42. The Pianist
The Pianist
The Beauchenes insist, even with the holidays approaching, that Henri keep up with his practicing. He is given a break only from Ms. Wilder’s lessons, not mine, as Mariane fears even one day off could stunt his progress.
I haven’t seen Mariane since I confronted her. Her directions have been relayed through Ms. Wilder and Ms. Byrne.
They must know I’m on thin ice—they know I’ve done something wrong. Their eyes have said so.
They must suspect I’ll be leaving soon.
Do they want me out? Do they hate me?
Henri and I follow our normal routine—scales at an increasing pace, one minute warm-up tunes, and then work on the Prelude, running through it for hours at a time, and he never grows bored. Henri is an excellent student: he wants to learn, he wants to do well. He reminds me of me.
He doesn’t smile when Ms. Wilder comes to get him. But he smiles when she returns him in the afternoons. He smiles at me.
The day before Christmas Eve, we practice in the evening before dinner, too. His hands are small, his fingers can’t stretch across the keys the way mine can.
He will do well. I’ll make sure of it. There will be hundreds of people watching. And Mariane and Leo will hear their praise. And then how can they say they want me to leave? Because if Henri is doing well, I am doing my job.
They’ve never sat in on our lessons. They’ve never asked him to play for them in the evenings.
This won’t be Henri’s first time playing in front of a crowd, but I can sense his nervousness as he runs through the piece, again and again, more determined each time.
Each mistake, each frustrated run, and I know he’s hearing their words echoed in his mind, their reminders of what Arnie was capable of, what Henri must become.
When Ms. Wilder comes to get him for dinner, I hold Henri in place and look him in the eye. “You are doing something very difficult,” I remind him. “We’ve been working very hard together, haven’t we?”
The assurances are as much for myself as they are for him.
He nods, his emerald eyes shiny.
“It’s just music,” I say, because at the end of the day, it’s true. I tell him what I wish someone would have told me, years ago while I taught myself in my dingy apartment bedroom. “Don’t focus on anything else but loving it.”
When my eyes open again, I am no longer seated at the piano, and the fire has long turned to dim embers. But I am still warm.
A body is curled around mine on the velvet couch, arms slung around my waist. A strong pale hand holding my wrist, his thumb pressed right against the delicate heart beat between thin bones.
He must feel how my pulse quickens as I come to, because his thumb begins to skate back and forth. Goosebumps erupt across my skin.
“Tired?” he asks, a hint of amusement in his voice.
I rub at my eyes. “You couldn’t have carried me to my room?”
But I don’t remember drifting off. I was practicing our song, and my exhaustion must have pulled me under.
He exhales a laugh. “You were drooling on the keys,” he lies. “I only thought to put you here on the couch, but I found I was getting quite tired, too.”
“A ghost, tired. How odd.”
The clock on the wall reads half past midnight. I’ve been here a few hours, then. It feels like just a second ago I was sitting at the piano.
His form is molded to mine almost perfectly.
I fit against him like one of us was sculpted for the other.
I watch his thumb brush against my wrist almost absentmindedly, my eyelids heavy.
The headache is still there, ever-present in the base of my skull.
A haze blankets my directionless thoughts.
With every breath, his body shifts against mine, his ribcage expanding, my spine sinking into the beat of his heart.
His face nuzzles into my hair, my neck, and only after some time passes do I realize his lips are touching my skin.
He’s not wearing the mask.
His thumb stops when he senses my pulse beating more erratically. “What is it?” Mumbled into the sensitive skin of my throat.
It would be so easy to turn my head and take him in. It crosses my mind that this could be some test of his, an exercise in trust, even, after the other night. Tempting me—pushing me to see how far I’ll bend before I break.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’ve just realized—it’s now Christmas Eve.”
Another amused sound rumbles in his chest. “It is.”
“I don’t have a present for you.”
A pause. “If you think I was expecting anything other than yourself, then you are mistaken.”
A sprinkling of tiny white snowflakes are illuminated by the lamps below the windows, enough to accumulate into a dusting of powdered sugar on the ground by sunup. The embers in the fireplace crackle. And the house is otherwise silent, the residents gone to bed.
It’s the first moment of true calm I’ve felt since arriving here, this sense of stillness, though not like we are holding our breaths for the next terrible thing, even with the party looming. My eyes drift closed, the pull of sleep too great, Bastien’s fingers on my wrist lulling me under.
“I’m not really a fan of the holidays,” I whisper.
“I imagine not,” he says, like he knows.
“They only tried to make it a big deal when I was little. My mom and my aunt.”
He’s quiet, and my mind swims, half-asleep maybe, loosening my lips.
“I don’t have a father.”
Some part of me almost expects a snide comment. But there’s only silence and his thumb gently caressing my skin, as he waits for me to continue.
“My mother gave me to my aunt when I was seven. Said I—” My throat constricts and I have to take a deep breath before I can begin again. “She said I was too much. She didn’t have the time for me. I think she just didn’t want the responsibility. But neither did my aunt, really.”
Bastien, who seems to know everything, falls still once again.
“She still sends Christmas cards—my mother. And she shows up on the occasional holiday. But never my birthday.”
“February.” He says. “The twentieth.”
“Yes.”
He shifts behind me, and with the movement I am now fully awake, because he turns me in his arms while reaching above his head—pulling the mask down over his face. Disappointment cinches in my chest, even when, for a brief second, I see the line of his jaw, the pale pink of his lips.
“Are you mad at me?” I whisper before I can think better of it.
The way his eyes narrow, I know he’s frowning. He’s frowning. And it takes him so long to answer that by the time he speaks, I’m sure he’ll say he loathes me, even though days have passed since I ran away from him. “You think I hate you because you took my mask.”
What I hate is how easily he crawls into my head. What I hate is how much this matters to me.
“No,” he says. “I had my fun with you after, didn’t I? I think that settles the score.”
“But you don’t want me to see.”
“Not… yet.” And then his eyes flutter closed. “I do. If it’s anyone, I want it to be you.”
And something inside me preens. After everything, he wants me.
“We’ll have to do something for your birthday,” he says softly. “It’s not too far out now.”
His chest rises and falls beneath my palms. If I wanted, I could lay my head against his heart and drift back to sleep.
We could remain here all night. We could do this every night, I think.
I wonder, if under different circumstances, in another world, if this is the version of him I’d always see. I wonder if we’d even cross paths.
I watch the glowing embers of the fire throw sparks. “When is your birthday?”
He’s silent for a moment, and I wonder if he’s forgotten to answer me. I have the heartbreaking thought that it’s likely no one celebrated him in over a decade.
“December. The longest night of the year.”
I frown, peering up at him again. “That’s passed already.”
He nods.
“Happy birthday,” I say, wanting nothing more than to reach for him. So I do.
My fingers brush against the white plaster.
He’s frozen but this—this is the test of trust. I don’t rip it away like I had in my anger, I lift the mask just enough to expose his jaw again, his lips.
There’s a few days’ worth of stubble across his jaw, framing those lips that have been on me so many times, and yet I’ve never had a chance to really look.
His fingers tighten at my waist.
Without lifting the mask any higher, I lean closer, anticipation stealing my breath as I softly press my lips to his.
This time, it’s different. The kiss is gentle and needy and so, so tender, and he hardly moves, except to eagerly lean forward.
His embrace is everything I’ve ever needed, strong and assuring, his arms winding around my middle. He wraps me up like he’s my cocoon and inside him I am safe to reveal the real me. My fingers wind into his wavy black hair.
“You should have told me,” I say.
“I must’ve forgotten.” He sounds breathless. “I won’t next time.”