Gabrielle (12 page)

Finally, he nodded. “Okay. I guess I can come over on Wednesday.”

“It will be fun,” I promised.

* * *

I waited until Dylan was out of sight before I called Bradley.

Clearly happy to hear from me, he said, “A formal invite to meet your grandmother, huh?”

I thought he was teasing, but wanted to make sure. “I told her we were just friends.”

“You know I'm kidding, Gabrielle.”

Most people called me Gabi, especially people my own age. Gabrielle usually sounded so formal and out of place. But not when Bradley said it.

From him, Gabrielle sounded just right. I honestly couldn't ever picture him calling me Gabi, not even once we'd known each other a long time.

I could still taste Dylan's kiss. I should only be thinking about him.

“Gabrielle? Are you still there?”

I nodded, then realized he couldn't see me. “Yes.” My voice sounded squeaky. “Sorry, I'm in the park and I think our connection got a little funny for a second.” Which was true, our connection was
totally
weird, at least for me. We'd connected from the first minute and even when I hadn't wanted to like him, I had.

I did.

“I'd love to come over and spend some time with your grandmother, Gabrielle.”

Irritated that his reaction was the polar opposite of Dylan's, I said in a sharp voice he didn't deserve, “Will Thursday afternoon work?”

“Sure.”

I told him my address, then said, “I've got to go,” and hung up on him.

* * *

I went straight to the electric piano in my bedroom when I got home. In the hardest times of my life, music had always been there for me. Comforting me. Soothing me. Healing me.

People had called me a childhood prodigy because I could play the piano and the guitar so well at the age of six.

I wasn't a prodigy. Not even close.

Every time I wanted my mother, I played whichever was closest. My grandmother used to stand in the doorway as I played for hours on end, watching me. She was concerned, and even at six and seven years old, I knew that.

But she let me play. Because she knew I had to.

And now, here I was again at the keyboard, empty and hollow as I laid my fingers down over the D minor chord.

The guys from Spinal Tap weren't kidding. It really was the saddest of chords.

Before I realized the words were coming, I was singing.

Life for a life, that's what I've heard.

Blood spills blood and without a word

You're gone.

Eye to eye, this time I'll fight

Creeping in silence, the matches ignite

In my hands.

I sat there in shock at the piano, realizing the questions and fears and worries screaming inside my head—inside my heart, too—had just spilled out.

I pushed the bench back to get up, to walk away from the piano, to try and push away the darkness that had taken root inside me...and my music.

But I couldn't leave. Not when it suddenly felt like my music was all I had left. The only thing that I could even believe in anymore.

If I always gave up so easily, I was never going to see any of my dreams come true.

Instead, I would just be swept along by the tide in whatever direction it took me.

Never more than now did I need to be in charge of my own life. Or at least feel that I was.

Suddenly, I knew what I wanted to say in the next part of the song. What I
needed
to say.

If darkness is power, then so is light

And I'll find my way out of this place

With nothing to lose, I'll stop holding

So tight

I will just keep going, I will

I will just keep learning, I will

I will keep on singing, I will

But even as I sang those words, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd found out about my mother, about the strain between me and my grandmother, about how hard Dylan's life had been and how our relationship wasn't even close to simple.

Who was I kidding?

The darkness was still there.

Hand to hand, I'm learning the rules

You leave me with nothing and here I'm a fool

Again

Head to head, I'll get it right

I'll get out of this and my wings will take flight

Away

I'd never mined any of my pain from losing my mother before. Until now. Until this song.

It scared me so much that swinging back into the chorus was a lifeline I was desperate to catch hold of.

If darkness is power, then so is light

I'll find my way out of this place

With nothing to lose, I'll stop holding

So tight

I will just keep going, I will

I will just keep learning, I will

I will keep on singing, I will

All of my fear disappears

I knew I was swinging way too far between dark and light, and yet, in that moment, as I sat at the piano with my hands actually shaking over the keys, I had to believe that at some point my fear really would disappear.

And that, one day, everything would be normal again.

I will just keep going, I will

I will just keep learning, I will

I will keep on singing, I will

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1a574zJIM

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-will/id427761572

I WILL by Gabrielle LeGrande / Lucy Kevin, © 2011

On Monday and Tuesday, Dylan seemed distant and distracted. That is, he seemed distant when I saw him. Which was pretty much never.

As far as I could tell, he missed half his classes and wasn't banging on my practice room door either night. He certainly didn't answer his cell phone the couple of times I let myself call him. I couldn't stand the thought of being one of those girls who called her boyfriend a dozen times a night to try and keep track of him.

On Wednesday I found him in the music room, sitting behind a drum set. He wasn't playing, didn't even have sticks in his hands.

He looked lost. And terribly alone.

Even though I'd told him more than once that I was there for him.

“Look, you don't have to come to my house,” I finally told him after the final bell had rung. I would be terribly disappointed, but I hated to think I was forcing him to do anything he didn't want to do.

“You're the first good girl I've dated,” he finally said.

“Still hung up on that, are you?” I tried to joke.

“It's just that no one has ever asked me to come over and meet her family before. It was always just sex.”

“Nice to know I'm more than just a piece of ass to you,” I whispered in his ear.

I could tell by the look he gave me that I'd shocked him. Frankly, I'd shocked myself a little bit, too.

His phone rang and when he saw who was calling he said, “Sorry, I've got to take this.”

He moved away and said, “Okay. I'll be right there.”

“I've got to go,” he told me as he shoved the phone back in his pocket.

“Where? Who was that?”

“The police think they've got a lead on my dad. That he's getting too close again. They need me and my mom to come in and talk about options.”

“Options?”

He ran a hand over his face, looking way older than seventeen. “I can't really talk about it right now. I've got to go.”

“It's okay,” I said. “Please call me later to let me know you're okay.” He was halfway out the door when he remembered. “Oh, shit. Your grandmother. Now she's really going to hate me.

Maybe we could do it tomorrow instead?”

I was nodding when I realized Bradley was coming over Thursday afternoon. “She's busy then,” I said quickly. “Could you come Friday?”

“Friday works. Hopefully.”

He came back and kissed me hard, like he was filling up his well of strength before he hit the police station, and then a second later he was gone, leaving me standing in the empty hallway with a spinning head.

* * *

My grandmother didn't say anything when I told her we needed to reschedule our tea with Dylan for Friday. She simply poured tea for the two of us.

“No sense letting all of this go to waste,” she said in her softly accented voice.

But I knew it was a strike against Dylan.

And given her belief in
the curse
, it was a strike he really didn't need.

* * *

Dylan wasn't at school on Thursday, so I never got a chance to find out what happened.

And he never called me, either, to let me know he was okay.

I was so worried about him—about his dad coming back into the picture and harming him or his mom—that I entirely forgot about Bradley coming over until the moment Missy and I stepped out of the front doors of my school after the final bell.

And found him standing on the steps.

He looked from me to Missy and said, “Hi. I'm Bradley.”

Missy shook his hand and gave him a sparkling smile. “
So
nice to meet you.” She shot me a look that clearly said,
You did not even begin to do this guy justice.

“What are you doing here?”

“Walking you home. To have tea with your grandmother.”

Didn't he get it? What if Dylan had been with me? How could I have explained things?

Oh, I know this totally gorgeous guy is coming over to my grandmother's for tea—just like you!

—but it's no big deal. It's a funny story, actually—he's looking for a courtesan and my
grandmother thinks it's my destiny to become one. Ha ha ha.

Not.

Missy looked between the two of us with raised eyebrows. “I really wish I didn't have to go right now,” she said, adding, “before getting to know you better, Bradley,” as if that would somehow make it less obvious that she was riveted by our relationship. Our non-relationship.

“Me too,” he said, genuine and friendly as always. I couldn't help but look for signs that he was attracted to her. Amazingly, it didn't seem that he was. I shouldn't have been glad about it. I should have wanted him to fall madly in love with her and leave me out of his life entirely.

Heck, she'd even said to me that she thought being a courtesan wouldn't be half bad.

The solution to at least one of my problems was staring me in the face. If Bradley fell in love with Missy, I wouldn't have to keep feeling like I was cheating on Dylan simply by hanging out with him and talking.

I opened my mouth with the intent of pushing the two of them together. “You know what, you two really should—”

The rest of the words strangled on my tongue.

I couldn't do it.

I couldn't push Bradley into Missy's arms.

What was wrong with me?

“Gabrielle?”

Feeling like an idiot—an idiot who couldn't even manage to do something crucial to save herself—I said, “Yeah, we'll all have to hang out sometime.”

“I really hope I see you again, Bradley,” she said before blowing us both air kisses.

He put his hand on my lower back and led me down the stairs in the direction of my house.

Stepping to the side, away from his warm touch, I reminded him, “I have a boyfriend.”

“And you really don't want him to meet a new friend, do you?”

“None of my friends look like you,” I blurted before realizing how it sounded.

“And how's that?”

I smacked him on the shoulder. His hard, muscular shoulder. “You've looked in a mirror before.”

“Sure, but I'd like to hear what you see.”

Again, that teasing voice. But so often it had something serious behind it. Was his playful, easy demeanor simply a front? And if so, who was the real Bradley?

Dropping the matter of his ridiculously good looks, I admitted, “I like you. A lot. But you and me, we're in different worlds.”

He was looking for a courtesan to love who would love him right back without ever demanding that he leave his wife to be with only her. Whereas I was turning my back on my family legacy.

I couldn't be that woman for him. I couldn't be his
companion
.

No matter how great he was.

“I want to be your friend, Bradley. Can we do that?”

Instead of answering, he stopped in front of a florist's shop and pulled me inside. He bought a beautiful arrangement that I knew my grandmother would love, but then, at the last second, he plucked a single aster—the same kind of flower that had been up on the rooftop the night we met—out of a water bucket.

“For you.”

I knew I shouldn't let him buy me flowers. Especially this flower. It would make it so that I would be unable to look at asters without thinking of him. But I couldn't not take it, not in front of the beaming florist.

“Thank you,” I said somewhat grudgingly, moving out to the sidewalk while he paid, and then, “Is this your answer, Bradley?”

My question came out fairly confrontational. Just like I'd been Saturday night when we first met.

“The petals remind me of you. Beautiful, with hidden colors.”

“Just friends,” I reminded him.

He stepped closer, held the large bouquet he'd bought for my grandmother to the side with one hand so that he could close the remaining foot between us. With his free hand, he brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes.

“If that's what you want,” he said softly. His eyes were a dark, chocolate brown, and they held me there, mesmerized for a long moment. And when he rested his fingertips against my skin, I swear I had no control over my head as I started to turn my face into his palm.

Abruptly, I pulled away. “We should go. My grandmother will already have the tea ready.”

He walked beside me as if nothing had happened, as if we were simply two friends heading to my house, but I knew differently.