Page 88 of Down Beat

“Thank you.” He grins, scooting around so his back is against the wall. “What else, kitty? What made you take off to play the violin?”

My fingers walk across the fibers of the carpet as I try to summarize what pushed me to make the decision. “I hated playing at first.”

“Because you wanted to play football.”

I smile at his recollection of our past conversation. “Yeah. But after a while I enjoyed how I felt when I could actually play a piece start to finish. It became my fallback on tough days, you know?”

He nods, patting the floor between his bent legs.

I scoot into the space, tucking my knees under his to sit Indian style with my back against his front.

His hands find the muscles in my back, massaging gently as I continue to give him the truncated version of events.

“Dad stepped out on Mum when I was a teenager. I was eleven when I started to question his habits. I was fifteen when it all made sense. In those years between, it was rough. He’d feed me lies so that Mum would hear them from me, and not him. I think he thought if I was spinning the yarn about where he was, she was more likely to believe it. But he slipped up, a lot. Credit card bills with unexplained charges. Constant phone calls where they’d hang up after Mum answered. And sometimes he’d forget to even tell his mates that he was using them for an alibi.”

“Sounds like a swell guy.”

“The best,” I say with loaded sarcasm. “Anyway, at fourteen Mum could legally leave me at home alone. So one night she went to his work to wait for him. He walked out, didn’t see her there, and drove straight to his mistress’s. Led Mum right to the place.”

“All over?”

I shake my head. “That’s half the reason why I’m distant from them now. She let him stay. And he never apologized for what he did. I resent her for being so weak, and I hate him for being so cruel.”

“Harsh.”

“Truthful.”

“How does that impact you playing violin, though?” His fingers work my shoulders as he talks, kneading, caressing, setting me alight.

“I played to drown out the sound of them arguing. I’d shut my door, pick up my violin, and play until the fingers of my left hand bore angry red indents from the strings.”

“To be honest, I would have thought that would make you hate it more.” He stops massaging, instead sliding his arms around my front to pull me back flush with him.

I melt into his embrace, loving how comfortable and safe it feels to have somebody literally protecting me from the world around us. The irony isn’t lost on me: here I am, supposedly accompanying him to make him feel better, and so far that’s all he’s done for me.

“What about you?” I ask as I slide my hands over his forearms. “Why did you start to play?”

“Got told a girl I liked thought musos were cool.”

I chuckle, twisting to look up at him. He grins down at me, eyes soft as he traces his gaze across my features to settle on my mouth.

“That’s terrible, Rey,” I tease, acutely aware his line of sight hasn’t moved. “You’re supposed to have some epic backstory about how it was what you were born to do.”

“What can I say?” He shrugs. “I was born to be a disappointment, so it’s only fitting my backstory is too.”

“Don’t,” I whisper, turning in his hold to sit side-on. “Don’t put yourself down so casually like that.”

“It’s easier than complimenting myself.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He frowns. “It just is.”

I reach up and run my fingers along his jaw, testing the coarseness of the hair there. “How do you make it through life?” I whisper the words, not expecting an answer.

It was more of a rhetorical question. I know how heavy it feels on the days where I get down, how loaded it can be to have something disappointing happen in your life that takes the wind from your sails. But to feel that every day, without reason, purely because you’re unhappy to be yourself?

I can’t imagine the stress that would put on a person.

A couple walk by with suitcases in tow, headed for the exit. The spell is broken as Rey pulls his head from my touch, resting it against the wall instead. I feel unwelcome in his arms, and yet he doesn’t let go, just acts indifferent by refusing to look at me, let alone talk.

It’s an oxymoron for his life, it seems. On the outer, here’s this guy who you’d think sheds conflict like water off a duck’s back, but on the inside there’s a man who hangs on to the things that mean the most to him like his life depends on it.

I guess, in a way, it does.

Content for the time being, I turn so that I face outward again, sliding his left arm up over my shoulder and against the side of my neck as I nestle into his front. He leans down once the couple has left the terminal and places a gentle kiss to the top of my head.

“Sleep, kitty. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Somehow I think it’s going to be his hardest one yet.