Page 11 of What He Never Knew

“Is that a good or bad thing?”

I considered her question. “Not bad. She’s just… she’s different than I imagined. But, we didn’t talk much. We meet for our first lesson tomorrow night.”

Charlie smiled. “Well, you’ll have to keep me posted with how it goes. Oh! Also, my parents are having dinner this Saturday and wanted to invite you, if you’re free? It’d be all of us.”

All of us.

That was her nice way of saying Cameron would be there, and her children, too.

I cleared my throat. “I work that night, but thank you for the invite.”

She nodded, her smile sad again. “Okay. Well, have a good evening, Reese,” she said, sliding into her car.

“Goodnight, Charlie.” I shut the door behind her, knocking on the top of her car before crossing the parking lot to my own.

I dropped my keys on the table next to the front door later that evening, kicking off my chukkas before crossing the living room to the kitchen. It was just as quiet as always as I placed the paper bag in my arms on the counter, opening the sliding glass door to let the fresh air and last bit of sunlight in.

My home was modest, a two-bedroom house not too far from school with a yard and garage. My neighborhood was nice, neighbors only slightly annoying, and though it wasn’t anything special, I’d made it homey.

Correction: my ex, Blake, had made it homey.

I met Blake in New York City shortly after I graduated from Juilliard, and she’d been there in one of the most difficult times of my life. But, we’d always been casual, never more than friends who occasionally hooked up. When she showed up on my doorstep a few months after I’d left New York and come to Mount Lebanon, I’d been shocked.

When she told me she loved me and wanted to be with me, I’d nearly shit myself.

It was the worst possible timing, especially since I was still tied up with a married woman at the time. And of course, Blake found out, and she asked me to choose between her and Charlie.

We both knew the answer even before she asked it.

This was my curse — hurting anyone who ever dared to love me. Even when I didn’t mean to, I still did. I was better off alone, and I knew that now.

Still, Blake had made my little house into a home in her short time staying with me, and I couldn’t walk through the modestly decorated living room or see the paintings hanging on the walls without thinking of her.

I thumbed over to my favorite playlist on my phone, turning on my Bluetooth speaker near the sink before digging in the bag on the counter for my dinner: beer and cigarettes.

At thirty-seven years old, I should have known how to take better care of myself. Maybe part of it was that I just didn’t give a fuck. I wanted a buzz, and a nicotine high, and to think about anything other than Charlie.

Popping the first beer open, I stepped outside onto my small back patio and lit up a cigarette. The smoke filtered up into the purple sky, the sun slowly making its descent in the west as I propped my feet up and kicked back. I listened to the bugs chirping to life, the birds singing their good evenings, the cars passing by on the street out front. They were the quiet sounds of suburbia, and they let my thoughts drift. For the first time in as long as I could remember, Charlie wasn’t the first one they drifted to.

Sarah Henderson.

I let out a long exhale of smoke as her face settled in my mind. She was just a girl, and yet she wore her scars on her sleeve like a woman who’d been through as much hell in her life as I had. Before I’d even known who she was, she’d captured my eye from across the restaurant. And it wasn’t necessarily because she was beautiful — although, she very much was — or because she stood out in the crowd she sat among.

It was because she was haunted.

I knew the shapes of the demons in her eyes, the weight on her shoulders, though she held them back and straight. I saw the way my music moved her — the same way it moved me — and I knew from that alone that she’d been cursed by her creativity, by her inability to see the world like a normal, well-functioning human would.

It was the same curse I bared.

There were people who lived, people who watched movies or listened to music or read books. But then, there were the people who created them, who wrote them, who brought them to life.Thosewere the poor, unfortunate suckers who had so much going on in their minds that theyhadto find a way to release it, to breathe life into it, to touch it and feel that it’s real.

Sarah was one of those people, and she was asking me to help her.

The first drink of beer was cold and refreshing, and I sucked down nearly half the can. The more I sat there and thought about my new student, the more I wanted to play.

I tapped out my cigarette in the ashtray, swinging back inside to trade my empty beer for a new one before crossing the house to my piano room. It was a room meant to be a study, or perhaps a dining room, but it held only a casual seating area and the most important material object in my life.

My baby grand.