“IS IT registration time for your master class already?” Angie asked.
“That class is full. Why?”
Angie pointed out the front window. “There’s a guy outside.” I set down the music I was transcribing and joined her. Sometimes students came to the house to try to convince me to add them to my roster.
“That guy?” A young black man, his brown hair a shade darker than his skin and cropped into a short fade, stood staring at my house. I took in his khaki pants, baby blue cable-knit sweater, and brown loafers, and didn’t recognize him. After a few seconds, he started to walk away. Before he reached the neighbor’s house, he turned and paced back. Another stop. Then he shook his head like he was scolding himself. He took a step toward the stoop and stopped again.
“I think he’s giving himself a pep talk,” Angie said. “He’s been out there for like five minutes.”
“Just in front of the house?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I’m going to see what he wants.” I walked out of the office, down the foyer, and opened the door. The man looked up at me. “How’s it going there?” I said.
“Um.” He cleared his throat. “Keelin?”
I gave a short nod, and he approached. Once our feet were on the same level, I found myself looking up to meet his fleeting gaze. “Hi. I’m Travis Deak. I’m friends with Malik and Jordana. I’m Malik’s best man, actually. He asked me to come by and—” Travis lowered his voice and muttered, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Do you want to come in?” I asked.
He looked relieved. “Please.”
“Let’s go to my office.” I led him past Angie.
He said hey to her, and she heyed back. She started to follow us into the room, but I shook my head and closed the door.
“How can I help you?” I motioned him toward the chairs. Travis walked past the baby grand and sat down. I smiled as he squeezed into the armchair. “If I’m going to keep having giants over, I’ll need new furniture. Malik really did a number on that chair, getting in and out of it.”
“He does a number on all furniture. Most things in his house are specially made. I guess you don’t have that problem. I mean—” He faltered and chewed his lip.
“I’m short. It’s okay. I’ve had my whole life to come to peace with it.”
“Heh.”
“So…?” I clasped my hands between my knees. “What’s up?”
“First, thank you for seeing me on no notice.”
“Travis. This isn’t a job interview. What’s on your mind?”
He inhaled. Exhaled. “We’re worried the wedding song is going to be a disaster, and we need you to talk Jordana into using a different song because we don’t want her to be embarrassed on her wedding day.”
“We?” I asked.
“Malik and I. Mainly Malik. He sent me.”
“I see.” I “saw” a lot more than what Travis said. I “saw” a man trying to put a cap on his fiancée’s dream because he didn’t think she had potential enough to achieve it.
“So, we’re good?” Travis asked.
“No, we’re not good. Jordana hired me to teach her ‘All I Ask of You.’ That is her song of choice for her wedding.”
“I hired you.” Travis’s voice rose into a whine.
“What?”
“The lessons… they’re a wedding gift from me. So technically I hired you.”
“And now you’re firing me?” I asked.
“No! No. I just…. Malik made me realize that maybe it would be better to encourage Jordana toward a different song choice.”
“It’s the song that she feels represents her relationship with Malik, and she has chosen to express that song herself.”
Travis leaned forward. The chair creaked. “She can’t sing. It’s going to be a disaster. Jordana didn’t hire you. I did. And I’m telling you—switch the song.”
“No.” I raised my chin, locked my eyes onto Travis’s, and suddenly I was the tallest one in the room.
Travis slumped. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he mumbled. “We all love Jordana so much. We want the day to be perfect for her. She deserves…. Shit.” Tears appeared in the corners of his eyes. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “You don’t understand,” he said after he finished blinking the moisture away. “Jordana’s our glue. And I just… we just need your help on this.” He glanced at me. I leaned forward, my previous defiance replaced with compassion. “Please,” Travis whispered.
“Come over to the piano.”
“What for?” Travis followed anyway. I sat on the bench and motioned him into the curve of the baby grand.
“Do you sing?” I uncovered the keys and positioned my fingers.
“No. And I’m not here for a lesson.”
“Uh-huh. Repeat after me, please.” I started singing scales.
“Keelin, I’m not—”
“If you want my answer in this room, you sing.”
Travis gave me a look. Evidently he hadn’t expected me to be a hardass. People rarely did. My wispy brown hair that curled over my ears and skin that burned if I spent more than two seconds in the sun, combined with a slight upturn in my nose and the fact I barely reached five six in shoes, didn’t exactly make me someone people thought they should listen to at first glance. I’d spent my whole life proving them wrong.
“La?” Travis ventured.
“Yup.” I repeated the scale. This time Travis followed me. “Good. Now I want you to focus on relaxing your throat. Imagine you need to make room for the notes to come out. You want to gently caress them with your vocal cords, not choke on them.”
“I’ve heard that before in another context.”
I coughed to cover up my reaction. Travis laughed at his joke.
“So you’re well practiced,” I quipped.
It seemed the coughing was contagious. He glanced at me. I was 90 percent sure he was checking me out. “Uh, maybe you’d better just play the scale.”
I laughed and did so. “That was better,” I said at the end. “Once more.” Travis sang for me again. I focused on his technique. I made a suggestion. He tried it. It worked.
I rested my hands on the keys. “You improved in three minutes. Can you feel that?”
Travis nodded.
“I need you to trust me. You and Malik. Jordana will get better with every lesson. I’m not saying she’ll be Sarah Brightman by her wedding, but we’re chipping away at those bad habits, and there’s hope.” I stood up and touched Travis’s elbow. “There’s always hope, all right?”
Travis looked down at my hand. “You think so?”
“Yeah, because she and I will work our asses off to make it true.”
“Malik isn’t going to be happy.”
“You want me to talk to him?” I asked.
“No. I’ll handle it. Best-man duties. Listen, thanks again for letting me take up your time. It was really good to meet you.” Travis stuck out his hand.
I shook it. He had a firm, dry grip. “Likewise. I’ll walk you out.”
He smiled. I liked his smile. “I think I can find my way. It’s only about four feet.”
“Feel free to drop by anytime, you know, if you think the song is too difficult for Malik….”
“Is it?” he asked, so fast, like he was jumping on my suggestion for another reason.
I laughed. “Out.”
Travis grinned back and made a tactical exit. I watched him bound down the front steps. The khakis hugged his round ass in all the right ways. I stayed at the window, watching him go until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“SOOOO, TRAVIS was dreamy.” Angie tilted backward over the couch. I moved the TV remote before she could backbend onto it.
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
“So you think so too?” She flopped over onto her stomach, knees wedged against the end of the couch, and batted her glittered eyelashes at me.
Did I think the six-foot-two-inch broad-shouldered man with freckles scattered across his brown cheeks and nose beneath his amber-brown eyes that floated gold specks like little ships in a fantasy world was dreamy? Did I think the guy who had a laugh like a bass bell’s peal was attractive? Did I spend any time at all during his short visit imagining his arms rippling as he picked me up and carried me someplace “more comfortable” so he could lay that long body down on top of mine?
Did I ever.
“Yeah, he was all right,” I said.
Angie slugged me. “Liar. Oh my God.” She howled. “You wanted to jump him the second you saw him.”
I groaned. “Was it that obvious?”
“Well, not to him. He was too busy looking at you the same way.”
“How would you know? You weren’t even in the room.”
“I saw him looking at you when you opened the front door.”
“Ugh.” I pushed the cat off my lap. Melvin mewled and came right back, then started kneading my crotch in revenge. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Run to him!” She sat up. “He could be your match!”
“I don’t even know where he lives.”
She grinned. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll call him and ask. We have his number, you know.”
“No!”
“But—”
“Angie, I swear, if you do that, I’ll fire you. And don’t mention to Jordana that Travis came here, either.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What did he want, anyway?”
I shook my head. “I handled it. You can’t tell Jordana.”
“But I can tell Malik? Because Malik knows? Because Malik sent him.” Her tone took on a dangerous, thoughtful quality.
I rubbed my face. “Isn’t it time for you to go home?”
She sat up even straighter as epiphany landed. “Oh my God, Malik asked Travis to come here and get you to change the song because Jordana sings like a cat getting fucked!”
“Angie!”
But she was too gone into her theory to pay attention to me. “You didn’t agree, did you?”
I sighed. “No, I didn’t agree. I told him it’s her song, and I’m working with her. Then I did a short demonstration with him and I sent him away. It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“It was the right thing.” She slumped again, as if the epiphany had drained her. “I’m proud of you, boss. I might have had to quit otherwise.” She plucked the remote from me and changed the program I was watching.
“I pay the salary, you know,” I said in weak protest.
“And the Netflix,” she answered cheerfully. I didn’t budge as she kissed my cheek with eucalyptus-balm-coated lips. “Thanks, boss.”
“You’re welcome,” I grumbled. As Angie scrolled through her options, I thought about Travis. He didn’t seem like he was intimidated by who I am, or by who I used to be. Maybe I wouldn’t have to make the first move for once. I’d never been good at that. Paeder was great at it. He could seduce a nun… provided the nun was a gay guy in a Halloween costume. Hell, he seduced me for years. Not that that was any great trick. I was lonely and desperate and yeah, in love. After Paeder, a dry spell hit me like the biblical famine of Egypt. I could count my relationships on one hand. None had been as exciting as life with Paeder. Even with his cheating.
Travis seemed like a solid guy. Seeing him get emotional about Jordana had almost done me in. Ultimately, though, that was the cornerstone that made me stick to my guns. And I saw that he appreciated it. I could get his address easily. Ask him out. Start getting to know him. But I wondered if that was the right move. Maybe what I needed was space and time to think. The fastest I’d ever gone from hello to sex was twenty minutes. It was backstage at one of those radio-hosted festivals in the mid-90s in London, between me and the “shy one” from another boy band. He wasn’t shy once his pants were off. We’d rutted like dogs in the hidden corner of a cloakroom, me right after performing, him right before. I remembered his name, which was more than most of the UK could say. His flash-in-the-pan band evaporated a few years before Icon combusted. I never saw him again.
I needed time to think about Travis, to decide if I wanted him to be another fuck in a cloakroom or if I wanted to take a bigger risk with him, a Paeder-sized risk.
“So is that cool?” Angie asked.
I figured she was talking about the program she’d selected. I checked the screen. Two shirtless guys in battle. “Sure.”
“Great! It’s only for a few days.”
Wait, what?
“Uh? This show?”
She sighed. “Me staying here while my roommate’s family is visiting. I was just talking for, like, five minutes about how her dad has the hots for me and it’s super creepy.”
“Oh. Uh, yeah, sure. No problem.”
“Great.” She was happy again.
“Um. Starting when?”
“Tonight.”
“Oh. So that’s why you haven’t left yet.”
She snuggled into the couch. “Yep.”
“For how long?” I asked.
“Coupla nights. You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“Sure I won’t.”