belt out with the moody tones. It feels so powerful to be able to make this instrument sing like this, like I’m some kind of god. I want him to have that feeling too. I guide his hands and fingers from one set of keys to the other, and we’re playing together, the song slow at first as we find our footing together, a few wrong notes here and there, but then it’s gliding along.
Eventually I take my hands off his and I just sit beside him, watching him play. My jaw tightens and my eyes burn and I have to keep breathing long and deep through my nose in order to hold it together, a deep ache forming in my chest. It sounds perfect and he looks perfect and everything about this makes sense and yet none of it makes any sense at all. I pray, hope, wish that somehow music can reach him, that it can travel somewhere deep inside, to wherever he harbors that trauma that Abe talked about, the one Valtu doesn’t know is buried in his soul, and that it can bring him back to life, bring him back to me.
Please, please, please, I think, and the music continues to sweep us both away until the song is done and the room is so full of this wild, beautiful energy, you can feel it on your skin like melting snow.
Valtu closes his eyes and exhales.
I hold my breath and hope and wait.
“Thank you,” he whispers, before rubbing his lips together. “Thank you.” He breathes in deeply through his nose and straightens his shoulders before looking at me. “That took me back.”
But from the way he’s looking at me, like I’m some woman he still doesn’t really know, I know it didn’t take him back far enough.
