13. August

Chapter thirteen

August

C onstance’s late start at Timber Creek meant she wasn’t part of Niles’s Christmas concert—although she should have been. Her midterm solo was leaps and bounds beyond her classmates’, and she had stage experience like they would never know. I’d tried to bring it up with my daughter, but she’d yelled with a fast flurry of ASL. I could only assume it meant I should mind my business.

Apart from occasionally observing rehearsals, Niles hadn’t wanted me involved with the Christmas show. It was his baby to nurture, and he’d kept me at a distance. Heaven forbid I suggest ways to improve it. He wore his bruised ego like a second skin. I let it go. After the holiday, the concert band was mine, but I suspected surrendering the reins was the last thing Niles wanted to do.

The final bell rang, and the fourth-period class trickled out much slower than usual. A few students helped Niles gather music stands and percussion instruments, transporting them to the auditorium. Constance approached, backpack slung over one shoulder, violin case clutched in her left hand. She extended the right with a message written on her phone.

In no mood to wage war over words, I took the device and read.

I’m going home. What are you doing?

I scanned the room. “I’ll see if Mr. Edwidge needs help preparing for tonight.” Although I thought he would prefer I scatter with the rest of the students, but setting up for the evening seemed part of my duties as a guest teacher.

Constance took her phone back and typed.

How was my solo? Any feedback?

I eyed Niles across the room and lowered my voice. “Excellent pacing. Watch your bow grip during the flurry of runs near the middle. It grew rigid during the longer passage, choking the sound. You’ll end up with a bounce if you aren’t careful.”

Constance nodded with pursed lips and a furrowed brow. She was as much a perfectionist as her father.

What did Mr. Edwidge think?

I sighed, again seeking Niles, but he wasn’t in the classroom. “I don’t know. We never discussed it.”

Constance left, and when I couldn’t figure out how to inject myself into the flurry of setup duties, I bowed out as well, heading home.

***

Lacy snowflakes danced in the air as I returned to the main building that evening for the annual Timber Creek Christmas concert. They swirled and danced, brushing my cheeks and melting against my warm skin as I hustled along the path, Constance far ahead. The full parking lot bustled with parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends as they filed into the school for the show.

Abandoned by my daughter the second she located a group of girls from her grade who were also there to watch the concert, I sat alone in the back row of the auditorium. Before the lights dimmed, a man with a short beard, mussed brown hair, and a Peterborough hockey jacket took the seat to my left.

I thought he was a parent until he offered his hand to shake. “I’m told you’re the famous maestro. Jersey Reid, nice to meet you.”

The name touched a memory. I’d heard it before but couldn’t place it. I returned the handshake. “Just August, please. Do you teach here?”

“No, no. My partner does.” He hitched his chin toward the stage. “He’s helping Niles wrangle the wild beasts and get things organized. Koa Burgard. I believe he teaches your daughter English.”

The pieces clicked. “Ah, yes. Has her hooked on Jane Eyre .”

Jersey chuckled. “Could be worse. Be glad it isn’t something maudlin like the Russian guy who’s obsessed with writing morally gray characters. I can’t remember or pronounce the author’s name. Something with a D .”

“Dostoevsky?”

“That’d be him. Zero out of ten stars. Do not recommend.”

I chuckled. “I’ll be sure to file a complaint if I see his work on her nightstand.” I indicated his jacket. “You’re a hockey coach.”

“I am. Peterborough minor league. You into sports?”

“Not at all.”

Another smile, accompanied by a head shake. “You creative sort need to get with the program.”

“I played golf once.”

“Doesn’t count. Golf isn’t a sport. It’s a leisurely walk spoiled.” Something caught Jersey’s attention, and I followed his gaze to find Niles at the side of the stage in discussion with a few parents.

“How do you like working with Master Edwidge ?” he said with a flair.

“Master?”

“Koa’s nickname. A little on the nose.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. “It’s an experience.”

Jersey chuckled. “I hear you’ve got him in quite a knot.”

My stomach dropped until Jersey explained. “Niles is sensitive about his standing among the faculty. Only one without a PhD. He’s never felt good enough and is convinced you’ve come to replace him.”

“Why on earth would I want to teach high school music?”

Jersey slanted a brow, and I heard the ambiguous context of my question. Before I could reorder the wording into something less arrogant, the lights dimmed, and a hush folded over the audience.

Jersey’s partner—Niles’s ex—snuck into our row and took the seat on Jersey’s other side, leaning over to say a quiet hello. I smiled tightly and focused on the stage. Niles had claimed he and Koa had remained friends. How much had Niles shared with his friend? Doubtless nothing positive. Did Koa and his partner know about the jazz club? My admission? The near kiss? Our exchanges over the past week had been hostile. Niles was clearly upset, and I didn’t have the tools or courage to fix the damage I’d done.

A spotlight appeared. Niles came on stage, stopping in its aura, and greeted the parents, explaining the night’s program and thanking them for coming. Instead of introducing the band or a soloist, Niles sat at the worn upright and straightened the sheet music on the rack.

Unexpectedly, the show began with Niles’s own performance.

I hadn’t heard him play with any seriousness since the first day we’d met when he’d fumbled through Gaspard de la Nuit . My comments that day had not been appreciated, and we’d been on a downward slide ever since.

The unfamiliar piece he’d selected for the evening painted a magical landscape of a winter night. Intricate layers gave it depth and wonder. His creative use of dynamics helped build anticipation. Nightingales danced on snow-covered branches, fluffing their feathers in the cold. Cinnamon and spice drifted from beverages swirled with whipped cream toppers. Crystalized breath and rosy cheeks. Heartbeats pattering inside tiny chests with the anticipation of Father Christmas’s arrival.

Closing my eyes, I found the correct key and moved my fingers on my legs, picking out the bassline with my left hand and adding a flair of harmony with my right. I rode the sleigh ride. I tasted the hot cocoa. Pine and sap tickled my nose as I inhaled.

It wasn’t until Niles finished and stood to bow that I returned to myself again, querying why Niles had chosen to open a show intended for students and their parents.

Over the following two hours, I listened to the concert band and several solo performers with the ear of a professional, trying not to cringe. It took time to adjust my ingrained expective nature. I’d spent a lifetime on stage, but never in an amateur capacity. It was unlike anything I’d witnessed. The seriousness I’d anticipated was absent. The discipline was lax, yet it was raw and real and somehow beautiful in its own way. The rough edges and imperfect transitions between performances helped me relax after a time as I observed a quality of life I’d never experienced. Freedom from expectation. A joy in its simplest form.

No pressure. No criticism. No punishment. Just the pure essence of music enjoyed by all.

Niles and I had fought tooth and nail all week over grades. His incessant reminders that these were teenagers had gone over my head. I had been a teenager of a different sort. The scale of comparison was imbalanced. My quality of life was incomparable to those on stage.

The concert ended at nine, and the auditorium bustled with a clash of families and faculty. Koa and Jersey took their leave, wishing me a happy holiday. I remained seated until the crowd thinned, and I spotted my daughter happily engaged with a few other teenagers. The upcoming weeks presented a challenge. It would be Constance’s first Christmas without her mother. I was a poor substitute, and she let me know it every chance she got. I didn’t know how to make her happy.

Many students were heading home that evening, taking an early holiday. I anticipated the final day of class would be lackadaisical. Only a handful of solos remained to be evaluated. Perhaps Niles could conquer them alone, and I could bow out. It wasn’t like I’d provided much in the way of help. He rejected every piece of feedback I delivered. I could stay home, invite Constance to take the day off, and we could get a Christmas tree or buy decorations for the cottage. I hadn’t shopped because I didn’t know what to buy a fourteen-year-old.

When my daughter left the auditorium without saying goodbye and a text landed on my phone a minute later, telling me she was going home, I abandoned the plan as fast as it formed. She wouldn’t want to spend a day with her dad.

Few people remained, and as the last of them trickled out the door, I found myself alone, not wanting to head home when the only thing awaiting me was a hostile teenager.

I missed Chicago. I missed late-night rehearsals and independence. I missed not being the target of teenage dissatisfaction everywhere I turned.

The stage lights clicked off. Clicking footfall sounded from behind the backdrop. The curtains ruffled, and a moment later, Niles parted the flush seam, appearing mid-stage. He aimed for the piano and collected a stack of sheet music from on top. Scanning it, he moved to leave the way he’d come when he noticed me sitting alone at the back of the auditorium.

A long pause ensued where we stared at one another, neither of us speaking.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, his voice filling the vast empty chamber.

“No better place to have a midlife crisis.”

He frowned, so I added, “The show was entertaining.”

“Entertaining?” Niles tossed the music back on the piano and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets. “Interesting word choice.”

“I can’t win with you, can I? It was a compliment. I enjoyed it. It was… perfect in its simplicity.”

Niles huffed and shook his head like he couldn’t figure me out. That made two of us.

He wore a festive hunter-green V-neck with a white shirt and tie underneath. No rolled sleeves, as was his norm. He exuded an appropriate teacher vibe that evening. Long hair tamed in a tight bun at his nape. Flyaways carefully controlled. A clean-shaven jaw, which surprised and disappointed me. I liked the trim beard. It suited him.

He was incredibly attractive, and I couldn’t dismiss the feelings he stirred, no matter how hard I tried. In the back of my mind, the serenade I’d come to associate with Niles resumed. It was always there, under the surface, expanding with each encounter.

We’d barely had a civil conversation all week, and Niles didn’t seem open to one now, but I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go home to a tension-filled house and a daughter who ignored me. I wanted his music inside me. I wanted to see where it took me. He turned my system upside down, yet I couldn’t pull away. I didn’t want tension. I didn’t want a wall. I wanted to bridge the gap and harmonize.

“Will you play for me?” I motioned to the piano.

Another huff. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“It’s humiliating.”

“You have skill, Niles. I never said you didn’t. The piece you opened with. I didn’t recognize it. It was beautiful.”

His guarded expression remained, and he didn’t seem inclined to share the title. Abandoning my seat at the back of the auditorium, I followed the aisle to the stage. Peering up, I met Niles’s wary gaze.

I pressed my lips together, seeking the right phrase, the right notes, the right tone to convey the right message. “I was wrong.” It was a start.

“About what?”

“A lot of things. I grew up in a different world, and you unfairly judge me. I’m trying to adapt to this… situation, but I’m clearly failing.”

I stared at my hands, at my long fingers and trimmed nails. My most precious commodity, yet some days, I wanted to take a hammer to them and smash the bones. I wanted to escape the chains that bound me to this life.

Craning my neck, I met Niles’s gaze. “You resent your parents for not supporting your dream. They wanted something different for you, and when your desires and goals went unrealized, you blamed them.

“You envy me for having lived what you perceive to have been a perfect life. My parents, in contrast, did all they could to ensure I reached my full potential. They didn’t encourage or promote ten hours of practice a day. They insisted on it. It wasn’t an option. I didn’t get a choice. They didn’t commend my accomplishments. They listed errors, and I was punished for them.

“I played piano until my fingers ached, until I saw the passages and notes in nightmares, and I wanted to tear my ears off because I was so tired of hearing them. I was dragged to countless auditions from the time I was six years old. I had tutors who did nothing but shout and scold. I was never allowed to play outside or do things other boys did. My hands were a delicate gift from god, and I needed to care for them.” Displaying them, I made fists in defiance and squeezed them until my knuckles hurt.

I glanced about the stage, at the music stands and chairs lined up on risers, at the lonely timpani and the upright grand that had seen better days and needed to be tuned.

“Music and the stage are the only life I’ve ever known, and I’m not sure it’s the life I would have chosen for myself. If I come across as starchy, rude, or arrogant, if my methods are harsh and my comments are destructive and cause you shame or embarrassment, I apologize. You’re not less than me because you didn’t rise to professionalism, because you didn’t attend Juilliard, because you don’t have a World Classical Music Award on your wall. None of it matters. Not to me.

“I’m sorry you didn’t live your dream as you’d hoped, but let me tell you something. I respect you for having the courage to defy your parents’ wishes and follow your heart. Sometimes, I wish I’d done the same. Maybe I’d have learned to fix automobiles or design houses. Maybe I’d have played tennis for a living, become a farmer, or joined the navy.” I chuckled. The notion was outrageous. “What I’m trying to say is, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.”

I reached to adjust my tie and remembered too late I wasn’t wearing one and smoothed my hand down my sweater front instead. “I’ll get out of your hair so you can shut down for the night. I don’t think I’ll be in tomorrow. We’ve had enough conflict this week. Merry Christmas.”

I turned to go, but Niles’s words stopped me. “If all that’s true, why are you doing the same thing with Constance? Why are you shaping and molding her life to reflect yours if you hated it?”

A painful smile touched my lips, and I turned back. “I didn’t raise my daughter, Niles. I was the absent, uninterested father, remember? She’s the product of her mother through and through. Chloé molded and shaped our daughter to reflect the life she loved. She instilled in Constance a passion for music from the time she was a baby, and she guided our daughter down the road to stardom before Constance could hardly walk.

“Since I’ve taken custody, I’ve learned that Constance’s desire to pursue these goals is now her own. She wants Juilliard. She wants the stage. She doesn’t yearn for other things, or if she does, she doesn’t share them with me. She locks herself in her room and plays until she can’t, and there is no stopping her. It’s a self-discipline that comes from in here.” I tapped my chest. “You recognize it because you have it too. Trust me, I’ve tried to sway her elsewhere, but she won’t be pulled off course, and who am I to take her dream away? I enrolled her at Timber Creek to give her a chance to be a normal teenager. It’s the least I could do, and yes, part of it was selfish because it saves me from having to be a parent. I wanted to give her options, Niles. I wanted to show her there was more out there, just in case. Chloé didn’t want her here, but Chloé lost the privilege of having an opinion when she… Well, that’s another story.

“Constance didn’t want to come either, but I think she’d rather be here than at home with me, so she reluctantly agreed.” I shrugged. “Please don’t judge what you don’t understand, and I’ll try to do the same. We have a lot of months together. I hope we can find common ground. Have a good night, Niles.”

I turned and walked up the aisle. He didn’t call me back. At the auditorium doors, I paused and glanced over my shoulder, catching him staring after me. Niles snapped to attention and slinked offstage with his head down.

A moment later, the vacuous room plunged into darkness. Silence swelled. Instead of leaving, I returned to my seat and self-pity, content to remain the auditorium’s lone occupant all night if I had to. It was hard to envision Constance noticing my absence when she was likely locked in her bedroom practicing her music.

Alone with my thoughts, I tried to grasp hold of the drifting notes that occurred in Niles’s presence, arranging them, humming them, and dissecting the central heart of their song. Eyes closed, I envisioned them on staff paper and created chords and harmonies. I played them on the piano of my thighs.

A noise brought me up short.

The symphony stopped. I cocked an ear and strained my eyes, but the void of the windowless room had no beginning and no end. I floated in an abyss, absent of time and space.

But I was no longer alone.

Shuffling.

Someone sat next to me, and my eyes, adjusted enough to the darkness, barely made out Niles’s form. “You startled me.”

“You didn’t leave.” His soft, unthreatening voice filled the space between us.

“No, I…”

“Midlife crisis?”

I chuckled. “Of sorts.”

“You should go home.”

“I’m not ready to face the teenager.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Aren’t you tired of listening to me?”

“Only when you’re contradictory about how I grade students.” Niles shuffled to face me. I could scarcely make out the contours of his face, but I felt every inch that separated us. “When you share about your life and your daughter, I understand you better and forget to hate you.”

I said nothing, encumbered by the weight of despair. Niles didn’t know the half of it. “It goes much deeper than being a child prodigy and having a baby I didn’t…”

“Want?”

“Expect. I wasn’t meant for this task. I never wanted custody. It’s shameful to admit.”

“Where’s Chloé?”

I considered the exhaustive task of translating that story and shook my head, despite the darkness and unlikelihood he would see the gesture. “Another time, Niles. Please. I have enough misery without transferring the mass of her problems onto my shoulders.”

“Does she know?”

“Know what?”

“About you?”

I racked my brain for his meaning. “I’m confused. Does she know what about me?”

Niles chuckled and shifted forward once more. “Never mind. And here I thought you were intelligent.” His thigh brushed mine, but he moved it away before I could exhilarate at the connection.

Encouraged by the shadows and private atmosphere and partly because of aching loneliness and the fatigue of holding myself together, I moved my leg next to his, meeting his thigh once more, telling him without words that I wanted his touch.

Niles’s hand landed on my knee and pushed it away. “Don’t.” A cutting edge to his tone.

“I thought—”

“I make it a point of not getting involved with closeted men. They’re enough to drive you crazy, and I don’t need the drama. I’m too old for that.”

“Okaaay… But I’m not closeted.”

He huffed a sarcastic laugh. “Good lord, not closeted? You’re practically living in Narnia. I thought you said you weren’t in denial.”

“I’m not.”

Another satirical snort.

“I’m not gay, Niles.”

“How can you… Let me get this straight. You’re not gay, you’re not in the closet, and you’re not in denial, but you wanted to kiss me Friday night and stopped when the Uber pulled up. What are you then?”

He couldn’t see the shame burning my cheeks, but I squirmed internally, nonetheless. Regulating my voice so the tremble of nerves wouldn’t give me away, I said, “I would consider myself a… repressed bisexual.”

A pause, and Niles laughed. A full, hearty belly laugh that went on for ages. It resonated in the empty auditorium. When I sought to see him in the dark, I found his head tipped back, one hand swiping his face.

“Oh god. I’ve never heard anything like that before. A repressed bisexual. It’s brilliant.”

“It’s the truth.”

“You’ve made my day, except I don’t know what to do with that information. I can honestly say I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Considering you find me insufferable, it doesn’t seem there’s much to debate. I’ll keep my leg on my side of the line and continue… repressing my bisexual feelings.”

Niles’s humor wound down, and he tipped his head to the side to face me. I’d been staring at him, so the changed position brought him closer. The only thing separating us was a cavern of darkness and maybe a few inches. It felt safe. Private.

Intimate.

“Are you repressing feelings toward me, Maestro?”

The moment shifted under the quiet weight of his question. The music returned, serenading me down a path that led to an unknown destination. We harmonized. His chords. My melody. The imbued allegro rhythm of my heart. The pianissimo of a held-breath moment. An aria of a journey not yet begun.

“I am,” I croaked. “I’ve barely been able to take my eyes off you since the day we met.”

“The day you insulted my piano playing in my own classroom.”

“I didn’t insult you. I was trying to explain how—”

“August. Shut up.”

A hand on my nape. Accelerando.

The touch of his mouth against mine. Crescendo.

A majestic, symphonic explosion as his tongue breached my lips.

The kiss sang through my veins, “Flight of the Bumblebee,” Ruslan and Ludmila .

I soared on the high, frantic notes, trying to keep up, ability failing for the first time in my life as the pace quickened beyond my skill. I was out of control, out of my depths, but I didn’t care.

Niles took the role of conductor. His soft mouth and confidence became my guide as he orchestrated our music and created new harmonies not yet explored. It had been years. Decades. Centuries. Eons. These feelings were new. Timeless. Infinite. Precious and rare.

He tasted like hazelnuts and apple orchards, like thirty-second notes gone wild. Instinct took over like it did so often when I played, my hands and body knowing what to do without cues from my brain.

I grappled for the elastic holding Niles’s hair secure and pulled it out, letting its length fall over his shoulders in waves. Cinnamon. Cardamom. Sweetness and spice. A crashing cymbal. The thunderous boom of a timpani.

I wrapped my fingers around the thick strands and fisted them like I’d wanted to do the day we met.

He grunted at the aggression, chuckled, and broke the kiss. “Repressed bisexual. Christ.” He laughed against my mouth.

“Shut up.”

I tried to draw him back, but he resisted, breathless. “Hang on.”

Shifting the armrest out of the way, Niles crossed the barrier, moving halfway onto my seat, wedging a leg between mine. Hands on my face, my shoulders, my chest. Lips, tongue, and teeth.

My erection pressed against my pants, and had there been light, I might have been embarrassed by the youthful reaction. From a single kiss. A joyous touch.

By a man.

After years.

Niles’s tongue wrapped around mine, hand wandering lower. He found my shame and pressed his palm against it, pawing and stroking me through my pants. I could barely think. Struggled to breathe and keep up. The shivering, rushing, cascading glissando of a harp touched my spine.

The belt buckle.

My zipper.

Shifting of underwear.

Air against swollen flesh.

A warm, steady hand.

I gasped, breaking from Niles’s mouth as he stroked me, shuddering with unrepressed pleasure. "Se thélo tóso poly."

Chuckling, he nipped my lower lip, the sting of his teeth another shot of pleasure. “Speak English, Maestro. I didn’t understand.”

“It’s…” I couldn’t think straight. “It roughly translates to ‘I want you so badly.’”

“Oh, do you?” His concentrated movements on my cock intensified. “Now tell me I don’t know what I’m doing. Tell me I lack skill.” He increased his pace, and my thoughts scattered into the wind as I tipped my head and arched my back, cursing again in Greek.

“It was never… a competition… oh god.” I tugged him back against my mouth, commanding the kiss. Any notion of shyness or uncertainty dissolved. Niles didn’t slow. He didn’t stop.

Coordination was a thing of the past, and I rode his mouth and hand until an explosion of stars eclipsed the blackened universe of the auditorium, and I came.

Niles took me through every shuddering aftershock, pecking kisses along my jaw to my temple when I couldn’t find the dexterity to make my muscles obey even a simple command. Hazy and boneless, heart still drumming in presto, I let Niles’s music rock me back to earth.

As the coda veered us toward conclusion, Niles removed his hand. Disheveled and covered in release, I chuckled. “I’m a mess.”

“Yes you are.” Hovering over my mouth, I could just make out the shape of Niles’s eyes in the dark. “And you need to pull your shit together if we’re ever doing this again.”

“What?”

Niles moved away, and I scrambled upright, fumbling for his arm to stop him, but he’d moved out of reach. I could no longer see him in the dark but heard his retreat.

“Niles?”

A gentle laugh found my ears. “Repressed bisexual. Meh, I could do worse. Have a good holiday, August. See you in January.”

“But—”

The door to the auditorium slammed, and I was alone.