Page 20 of What He Doesn't Know
My chest tightened at her admission. Part of me was glad for her, that she’d found what she loved to do, that she’d secured a job that wouldn’t ever feel like a job to her. But the other, stronger half of me wondered why her home wasn’t where she was happiest. In my opinion, it should have been.
“I didn’t know I wanted to teach until after I’d tutored for a while at Juilliard,” I admitted. “I always kind of thought performing for crowds was what made me happiest. But all the restaurant gigs I had, all the weddings and parties, even Broadway — none of that made me feel as good as it did when I taught a kid how to read music, or how to perfect a piece they’d been struggling with.”
Charlie finally took a bite of her yogurt with a smile. “It’s pretty magical, isn’t it? Nothing in the world like that feeling.”
“There really isn’t.”
“Do you still play?” she asked. “Outside of the classroom, I mean.”
My chest tightened, and I shifted in my seat. “I’ve thought about maybe finding something in Pittsburgh. It’s been hard, since… everything,” I admitted, catching her eyes. She understood what I didn’t have to say. “Playing doesn’t really bring me joy the way it used to. Before.”
Her face bent. “That makes me so sad. You play more beautifully than anyone else I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, well,” I said with a shrug. “My ability to play like that faded pretty fast after everything happened. Almost as fast as the inheritance my family left for me.”
“Blew it, huh?” Charlie asked.
I smirked like it wasn’t a big deal, but the memories of long nights spent doping and throwing my money away hit me like a fist to the chest. “Surprised?”
“A little.” She tilted her head to one side. “I’m sorry, Reese. I know it doesn’t help or mean anything, but I am.”
I watched Charlie dip the spoon back in her yogurt, both of us quiet.
“Some of the teachers are getting together for happy hour on Friday,” I said after a minute, changing the subject. “You should come.”
She shot me a look under one lifted brow. “Not really my scene.”
“What? Can’t throw down with the crew for a while?”
“I barely talk to any of the other teachers,” she confessed. “And besides, I have a date with Cameron that night.”
“Oh.”
It should have been easy to hear her say that. It should have hit me like common sense. She was going on a date with her husband, as she should on a Friday night.
But it sliced through me like a rusty blade on an old wound.
“That’ll be nice. I was bummed I didn’t get to spend more time with him at dinner this past weekend.”
Charlie paused, lifting another spoonful of yogurt to her lips. But she dropped it back into the tub without taking a lick. “Yeah, just bad timing, since there was a game that night. I’m sure he would have loved to get to know you more, too.”
“I’m sure. Next time,” I said, hoping to comfort her, but she just chewed her thumbnail.
Lunch was almost over, and it didn’t feel like the smoothest segue in the world, but I was running out of time. Swallowing, I reached into my messenger bag for the gift I’d brought her. It was wrapped in simple brown parchment paper with her name in neat script on the front. I slid it toward her with two fingers, watching as she eyed it before glancing up at me.
“What is it?”
“Well, open it and find out,” I teased.
She ran her fingers over the top of the paper as she pulled it closer, her nude nail polish nearly blending in with it. A strand of her hair fell out of place and over her eye as she ripped the first piece of wrapping, and that’s all it took for her to cover her mouth with a gasp.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, peeling the paper back slowly. “Is this…”
“It is. The one and only good thing I have to show from my inheritance.”
She shook her head, glancing up at me briefly before unwrapping the book all the way. It was an old copy ofAnna Karenina, one that would have likely been thrown in a donation bin by the unsuspecting average American. The lower right-hand corner of the dark brown cloth cover was badly bent, the spine stretched and worn, and as she flipped through the pages, she revealed the various stains that riddled the pages within.
To someone else, it would have been trash. But to her, it was gold.