Page 50 of My One Week Husband
Sure, we’re lingering in town, but we’re technically still working, making sure that these inn locations are ideal in every way, near to all the shops, close to the cafés, accessible to tourist activities.
Ah, hell.
Who fucking cares?
I’m not working. I’m living, soaking in the Mediterranean as it stretches to the horizon like the sea is reaching into the next day.
Maybe tomorrow will be as good a day as today.
At the end of the street, an antique shop comes into view. The window display boasts a bureau, a rolltop desk, and an old-fashioned accordion.
When we reach the store, Scarlett slows her steps, drawn to a violin in the corner of the window.
My heart lunges at it, wanting to grab it, clutch it, pick it up.
Scarlett turns to me, her eyes locking with mine. For a flash of a second, I see pity in them.
But is that truly pity? Or is pity only what I reflect back to myself?
Tension mounts in me, since I’m not sure I want to talk about my music if she’s going to ask. She didn’t poke or prod yesterday, and that helped. I’d said my piece; I didn’t have more to say.
But perhaps she does.
She tips her forehead to the window. “What was your favorite piece to play?”
That is a question I can answer.
More so, I want to.
22
Daniel
All the tension in my bones releases, since I get to talk about something wonderful. Something I don’t normally discuss with anyone.
“Barber’s Adagio for Strings,” I say, knowing the answer instantly.
She knits her brow, like she’s reaching into her mind to see if she knows the tune.
I hum a few notes to cue her. Her face lights up. She snaps her fingers, grinning. “Yes, I can hear it now.”
I hum a few more notes of one of the saddest, most plaintive pieces of music ever. “It’s so solemn. It seems to speak only of somber moments, of the passing of life, but in the intensity, there’s such beauty,” I say, and I can hear the music in my head. I can remember the last time I played it, when I was only seventeen. The memory fills me, flooding my veins, flowing into my cells. “I played it in Vienna. With the philharmonic. It was magic.”
“That sounds magical. What else? What were other pieces that were magic to you?” she asks, bouncing on her toes, eagerness etched in her features.
“I could go on,” I say, since talking about music is almost like remembering old friends who passed away too soon, making sure their deaths weren’t in vain. “Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2. It’s spiritually powerful, and sublime. But it’s also dramatic, intense, and incredibly difficult to master,” I say, my pitch rising, excitement building in me as I hear the complicated notes in my mind. “It took me years.”
“When were you first able to play it the way you wanted to play it?”
“I was ten.” I bring my hands to my forehead and rub my temples, calling up the memory. “I played it for my parents. I said I was going to do a concert for them after dinner.” I laugh as something like happiness surges over me at the images of my home flickering before my eyes.
“Were they thrilled to hear it?”
“Yes, but they wanted me to eat first. Patience, I suppose. That’s what they were teaching me.”
“Did it work?”
With a grin that can’t be contained, I shake my head. “I could barely last through dinner. I gobbled down the chicken, left the rest of my plate on the table, and ran to the living room, tugging them along. Made them sit down. Then I raised my violin, and I played it,” I say, my voice distant as I linger in that faraway memory.
When I meet Scarlett’s gaze, her green eyes are simply enrapt. Like I’m a storyteller, and I’m enchanting her with a tale.
Well, hell, bloody fucking hell, I’m enchanting myself with these memories that I haven’t let see the light of day in my own mind.
“They must have been so delighted. They must have been beside themselves with pride,” she says, like there’s a lump in her throat.
I don’t mind the emotion in her tone. It’s not pity. It’s not judgment. It’s appreciation.
Somehow that’s the permission I need to keep going. “I also loved Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9,” I say, then I hum a few notes of that. “Another complicated one. I played that in London when I was seventeen.”
“Amazing,” she says, then makes a rolling gesture with her hands. “More, more. Tell me more.”
The ball is rolling, the avalanche building. Notes and chords swell in my mind, racing to reach the front of it, to earn her attention. “Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 3. So melancholy, but full of sweetness too. God, so much sweetness,” I say, and this time I raise my hands as I hum, picking up an imaginary instrument, slowly, languidly stroking an unseen bow across the strings. My eyes fall shut as I imagine playing that sonata for this woman.
