I freeze then resume my caress, my stomach twisting. “You were thirteen.”
“Yeah. I got it after my dad died.” Her hand reaches back and finds the one at my side, bringing it forward to rest on her hip. “Right after Lorenzo…”
Just the mention of his name makes me want to pound my fists into his face until he chokes on his blood.
Her shoulders tense, relax. “The tattoo artist refused me because of my age. Until I suggested a different kind of payment.”
I continue to trace the whorls of ink, letting the softness of her skin calm my rising anger. “You offered him sex.”
She nods. “I needed this tattoo.”
With her back to me, I can’t see her eyes, but the emotion in her voice squeezes my chest.
“My dad claimed he didn’t just hear the notes when he played. He could see them curling through the air like scrollwork. Every song was a graphical image in his mind, and he drew those embellishments in the margins of his music sheets.”
When I was thirteen, I played with my dick while daydreaming about a girl—any girl—touching it.
When she was thirteen, she sold her body to a tattoo artist for a permanent keepsake of her dead father.
I glance down the curve of her back, my finger following the curls of ink with new appreciation. “Which song is this one?”
She gives me a watery smile over her shoulder. “His favorite Herbie Hancock, ‘Someday My Prince Will Come.’”
I’m no prince, but when I’m buried inside Ivory, I will always come.
Stepping around her, I remove a platinum bracelet from my pocket and clasp it around her wrist.
She studies it with wide eyes, holding the tiny frog charm between her fingers. “Edvard Grieg kept a frog figurine in his pocket at all times.”
I curve a hand around her waist, fingers stroking her naked back. “And he would rub it before concerts for good luck.”
She nods and kisses me, breathing against my lips, “Thank you.”
That night, she plays with more passion and skill than all of her peers combined. Stogie watches from the audience, his face stretched in a huge smile. I watch from the stage wings, my heart beating in time with her fingers.
Everything is good.
Joanne, Shane, and Lorenzo are gone. Prescott and Ms. Augustin are contained. The dean has nothing on me, while I have enough blackmail to ruin her career. I’ve been so careful.
Everything is perfect.
Too perfect. Like life has handed me a song filled with soul-deep joy and told me to savor every note.
Because eventually, the song will end.
Christmas comes and goes in a blur of extravagant presents and warm smiles at his parents’ house. Emeric and I spend the rest of our two-week break at home, in bed, tucked in an indestructible bubble of whispering, touching, kissing bliss. Every second with him feels like a dream, like any moment, someone’s going to cruelly shake my shoulder and force me to wake up.
Since I moved in, our trips outside of the house have been limited to school, weekly visits to Stogie’s, and weekend dinners at the Marceaux’s. There are no date nights at the movies, romantic dinners in the French Quarter, or hand-holding strolls along the Mississippi River. We do normal in the privacy of our own world, such as binging on a TV series starring bearded pirates with perfect teeth.
Doesn’t really matter what we do as long as I have him to do it with.
When I graduate, we’ll be free of the student-teacher restriction. No more hiding and living in fear. Then…?
He says Leopold is mine if I want it. I don’t know how. If he breaks his deal with the dean, our entire world will come crashing down. I intend to pursue a spot there on my own. Maybe it’ll take me years. Maybe I’ll move there and knock on the recruiters’ doors every day until they get sick of seeing me.
He says he’ll move to New York with me while I work on my degree. That makes my heart soar, but I can’t ask him to leave his job and his family.
He says I can do whatever I set my mind on. I believe him.
December ends a discordant passage in my life, a coda to Treme and my broken family.
January is the prelude of a new song, promising a year of hard decisions.
February glides by in a glissando of homework, piano lessons, and quiet evenings with Emeric.
March kicks off with a countdown to spring break, unseasonably warm weather, and…
A bladder infection.
Squatting on the toilet, I hunch over in pain. I haven’t moved for thirty minutes, every teeny trickle of pee burning fire between my legs. “I’m going to be late for school.”
Emeric crouches in front of me and rests the back of his hand on my forehead, concern darkening his blue eyes. “Still no fever, but you’re staying home, and that’s final.” He shoves a glass of water in my hand. “Drink.”
More water means more urinating, which means more burning. “No more.”
He arranges my fingers around the glass, forcing me to hold it. “Dehydration is the reason you’re sitting here.”
“And too much sex.” I manage a grin and take a sip.