Chapter 14 Marigold
Marigold
Ever since Jamie moved in here, the air between us has gone strange and electric. I’m hyperaware of his presence at all times. It’s like some part of me has become uniquely attuned to his particular resonance, a plucked violin string that shivers and thrums every time he looks at me.
When I wake up the next morning, I feel oddly hungover, even though I didn’t drink at all last night.
I know it’s probably just that we were awake until late, but I still spend the first ten minutes curled up in bed with my phone, searching multiple sclerosis + fatigue, multiple sclerosis + tired morning, multiple sclerosis + exhausted, multiple sclerosis + hangover feeling.
Eventually I fling my phone toward the foot of the bed and flop down against the pillow.
I know logically what I’m doing. I’m scouring the Internet as though somewhere in the depths of my Google search results, I’ll find an article that says You, Marigold Gensler, will stop being able to play piano on X date.
Not everything is MS. I know that. My neurologist has told me that, more than once. But somehow it still feels like everything could be.
I finally drag myself out of bed and make myself get ready—which is a more involved process than it usually is.
Normally I wouldn’t bother changing out of pajamas or putting on makeup in my own house.
But Jamie’s here, and…well. Even if I didn’t have a raging crush on him, I’d want to look presentable.
He’s up already. He’s sitting at the kitchen counter, focused on his bowl of cereal and coffee mug; he doesn’t see me yet.
It’s strange, getting this glimpse of him without his guard up.
Jamie’s perfection always seemed effortless, before.
But now the cracks are visible in the way his head tilts forward like it’s too heavy to hold upright, his spoon circling and circling his cereal bowl but never rising to his mouth.
The whole thing feels vulnerable. I wonder if this is how Jamie felt watching me the other night—like he had inserted himself into something intimate, a voyeur of my private life.
He notices me before I can decide whether to say something—announce my presence, so it doesn’t feel quite so much like I’ve been spying on him.
“Hey,” I say, because at least I can get the first word in.
“Hi. Morning. How did you sleep?”
Fucking terrible. “Great. What about you?”
“Fine.”
Cool. Back to small talk, I guess. I’m not sure why—or if—I expected anything different. He was probably more upset about the Phil thing than he let on. I wouldn’t blame him. It’d be very on-brand for us.
I get out the eggs and the milk, but it’s only when I’m dipping last night’s challah slices into the bowl that Jamie goes:
“Wait, you’re making French toast? Nobody told me French toast was an option.”
I arch my brows. “French toast was always an option. The bread and eggs were right there. You can help yourself.”
“Little weird to help yourself in someone else’s kitchen.”
“You help yourself to the Cheerios every morning,” I point out.
“It’s different using a stovetop, and you know it,” he says. “Can you make me some?”
“Make it yourself!”
“It’s always better when it’s made with love.”
Well, fuck. He has no right to say things like that, sending a shockwave plummeting straight down to my gut.
And I have no right to react like this, heat furiously rising in my cheeks and flushing the back of my neck.
I’m overthinking. I’m constructing narratives of things I want to be true, not things that are. I’ve written this whole love story in my head in the wake of our faded rivalry. Jamie and I flitting toward each other like moths to light and—
And what? Falling in bed together? Being unabashedly happy for each other over every accolade, even when it means we failed? Is Jamie going to hold my hand at every MRI and give me sponge baths when I’m immobilized?
Or am I just spinning out in fantasies I somehow dredged up in just over a week together, a whole world I’ve constructed for myself where everything’s perfect and there’s always a happy ever after?
“Plus, it’s Christmas,” Jamie adds, reminding me that we are—in fact—in the middle of a conversation right now.
And I guess he’s right. If last night was Christmas Eve, then that does make this Christmas Day. Wait. Was I supposed to get him a present? Did he get me a present?
“You’d better make it, then,” I say, trying to go for a lighthearted tone and probably failing miserably. “Since it’s Christmas and all. We all know how much you adore yourself.”
Jamie falls for the ploy and rolls his eyes at me, grinning. But Congrats, Goldie, you played yourself, because that grin only makes that electric storm in my chest flare brighter.
After breakfast, Jamie does the dishes—Stop being such a simp for guys who clean—and we switch back to piano mode, me at the Bosendorfer and Jamie lounging on the couch some distance away with his headphones, making notes on sheet music.
When it’s time to switch up, I hesitate before putting on my own headphones, listening to the first measures of Jamie’s Liszt étude.
“What?” he says, breaking off sixteen bars in. “I can’t focus when you’re staring at me like that.”
“Nothing. Sounds good, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh.”
I put the headphones on and hunch over my laptop before I can make myself look any stupider. But Jamie hasn’t given up, and these headphones aren’t noise-canceling—it messes with the sound purity—so I sigh and shove them down again. “What did you say?”
“I said if you want to hear me play, you should come by the restaurant tonight. I play every Saturday.”
There’s something about the way he says it. About two seconds later, I pin it: Jamie’s nervous.
It’s an emotion I’ve never seen him wear before. Anxiety looks good on him.
I make him wait it out another few agonizing moments before I say: “All right. That sounds fun.” And this time, I go for it. “It’s a date.”
That flush on his cheeks is sweet vengeance.
I kind of hate how I spend the whole rest of the day in impatient anticipation of night. It’s not seeing Jamie play; I’ve seen Jamie play so many times I could—and have—seen him play in my sleep.
No. It’s different this time. I muse on it later over lunch, picking at my sandwich lettuce and trying to figure out the origin of this feeling.
I decide it’s because the location was surprising.
If I had to imagine what Jamie Larson does when he isn’t at Parker, neither going to a boxing gym nor playing piano at a restaurant would be on the list. In fact, the list would 100 percent consist of him in his dorm or in a practice room, poring over scores and scheming.
Ever since he came to live here, I’ve learned more and more ways in which Jamie defies expectation.
“So what kind of place is this, anyway?” I ask that evening, once we’re done with practice and cleaning up the sheet music that has somehow ended up scattered across the top of the piano (and the rest of the living room). “Like, do I need to go in an evening gown, or…?”
He laughs. “It’s just a restaurant. The kind of restaurant that has a live pianist, so I guess it’s nice. Probably not as nice as you’re used to, though.”
I bite my tongue. I can tell from his tone that he doesn’t mean it as a jab, even if it stings like one.
“Not sure what that’s supposed to mean,” I say as lightly as possible. “It’s not like we go to Michelin-starred restaurants every week. What do I need to wear? That’s all I’m asking.”
Judging by the faint color in his cheeks, he at least understands that he ought to shut his mouth. “I dunno. Nothing too fancy. The kind of thing you’d wear on…on a first date.” The color deepens.
He hasn’t forgotten what I said this morning, apparently.
“Well,” I said. “I’ve got just the thing.”
Which is a lot more confident than I actually am, because I spend the next half hour furiously digging through my closet and texting Cessy photo after photo of different dresses.
What the hell is this even FOR? she asks at one point. Please tell me you aren’t going to church????
And I text back: NO QUESTIONS JUST TELL ME WHICH DRESS.
We decide on a burgundy silk wrap dress that doesn’t quiiiite plunge low enough to be racy, because red silk plus cleavage would be a lot.
But there’s clavicle and skin, and I read in a trashy magazine once that silk is a seductive textile, because it makes men think of sliding their hands along the water-cool fabric, your body a soft heat underneath.
I’ve never been good at hair—I’m more of a “wash-and-air-dry” kind of girl—so I spend a solid half hour in the bathroom trying to coax out the soft waves that look effortless but take a lot of skill and curling irons and product to actually achieve.
I’m not totally sure I’ve managed it in the end, but it’s five-thirty and Jamie’s shift starts at six-thirty and it’s time to go.
He’s waiting in the foyer when I finally emerge, dinner jacket over one arm and phone in hand, scrolling through something unseen.
He glances up—and as soon as our eyes meet, his are dipping down, taking in the silk, the shape of my body, the solid black combat boots I’ve paired with the dress so I don’t look like I’m trying too hard.
“You ready to go?” I ask, even though the answer’s obvious, just to enjoy the way his gaze snaps back up to mine as if caught doing something wrong.
“Yeah. I mean, sure. Are you ready?”
“All good, my man.”