Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,16
a little Mozart, and he didn’t believe half the stories about any composer who came before him. He’d never met someone who ate, slept, drank, and bled music. He had been good once—maybe even great—but that was years ago, before forty started creeping up. Before his life turned stale and common.
He spent most of the evening going through his usual script of calming parents down, of assuring them their child’s solo was not riddled with mistakes, was not some great tragedy that would miraculously make it onto the front page of the New Yorker the following morning.
Though he did like to picture it sometimes—his tinny computer voice reading out, “Small Town Child Bombs In Local Concert,” like any student he’d ever taught meant something beyond these four town walls boxing them all in. So instead, he’d just smile, and he’d pat their hands and praise their kid like they’d walked on water before going into the dressing room and screaming into a pillow.
The only thing that got him through was knowing Van would have Chinese take-out waiting for him at home. Half a dozen small paper boxes, steaming-hot and full of spices that would make him full, and bloated, and sleepy. It wasn’t his fantasy from years ago, when he used to imagine what it would be like to have someone he was in love with waiting for him. But he still wondered if these impossibly long nights stuck in a school auditorium would feel worth it if he had anyone besides his brother to come home to.
And half of that was his fault. Early relationships were meant to crash and burn—they were meant to work out all the bad habits and toxic behaviors so you could appreciate the good people who came after. But they were so much damn work, and Nik was so exhausted by the time he hit twenty-five, he just stopped. He stopped looking, stopped trying to feel for people, stopped letting it go past a single night with sloppy blow jobs and over-lubed sex.
Maybe it would have been easier if he’d made friends. Maybe, if he’d been more like others and allowed people to get close, there wouldn’t be the impending, crushing emptiness at the end of the night. But that had never been him.
“Okay,” Nik said to the small group of students gathered around him. It was nearly the end of the year, so they knew this speech. He heard them shuffling, heard strings plucked and bows tapped. They were restless, and he didn’t blame them. “I need you in your row lines. Mrs. Castile is going to make the introductions, and then we’re going right up on stage. When we’re done?”
“Move the chairs back three steps,” Anya piped up, the only one in his class never afraid to just answer questions. A know-it-all, but he liked that about her. “The intermediate concert is next, and we have to sit and listen and behave.”
Two kids behind her snickered, and normally he would have issued a reprimand, but he didn’t have the energy. He adjusted the collar of his new shirt, the slick fabric under his fingers soothing. It made him think about Jay and the mall. And that made him think about Adam—about the rough cadence of his voice, the way he laughed, the nervous way he’d said goodbye. The moment should have passed. Nik shouldn’t have been thinking about him again right before taking the stage with his kids, but here he was.
He heard the hollow sounds of Bethany’s heels on the stage, and he gave his hands a single clap. The kids shuffled around, getting into their row lines. He heard instruments hitting each other, cellos touching the ground, and he promptly ignored it as he turned and reached for the edge of the curtain to orient himself. Anya was at his side a second later, and his hand settled on her shoulder. His cane was in his pocket, and the conductor baton in his left hand because the kids loved it, even if none of them could follow it, but it made them feel professional, and he wanted to give that to them.
“Ready?” he asked his tiny guide.
“Mrs. Castile is waving us on,” Anya said dutifully.
For being eight, she was a decent guide—better than half the adults he’d trusted over the years. He knew she had her violin tucked under her arm, and he loved that she was straight-backed and steady as they made their way to the mic.