Page 105 of So Not My Thing
This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to date Miles, even when I’d wanted him so desperately, I thought I would die from the wanting: there would be no escape. I’d always be watching for his car in his spot, trying to figure out when my apartment was wholly mine and when he was invading the space beneath me.
So stupid.
But I didn’t want to cry anymore about it tonight. Instead, after dinner, I changed into an extra pair of my mom’s pajamas and sat down at the piano. The one good thing that had come out of my time with Miles was the practice I’d put in.
“That was lovely,” my mom said, when I finished the last notes of “Moonlight Sonata,” a piece I hadn’t played since high school. “It does my heart good to hear you playing again.” A yawn escaped her, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, honey. That’s not a comment on your performance. Want to sing me to sleep?”
I smiled. It had been a joke between us since I’d first learned to accompany myself. She loved for me to sing her a song before we all went up to bed. “Of course, Mama. What do you want?”
“Do ‘Brave’ by Sara Bareilles.”
She’d always loved bragging to her friends about her Baby Bareilles, even though most of them had no idea who Sara Bareilles was. As the lyrics came back to me, I found myself singing them with conviction instead of humoring her.Say what you want to say, and let the words fall out.I’d be singing it to myself as I fell asleep tonight.
She padded over to the piano bench to drop a kiss on my forehead. She’d sent my dad up to bed an hour earlier when he’d dozed off in front of the TV. “Stay as long as you need to. And as far as I’m concerned, Channel Five doesn’t exist in this house anymore.”
I meant to sneak over to my place early before I knew Miles would be at the club. I needed clothes and my laptop. But when I woke up Wednesday morning, my eyes were sore and puffy-feeling, and sinus pressure I only got from pollen or crying pushed against my cheekbones. I didn’t feel like crying anymore, but I didn’t want to go to work either.
I shuffled downstairs and found my purse, fishing out my phone. I let it wake up while I foraged in the kitchen. It was too early even for my mom, who would usually brew some coffee—always Community coffee, always doctored with two creams and a sugar. I dug through the fridge for something to reheat while my phone vibrated like crazy, announcing two million messages that had come in while it was off.
I gave up looking for something to reheat and pulled grits from the pantry. My phone kept buzzing. I set a small saucepan of water to boil and finally checked it. Thirteen missed calls. Thirty-seven texts, all from Chloe or Miles. Hers started around six and ended around the time Dylan had called my mom. The final one read,Glad you’re okay. Call me if you need anything.
I didn’t want to read the texts from Miles. There had to be at least twenty-five. The last one he’d sent, the one that showed up in my texts list, read,Seriously. That was totally unfair. Call me please? I just want to...
The rest disappeared, too long to fit in the preview window. I didn’t open it. I would talk to Miles eventually. But I needed to work out some stuff first.
I texted Donna instead to tell her I wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be in the office. I rescheduled two client meetings, turned off my phone, and curled up to watch more Animal Planet and eat plain buttered grits.
About a half hour later, my mom came down, dropped a kiss on my head, and went to put the coffee on. My dad came down a few minutes later, hair wet from a shower, and I ate a second breakfast with them, this time with eggs and bacon.
“It’s nice to have you at the breakfast table,” my mom said as she gathered up our dirty plates. “It’s been too long. Last Christmas, at least. You and Dylan are too independent. I miss fussing over you.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You going to be okay if we go into the office, sugar?” My dad’s forehead furrowed like he wasn’t sure he was going to believe me if I said yes.
“I’ll be fine, I promise. I want to decompress and maybe play the piano for a while.”
Eventually, they decided to take my word for it and left together for work. The house fell completely quiet as soon as the door shut behind them.
I went over to the piano and tried the melody I’d been messing with for a week, but it felt more wrong than ever. Before, I could sometimes sense the edges of what it was about, but today, I drew a blank.
Instead, I picked out a different melody with my right hand, something bluesy, the traditional C-F-G chord progression feeling like the right fit for my mood this morning. Today was a day to write about love gone wrong. I hopped off the bench and lifted the lid, digging through it until I found the sheet music for an old Allen Toussaint song, spending a couple of hours learning it until it came to me more fluidly. Then I pushed it aside and went back to the melody I’d been picking out earlier.
By lunch I had two verses, and after a quick cold-cut sandwich, I sat down and finished the rest of it. I played it for myself several times, and I was ready to do a quick recording on my iPhone when I realized that reaching for it would only mean seeing more texts from Miles. I set it back down without turning it on. If I forgot the chords and lyrics, that could be his fault too.
Instead, I curled up on the sofa and watched more Animal Planet. When my mom got home around four, she walked into the den and sighed. “Honey, I was really hoping to find you watching Real Housewives of anywhere.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Why?”
“Because if you’d moved on from sad animals to being judgy it would mean you’re feeling better.”
I scrunched down further into my cushion and drew my knees to my chest. “I don’t feel better. And I wrote a blues song,” I mumbled into my knees.
“What was that?”
I sighed and lifted my face up. “I wrote a blues song.”
My mom winced.
