Living In The Shallows (UK Crush #1)

Chapter Seventeen:

Teddy and I had found a room with a piano in it when we'd gone in search of some sodas earlier, and I'd faked fatigue to get out of dinner with the boys so I could try to sneak back down and play it. I asked him how he'd even seen the vending machines from so far away, and he'd answered, "I can always recognize what I want, no matter how hard it is to see."

It wasn't until I sat down at the piano that I realized how much I missed touching the keys. I had never gone an entire week without playing since I first started taking lessons when I was five.

I did some scales and exercises to loosen up, then played some favorite pieces as warm up. Then I went into some of the simpler movements, just favorites, not complete sets, mostly second movements, the slower ones, which my professors discouraged, but, hey, they weren't here to hear me, and I had only myself to please. Then, as a finale, I decided to try my audition piece, just to see if it was still sharp and fresh.

It was still robust, and I got completely lost in it. As the closing chords faded away, I was shocked to my core by a voice echoing through the room, so shocked I nearly fell off the stool.

"You must think our music is such crap."

I stood up, knocking the stool over, and whirled to the doorway and the sound of the voice. Teddy was there, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, an open soda bottle next to him. I didn't know how long he'd been there.

Surprise made me blunt. "What are you doing here?"

He held up his phone. "Left it on top of the drinks machine and came down to retrieve it. Heard the music and here you were." He stood, walked to where I was, picked up the stool, and gestured for me to sit. Not knowing what else to do, I sat.

He picked up my hands in his own and held them. "No wonder," he said quietly.

"No wonder what?" I queried.

"No wonder you have such beautiful hands," he responded. He squatted down to be eye level with me and balanced on the balls of his feet, still holding my hands, kissed each one, and looked at me, and I realized with another shock that he was close to tears. "I've thought it many times, and now I know why." He released them and stood up.

"Will you play something else for me?" He moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, his large hands warm on my skin. The last two words somehow turned the request into something so intimate that it became impossible to respond in any other way but with my fingers on the keys.

I considered, then began to play Beethoven's Sonata Pathètique. He left his hands where they were, and I felt his responses to the music as I played. During the ponderous first movement, they gripped my shoulders and collarbones so strongly that I felt he could snap them if he wanted to; the music carried us together through the highs and lows. When the gentle second movement began, his grip relaxed. The third movement was quick and busy, and I could feel his fingers keeping time along with the beat, his whole body vibrating with the huge chords at the end.

As the last notes died away, he leaned down, kissed the top of my head, and murmured, "Jesus, that's almost better than sex, don't you think?" before stepping away and shaking his head vigorously to clear it.

He went back to his spot against the wall and motioned for me to keep playing. Wordlessly, I put my hands back into position and played, picking pieces at random, moving at will between periods, from classical to romantic to modern, wandering from Satie to Debussy to Haydn to Scriabn to Rachmaninoff. I must have played for close to an hour.

Finally, I turned to him and said, "My fingers are starting to cramp, and I'm getting hungry. Feed me, please?"

He stood up from his place against the wall and motioned for me to come to him. He put his arm around me as I reached him and kissed me again on my forehead. "Sitting there in that shirt, fingers flitting over the keys like you do, you know what you reminded me of?"