Chapter Fourteen
IN THE BLINK of an eye, I’m submerged into complete darkness. My hands freeze over the piano keys. For a second, I wonder if I just had some kind of stroke.
The fact that I’m even asking myself this question registers as a good sign, even if I’m completely blind.
I’ve never experienced this kind of darkness before, where there isn’t a single speck of light to guide me—no peek of streetlights from the other side of the curtains, no soft glow from the clock on my stove back at my apartment.
With clumsy fingers, I grope my way along the top of the piano, where I left my phone facedown so I could concentrate.
It lights up as soon as I flip it over. There are forty-two unread messages, plus an alert from the National Weather Service: COASTAL STORM THREATENS NORTHEASTERN SEABOARD; HEAVY RAIN AND WINDS EXPECTED; TAKE COVER INDOORS.
Well, that explains it. After cooking dinner for myself—yes, baked fish with rice, just for me—I locked myself away in the studio.
I put my phone on Do Not Disturb so I could concentrate as I tried to write something interesting and moving enough to present to Chris this week.
I guess this room really is soundproof; I haven’t heard any signs of a big storm for the last two hours.
As I’m typing back a quick text to let my family know I’m okay, my phone warns me about my low battery. Three percent, to be exact. I sigh and pull myself up from the bench, then promptly whack my knee on the wooden leg of the piano. That’ll leave a nasty bruise for sure.
With my phone’s flashlight on full blast, I make my way out of the studio to find the rest of the house is just as dark.
In the den, I can hear the rain pelting the exterior of the house and the wind howling like some kind of demonic dog.
It’s creepy enough that the hair on the back of my neck raises.
“Oliver?” I call out tentatively.
“Over here.”
The glow of another phone flashlight appears as he rounds the corner from the living room and enters the kitchen.
I can’t see him, just the bluish orb of his phone as we make our way toward each other.
I stub my toe on one of those big wingback chairs and mutter a stream of obscenities. I may not survive this night.
“You okay?” he asks as I bend down to survey the damage.
“I’m fine,” I huff. “Do you have any real flashlights here? My phone is about to die.”
When I look up, he’s much closer than I expected him to be. He’s hunched over on the floor with me, his long fingers splayed out against the rug next to my foot. Almost, but not quite, touching me.
“In the basement,” he replies. “Stay up here, I’ll be right back.”
I’m certainly not going down into a pitch-black basement, so I cautiously pick my way over to the dining room. Just as I set my phone on the table, it dies completely. I find myself in complete darkness once again.
Oliver reappears a few minutes later, a real flashlight in one hand and a small black bag in the other.
Now I can see he’s changed out of his J.Crew outfit of the day and into something more comfortable; he’s wearing a matching blue sweat set that looks so soft and cozy I almost want to reach out and touch it.
It’s nice to see him a little less put together than usual.
It makes him feel a tiny bit more human.
“Candles, flashlights, matches, and batteries,” Oliver says as he starts unloading the bag on the table. “Although I have no idea if the batteries are good anymore. They’ve probably been down there for ten years.”
I pick up a big glass votive candle. “Wow, this isn’t your first storm here, is it?”
“No. They happen somewhat frequently.”
Together we light a few of the big candles and set them around the dining room table and kitchen counters.
The flickering lights, combined with the storm that continues to assault the house with all it’s got, makes me feel strange, like we’re not on this planet anymore. Certainly not present-day, at least.
I look at my phone, dead on the table. “Well, now what?”
He looks around the room and shrugs. “We wait out the storm, I guess. Do you want some wine?”
Even though his question sounded cautious, I find myself smiling and nodding. “Now you’re talking.”
When Oliver pours for both of us, I realize that this isn’t the first one for him—the bottle was open on the counter, his glass next to it, along with a book with a postcard shoved inside of it. As he hands me a glass of pinot noir, I ask, “What are you reading?”
“Oh.” It’s hard to tell for sure in the dim light, but I could swear he blushes. “Just a memoir.”
I take a sip and slide into a chair. “Do you read a lot?”
“Sometimes. Depends on how busy I am.” He takes a seat opposite me. “You?”
“Not really.” I scoff. “I’m more of a reality TV girl, but every now and then my sister will lend me something she really loved and I’ll read that.”
“You have two sisters, right? Both younger?”
I blink, surprised that he remembers this. “Yeah. Rosa and Amanda.”
“They look so much like you,” he replies absently, and I find myself curious about just how much wine he had before the power went out.
We’ve never acknowledged that he’s met my family—not even once in the years we spent working alongside each other in college.
His eyes wander to the sea of darkness behind me, and I wonder if he’s thinking about that night, too.
How uncomfortable it was, how he snubbed us and ran off.
Then his eyes slide to me as he says, “I’m sorry, by the way.
About how rude I was when I met them. I didn’t mean to be but I—well, I think I was nervous. But I never forgot that.”
“Wow.” The word slips out of me because I am genuinely shocked—that he remembers this, and that he’s apologizing for it. I take a big gulp of wine to buy myself some time before adding, “Well, yeah. It was super awkward. But it’s fine. Water under the bridge or whatever.”
As soon as I say it, I realize that I mean it.
I don’t know if he’s being honest about being nervous, but I do know that I don’t want to hold this against him.
Yes, Oliver seemed like a real snob that night of the recital, but what eighteen-year-old isn’t an idiot in some capacity?
There’s a myriad of ways that Oliver and I didn’t see eye to eye in undergrad, but I can let go of this one.
He smiles at me in a way that I’ve never seen before.
It’s a slow and gentle thing that takes its time.
When it reaches his eyes, they sparkle in the candlelight.
He’s not wearing his glasses, so there’s nothing between us, nothing at all, as we hold each other’s gaze, me with a curious smirk and him with that soft curve of his lips.
That look does something to me that I do not want to think too hard about. I shiver. Take another drink of my wine. Then another.
“Water under the bridge,” he echoes. “Thank you.”
“Yep, sure,” I blurt out, too fast to be casual but whatever; I blame the wine. “What about you? Any siblings?”
“No, only child. Isn’t that obvious?” he asks, and the light sarcasm in his voice makes me laugh.
“Yeah, actually, it is. I’ve never met someone so solitary and quiet in my life.”
“You get used to being on your own.” He pauses to take a sip from his glass. “Though I do like your company, Celia.”
It’s my turn to blush. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he replies, and something in his eyes changes, but I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly.
“Well, you’re not so bad yourself.”
In this moment, with the wine and the storm and the candlelight, it’s true. This version of Oliver is different; he’s not the talkative type that I know from having grown up with two little sisters who never once shut up in their lives, but he is open and curious. Nice, even.
“What were you working on just now? Before the power went out?” he asks.
I sigh and run my hands through my hair. “I have an idea for a theme for one of the characters. It’s not quite there yet, though. I need a little more time to develop it.”
“Will you play it for me?” he asks with an eagerness I’ve never heard before. “Tomorrow? Whenever the power comes back?”
I nod. To hear him so genuinely interested sends a trickle of warmth down my spine. I watch as he finishes his wine, then retrieves the bottle and pours us both another glass. In that moment, I realize two things about Oliver that fundamentally change the way I look at him.
First, he’s not a snob. Not anymore, at least. Sometime in the last nine years, he’s become almost friendly, but he is shy—to the point that he doesn’t speak up for himself, which explains the shellfish miscommunication.
Second, it’s not that he prefers to work alone, or is incapable of working with a partner, or doesn’t know how to share—whatever reasoning I had built up in my head about why we’re struggling to work together.
It’s that Oliver is so used to being on his own that he needs someone to extend a hand to him. He needs to be invited.
Tonight, the wine brought that particular wall of his down. It also opened my eyes so I could see him in a new light.
“Let’s do it now.” My heart races as soon as the words leave my lips. If he rejects me again, tells me no…
“Now?” he asks with wide eyes. Outside, the wind howls hard enough that tree branches beat the walls of the house. There’s a lump in my throat as I wait for him to say anything other than no. He takes a deep breath before adding, “Why the hell not? Grab a candle. Let’s go.”
The pressure in my throat dissolves when we both grab a candle and our wineglasses. My heart, however, continues to beat rapidly, even as Oliver slowly leads us through the darkness of the house and into the studio. I manage not to hit any body parts on the furniture.
As soon as the soundproof studio door closes, we’re enveloped in a soft silence.
There’s no storm in here, nothing other than the two of us, the pinot noir, and flickering candlelight.
We set everything on top of the piano before settling onto the bench.
It’s not quite big enough for two fully grown adults, so I can feel the heat of his body pressing against mine as we sit side by side.
My stomach does a funny kind of swoop when I shift on the bench. At the same time, Oliver clears his throat.
“Show me what you’ve got so far,” he says, his voice even lower and quieter than usual.
I place my hands on the keys in front of me. It takes me a second to gather my wits, thanks to the wine and the absolute rager going on inside of my chest. For reasons I can’t explain, I’m nervous—more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life.
But when my fingers play the small lick of a melody I’ve written, they’re steady. Because this? This I know how to do. Making music, writing it, playing it—it’s my outlet. It’s never once failed me.
When I stop playing, Oliver places one of his hands at the lower octaves of the piano. “That was C minor, right? Play it again, but slower.” I do as he asks, slowing my tempo, while he works out chords with his right hand. When the musical phrase comes to a close, we do it again without prompting.
It sounds good—really good, but it’s missing something. “Let me add some dissonance here,” I suggest. “Again.”
We play it again, this time a little different, but also a little more certain.
It’s strong enough that I’m able to focus on the music instead of the feeling of his arm brushing against mine.
Over and over again, we play the same four bars of music, until something cohesive starts to form while Oliver makes subtle changes to the chords he plays with his hand.
“This is good,” he says after the seventh or eighth pass. “We should record this on my phone before we forget it.”
I know what he means; two glasses of wine have made the edges of my brain a little fuzzy.
When he stands abruptly, our bubble bursts, a gust of cool air rushing around me when his warmth leaves my side.
I stare at where my hands sit on the ivory keys as he steps out of the sound booth with one of the candles.
In the quiet, still room, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. For the first time since arriving in Maine, Oliver and I have made real, tangible progress—and it feels so, so good.
FROM: Celia García
TO: Chris Ross
CC: Oliver Barlowe
DATE: Friday, August 28 at 10:13 AM
SUBJECT: Lineage music
Hi Chris,
Sending over something that Oliver and I have been working on. It’s just piano so far but we plan to orchestrate more. Let us know your thoughts when you can.
Cheers,
Celia
FROM: Chris Ross
TO: Celia García
CC: Oliver Barlowe
DATE: Friday, August 28 at 6:48 PM
SUBJECT: RE: Lineage music
i like this. lots of color in here. would like to hear it with strings
c