Nocturne (37 page)

She frowned then looked away. Her face seemed to tremble. She looked back and whispered, “I’ve always loved you.”

I looked at the table. “Last night was undeniably the best night of my life.”

She rolled her eyes and waved at the waiter, indicating another round. I was an unsteady mess as it was, but another drink would just be more of the same.

“Savannah, I need you to listen to me.”

She shrugged. “I have been.”

I swallowed. Then I plunged forward. “I never stopped loving you. I never stopped thinking of you.”

She shook her head. “Inconvenient, isn’t it, that you went and got married.”

I winced. “Yeah. Well, I did. I was … lost. Lonely. I’d screwed up badly and knew it. I’d lost touch with you. I didn’t know how to make it up to you. I didn’t know how to fix it. And ... she was there. It was just ... easy.”

“Easy?”

My tone dropped, and while I spoke the words, I couldn’t possibly express the frustration, the disgust. “Easy and stupid. I married someone I didn’t love.”

She met my eyes. “What does that have to do with
me
, Gregory?”

I held her gaze. “I guess, what I’m trying to say is ... I can’t promise you anything. I can’t ask for anything. But … I’m going to anyway. I want you, Savannah. I want you in my life ... for … whatever happiness we can have, while we can have it.”

She recoiled, confusion and sadness on her face. Then she started to stand, and I reached out and grabbed her hand.

“Please,” I whispered. “Savannah ... I need you. Desperately.”

She shook her head, tiny movements, and I dove in and said, “We have this summer. We have … the next two months on the road. Savannah ... don’t turn me away. I love you.”

“What are you asking me?” she cried.

“I want you to have an affair with me.”

The words fell into the room, suddenly silencing everything around us. She stared at me, her lower lip barely trembling.

Then she stood, yanking her hand from mine, and ran out of the car.

Savannah

Yes.

I got out of the lounge car as fast as I could, before I could utter the single most ridiculous word I’d ever considered saying. Gregory just asked me to spend the summer with him.
With him.
He loved me. Just me. There were things going on in his marriage that were complicated, but … he didn’t love her.

He loved me.

I needed to talk to someone about this. I needed to tease out reality from fantasy, and love from choices. Because, really, whether or not Gregory loved Karin, he was married to her. He chose to marry her when I was thousands of miles away and not in his life at all.

What if I’d been around?

I’m consumed by you and need you in my life any way I can have you ...

I couldn’t tell him I didn’t feel the same way. Because I did. I had been consumed by him from the moment he played at the end of our first class. Obsessed. Obsession makes people crazy.

Maybe crazy was okay if love was the reason.

Yes, I definitely needed to call someone.

Nathan had listened to me cry about my mistake with Gregory after I’d gotten off the phone with my mother. He yelled some colorful language about Gregory putting me in the position to get hurt
.
That I deserved better than that, and I was wise to stay away from him. The fact that I was considering graduating from
the other woman
to full
mistress
status for an entire summer, rather than a single night, was not a conversation I could have with the hot-headed flutist. No one needed a broken hand, and Nathan would be the last to consider the effect one could have on his career.

Marcia had texted me several times when I didn’t call her back. I now had a hell of a lot more to tell her than I did after our initial call. Somehow I’d been fortunate enough to end up in a single sleeper room on the train. I have no idea who I’d have to thank for that, but they were getting thanked. A train is not typically a place that grants privacy, but I’d finally caught a sliver of a break.

Lying flat out on my bed, there was one person I had to call before my former roommate. I pressed
send
and spent a few seconds drumming up something to say.

“Hello?” His voice was groggy, unfocused.

“Dad. I know it’s late ... I’m sorry. I needed to … I needed to hear your voice. Can we talk?”

“Savannah! I’m glad you called. I never know when is a good time …”

“I know, Dad, it’s fine. We’re so busy all the time between playing and traveling, and figuring out which city we’re in.” I laughed for the first time in several days.

“How are things going?”

I chatted with him for a few minutes about the cities we’d been to, the various venues we’d played in, and how everyone was getting along. While the tour was mostly comprised of younger musicians, newer to their respective symphonies, there were some seasoned members amongst us. Some with long standing feuds with other musicians, which made for great storytelling during late night transit. Who would have guessed that trombonists could be so moody?

We never talked about my mom, apart from him telling me once in a while that I needed to call her back.

“Dad,” I sighed, “I talked to Mom the other day. She told me about Malcolm.”

“What … um, what did she tell you about Malcolm?” His voice had changed. He sounded slightly on edge. Not angry, though.

“About the story in
Opera News
.”

“Uh-huh …”

“Did it go on for the whole seven years, Dad?”

“Savannah …” As he exhaled into the phone, I could almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Come on, Dad, I’m an adult. This is my life, too.”

“Oh, sweetie, it’s so complicated.”

I chuckled half-heartedly, “Clearly. Did you know about him the whole time?”

My mother never admitted to a seven-year affair with Malcolm, but it was obvious. Given she was working in Italy and he was working in Boston, I gathered whatever relationship they had up until she moved back to the States was largely emotional.

“Malcolm was always a good friend to your mother. To the family. They have a lot in common and live in the same world.”

“Yeah,” I snapped, “a world you
left
for her.” I felt my cheeks heating thinking about the career my dad walked away from to support hers.

“I didn’t leave it for her, Savannah … it was for you.”

“What?” Tears stung my eyes.

“It was for us. For our family. You mattered more to me than to try to raise you on the road. One of us had to make the choice. She was further in her career than I was. Making her give it all up wasn’t something I could do.”

“But you both
chose
to have a family. Why did
you
have to give it all up?”

“That’s life, Savannah …” There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling me in that silence.

“Has it always been him?” I was whispering, disbelieving I was asking my dad something so personal.

“Your mother and I had a challenging relationship, Savannah. We wanted children together, but you came a little earlier than planned. That called for us to make some tough choices. It brought things out in us that … look, your mother is a good mother.”

He didn’t want to throw her under the bus, but it was clear that what went on—was now going on—between my mother and Malcolm was no secret.

“But you and Mom were
married …”

“I don’t have anything I can say to make this easier to understand. But, I do want to tell you something.” His tone darkened to the stern set of notes he used when discussing drugs with me in high school. “Don’t make things harder on yourself than they need to be. Love shouldn’t be a fight, Savannah. It shouldn’t be hard. It shouldn’t tear people apart and leave everyone broken. If someone loves you, they give you all of themselves, not just parts. Do you hear me?”

My lips parted, startled by my father’s bleeding honesty. “Yeah,” I gasped, “I hear you. I have to go, okay? It’s late.”

“I love you. Check in again soon, okay? Even if it’s 3:00 a.m.”

“I will. Love you, Dad.”

I didn’t know before if my dad saw what my mom saw when watching my performance with Gregory, but that cleared it up. Of course he saw. He was wrong about one thing, though. You fight for what you love. Who you love. Giving up on Gregory six years ago left me empty. I had a chance to make that right, if even for a summer.

Spending a few weeks capturing what most people spend a lifetime searching for had to be better than nothing at all. Maybe Gregory and I had to grab whatever happiness was dangling in front of us. It was our window, and it was closing in a few weeks. I didn’t know if it would ever open again. I didn’t know what was going on in his marriage, and I didn’t know what went on in my parents’ marriage. All I knew was Gregory Fitzgerald was the only one who made me feel this way, and if this was the only chance we had to fully experience each other … I had to take it.

Even if it would break me in the end.

Gregory

Nathan vacated our sleeping quarters early. The train arrived in Denver at 7:00 a.m., and he banged around the tiny cabin like a grumpy teenager before finally leaving. Frankly, I was relieved to have avoided a physical confrontation with him last night. I knew he cared deeply for Savannah, and despite the rage that bled from his pores, I felt less retaliatory and more ashamed of myself for hurting her.

Hurting her wasn’t my intention. None of this was. I stepped out of the shower in my mid-grade hotel room and ran my hands through my hair, thankful my hangover was subsiding. When I’d started drinking in the lounge car, I didn’t expect to leave there asking the woman I loved to engage in a relationship with me for the remainder of our tour.

I didn’t regret asking her. If that was the only way I’d ever have happiness, then so be it. What bothered me was ... I’d put her in a position where she had to make the decision. It was that I’d put my desires and needs onto
her
. The way her eyes widened as she swallowed when I asked. She went silent.

She’s rarely silent.

She sat stoically and listened to my slurred reasoning. I meant every word. We needed to seize this time. We’d been given an opportunity to be together, even for a short time. It would be risky, and a lot of people could get hurt.

I didn’t want her to get hurt. That was my bottom line. I would sacrifice just about anything to never again see the look she had on her face before bailing from the cab and walking down the busy road in Lincoln. Away from me.

It was approaching noon and I was anxious. I hadn’t seen or heard from Savannah since our talk. It occurred to me that watching her stand and nimbly leave our table could have been the last time I saw her in any context other than the stage. I had to tell her, though. I had to tell her my feelings. My desires. I had nothing to lose, but her to gain.

Shit. What could she possibly think of me, a married man, asking her to willingly carry on with me this summer as if we were the only two people in our lives? As I paced back and forth, there was a weak knock at my door.

“Gregory, it’s Savannah …”

I rushed to the door, swinging it open to find her standing with her arms loose at her sides, eyes cast down and looking swollen, as if she’d been crying. I wanted to take her into my arms in that instant, but I didn’t know if she wanted me touching her anymore. She was wearing a short black skirt and a grey tank top. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a wild nest of curls. Still, she took my breath away. She always had.

“Come in.” Instinctively, I looked down the hall before closing the door behind her.

“No one’s out there. I waited for them to clear out before I knocked.” Her voice was flat as she sat on the edge of the bed.

Pulling my eyebrows together, I walked toward her and sat down next to her.

“That’s how it’ll be, you know,” she said to the floor.

“That’s how what will be?”

“Looking over our shoulders for the rest of the summer. Making sure no one sees you with your mistress.” She stopped and looked at me as I gasped at her use of the word
mistress.
She started again, still not looking at me. “That’s what this is, you know. I’d be your mistress.”

I knew that’s what it looked like. It was an affair in the sense that I was married, but Savannah was so much more to me than my
mistress
. I couldn’t figure out how to say that to her, though, especially when she seemed to refuse to look at me.

I swallowed hard and tentatively placed my hand on her thigh. She didn’t move it. “Savannah …”

“What? That’s what you’re asking of me, isn’t it? To be your mistress?”

I clicked my tongue against my teeth and winced at the word. I wanted her to stop saying it. That’s not what she was … who she was.

“You mean more to me than that, Savannah. You know that,” I managed. Slowly.

“Then why …” She shook her head, looking at her manicured toes.

“Why what?” I asked, stroking my thumb back and forth across the top of her thigh.

She shrugged. “If I mean so much to you … I’m not saying leave your wife for me. But if I mean that much to you then why not wrap things up in your marriage and then come to me? Why an affair? Why now?”

I lifted my hand from her leg and ran it over my face. “My marriage … while it hasn’t been a long one, has felt like it. There’s … not a lot of love there, if any. I think it was convenient for both of us. Jesus, I don’t want to sound like a bastard here—”

“You don’t.” She grinned slightly. “Trust me, I get it. I think.”

I counted myself lucky that Savannah hadn’t run from the room yet. That she was still sitting there listening to me, and asking questions, gave me some hope that she wouldn’t disappear through that door forever.

I paused a moment before continuing, trying to consider how to talk about my
wife
with the woman I loved. “I was looking forward to this tour to have some space, some time to think. Honestly, some time to figure out how to make a clean break and not lose everything. Including my dignity. But something is going on with Karin right now. I don’t have all the details. It’s incredibly complicated, and I don’t feel right talking to anyone about it right now.”