Page 7 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door (Stuck Together In Mermaid Shores)

Chapter Seven: Alina

T he basement of the cottage is cool and dim, and also blessedly silent except for the faint hum of the dehumidifier in the corner.

It’s not ideal for practice—there’s barely enough space for a chair among the washer, dryer, and storage bins—but it’s the only room where I can be sure Karina won’t barge in. She means well, but her constant hovering is suffocating. I know that if she heard me playing, she’d start asking me a million questions about whether or not I should even be holding a violin right now.

Plus, I don’t want to bother her and Andy with the noise. They’ve been enjoying their vacation, running off on couple-y adventures while I not-so-subtly excuse myself from being their third wheel. I can tell that Andy is concerned about my antisocial behavior, but I’m sure Karina has already told him that this is simply how I am. I’m grateful that she invited me here for the summer, but I still really need my alone time.

I sit stiffly in the folding chair that I dragged down the stairs, my violin resting on my lap. My hands are secured in compression gloves that I picked up at a store in the next town over. The fabric is supposed to help ease the tension in my joints with the light pressure of all-over stability. Right now, however, they feel more like a suffocating, cruel reminder that I’m not supposed to be doing this.

I told Diana that I would rest over the summer. But even though she told me that story about how she took several months off from playing the harp before returning to her beloved instrument, I can’t bring myself to follow her good example. It’s not like I’m addicted to the instrument. I just don’t know what else to do with myself.

Also, I know I’ll hate myself if I let an entire summer pass by without at least trying to maintain my technique.

With a slow and deliberate motion, I raise the violin to my chin and set the bow against the strings. The familiar posture is both a comfort and a torment. My wrist protests almost immediately as I draw the bow across the A string. The note wavers, thin and uneven.

I grit my teeth and try again.

The second attempt is worse. My fingers falter, trembling with a combination of pain and frustration. The throbbing in my hands grows sharper, radiating up my left forearm with a particularly vicious spear of discomfort.

“Just one scale,” I mutter to myself, though the words crack as they leave my mouth. “Just one. Please.”

I barely make it through two octaves before the bow slips from my grasp and clatters to the cement floor.

“Shoot…”

My vision blurs as I scramble to retrieve it. The bow isn’t broken, thankfully, but it might as well be, given how little use I can make of it. I clutch it tightly in my hand, as if holding it harder might will the pain away, but it only makes my fingers scream in protest.

The violin slides from my shoulder, and I slump forward, cradling it like a lifeline.

I can’t do this.

I should’ve known better than to try this today. I woke up this morning earlier than usual, coaxed out of sleep from the agony in my wrists. I’m pretty sure I slept with them at an odd angle, worsening the inflammation that’s already there.

I can’t do anything right. Not even when I’m unconscious. My body is determined to betray me.

Hot tears spill down my cheeks, and I bury my face in my hands. Months of frustration and fear bubble to the surface, overwhelming me with an avalanche of everything that’s started piling up since I felt the first twinge in my hand.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra feels like a distant dream, fading further out of reach with each failed attempt to play. If I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me, if I can’t fix this… I’m not going to be able to go back. Diana and Goldberg are both going to notice right away if I return in just as bad shape as I was before.

A teardrop lands on the upper bout. The darkly stained rosewood is meant to be able to withstand slight dampness, such as sweat, but I wipe the tear away quickly as if it’s going to deteriorate the instrument like acid. That would be just my luck, to destroy the most precious thing I own.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs jerks me back upright.

I wipe hastily at my tears with the backs of my hands as the door at the top of the stairs creaks open. Expecting Karina, or maybe even Andy, I open my mouth in preparation to deliver a polite argument that I’m perfectly happy to be left alone down here.

Instead, Gabe steps down onto the cement floor with a basket of laundry balanced on his hip.

Of course. It has to be him . How could I forget that the entire universe is conspiring against me? How dare I think that I might have just one day without things getting marginally worse?

“Sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was down here,” he says, pausing on his way toward the washing machine. His gaze sweeps over me, lingering on the violin in my lap and what I’m sure are some very obvious red blotches staining my cheeks.

“Go away, Sterling,” I snap, my voice trembling despite my best effort to sound composed. Automatically, I flinch. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. There’s no way to hide the fact that I was just crying now.

He hesitates, frowning slightly, though he looks more confused than anything. “Are you… okay?”

I almost laugh at that. I don’t think Gabe Sterling has ever bothered to ask me anything like that before.

“I’m fine,” I say quickly, avoiding his eyes. “Just leave, please.”

But he doesn’t move. Instead, he sets the laundry basket on the floor and steps closer. “You don’t look fine. You’re sitting alone in a basement and your eyes are all red.”

“Wow, thanks for the insight.” I glare at him, hoping the force of my anger will drive him back up the stairs.

It doesn’t. Obviously not. Gabe has never been deterred by my vitriol before.

“What happened?” he asks, his tone soft but insistent. Almost gentle, if I didn’t know him better.

“Nothing,” I snap. “None of your business.”

Gabe crosses his arms, leaning against the dryer. “You were crying.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

His eyebrows rise. “Right. So, your face is just naturally red and puffy like that?”

Gosh, I forgot how rude he can be. Especially to me. In fact, I swear Gabe reserves all of his rudest comments for me , specifically, because he always seemed to be perfectly pleasant to everyone else at Juilliard.

I bristle. “Why do you care? Do you want to gloat about how pathetic I am right now? Go ahead, Sterling. Get it out of your system.”

He blinks, clearly taken aback. “Why would I gloat?”

“Because you hate me,” I shoot back, my voice rising. “Because you’ve always hated me. Don’t act like you haven’t been waiting for me to fail.”

“Fail…?”

I let out a quiet sound of frustration and stare down at my stupid hands. “I’m injured. I can’t play. It hurts too much. They put me on a medical leave.”

A long beat of silence passes between us.

Then, “Oh.”

I look up at him. His expression is difficult to read.

Instead of telling me that it’s what I deserve for stealing his spot in the first place, or joking about how the spot is now open for him to take for himself, he cocks his head to side and says, “I don’t hate you, Alina.”

“Really?” I laugh bitterly. “Could’ve fooled me. That’s our thing, isn’t it? Hating each other?”

His jaw tightens. For a moment, I think he’s going to storm out in anger. It’s not like he’s never done that before.

But instead, he steps closer, his gaze steady and unnervingly earnest. I brace myself, expecting a cruel remark.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “I never would’ve wished something like this for you. An injury like that… it’s not something I’d wish on anyone.”

The phrase I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy comes to mind.

The sincerity in his voice is like a slap to the face, though. I want to believe he’s lying. That this is some awful attempt to humiliate me further, but his expression remains mostly neutral.

“Don’t pity me,” I hiss at him, clutching the violin tighter.

“I’m not,” he says firmly. “I know, probably better than anyone, how much your career means to you. Losing it…”

He cuts himself off, his throat working as if the words are too difficult to say. I wait for him to finish his sentence, but when nothing but silence settles between us, I realize that he has nothing else to say.

His kindness stings worse than any insult. I hate the way his words threaten to crack the fragile walls I’ve built around my mounting helplessness. I hate that he , more than anyone else, can make me feel more devastated about this situation.

“You must be so thrilled,” I say, my voice shaking. “The great Alina Sokolov, finally knocked down a peg. You get to stand there, living your perfect little life, and watch me lose everything. It must feel really nice after all this time.”

Gabe’s brow furrows. “Perfect? You think my life is perfect?”

“Isn’t it?” I snap. “You’ve got a career in Hollywood, a beautiful daughter, and goodness knows what else. Meanwhile, I’m falling apart.”

He lets out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, Ali. It’s real perfect. So perfect that I haven’t picked up a violin in years. So perfect that I quit the BSO after two years because I messed up my life plan by accidentally getting my wife pregnant long before either of us planned to. And it’s so perfect that I was then widowed at the age of twenty-three. Now I’m trying to raise my daughter on my own while pretending like I have it all figured out, just so that she isn’t negatively affected by how undeniably imperfect my life is.”

I stare at him, stunned into silence.

The raw honesty in his voice is not only startling, but utterly foreign. The sarcasm and the vehemence are things I recognize coming from him. Those are familiar. But the vulnerability is strange. It’s like I’m seeing a side of him that I didn’t even know existed.

“You’re not the only one struggling, Alina,” he continues, his tone softer now. “You’re not the only one who’s lost something.”

I look away, my chest tight with conflicting emotions. I want to cling to my anger, to the righteous indignation that has fueled me for so long, but his words chip away at it, leaving me vulnerable and exposed.

His wife died . He’s not separated or divorced or anything like that. Wren doesn’t have a mother out there, planning to come see her at some point this summer. She probably doesn’t even remember her mom, if Gabe really was that young when she passed away. Wren must’ve been a baby.

“I’m sorry,” I say finally, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Thanks,” he says simply.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the faint hum of the dehumidifier. I clutch my violin, my fingers trembling against the worn wood.

“I’m not supposed to play at all this summer,” I admit, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “But I don’t know what else to do with myself. And I don’t even know what’s wrong with my hands. Like an idiot, I keep hoping that one day they’ll just magically get better and everything will go back to normal.”

Gabe doesn’t say anything, but the weight of his gaze is heavy.

“I’ve been trying to push through it, hoping it would get better, but it’s not. It’s getting worse. What if I can never play again? You may have put down your violin, but I can’t—that’s not—I just can’t do that.”

The tears I’ve been fighting spill over again, but I quickly swipe them away with clumsy movements tinged with humiliation.

Gabe shifts on his feet. “Have you seen a doctor?”

I shake my head. “I’m afraid to. What if they tell me it’s chronic?”

“You can’t think like that,” he says, his tone somehow gentle and harsh at the same time. Grow up and be practical, he must want to snap at me. “Whatever it is, there’s a good chance it can be treated. You won’t know unless you face it, though.”

His words are maddeningly reasonable. For a moment, I hate him all over again for being so calm and logical. When did he get this way? Is this what parenthood does to a person?

“What do you care, anyway?” I grumble. “You’ve already moved on from the orchestral path, and look at you now. You’re successful, happy—”

“I’m not happy,” he interrupts, his voice sharp.

I blink, startled.

“Do you think I wanted to give it up?” he says, his gaze piercing. “I didn’t have a choice, and I miss it every day. That’s what you don’t understand, clearly. Sometimes, life deals us cards that we can’t ignore. I had a pregnant wife and a position in the symphony that wasn’t paying me enough. I did what needed to be done, and it wasn’t even worth it in the end when she… when I lost her.”

His confession hangs between us.

“I never wanted to see you like this,” he adds, his voice softer now. I’m not even sure I’m hearing him correctly. I might be hallucinating. “You’re one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever known. I know how much you’ve sacrificed to get to where you are because I was there to watch it happen, remember? I don’t want to see you lose that, even if there is a small, wicked part of me that might find it satisfying to know that I’m not the only loser between us.”

His words slice through me. For years, I’ve clung to the idea that Gabe Sterling was my enemy—the one person who wanted to see me fail. I’m not sure I know what to do with the reality that I might have been wrong about that.

“Why are you being nice to me?” I ask suddenly, my voice cracking.

He shrugs, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Maybe I’ve grown up.”

The absurdity of the statement almost makes me laugh, but the sound comes out as a choked sob instead.

For a moment, we float in the awkward silence, the weight of our shared pain bridging the gap between us.

Then, Gabe slowly reaches out to pick up the laundry basket. The old Gabe, the one I knew at Juilliard, would be annoying enough to start a load right now and officially destroy the acoustics of my temporary practice space. This new Gabe, the one that I’m struggling to make sense of, seems to have no problem coming back later.

Or maybe he’s just eager to get as far away from me as possible right now.

“Get some rest, Sokolov,” he says, his tone bizarrely sincere. “And maybe think about calling that doctor.”

All I can do is nod as I watch him go, his footsteps fading up the stairs. When the door closes behind him, I let out a shaky breath and rest my forehead against the cool surface of the violin.

For the first time in months, I feel the smallest flicker of something like hope. Or maybe not hope , but a sense of comfort in the reality that I’m not alone.

Which is weird, really. I shouldn’t be comforted by the fact that Gabe and I are both, apparently, deeply unhappy. I shouldn’t want to share any sense of camaraderie with him.

Things change, though. Like he said before, maybe we’ve grown up. Maybe we’re too old to stay enemies.