ARI WENThome.
He didn’t bother going back inside his parents’ house for more than to put on his shoes. He could hear his parents mumbling in the other room, but when his mother tried to talk to him, for the first time in his life, he ignored her.
Even seeing, briefly, the Tupperware container of Jax’s homemade cookies filled him with rage.
Damn it. If he’d just—if he’d remembered to use the stupid safeword, or if Jax had…. What? They could have gone on forever walking on eggshells around his parents, who would never accept Jax? Ari could go on accepting that his parents didn’t care about what he valued in a partner, or his partner’s feelings, unless they’d preapproved of him?
No.
Driving home took all of his attention. London’s roads were treacherous in the snow, and the first snowfall of the year brought out idiot drivers everywhere, people who hadn’t yet put on their snow tires and people who had forgotten it took longer to stop in icy conditions. By the time he pulled into his parking spot, his nerves were shot. His sister and his parents had called four times apiece. He turned the phone off as he threw the car into Park. Then he picked his way across the parking lot.
His apartment was lit only by the glow of the orange sky through the picture window. He toed off wet shoes and hung up his coat, but when he went to set his keys on the counter, there was something in the way. He flicked on the light.
Jax’s helmet.
Ari wanted to throw it across the room. He wanted to hold it to him and curl up around it. Too many emotions—rage, sorrow, helplessness—flowed through him.
He should have known that this relationship would end like all the rest: Ari’s lover staring at him sad or angry or resigned and pointing out how bad Ari was with words and actions, never saying or doing the right thing at the right time. It seemed inevitable that Jax would come to the same conclusion.
Ari strode across the apartment, settled at the piano, and began to pound the keys. He wanted to drown out the noise in his head, to serenade his feelings into submission, to forget for one moment that the best thing that ever happened to him was now ruined.
So he bent over his piano and stayed there for almost two days straight. Sometimes he moved to the violin, but he spent most of the time furiously composing, trying to purge his emotions.
He wrote a sad song about not being good enough for your lover. Then, after remembering how Jax had promised he understood, that he could handle it, only to spectacularly sabotage the evening, the chords came out angry, confused, discordant. Why had Jax done it? Why had he deliberately made things worse? Why not just retreat?
Of course, then Ari remembered the hurt on Jax’s face as he’d gotten into the car, and his next melody came out longing, wanting to fix something but knowing you couldn’t. You couldn’t fix a relationship when one of you didn’t want it fixed. Because Jax was done with Ari.
Ari poured that heartbreak out onto the page.
Toward the end of the forty-eight hours, Ari stumbled away from his piano and collapsed fully clothed onto his bed.
He awoke to the sounds of banging on his front door and then the jangle of keys in the lock.
“I swear to God, Ari, you better not have choked to death on your own vomit.”
Ari managed to get upright before she came stomping into his bedroom. She sagged when she saw him, relief stark on her features, before she straightened up and stomped closer. She wrapped him in a hard hug, her arms tight around his ribs.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again! I have been going out of my mind—stuck in Toronto, you not answering your phone, and Maman and Baba calling to demand if I knew about your harlot. What the fuck happened?”
Ari pressed his face into her shoulder—even if it hurt a bit to bend that far—and took deep breaths. She still smelled reassuringly of mangos from the scented bodywash she started using in college.
“What’s wrong? Not even you normally go dark for two days. Ben thought I might wear a hole through the hotel carpet,” she chided.
“Sorry. I know you were looking forward to that trip.” She’d had to go to Toronto on business with the label, but she’d convinced Ben to come along to turn it into a romantic long weekend afterward.
“Forget about the trip. You look like you haven’t showered. And your piano looks like you exploded a filing cabinet on it.”
It was covered in reams of sheet music. He had pretty much finished the album at this point. At least his broken heart had productivity going for it. “Good for songwriting,” he mumbled.
She combed her fingers through his hair. “What is?”
With a sigh, Ari pulled back—he was getting a crick—and said bleakly, “They don’t have to worry about me bringing my harlot around anymore. Jax made that pretty clear.” He slunk into the kitchen. He’d feel better if he drank some water. Probably.
“What the fuck?” Afra demanded. “I thought you guys were okay.”
“Me too. Guess he wasn’t actually ready to meet the parents.” He downed his glass, and Afra frowned at him. “No, that’s totally not fair. He hadn’t really done anything when Maman implied I was using him for sex.”
“What?” Afra’s deadpan sounded dangerous.
