Page 3 of Checking All Her Notes
He nods once, precise and economical with his movement. “Unfortunately.”
“Everyone says you’re grumpy.”
“I’m consistent,” he replies without missing a beat.
That startles a laugh out of me. A real one. The kind that catches me off guard and makes my shoulders shake. “Consistently grumpy is still grumpy.”
“Consistently realistic,” he corrects, sweeping a pile of glass toward the dustpan.
“That’s what grumpy people say when they don’t want to admit they’re grumpy.”
His mouth twitches. Just barely. Like maybe somewhere under all that stone, there’s a human who remembers how to smile but hasn’t practiced in a while.
We work in silence for a moment. Well, relative silence. The kids are banging through their scales with the subtlety of a marching band. Kayla hits a spectacularly wrong note and Lily immediately copies her. I make a mental note to separate them next week.
“You teach all of them at once?” he asks, eyeing the chaos.
“Yep. Group lessons are more fun. And louder. So much louder.”
“You have patience.”
“I have also have ear plugs for the particularly loud days.”
Another twitch of his mouth.
He sweeps the glass into a pile with surprising efficiency. When he’s done, he reaches for the dustpan at the same moment I do. Our fingers brush.
My pulse jumps.
His doesn’t seem to, but his jaw flexes. Just once. And he pulls back like the dustpan suddenly got hot.
“I’ve got it,” I say, my voice coming out steadier than I feel.
He holds the dustpan while I sweep the last bits in. His hands are big and scarred across the knuckles. Hockey hands. There’s a fresh bruise blooming across two of his fingers.
“Does that hurt?” I ask, nodding toward the bruise.
He glances down. “Nah. Blocked a shot yesterday. It’s nothing.”
“That’s nothing?”
“You should see the other guy.”
“Did you punch him?”
“Didn’t have to.” He almost smiles. “I just looked at him.”
I laugh again, and this time he definitely reacts. His shoulders relax a fraction. The storm in his eyes clears just a little.
I’m still staring at the broken window, mentally calculating how long it’ll take to fix it, when Jude says, “You should move your piano farther from the window.”
I glance over, raising an eyebrow. “You should aim better.”
His eyes cut toward me, and for a second there’s genuine amusement in them. A flicker, gone too fast, like someone changed the channel. “Can’t promise that.”
“So I should just expect regular window replacements?”
“Builds character,” he says, deadpan.
