Page 108 of Sounds Like Love
The world faded away.
The hurricane.
The Revelry.
All of it.
There was just Sasha, and me, and the song.
My panic melted. My soul came back. This was my dream—not sparkly fame or big-city lights—butthis. This feeling, this certainty. I felt whole. And it hadn’t taken a Grammy or a hit or a famous person singing it—it just took the act of creating something new and sharing it. That was the magic I’d longed for, the part of me that I’d missed.
And it made my heart soar.
I sang for my mom, who I wished could have a hundred more summers like this. Whowouldbe here, just not in the way we’d always planned. Sasha sang for his, a memory in a doorway, morning light pouring in around her as she whispered that she loved him,before closing the door one last time. The pieces that we’d lost, that we would lose, sang with us. They were in the way we loved music, the way we wrote songs. Mom was in the radio as I scanned the airwaves for my favorite songs. She was in my memories of the Revelry, sticky beer and loud music and bright lights. She was in the way I looked for love in ballads and passion in the key changes. Perhaps she would lose all her memories, and maybe she would become someone who didn’t even recognize herself, but I carried her memories, too. As did Dad, and Mitch, and Gigi and Vienna Shores, and all the people who met her in this one too-short life.
We were all made of up memories, anyway. Of ourselves, of other people. We were built on the songs sung to us and the songs we sang to ourselves, the songs we listened to with broken hearts and the ones we danced to at weddings.
Mom couldn’t stop smiling, even though she couldn’t stop her tears, either, as though she’d finally heard the ending of a story that she gave up on finding, and it was bitter and sweet and soft.
My fingers crossed Sasha’s, bumping over each other, twining together, the sound of the baby grand bright and bold with only the good notes. Chosen by phantom hands decades ago, and finished by two strangers who weren’t strangers anymore, passed on through some invisible songbird who perched against our hearts, and sang.
Playing together, our voices harmonizing, felt like it did when we were in each other’s heads. I knew which way his hands would go; he knew mine. We were connected, but this time the string was music. The threads were chords and counterpoints.
I wasn’t sure what kind of song this would be, but I hoped it would be the kind that made memories. The kind that made love a conversation, made romance a work of art. Painted stories of late-night confessions and midmorning heartbreaks,falling in love through joyrides and banana-lemon margaritas and secrets whispered against flushed skin.
And the kind that, when you were lost in the world, brought you home.
The rain battered against the eaves. The wind howled. Candles flickered in the darkness.
And I was home.
Chapter40Closing Time (You Don’t Have to Go Home)
THE LAST NOTEof the song faded into silence.
Maybe no one would want to play it on the radio, or blast it from their stereos, or dance to it at their weddings, but I loved it. I loved every note, every harmony. This was the first time we heard it outside of that cramped rental on the beach, and somehow the Steinway had brought it to life in a way that no other instrument could. There was a sureness to it—a warmth that reminded me of when Sasha used to be in my head.
I drew my fingers away from the keys first, turning to look up at my playing partner. He had turned to do the same. The silvery linings of the moon painted his face in soft, cool tones, warring with the candle flickering at the edge of the piano. His shoulders had melted as we played, his body relaxed. Here, in the soft light, was Sasha.
My Sasha.
It was almost like we were still connected. The notes had told him my thoughts,between the mezzo-fortes and the crescendos, the harmonies and the contras.
I hoped it was enough.
Too bad the moment was ruined by my parents. And, also, the fact that we had an audience at all. Everyone clapped. Todd’s wife even dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Mom’s smile was so wide, her eyes full of unshed tears.
Dad pressed his hands against his heart. “That’s my girl! Did you see? That’s mine! She came from me!”
To which Todd replied tepidly, “We know that, Hank.”
“And I did all the work,” Mom added matter-of-factly.
Dad just laughed and slung his arm around Uncle Rick, and they returned backstage to try to revive the generator.
“It wasn’t that good,” Sasha muttered under his breath as the crowd dispersed.
I agreed. “It needs some work. You were flat.”
