Page 121 of String Boys
“Yes, please,” Seth said weakly.
“Good. What’s Amara going to do after graduation?”
“Well, she and Vince both got offered jobs down in LA,” Seth said. “I think they’re moving down there. I’m going to Italy, and I guess they promised they’d put out my portfolio recording when I was done and submit it around. Hopefully I’ll end up in San Francisco again.”
“Why not Sacramento?” Guthrie asked, taking a casual bite of steak, as if this wasn’t the goddamned $64,000 question.
“I, uh, can’t really go back right now,” Seth mumbled. Guthrie had never asked. Never once, after that first night. Why Kelly came down to see Seth way more than Seth ever went to see Kelly.
Guthrie’s eyes narrowed. “This have anything to do with how worried you get when we beat assholes in a fight?” Twice more, for a total of four times, they’d been jumped at the Stomp. The last time had been in front of Butch and Jock. Seth had used kicking and elbows on his guy, Guthrie used fists and fury, but it had been quick work to get rid of the hecklers who’d yelled obscenities at Seth during their entire set.
Word had gotten around, apparently, after that last time. Nobody had heckled Seth since.
“I… uh…,” Seth stammered, and Guthrie shook his head.
“Never mind. You already told me it wasn’t your first fight. I just… all this time later and there’s a lot of shit I don’t know about you, Fiddler. But the one thing I’m pretty sure I do know is that you couldn’t have done anything so bad you can’t go home.”
“It doesn’t matter if I did it or not,” Seth blurted, apparently weakened by emotional honesty like any other human. “What matters is Kelly’s brother can use… use thethreatof what they think I did to take back custody of his daughter.” Chloe—ah, God love her. She’d be four this August, and she was gradually creeping up through those milestones, mostly because the girls and Kelly worked with her every chance they got.
Something in her precious little brain had been broken when she was a baby, or even before, in the womb. Her hands didn’t work the way they should. Her balance and coordination were off. Her language skills were two years behind. Kelly’s mom had gotten her enrolled in special preschool programs to help—she’d be getting on a bus that August to go to school, which terrified the entire family, because she was so damned tiny. Craig and Linda and Kelly were scrambling to find a way to drive her to and from preschool that wouldn’t interfere with Kelly’s school schedule. Lily and Lulu were almost ready to drive—if Seth could get enough money together to buy them a car,theycould help transport Chloe and Agnes, and that would help immeasurably, but it couldn’t happen until Seth got back from Italy at the earliest.
“That would be bad?” Guthrie asked, pulling Seth from the incessant worry of the Cruz family and how to help keep them afloat.
“Matty isn’t….” Seth closed his eyes. “We used to be close,” he said, and he and Kelly knew this story so much, that pain was rawer than it should have been. “We used to be friends. And then… I mean, I know what wethinkhappened, but I don’t know whatreallyhappened. What wethinkhappened was bad enough. Anyway, got really awful. About me and Kelly together. About me in particular. He’s in and out of rehab. The last one seems to have stuck for the drugs, but he’s drinking too. Just… he and his wife, they just… they go to church and then act… not godly,” he finished, feeling weak. “We don’t want her to go with them.”
Guthrie nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Seth, you… you have the problems of an old man. Do you realize that?”
“So does Kelly.”
Guthrie nodded, and then grimaced. For the first time Seth heard the unspoken thing, the thing that had never occurred to him.
If he broke up with Kelly, he wouldn’t have any of Kelly’s problems.
He actually pondered that for a moment, and then remembered Chloe, as she’d been when he’d snuck up to Sacramento that spring break. She’d spent as much time as possible on Seth’s lap, making him read her cardboard books, making him play violin for her, making him sing. The stuffed animal collection that had started out as Kelly’s and then, piece by piece, had become the girls’, had been passed down to Chloe, and he’d brought her a new set of them, complete with a backpack to carry them. She’d worn the backpack every day, and Seth had played with her until she’d fallen asleep.
The rest of the family had assured him that they needed the break—and he could believe it. Chloe needed. Constantly needed. He only had to fill her void for a week at a time.
But he’d loved that week. Besides seeing Kelly and his father, he loved being her person, the grown person she loved more than anything.
The thought of Italy was killing him.
“They’re my problems too,” he said softly. “I… I can’t—”
Guthrie actually touched his hand. “I hear you. I’m sorry I even brought it up. Here. Let’s finish. We can have dessert.”
The trip home was easier. They talked about what Guthrie’s dad’s band would do without Seth, and how Seth had put in a word at the conservatory to see if they could find themselves another “fiddler.” There were lots of kids who liked country music, Seth told him. He was pretty sure they’d have a replacement before Seth’s plane took off.
“For the band, maybe,” Guthrie said as they pulled up to the gates of the conservatory. It wasn’t actually in the city proper—it was situated on the peninsula, another big campus like Bridgford but so much closer to the sea. “Not for me.”
Seth opened his mouth, and Guthrie held up a hand.
“Look, I’m going to ask something huge,” he said. “And you can say no, and either way I’ll still be in the audience when you graduate because you’re my friend. But I’m going to ask anyway, okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’m going to get you to your dorm and then you’re going to look at me like this was an ordinary date. But before you grab your violin from behind the seat, and your bundle of clothes, just close your eyes and let me kiss you. Like we might have another one. Like….” Seth could hear it, how hard it was to ask. “Like you might love me someday, like I might have a chance. I know I don’t. I know you can’t. But… but maybe, just maybe, one kiss and I can go on with my life, okay?”
“Guthrie—” He was going to say no.