They’re playing a soft hum of a tune, a prelude if you will. I’m able to make my way to the front of the room, taking in the sight before me.
In the center of the stage is a black grand piano similar to the one I played on the yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean. The one I was playing when the most beautiful man walked in and caught me in my most vulnerable state.
And that beautiful man is on the stage, seated at the piano in the middle of a real life orchestra about to play a song . . . for me.
His fingers start to play the notes and the string section around him picks up as well, causing my soul to soar before they all quiet down to a low hum as Asher continues to play.
I open the notebook and look down at the words he has written.
All around me, people are mesmerized not just by the orchestra and the song they are playing, but by the man in the center. The man in the center who is staring at no one else but me. Honey wheat eyes and staring down at me, his fingers playing the chords from memory.
My stomach drops and my breaths become deep to still my nerves. With every glide across the ivory keys and pump of the pedal, I feel my resolve for Asher wavering. I wanted him to give and for two weeks he has been giving me words and meaning. And today he is giving me that honey-wheat soulful gaze I once fell in love with—and it is destroying me. I stare down at the words on the pages.
This is a song about someone leaving. It can’t be to me, because I never left him. To the contrary. He left me. This song isn’t about me.
It’s about him.
Scanning the page, I run my fingers over the words, over the smoothness of the page. There is no song title. There is no author. It’s a song I’ve never heard of before yet I feel like I know it by heart.
He said I should be taking notes and I am. But what if I’m taking the wrong notes? Songs can be interpreted in so many ways. What if I’m reading this all wrong?
When the song is over, the crowd erupts in applause. People shout admiration for Asher’s playing and some of the students ask him to play something else. He obliges and asks them if they have any requests.
I take this as my cue to leave and let him wow his audience. I suppose that really was what this was all about. A lesson for the students.
I turn around and make my way through the crowd that has subsided. I walk through the lobby and am on my way back up the stairs when the stairwell door opens and Asher calls my name.
“Emma.”
I stop and turn around, looking at the man who went from ruining me to asking me to save him to making me want to fall in love with him. I know I should say something about the performance but I don’t know what to say. Instead I clutch the notebook to my side and stare at him, giving him the control because right now, I don’t know what I should do.
“I never got a chance to ask you. What happened to the shoes?”
I stare at him for a second before realizing he’s talking about the bouquet of Top-Siders he bought me. I consider lying, more for the fact I don’t want to appear crazy, then decide against it. “I burned them.”
Asher tilts his head, his face contorted as he tries to decide if I’m lying.
I answer him matter-of-factly. “Leah and I had a bonfire when we got back to Ohio. We doused them in limoncello and lit them up.”
His lips curl up on both sides as he shakes his head. “Well, that seems like a perfectly good waste of limoncello.”
I laugh at his response and let my shoulders release the tension I was carrying so tightly. I’m a wreck. He ruined me. But by God he owns me.
“I’m getting marrriieeedddd!”
Leah squeals from her place on a white bed in the middle of a Manhattan male strip club that caters to celebrations just like this. Instead of tables, there are several white beds big enough for ten girls to sit in and enjoy the show on display.