I hardly had ten minutes to compute how she can tune an instrument she’s never touched before by ear then find chords for it in a matter of seconds before she’s reinventing my world.
I swallow hard and manage to choke out some words. “It’s your play.”
She shivers. She doesn’t need to ask how I know. In the moment she looked up at me, I saw the understanding in her eyes.
Too many things are falling into place in my head.
It’sherplay. Her play disguised as Mr. D’plume’s. No wonder they’ve seemed closer from the first moments. Theyare. They are close in ways that I couldn’t even guess.
I cover my mouth with my hand and wrap my other arm around my stomach. This girl. We go weeks without anything new to blow my mind, then she drops a sparkle of something incredible, then we fade back into the new calm wonder that follows.
Will she ever cease to take my breath away?
I don’t think so.
Forcing a smile to her lips, she glances away. “Whaaat?That’s crazy.”
“Yeah. No.”
The smile drops, her lame halfhearted attempt dissipating. As if she’s allowed to lie tome. She hugs herself, and a sharp pain shoots through my chest.
I’ve always felt it. I know I’ve always felt it. I may play Kenneth, but I’m the Harriet in our relationship—endlessly reminded of how she can’t compare to a lord. Calypso is hopelessly out of my reach, on another level entirely. I feel the fibers connecting us where we’re alike in the moments when we both are capable of the same little snatch of brilliance, but then without breaking a sweat, she goes and exceeds every expectation.
She wrote an entire masterpiece. Composed every song. Wove all of it together. By herself.
And she is barely older than me.
“Say something,” she whispers, not looking up.
I take a breath. “Like what?”
Her fists clench in the cloth of her shirt. “I don’t know. Yell at me or something.”
My brows knit. “Why on earth would I yell at you?”
She shivers. “I kept it secret. I lied to you, to everyone.”
I huff. “Yes, and you did such a good job I’m still stuck between immense pride and complete shock.”
“Pride?” She dares turn those big blue eyes up toward me.
I poke her glasses, pushing them up her nose. “Is that not the proper response? You wrote a play. A play that’s going to be performed at one of the most prestigious art colleges this side of the country. That’s not something to be proud of? Are you insane?”
The look she gives me breaks my heart, like she’s waiting, waiting for something terrible. When I don’t say anything else, she whispers, “You’re going to tell me I should tell everyone.”
“Why would I tell you something like that?” I cup her cheek, make sure she can’t pull away from me or keep curling into theball she started to. “It’s obvious to me that you know you could very well do that, and you haven’t for your own reasons. Why would my telling you to do something you already know is well within your capabilities be at all productive?”
Her lips part, and one hand lifts, slowly, gently. It cups mine, and for a single instant she seems the slightest bit freed. Her eyes close, and her mouth turns toward my palm, an echo of what I did to her on stage.
The action rips through my chest, thieving my breath, my heartbeat, my heat.
Her eyes open, but they don’t find me. “You really are my Kenneth.”
Red slashes across my face, boiling and simmering. I feel it stretch out to my ears, and I don’t even know how I look. Smitten. Probably smitten.
Fitting, since I am.
“No matter what I do, Mom makes it feel like it’s never enough and too much at the same time. I know she just wants me to embrace my ‘brilliance’ and show the world, but it always makes it seem like my decisions are insufficient. If I drew a picture, it couldn’t just live on the fridge. It had to go to the whole family, online, everyone had to see it. All while I faced extensive criticism about where I needed to improve. It felt like it was more for her than it was for me. I stopped loving art before I knew if I could even be good at it. Then when I reached high school, I found new passions and I didn’t share them with her. I tried to share them with friends, but the response I received then was harsh. Different words leading to the same emotion.”
