Sitting in the makeup chair next to Savannah, I was annoyed. The flight was quiet, with only a soft “excuse me” from her lips when she slid past me to use the restroom. We’d spent the past couple of weeks skillfully avoiding each other. Well, I was avoiding her, and it sure seemed she was avoiding me. She would look down whenever I scanned the orchestra, or would turn her back to me as I approached someone standing next to her. I couldn’t worry about that right now, though, as I was still being punished by bi-hourly texts from Karin. I assured her this time apart would give us both a chance to breathe and assess our goals. Hers hadn’t, and I knew wouldn’t, change.
She wants a baby.
“What are you doing?” Savannah snapped to one of the stylists in front of her, pulling me from my silent battle with someone who wasn’t here.
Looking at her in the mirror, I saw the stylist messing with the neckline of Savannah’s dress. It was a gorgeous knee-length green dress that highlighted her bronzed skin. Similar in color to the gown she wore to her mother’s performance five years ago, it tied around her neck. While I knew the night I met her mother that I’d never forget how Savannah looked in that dress, I cursed myself for the thought anyway.
Focusing on trying to figure out what Savannah was upset about, I followed the stylist’s hands and saw them pulling the neckline down, exposing more cleavage than I’d ever seen from Savannah. Even more than that red dress she wore dancing. Twice.
“Honey,” the young stylist sassed, annoyed, “the point of this tour of yours is to increase interest in classical music, is it not? To make centuries-old music accessible to people like us?”
“If I walk out there like this,” Savannah slapped her hand away, “it will suggest there’s far more about me that’s accessible than my music.”
She slid off the chair and walked skillfully in ridiculously high heels over to the full-length mirror, where she repositioned her dress and wiped the excessive color from her lips.
“Why did you do that?” the stylist shrieked.
With an eye roll, Savannah replied, “I’m not going to get this crap all over my ten thousand dollar flute. Thanks, though.”
I was mid-way through a chuckle, impressed by her grace amidst surely feeling frustrated, when I felt someone’s hands on my head.
“Damn it!” I ducked out of their reach. I lack grace when frustrated. “What?”
With a long sigh, a second stylist groaned, “We’re stylists, I’m styling your hair.”
“It looks cute, Gregory,” Savannah teased from across the room.
“Oooooh,” a producer exaggerated, walking into the room with an oversized headset on her undersized head. “So, it’s true then. The whole student-teacher thing from a few years back?”
That was the last straw.
Between things at home with Karin, the cold shoulder I’d been giving Savannah, which was growing physically painful for me to maintain as the days wore on, I tore the brush from Dwayne’s hand and chucked it across the room, where it, thankfully, only hit the wall before hitting the ground with a clunk. In the brief second before I put my head in my hands, I caught Savannah’s eyes studying me in the mirror, wide-eyed but calm.
She cleared her throat and addressed the people in the room. “Can we have a few minutes, please? I’m aware we’re on in seven minutes. I can see the clock.” She spoke quickly and with authority.
The pair of stylists and the pissed off producer obliged and left in a hurry, mumbling something about self entitlement as Savannah shut and locked the door behind them. As the sound of her heels against the tile got closer, I had to say something.
“Sorry about that …” I trailed off, having little else to offer.
Savannah swallowed hard as she turned my chair toward her. I was eye level with her chest, but it wasn’t her breasts that interested me in that moment. It was her eyes, laced with concern, and the sliver of vulnerability her eyes always carried. She shook her head and picked up a comb, not saying a word.
“I can do it—” I started, leaning forward in my chair.
“Just sit,” she whispered.
Gently lifting my chin with a nudge from her index finger, I could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek as she brought the comb to my hair, attempting to fix whatever it was Dwayne had done. After a few passes, she set the brush down and ran her fingers slowly down the sides of my head. Her touch ignited me, and I had to carefully measure my breathing to keep from giving myself away as thoughts of everything going wrong at home slipped away.
She slowly moved her fingers to the back of my head, leaning over me slightly, so her breasts were mere inches from my face. I closed my eyes, breathing in the fresh scent of lilies that seemed to come from every part of her body. Goosebumps sprang across my neck as her fingers grazed the skin just below my hairline. I prayed she couldn’t feel them.
“There,” she said after several seconds, taking a step back.
Looking in the mirror I saw that my hair was exactly how it always was. Every day.
Widening my eyes, I looked between myself in the mirror, and her. “How did you—?”
With a soft chuckle, she met my eyes in the mirror. “And you thought I never paid attention in class. Come on, we have three minutes before we’re on.” She squeezed my shoulder once before exiting the room, leaving me in conflicted silence.
“Shit,” I sighed as I exited the room, following the scent of lilies down the hallway.
Her eyes closed and her lips pursed correctly as I reached the second measure of the intro. Savannah took a quick breath, her shoulders falling back, her breasts just slightly rising as she inhaled, and then she was playing. Just like it was five years ago.
Her eyes met mine as we played. Boring into me, as if she were asking years’ worth of questions. Why was I so angry? Why had I given up so easily five years ago? Why? Why didn’t I fight for her?
I could feel the tension in the audience as she played the runs, rapid arpeggios scaling upwards. Aggressive, angry. This was a lighthearted piece. Or it was intended as such. With intense energy, with a shift in tone here and a difference in breath there, she had transformed it, to an emotional, oppressive piece of music.