9. Recognition
Recognition
Rowan
T he community center gym smelled like disinfectant and decades of teenage desperation. I pushed through the glass doors, already rolling my shoulders to work out the tension that had taken up permanent residence there since coming back to Harbor's End.
The space was exactly what I'd expected from a small-town community center: a handful of ancient weight machines that looked like they'd been purchased a decade ago, a few free weights that had seen better days, and motivational posters that were so faded they'd achieved the opposite effect.
Perfect. The last thing I needed was a fancy gym full of people who might recognize me and want to chat about my mother.
I dropped my water bottle on the floor and grabbed a pair of twenty-pound dumbbells, muscle memory from years of trying to work off my anger taking over.
The weights felt good in my hands, solid and honest. You couldn't lie to iron.
Either you could lift it or you couldn't, and right now I needed that kind of simple truth in my life .
Then there was Elias, and the fact that I couldn't figure him out.
The problem was, every time I thought I had him pegged as just another guilt-ridden widower playing at being helpful, he'd do something that threw me off balance.
What really got under my skin was how he didn't give up when I pushed. And I had pushed, hard. But Elias just... absorbed it. Not like a doormat, but like someone who understood that anger was just grief with nowhere else to go.
It was infuriating. I didn't want his patience. I didn't want his understanding. I wanted him to fight back, to give me a reason to write him off and go back to New York with a clear conscience.
Instead, he kept being decent to me, and that was somehow worse than if he'd been an asshole.
Fifteen reps. Switch arms. Focus on the burn in my bicep instead of the burn in my chest.
Except every time I tried to focus on the physical discomfort, my brain wandered back to Elias.
To the way his voice had gone rough when he talked about building the studio for her.
To how he'd looked sitting in that chair across from me, like he was afraid to take up too much space in his own living room.
Twenty reps. Both arms. Move to chest press.
I lay back on the ancient bench, which creaked ominously under my weight but held. The ceiling above me was water-stained and peeling, but it gave me a place to stare while I worked through my complicated feelings about my dead mother's husband.
Because that's what he was, right? Just the man who'd married her. The guy who'd been there for the last three years of her life while I'd been in New York, stubbornly pretending I was too important and too busy to answer her calls.
So why did I keep thinking about the way his mouth had curved when I'd made that joke about his tea collection? Why did I remember exactly how his laugh had sounded, surprised and genuine?
The barbell felt heavier than it should have. I gritted my teeth and pushed through another set, sweat starting to bead on my forehead despite the autumn chill that seeped through the community center's crappy insulation.
Music drifted through the walls from somewhere else in the building. Guitar chords, simple and repetitive. I tried to ignore it and focus on my workout, but there was an acoustic guitar mixed in with what sounded like several smaller electric ones, all playing the same basic progression.
A voice joined the guitars. Not singing, exactly, but talking over the music. Too muffled for me to make out words, but the tone was patient, encouraging. Someone teaching.
I sat up on the bench, wiping sweat from my face with the bottom of my t-shirt. The music stopped for a moment, then started again, a little cleaner this time. Whoever was teaching knew what they were doing.
None of my business. I had my own shit to work through, and eavesdropping on some community center guitar class wasn't going to help with any of it.
Except the voice started up again, and this time I could make out a few words. “...better. Remember, the rhythm is more important than getting every note perfect...”
Something about that voice was familiar. Not the words, but the cadence. The particular way the sentences rose and fell.
I stood up from the bench, telling myself I was just getting some water. The music got clearer as I moved toward the door, and I could hear children's voices now, laughing and calling out questions. A kids' guitar class. Cute .
“Can we play the song about the dinosaur again?” a high voice asked.
“In a minute, Emma. Let's make sure everyone's got this chord down first.”
My hand froze halfway to my water bottle.
I knew that voice.
I moved to the gym's doorway, looking down the hallway toward where the music was coming from. The door to what was probably a multipurpose room was cracked open, spilling warm light and the sound of acoustic guitars into the corridor.
This was stupid. I should go back to my workout, finish my sets, and get out of here before I did something idiotic like walk down there and confirm what I already suspected.
Instead, I found myself moving down the hallway like I was being pulled by invisible strings.
The multipurpose room was bigger than I'd expected, with folding chairs arranged in a semicircle and music stands scattered around like someone had tried to impose order on chaos and given up.
About eight kids, ranging from maybe six to twelve years old, sat with guitars that looked enormous in their small hands.
And at the front of the room, crouched down next to a girl who couldn't have been more than seven, was Elias.
He looked different here. Relaxed in a way I hadn't seen before, wearing jeans that had actual wear marks and a flannel shirt that had been washed so many times it had achieved perfect softness.
His hair was messed up like he'd been running his hands through it, and there was a genuine smile on his face as he adjusted the little girl's finger placement on the fretboard.
“There you go, Emma. See how much cleaner that sounds when you arch your fingers like that?”
The girl beamed up at him, plucking the chord again with obvious pride. The sound was still pretty rough, but Elias nodded like she'd just performed Carnegie Hall .
“Now everyone try it together,” he said, standing up and picking up his own guitar. “Remember, we're not racing. Just focus on making each chord sound as good as you can.”
The resulting sound was exactly what you'd expect from eight kids trying to play guitar in unison. A mess of missed notes, wrong timing, and at least two completely different songs. But Elias just nodded along like it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard.
One of the older kids, a boy with shaggy hair and an attitude that suggested he was too cool for everything, had stopped playing entirely and was just glaring at his guitar like it had personally offended him.
“Having trouble, Mark?” Elias asked, moving over to him.
“This is stupid,” the kid muttered. “I sound like crap.”
“You sound like someone who's been playing for three weeks,” Elias said, crouching down next to Mark’s chair. “Which is exactly what you should sound like. How long do you think it took me to get good at this?”
“I don't know. Like, a month?”
Elias laughed, and the sound made my chest do that weird fluttering thing again. “Try ten years before I could play anything that didn't make people leave the room. And that's with practicing every day.”
“Really?”
“Really. When I was your age, my neighbor's dog used to howl every time I picked up a guitar. I took it personally until my mom pointed out that the dog howled at sirens too.”
A couple of the other kids giggled, and even Mark cracked a smile.
“The trick is not to worry about sounding good right now,” Elias continued. “The trick is to have fun while you're learning. Because if you're not having fun, why are you doing it?”
Mark nodded and started playing again, his chord progression still shaky but more confident. Elias moved on to the next kid, offering the same patient encouragement, the same gentle correction.
I realized I'd been standing in the doorway for at least five minutes, just watching. Like a creeper. A creeper who was definitely developing feelings for his dead mother's husband, which was fucked up on multiple levels that I wasn't ready to examine.
I should leave. Go back to the gym, finish my workout, pretend I'd never seen this.
Instead, I leaned against the doorframe and kept watching.
There was a kid in the back row who hadn't played a single note. She was small, maybe eight, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and the kind of serious expression that suggested she was overthinking everything. Her guitar sat in her lap like she was afraid to touch it.
Elias noticed her too. He finished helping a boy with his strumming pattern, then made his way over to the quiet girl.
“Hey, Sofia,” he said, pulling up a chair next to her. “How are you doing?”
“I don't think I'm very good at this,” she said quietly.
“You haven't tried yet. How can you know if you're good at it?”
“The other kids already know how to play chords. I don't know anything.”
Elias was quiet for a moment, then set his guitar aside and held out his hand. “Can I see your guitar for a second?”
Sofia handed it over reluctantly. Elias turned it around so he was holding it backwards, the neck pointing away from him, strings facing the floor.
“Now I'm going to try to play you a song,” he said solemnly.
He started strumming, producing a sound like someone torturing a cat. The other kids started giggling, and even Sofia cracked a smile.
“Hmm,” Elias said, frowning at the guitar like it was malfunctioning. “That doesn't sound right. Maybe if I try this way?”
He flipped the guitar upside down and tried again, creating an even worse noise. Now all the kids were laughing, including Sofia.