Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,69

to spill over into a love for kids in general. There were still kids she liked—students who had the same kind of enthusiasm for playing and singing that she’d had as a child, or even just interesting, quiet kids who she could tell liked listening to music on their own. But the brassy, bossy alpha types always turned the class’s attention toward them, and then Laura had to fight to wrest it back. She was tired of these future CEOs and lawyers. She wished there was a way to oust them so that she could focus on the students like the gentle second grader who’d come to her last week complaining that her hands were too sore to play guitar anymore. She’d told the girl that her fingers would toughen up soon and to keep playing, the same advice she’d been given the first time this happened to her. Maybe her life would have been different if she’d given up. It might have been better, she’d caught herself thinking.

The class ended at last, and Laura had an itch to run out of the classroom as quickly as her students did. Instead, though, she spent a decorous moment gathering her things, putting the instruments back in their cubbies on the shelves, smoothing her hair and reapplying lipstick using her reflection in her phone’s reversed camera as a mirror. She still always wanted to look good for Callie.

Laura took a seat at the bar they’d chosen as a mutually convenient meeting spot, ordered a glass of white wine and drank the first two sips like it was water. Though her back was to the door, she could tell when Callie walked in.

Even in their city full of professional-quality beauties, it was still rare to see anyone as beautiful as Callie. Everyone who saw her adjusted themselves in subtle ways; the bartender smoothed his hair back, and the college-aged women at the table nearest the door straightened their spines and pushed their collarbones forward as though showing off invisible necklaces. Callie rushed up to Laura, who stood up next to her barstool so that her friend could envelop her in a cool, perfumed hug. She was wearing a white shirtdress under a cropped black leather jacket, and there were little gold caps on the toes of her ankle boots. Laura wished she’d worn something other than her usual barely passable adultwear outfit of black jeans, Converse sneakers, and button-down shirt, but it didn’t matter. Whoever was with Callie was rendered at least temporarily beautiful or cool by association, and the bartender came around immediately to affirm this by putting misty glasses of ice water in front of each of them, topping off Laura’s glass and leaving Callie with the wine menu, all without uttering a word.

“That looks good. One for me, too, please,” Callie said, and was taking her first sip of wine within seconds. Laura had sat at the bar for five minutes before anyone had even given her a menu.

There was energy buzzing around Callie, mixing with her perfume and somehow promising fun, excitement, and money. Even after all these years of having the promise not quite deliver, Laura was still enthralled and enticed by it. They sat for a minute just sipping and smiling at each other, and then Callie reached out and touched the tender bruise under Laura’s eye that no one else, even Matt, had noticed. “Did you take up kickboxing?”

“I probably should. Marie is kind of out of control.”

“She punched you? What a little bitch!”

It stung Laura when anyone insulted Marie, though she of course thought of her daughter as a bitch all the time.

“Well, not quite. She threw her phone, not on purpose. But also not by accident, you know?”

“Did you punish her?”

“Should I have?”

“What would your mother have done?”

“Jesus, I don’t even want to think about it. Called the cops, probably. I see my mother once a year for Christmas and talk to her on the phone once a month about the weather. If that’s my relationship with Marie in twenty years I’ll, like … kill myself?”

Callie smiled. “Fair enough! And of course I am the last person in the world who should be giving you parenting advice. I just hate seeing you get hurt. Emotionally or otherwise.”

Laura shrugged and finished her glass of wine, which was seamlessly refilled.

“There’s no way to avoid it. The whole endeavor is just one variety of heartbreak after the next.”

Callie looked down at her own pretty shoes. “It seems