I nodded. Monday. His thumb slowly ran along my jaw, and I closed my eyes, leaning my head back slightly, my breath sucking in slowly.
The moment ended too quickly. His eyes darted to the narrow window in the practice room door. We’d taken a terrible risk the previous day. The kind of risk that could end his teaching career and destroy my reputation.
I couldn’t help but ask myself if the risk ... the thrill of that risk ... had enhanced the moment.
Then he was gone, leaving me confused and lonely and unsure.
The following Monday, I tentatively walked up Pinckney Street in Beacon Hill, my flute case in my right hand. It was a beautiful day, the sky clear, everything crisp. The beginning breath of fall breathed the slightest chill into the air. It calmed my nerves, reminding me that he had invited me here. He’d said, “I love you.”
Of course, in the back of my head, his full sentence continued to play out in my mind, because the words he’d said weren’t simply, “I love you.” They were I am in love with you, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m sorry for that.
Who says that?
Gregory fucking Fitzgerald says that. Leaving me wondering what he was looking for, what did he want? Was he just playing with me? Was he looking for some excitement? Was he planning to have his fun then toss me aside, did he even know what the hell he was doing? Did he even know what love was? Because you don’t tag any stipulations onto the end of I love you. You just don’t.
My thoughts and emotions were completely tied up in knots by the time I knocked on the door of his townhouse on Beacon Hill. Through the door, I could faintly hear his cello ... he was practicing the Kol Nidrei again and didn’t stop. I knocked again a second time, but he obviously didn’t hear me, because he didn’t stop playing. I shifted on my feet, my emotions wavering between irritation that he wasn’t answering the door to ... what?
I couldn’t put my finger on it, until I saw a woman walking a dog the size of a pony down the street toward me. My eyes darted away from her, and I knocked again, harder. I swallowed as I avoided the woman’s gaze, trying to mute the confusion of my thoughts and feelings. Part of me was incredibly excited to be here, because I knew that while we’d practice, we’d likely be doing far more than that. But part of me was uncomfortable that I hadn’t demanded clarity from him, that I hadn’t insisted we explore exactly what those words meant when he said, I am in love with you, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m sorry for that. Because I kept asking myself what my friends would think, what my parents would think.
I shook my head as I finally raised a fist and slammed it into the door. I was almost ready to walk away. I felt like a stereotype—the young student with a crush on a professor—and it made me confused and ashamed and angry.
After all that knocking, I was startled when he finally stopped playing and I heard the bolts slide back. Gregory opened the door and stood there for a second, his eyes glassy, his breathing heavy. He wore black jeans and a plain white t-shirt, and the faintest sheen of sweat made his forehead and neck reflect the sunlight.
For the barest fraction of a second he stared right through me, as though he didn’t recognize me. Then his eyes darted to the woman across the street, then back to me. “You’re late for your lesson,” he said, loud enough for the woman to hear, then turned his back on me.
I wanted to hit him.
Instead, I followed him inside the house, closing the door behind me. All of my instincts were screaming at me to turn around and leave. He’d been hideously rude to me, and there was no reason for it. None at all. When his eyes darted to that woman and he’d spoken to me in the tone he had, he’d made it very clear. He was ashamed of me.
He turned back toward me when he neared his cello. It was a beautiful instrument, not the workmanlike one he normally carried at the conservatory. He turned toward me, one of his hands moved over the curve of his cello the way a man touches a woman.
I wanted to be touched that way.
Wordless, I unsnapped the case for my flute and began assembling it, trying to still my confused thoughts.
“Shall we begin where we left off Friday?” he asked, softly.
I wanted to snort. Where did we leave off Friday? With his hand cupping my chin. With my entire body trembling in anticipation. With my emotions in tatters.
It was better to take the question literally. “Yes.”
And so we played. And no matter the chaos in my head, the music was anything but muddled or unclear. For the next ninety minutes we played without pause, and with barely a word spoken between us. It was intense, emotional, and brutal. As the melody passed back and forth between us, sometimes alternating, sometimes in unison, our eyes repeatedly met, and each time I felt raw, as if he were stroking the bow across my soul instead of the strings of his cello.
For that hour and a half, I felt as connected to Gregory as I’d felt when we were making love. In truth, I felt as connected to him as I’d ever felt with anyone. What we created between the two of us was so much bigger than what either of us did alone. I literally felt the walls of my ego and isolation fall away, leaving me open, raw ... and vulnerable. I felt ecstatic. Beautiful. In love.
Finally, he signaled enough. And as I placed my flute on its stand, he did the same with his cello and abruptly walked out of the room. I flinched, my emotions suddenly going into a tailspin.
Not a word? Not a sign that he’d felt anything?
Tentatively, I followed him into the kitchen. He stood facing the center island, his arms trembling from the continuous exertion of our practice, his back to me.
I swallowed. I was afraid. I was afraid of what he might say right then. What was going through his mind? And so, slowly, I reached out and put my hand on his back, my fingers splayed out, feeling the tension in his shoulder and back muscles.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.”