Especially since Jax had expressed how happy he was to be with someone who was on the same page as him. Who took what they had seriously.
Ari rubbed his face and sighed. He definitely should have told Jax about Sohrab. There probably would have been a way to even make it seem funny if he had told Jax when it happened. If Jax hadn’t found out about it from Sohrab weeks after the fact.
The hurt in Jax’s voice when he snapped “Why don’t you go on a blind date with him” stopped him cold. Jax looked embarrassed and hurt and angry at all once. For the first time it occurred to Ari that maybe Sohrab wasn’t the only thing to push Jax over the edge. He’d been talking about Aiden at length, comfortable in the knowledge that Aiden was in no way his type, but maybe Jax wasn’t so sure.
Ari might be the dumbest man alive. This was why his relationships crashed and burned. He wasn’t good at seeing what other people needed or predicting what they would do. He thought he was making it work with Jax. Apparently not.
“Ari?” Theo stood a few meters away, a reusable bag in one hand and his phone in the other. His head was cocked. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”
Ari looked around. In his distraction, he’d apparently wandered into a student neighborhood. “Oh,” he said. No, he wasn’t. But he wasn’t going to say that to his sort-of intern. “Hey, Theo. You live around here?”
Theo looked at Ari, then at the grocery bag he was plainly carrying down the sidewalk. “No,” he said dryly. “I like to carry groceries miles out of my way and risk my ice cream melting.”
Well, Ari deserved that. He’d been exceptionally stupid this evening. “Ah….”
Theo’s brow furrowed. “Ari? Seriously, you seem, um, distracted.”
That was one word for it. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Sorry. I….” But he couldn’t come up with anything to say. “I’ll let you get back to your groceries,” he finally managed. “Have a good evening, Theo.”
He had the feeling Theo’s eyes were boring holes into his back as he walked away, but he didn’t turn around. He couldn’t see anyone he knew just then. They would ask questions he didn’t want to answer, and when he inevitably did, they’d tell him what he already knew.
That he brought this on himself.
And what was he going to do about it?
Jax had told him to leave. Even if Ari could properly formulate an apology, Jax wouldn’t hear it right now, and Ari should respect that. When he did apologize—and he had a feeling it should involve groveling—he wanted to have taken some kind of action that would show he meant it, that he took Jax’s concerns seriously and was attempting to do better.
So, hunching his shoulders against the November chill, Ari walked back to the Rock, got in his car, and went home.
By the time he was unlocking his apartment door, he’d ignored three calls from Afra. Theo must have tattled. If past actions were any indication, Afra would invite herself over if he kept it up, so he texted her that he was safe at home and he’d call her in the morning.
Then he turned off his phone.
Against the backlight of the window, his piano was a hulking, imposing presence, but its lines were familiar. And tonight, for the first time in weeks, it was calling to him. He took off his shoes and poured himself a glass of water. Then he arranged himself on the bench, back straight, and lifted the key cover.
The music he coaxed out of the instrument was dark, discordant, and angry. But no. A song couldn’t start there. It had to have somewhere to go. Ari backed it up sixteen measures. What was the song before the anger? Before Ari screwed up one of the best things that had ever happened to him?
Content. Warm. Harmonic. Resonant.Sweet.
Thatwas what Ari had destroyed.
He hoped the soundproofing in his apartment was as good as the contractors had promised, because composing this on an electric keyboard would feel wrong. He took the violin from its case, tuned it quickly, and sketched out the story he was telling. Two lovers, two instruments, together in harmony. A sweet, slow, smooth dance of twisting notes, phrases that echoed and repeated.
And then a screech of violin. That was Ari, falling out of harmony, betraying his partner.
He flicked on the light above the piano and scribbled down notes, composing furiously. The violin and piano would work almost in a round at first, catching each otherhereandhere, as if to say that together they could reach infinity. And then the faltering violin. A change into a minor key.
The piano part would crescendo gradually as the violin struggled to keep up, repeating a variation of the same phrase, increasing in pitch and desperation. And then finally—
The piano would thunder. It would drown out the strings. Ari tried to keep his fingers light on the keys as the emotion stormed through him. He was feeling what Jax felt now, layered on top of his own self-loathing. He deserved this pain. He had been completely spineless. Worse, he’d made Jax feel—
Your parents would hate me?
I’m starting to wonder what the fuck we’re even doing here.
He’d made Jax feel like he was in this alone. The way Jax had felt so many times before. “I fall in love at the drop of a hat,” he’d said.
Had Jax loved him? Had Ari ruined that forever?
