Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter thirty-four

I wait a couple days before I call Mom. I know it's going to suck, and it does, but at least she has Nolan with her when I tell her that I don't want the job at her firm and I don't want to move to South Dakota and as much as I love her, I don't want to live with her. She tells me she understands; she cries; she tells me to look after my heart; she cries again. It's a whole thing. I shouldn't have left it until the evening. She was probably a couple drinks down already before I called and I hear the glug of a bottle while I tell her that I'm moving in with Lou.

It could've gone worse.

The minute I end the call, only after promising Mom that I'll see her at Thanksgiving, Lou comes into the living room with two steaming bowls of chicken fajita pasta. She squeezes my foot as she sits next to me on the couch, loading up the first episode of Grey's Anatomy. She's never seen it before, and I am more than happy to go back to the very beginning to start it again.

"How'd it go?" she asks, blowing on a hot piece of penne.

"About as expected. She's convinced you're going to see the light and dump me and I'll end up living with her anyway, so if you could, like, not do that, that'd be great."

"I'll try my hardest."

"Much appreciated."

We eat dinner and watch the episode and Lou is hooked. We watch two more, cuddling on the couch as the light fades outside, after which Lou lights a candle and says, "I think that's enough TV for me, but we're definitely going to revisit this tomorrow."

"If we carry on at this rate, it'll only take us, like, five months to finish the whole thing."

"Jesus. How many episodes are there?"

"Um, about four hundred?"

"That should keep us occupied for a while."

It's just after ten. Lou stretches and holds back a yawn and carries the lit candle across the room, using it to light a couple more. I lie here on the sofa, my head on the arm, and I reach for my book. I love to peruse Lou's shelves, to find the ones she has loved, the books she has read over and over again, the spines creased and the pages bent; reading those is like using her perfume, slipping into her shoes. I've decided to expand my tastes beyond romance and thrillers, dipping my toes into her literary favorites: yesterday I picked The First Phone Call from Heaven from the shelf in the snug, purely because it had the most banged-up spine and I devoured the first hundred pages in one sitting. I could probably finish it tonight, I reckon, flipping through the hundred and fifty pages I have left.

Twenty pages later, I watch as she pads over to the upright piano and slinks onto the stool like a cat, her fingers finding the keys with no need for sheet music. The most beautiful tune emerges as her hands dance and I am captivated, my book forgotten as she plays a mournful song I know I've heard before.

"What's this piece?"

"Chopin," she says. "Nocturne in B-Flat minor."

"It's beautiful."

"It's my favorite piece to play," she says, not missing a single note even when her right hand is tripping over itself to play each intricate bar of the song. I can't tear my eyes from her hands, those long fingers that I know every inch of now. I don't move for a full five minutes, until the piece comes to an end.

"It sounds sad."

"Probably because it's in a minor key."

I sit next to her on the stool. "Play something else."

"What do you want?"

"I don't know the names of any piano pieces except Moonlight Sonata," I say. "Play something you love."