Violinist (CENTURIES series: Book #4)

24

I had my family... my parents and my two siblings. My big brother and my baby sister. They were all good people, broadly speaking, but did I love them? Would I come to them in my hour of need?

There were my colleagues. My 'friends' by work-category at the Aristocat Lounge who I bantered with in the five minute breaks of the long club hours. But did I love them?

And then there was Tony. But he was too complicated for love...

In truth, there was only one person whom I could say I truly loved, and it was the same person who had made this appointment for me. The person who had stood by me and accepted all my madness, who had been holding out his hand towards me for six months while I laid in my rubbles and watched the ashes fall.

Yesterday, I had finally taken his hand. It hurt moving, but it was a pain I had to go through to get better.

"It's been a long time since we talked," Dr Samson voiced when I didn't reply. I sat silently on her couch, still too numb to speak, even though it had been says since Dan found me on our living room floor. "Do you want to tell me what's happened since we last spoke? I think it was August, wasn't it? Do you want to tell me what's been happening in your life?"

Where did one start? The aftereffect of the breakup with Mason? The downsizing from my job at the senior center? The long months of being numb, letting the wind push me along, pretending everything was okay, because hoping that pretending everything was okay would eventually make it so?

And then there was Tony again...

"Why don't we start out with something easier," Her voice softened for some reason, and that's when I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks, quietly. I couldn't even keep it together anymore. They came without cause. "Tell me what your favorite song is these days."

Easy. I closed my eyes and knew very well what my favorite song was these days. The problem was, it didn't have a name.

Or maybe... it did.

"Blue. My favorite song... is Blue."

~~~

It had been two weeks of therapy, two times a week. Dan and my therapist had both agreed there was too much to talk about for just once every week, or month for that matter. Dr Samson took me on as an urgent patient and I let her.

Because even as far out as I was, I knew I needed help. That was the thing; The further you walked, the farther back you could see. What you saw, however, wasn't always what you wanted to see.

Remarkably though, I felt myself slowly coming back. Dan had thrown down my anchor and was guiding me back to shore. I cried almost every time he spoke to me.

People like Dan were sparse and limited these days. He was one of a kind, smiling when I couldn't, helping me when I had forgotten how things worked. He was so generous, so selfless and so damn caring.

And maybe that's why Kyle had held on to him and asked him to move in with him.

"I know it's terrible timing," Dan told as we sat that afternoon not long before evening, the winter darkness already falling over the city. "And I know it's fast. That's why I didn't say anything. I'm not moving out or leaving you until I known you're back on your feet, I promise you. But... I am going to say yes," He said, a sweet warmth rising to his cheeks as he looked down into his cup of mint tea, no doubt thinking of Kyle.