Face The Music

End Of An Era

9 months later

I sighed as I raked my shoulders out of bed. No one wanted to be awake at a time like this. What, 6pm? It wasn't really a bed, though, and it wasn't really a time. I never did give Josh enough credit with his living out of a bus. Now that I was doing it, all by myself, with no parents to cart me around from venue to venue, self-care had fallen to the wayside. Self-care had always been a wayside.

How did I get here? I didn't even remember. Something about me beating Josh away and him coming back anyways, like he didn't have enough to care about on his own, and him dragging me to a piano concert by some 20-year old kid who came to see me after and said that my playing way back when I was a performer was what inspired him to become a concert pianist. Something about inspiration, maybe, like if he can do this, and if he thought I could do this, then maybe I can. Something about a concert, just one, only one. And then something about my uncle coming out of his drag long enough to see a me play and crying afterwards, saying he felt like Lynn was there with us because he used to watch my recitals with her, and she would lay her head on his shoulder.

And finally, something like Josh hugging me so hard after I played that I couldn't breathe and just leaned against him, holding in my chest so I didn't start shaking.

And that resolution to play just once and then maybe go to the Amazon rainforest to live out the rest of my days as a tiger-taming hermit just melted away because who was I to condemn myself to hermit-dom when I hadn't even bothered with the life that Aunt Lynn tried to give me?

A gap year and some more booked performances. An old name really helps in things like these, and they were willing to give me a chance after my "four year-long haitus", like I really had intended to ever come back after everything that had happened. 

A late application to Juilliard because there was no reason not to, and suddenly, hello college, very soon. This would be the last performance I had before I left Canada for the bursting flash bulbs of New York City. I couldn't wait. Stifling little Canada, beautiful as it was, was just full of moose and frosty cold blanketing every surface of the pine-laden forest. Like I didn't have enough ice crystals in my life. Like Aunt Lynn's grave needed any more cold. I promised her that we would have her cremated, like she'd always wanted, but Henry insisted on having a grave for her nonetheless, however empty the sentiment and the hole. I scattered her ashes along the banks of some frozen stream in the middle of winter, praying to the moose that they take her with them to the farthest reaches of the tundra. They probably did, given that the moose have never been one to disobey my orders.

So the last show. I had long since grown out the purple in my hair. Now, it was just brown. Perhaps silvery at the tips because the dye had washed out, but that was probably a trick of the light, too, like everything. It felt like I was a trick of the light.

The lights in the dressing room flashed a moment, returning to normal the second I looked. My silver dress flashed, too. 

Josh walked in, then, stepping close and hugging me. "How're you feeling? You look great."

"Don't you get the feeling that I look like a fish?"

He gave me a skeptical eye twitch and didn't say anything.

"Like, this thin, agile fish that's so shiny your eyes hurt?"

"Maybe a fish that shines in the spotlight!" He tugged my hair and smiled at me, like I was some great big rose that blinded him from the rest of the room. "The fucking spotlight!"

I sighed. "Yeah, that, too. No kidding. Are you going to make me go up there, Buster?"

Josh shrugged. "Well, I'm no Buster. Are you happy?" His hair was silver now, too. It fell into his eyes, making him blink, but it wasn't like those long lashes were strong enough to fight away a swarm of precious metal, anyway.

"You make me happy," I answered, looking up at him. "Are you happy?"

He looked at his hands around my back, the ridges in the knuckles and the calluses on his fingertips from guitar casting imaginary shadows across his face. On some level, they couldn't have been imaginary. "Yeah. I think I am." Leaning down, he kissed me on the nose, the eyelids, where he smeared the tiniest bit my eyeliner, the cheeks, and then the lips. I held him closer, hugging him tightly against me. 

When I stepped back, he played a dance on the back of my hand with his fingers and then turned me to the doorway. "Ready to go?"

I looked back at him for a moment. "Who, me?"  I grinned. "Oh, I'm gone."