“Well…you didn’t have to come all the way up here.”
He’s tentative. Did he not want me to find out? I push in and look around until I find it—the piano, glinting in a dark corner. I go to it, ignoring the click of the door. The footsteps behind me.
“Were you giving a piano lesson?” I ask stupidly.
“Yeah.” Arms snake around me.
“I don’t get anything that’s happening here,” I say.
Or at least, most things I don’t get. I sit at the bench and run my fingers lightly over the keys. It’s a Kawai—a nice one. That’s the kind Max would prefer, I think with a rush of affection. He’d want it for the tone.
“You’re secretly teaching piano?”
“Busted,” he says.
I turn to him. “Why the secrecy? It’s not like you’re making troll doll full-costume sex fetish films up here or something.”
He look at me strangely.
“I mean, it’s piano lessons.”
He sits down at the bench next to me and plunks the middle C. “I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want it to be a thing.”
“A Max Hilton persona thing.”
“It would turn into a circus. A performance.”
It comes to me here just how much he hated being made to play. To perform. The child prodigy alone on the stage. I feel this wave of compassion for him. “But you like teaching?”
“I love it. I love getting kids to connect with the music, but not forcing them or shaming them. Just…showing them. I love when a kid catches fire with the piano.”
Goosebumps prickle over me. He wants to give them a chance to love music. To have what he didn’t have.
“Do you feel like you’re undoing it?” I ask softly. “With the lessons?”
“Maybe.”
I trace a finger over the cool, glossy keys. I play part of a scale. I can feel him cringe. He used to play scales so perfectly. “You could have a piano at your place. A baby grand.”
He gives me a jaded look. “You know what they say about people who decorate with baby grands.”
I snort. “Okay, Max Hilton. So who are the kids?”
“Employees kids.” He plunks another note. “What songs are you preparing for Anything Goes?”
“Wonderful” from Olympus on My Mind for my comic one. It’s a little risky. Bawdy.”
“I love that for Reno. A big personality piece.”
“I have that one down cold, but my challenge is ‘How Could I Ever Know?’ from The Secret Garden. It’s tricky.”
“But it would show off your high notes like crazy.”
“Right? It goes up to F5.”
“You know you can nail that.” He plunks a few notes of it. He’s familiar with the song. At least the refrain. Then he plays a few chords.
“You know it?” I ask.
“Not really.” He grabs his iPad and looks up the music.
“You’re going to play it?”
“I want to hear you sing it, and I’m thinking that’s the only way that happens.” He’s got the music up. My heart pounds. “I want to hear.”
It’s a marvel to watch him run through enough of it to get it down. I’d forgotten how well he can sight read, just a few stops and starts to get it in his bones and he’s on his way, making it his own. His phrasing is everything. Like he’s discovering the heart of the song. He could always do that.
He goes to the top, giving me my way in.
My chest feels light—I’m not sure if it’s fear or excitement. We’re doing music together. I want to jump in, but something stops me.
“Train’s leaving,” he says, repeating the prelude, a musical question he knows I have to answer.
We’re two pieces of a puzzle. We always were.
He goes back to the top. I watch his face.
He glances at me and groans and starts again. It’s a leap what I’m about to do—more intimate than fucking him. He knows it. He’s pulling me.
I stand. I launch in. The first verse lyrical and sad—the whole song is. I sing it like I’ve been practicing.
It was good how I did it, and then I look at him and his eyes are sparkling. Shivers go over me because he’s right in there with me.
He comes back at me with the next verse. Max makes it seem easy. Max has a distinct piano voice, but he knows how to use it to support my voice. We sang together that summer and he knows how to make me shine. The perfect tone to enrich mine.
We head into the song, like heading into the wilderness together.
And then everything falls away, and it’s just us, meeting in the music. The song is heartbreaking, and toward the middle it soars operatically. When we come to the end, he moves his finger in a circle to show he’s circling back to the beginning. I head in again and we’re off.
Flying again. Back in that magical summer, but so much better.
He pauses when I falter, returning to just the right point to get me back. We go again and again and then back around to the front. Like if we never stop the song, this doesn’t have to end.
It’s so beautiful and right that at one point this wave of grief washes over me. All the years of being stupid.
He stops. “Where did you go?”
“I feel sad.” Like sad could even begin to describe it. “We really do deserve that award. For friggin’ boneheadedness.”
He looks at his hands, poised over the keys. Does he feel it?
“You want to stop?”
“Hell no.” I sit next to him on the bench and show him on the score where I’m thinking of trying something new.
He starts back a few bars, posture erect, color high. He’s the opposite of the Max Hilton that’s offered for public consumption. He’s the old Max. Genuine. In my corner. I try the new thing. He goes back again and again. I feel like we could play forever. I want the shine of our music to push away reality. But finally I have to stop or I’ll burn out my vocal chords.
He looks over at me.
Smiles.
Not his Max Hilton smile, but his goofy smile. “You are gonna kill it,” he says. “And the role is for you.” He’s up, crossing the room to a small refrigerator. He tosses me a bottle of water. To soothe my throat. “You hungry?” he asks. “I’m hungry.”
“If you’re hinting that you want me to serve you a sandwich, you can forget it.”