He's Come Undone: A Romance Anthology Read online

  Knowing he was taking a risk, he asked, “What are you going to do for dinner?”

  “Not sure. Go back to my Airbnb, stare at the wall, and order some takeout.”

  She was truly by herself. Should he…apologize? Congratulate her? Confess that only a microwavable Trader Joe’s meal and an empty apartment waited for him?

  Before he could decide, she went on. “You guys don’t even have the decency to have baseball on.”

  He hadn’t realized the Red Sox season had ended. “I’m, uh, sorry. You’re a fan?”

  “It passes the time.”

  She turned those eyes of hers to him, all stormy and vulnerable, and his knees went watery. He was no good at not giving this woman what she wanted—if only he knew what that was.

  He set a hand on the wall to steady himself. “What would you rather do?”

  “Not think about it for a night. Not think about music or this place or my career or anything.”

  There was some part of this conversation he didn’t understand, the bulk of the iceberg lurking beneath the surface. Was it possible that Kristy wanted to see him…socially?

  His blood started fizzling and popping at the possibility.

  “We could have a drink.” He sounded hesitant and highly speculative.

  “We could.” An equally measured response.

  “Does that mean you want to?”

  She half laughed. “Won’t we just talk about work?”

  There was that risk. Beyond music, they couldn’t have much in common. She was so lovely, so cultured, so famous. And he was…himself. An instrument, in his own way, contrasted with her genius. But he could buy her a drink, be her distraction for an evening. He could do that much.

  “Is music work?”

  “Once, I would’ve said music was life.” She didn’t seem to know what she thought music was these days.

  “Well, as long as you don’t mind if I drone on about, I don’t know, Japanese versus American actions or which decade produced the best Steinways.” The answer to the latter was clearly the 1920s.

  “I’d love it.”

  His heart sounded a triplet. He shouldn’t enmesh himself in this; it wasn’t his business. But he couldn’t leave her alone when she was in pain. He just couldn’t.

  “Let me lock my office.”

  When he got back, she’d put her sweater back on—thank God—and he led her out the back of the theater and down to the reflecting pool. There was a slight breeze, so the gleaming stone edifices of the buildings were fractured in the pool’s surface like a print by Escher. It was a glorious October day, all sunshine and crispness. The kind of day that made July and February in Boston worth it.

  Walking next to her was the sharpest pleasure. He’d seen pianists show up for rehearsal in all kinds of outfits, ranging from formal attire to jeans. Kristy had on canvas sneakers, a long black cotton dress, and a ratty black cardigan, nothing like the ballgowns they loved to put her in on album covers. But despite her informality, something about her demanded your attention and held it. She oozed charisma.

  “Where’d you grow up?” she asked him after they’d walked for a few minutes.

  He couldn’t remember the last time a soloist had asked about him, or the last time he’d had this kind of “getting to know you” conversation with someone. He generally abhorred small talk, but, well, Kristy was Kristy.

  “Here, actually.”

  “And you never wanted to leave?”

  “My parents are still here, and my brothers and sister. It would be…I just can’t imagine living anywhere else.” He knew that his baby sister longed to get away, but all he could feel was what he’d lose if he did. Generations of Connellys had passed their lives in Boston. These streets and squares were in their stories, in their blood. He’d be extirpated anywhere else.

  “I can’t imagine that,” she responded. “The big family, the deep roots somewhere.”

  He realized, suddenly, that he didn’t know a thing about her private life. It had never come up when they were kids, and she never talked about it in interviews. Kristy could even be married or involved with someone—but of course even if she were, this wasn’t a date. They were merely having a drink.

  “Did your family move around a lot?” he asked.

  “A bit. But it’s more that I built my home, so to speak, in a certain instrument, the one that we’re not talking about.” Her grin was puckish, and his insides went sloshy again.

  Except this was the opening for him to ask what he cared about: whether she might want to unburden herself to him. “If you did want to talk about it—”

  “I don’t.”

  “—fair enough. But I’m here.” To offer absolutely nothing helpful, he was sure, but he meant it. If she needed something, he’d provide it. She made him want to play the white knight.

  Needing to change the subject, he asked, “So what’s the last book you read?”

  She told him about some thrillers she’d loved, and he talked about a history of Venice he’d been slowly working through, and then they arrived at an Italian wine bar he’d been to before. They were lucky enough to snag a table, and they ordered.

  “How did you get into the piano tech gig?” she asked.

  “Isn’t that about work?”

  “I have no objection to talking about your work, only mine.” Her eyes flashed, and his cheeks went febrile. Again.

  The real story had a painful beginning, and so Brennan picked up the thread at the more cheerful part. “Uh, well, a neighbor of ours was in the business. Phil.” He loved that man like a second father.

  Back then, Brennan had still been playing seriously. His interest in the technical side came from wanting to perfect his abilities—so when he’d diagnosed Kristy’s problems as originating with her and not the instrument, he was confident he was right.

  Seeing her brought his history back. Kristy’s story wasn’t going to end as his had, of that he was certain, but he knew how it felt to be betrayed by something you loved.

  “Anyhow, Phil knew I had an interest in…that instrument.”

  She giggled, and he wanted to preen.

  “I started watching him tune and voice pianos. There’s no formal schooling to be a technician. I took a course from the guild and became Phil’s assistant. He was good about making sure I was exposed to different styles, different approaches. He was the one who arranged for my internship with the concert tech at Tanglewood.”

  What he omitted: He’d auditioned for the piano program first and not been admitted. Just before he’d met her, he’d given up the very dream she’d achieved.

  Even across the decades, the rejection stung.

  But soothing the ache was Kristy. She took a sip of her wine and watched him over the rim of the glass. Her expression was smoldering, and he would’ve given up on any number of dreams to know what she was thinking.

  “You were so serious, even then,” she finally said.

  Her words didn’t make any sense. They had, both of them, been ridiculously devoted to their respective crafts.

  “Because you were such a wild child.” He hadn’t meant to accuse her, but it wasn’t fair to suggest he’d been any more serious than she was. It was just that she hadn’t only been serious. At least from the outside, she’d seemed to be able to balance musicianship with…with normalcy.

  He didn’t know how to follow his rules and still be normal. He’d never been able to affect the ease others could, let alone the effortless coolness that Kristy radiated. At some level, he was the stuffed shirt Caroline often accused him of being. Restraint was professional. Restraint was safe. He’d shattered his restraint the previous night, and look where that had gotten him.

  Across the table, Kristy’s lips twitched. “Were you there the night we snuck beer into the dorms?”

  “No, but I heard about it.” They hadn’t exactly run with the same crowd, and not just because he’d been no more successful socially at fifteen than he was at thirty-five. No,
he knew that he’d kept his distance from her and the other pianists in part because they’d gotten in and he hadn’t. He’d mostly socialized with the technicians and the strings players instead. He hadn’t resented them irrationally.

  “So you wouldn’t have drunk pilfered beer with me?”

  “I wouldn’t have drunk pilfered beer with anyone.”

  “Oh, poor baby.” She gave him a wry grin. “So I was a ‘wild child’—” She added exaggerated air quotes to that. “—but no one ever seemed to know what to make of me.”

  “Pardon? We all knew exactly what to make of you.” She’d been the prettiest and most talented woman there; everyone had been more than half in love with her.

  “Well, they settled for calling me a diva.”

  He grunted. She was quite correct—that had been something they’d called her. One of the less colorful things.

  “Did you think I was a diva?” she demanded.

  “I’d be mortified to tell you what I thought.”

  “Is that so?” she purred. “Now you have to spill.”

  “Hey, if there are things you refuse to talk about it, I get to set some limits too. You encouraged—I mean, you seemed to encourage the diva label.” He didn’t want to admit he’d had a riotous crush on her, and he was also trying to get around to what he really wanted to know: how and why she’d shaped her public brand and where it had all gone wrong.

  “Sure. It was easier, sometimes. At least a diva has a role, has respect. So what happened next?”

  She was bringing the conversation back to him because she didn’t want to talk about herself, which he accepted. This kind of disclosure wasn’t terribly comfortable for him, but he’d give it to her.

  “Eventually, I’d learned what I needed to from Phil, so I went into business for myself. But this is a tough market.” There were scarcely more high-end piano techs than there were concert pianists. “Eventually I started working on the pianos at Berklee, and that turned into the gig with the symphony.”

  “You’re young for it.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “It suits you.” Her gaze was appreciative—and unmistakable.

  He tried to swallow, but something about his physiology had changed and the process didn’t work any longer. Kristy was flirting with him. She was. Really.

  “Thanks.” He managed to quaff most of his glass of wine. His throat burned, but it was a welcome distraction. Holy hell. This just couldn’t be real.

  He shot her a glance. She was still watching him.

  He’d backed into relationships almost by accident in the past. Mostly with women he thought were kind and funny and who felt safe. Together, they’d been more lukewarm than scalding.

  Kristy was vulnerable and hurting, and he’d never been racked with this kind of volcanic sexual longing before. This was a terrible idea for both of them—even if he could set aside his ethical qualms about intimacy with coworkers, and he’d never set ethical qualms aside in his life.

  The air was humid with possibility. He suspected he could close the last inches between them and kiss her. He was almost certain she wanted him to. As a distraction. To gratify them both.

  It hurt, how much he wanted to do exactly that. To be as selfish and shortsighted as everyone else seemed to be just this once.

  But the fear he’d seen in her eyes, the vulnerability in her voice when she told her agent she couldn’t play, rose in his mind and doused him with ice water.

  In taking her out, he’d meant to ease her loneliness, but he’d smacked into his own instead. He was susceptible to Kristy because she was brilliant in every way, but also because he’d been by himself for too long.

  He wasn’t going to let mere desire for human contact pull him under and shatter his rules, however. He’d broken them because of her once already, and it had felt dreadful. He wasn’t going to do it again. No, he was going to take care of them both and put an end to this flirtation.

  He leaned back in his chair, trying to put as much space between them as possible, and then he gestured broadly. Oh God, that felt unnatural.

  “So, that’s my story.” He tried to make his voice jovial. All he managed was anemic. “Now let me give you a complete rundown of the features of various Steinways before comparing them to golden age Mason & Hamlins. Very interesting stuff.”

  A long break followed this. He hadn’t managed the shift deftly being too agitated to be subtle. Hopefully his rejection wouldn’t sting.

  When the moment passed and Kristy laughed, it was false and muted. She knew he’d turned her down, but perhaps she also understood why he’d done it.

  “Bore me with technicalities, then,” she said.

  Those, at least, were safe.

  Chapter 4

  Furioso

  Kristy wanted to play.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this, as if she needed to whale on something and the most obvious choice was a keyboard. She needed to be able to control every aspect: the pacing, the color, the phrasing. Because she sure as hell couldn’t make people do what she wanted.

  Take yesterday. During the semipublic rehearsal when she’d basically auditioned for the symphony leaders, she hadn’t known if she could do it. But she’d believed Patrice when her agent had threatened to quit and that icy fear—oh my God, I can’t look for another agent, not now, and without an agent, I’m not a professional anymore—had been enough to compel her to play.

  Fear wasn’t the ideal motivation, but it had served. Kristy had given a perfectly adequate performance.

  Now she wanted to try rage as the seed. Because she was damn pissed at how she’d thrown herself at Brennan the night before, and how he’d gently, gently communicated his disinterest before putting her into an Uber an hour later.

  So she’d shown up at the symphony hall early and without her normal entourage. When the panicked stage manager had told Kristy that Brennan wasn’t around yet, she’d said, “Whatever. Have someone turn on the lights, and I’ll get to work.”

  She didn’t need Brennan. He’d said the problem was with her, and he’d probably been right. If she was the weakest link, then she fucking well ought to fix herself.

  The facilities manager had set up “her” piano in a rehearsal space. The acoustics weren’t the same but that didn’t matter. She needed to ensure that she could play with abandon. She certainly felt reckless enough right now.

  “Anything else?” The grip was the same one who had interrupted her the first day. He was scruffily good-looking and carried himself with that uniquely Boston brand of arrogance, a smug turn of the lip that assured you you weren’t worth crap.

  Don’t worry, buddy. I think that all by myself.

  “Just leave me alone.” She said it as coldly as possible. If bitch was what people expected from her, that was what she’d give them.

  She skipped her warm-up; she didn’t have the restraint for Hanon today. She blasted straight into the opening of the Wanderer Fantasy.

  Brennan had told her to play fearlessly, to take off the chains, and so she did. She slammed her fingers into the keys, compressed the pedal as hard as it would go. She didn’t know if it sounded good, but it certainly sounded loud.

  When she got into the second section, it was clear she didn’t have it in her today to play quietly. Pianissimo wasn’t her thing right now, but she could ignore the dynamics. They didn’t matter.

  After a little stumble here and a discordant note there, it was clear the dynamics were the least of her problem. Because when she got to the fugue, well, things began to fall apart.

  She removed her left hand from the keyboard—it wasn’t helping matters—and played through the section with only her right hand, like a child at her earliest lessons. For a dozen measures it was okay, and then Kristy fucked up a key change.

  Again, she stopped. Reminded herself that her screw-ups didn’t have any larger import. She was just in a foul mood, and besides, she was only getting started. Th
is was what she got for being impatient and not going through her process.

  She got up and made herself take a few steps away from the bench. The rehearsal room was silent, safe. No one had heard her. She hadn’t done her reputation any harm.

  For once, she did the wrist stretches her physical therapist recommended. Then she sat again and played a four-octave scale in C major. It was the key of Waldstein, the Beethoven sonata she’d played on her first major recording. Then she did A flat major, the first Chopin prelude she’d memorized had been in that. Followed by E major, a Haydn trio she’d absolutely nailed at Tanglewood once. And B flat major, her favorite of the Songs Without Words.

  There was nothing she could play or listen to that wouldn’t be haunted with memories. Success, failure, fear; two dozen dresses she’d worn and hotel rooms she’d occupied and reviews she’d read between her fingers. The memories assaulted her with every note. The ascending and descending runs were crusted over, and to play, she had to prick the scabs. There was no way out except through.

  She finished and nodded slowly. The scales were fine. So she was fine.

  Here goes nothing.

  She jumped to the adagio of the Schubert, the easiest section of the piece, but her body still felt…not right. She was playing better technically, but the tone, while loud, was monotonous. Just a hulking monolith of sound without variety. She was, again, playing not performing.

  Kristy stopped and tried to empty her mind. To quiet the voices and the doubts before they started screaming. She rubbed her temples and whispered, “You’re just warming up. Everything you need is in you.”

  It was, but it didn’t matter. The epochs of rehearsal time she’d put in, even when she wanted to do nothing more the entire time than quit, hadn’t gotten the job done. She’d logged the hours, and it wasn’t enough. Perhaps nothing she did would ever be enough.

  You could quit now.

  The words beckoned to her like they always did.

  She gave them the middle finger and ran at the piece again and again. Sometimes for ten or twenty measures at a time, she managed to put together a decent run. But then the spark would cool, and all the urgency would drain out. Flat. She sounded flat. When she tried to fix that, the tone went brutal. Hard.