Chapter One
I sat at the piano in the music hall of my old college, staring at the polished ivory keys and wondering how the hell my life had gone so thoroughly off track. Almost a year ago, I’d been primed to graduate with a fine arts degree in piano performance at the top of my admittedly small class. Then I would have worked my way up through the classical circle until I found myself on the stage of a concert hall in Europe, squinting through the stage lights at an audience packed with suits and evening gowns.
It was all very romantic—or at least, it could have been. Instead, here I was, a drop-out returning to the scene of my shame. I lifted my hands like a man in a trance, setting my fingertips to the keys. I did it gingerly, as if I thought they’d burn me. Maybe I did think that. Maybe I would have deserved it.
I pressed down with my right thumb, and the note rang out across the room, fading away into the high ceilings. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a broken dream.
“Colin?”
My head whipped around so fast I’m pretty sure I gave myself whiplash. Too late, the voice speaking my name registered a panicky note of familiarity in my mind. This was someone who knew me, probably from school. Possibly even someone who was still in school, working toward a promising future the way I hadn’t. Someone who hadn’t given up yet.
Turns out it was also someone hot.
I turned on the piano bench, pushing my hands self-consciously into the side pockets of my sweatshirt. It was too late, obviously—he had already seen me bent over the keys. He smiled, and I thought I recognized his face as well as his voice, but I couldn’t quite conjure up a name. “Hi,” I said. “Uh, what’s up?”
“Were you going to play?” he asked. He nodded toward the piano, at which I was still sitting. It certainly looked like I was going to play. I had to give him that. But I hadn’t worked up the courage, and now that I was no longer alone, the desire all but evaporated.
“Oh, no. Not really.” I laughed awkwardly. “I was just, you know. Messing around.” Because that’s what senior piano performance students do at a piano. We mess around. I’d never experienced such a crushing sense of my own stupidity.
The guy nodded as if that was a perfectly normal response. A lock of his jet black hair bounced down into his dark eyes. He didn’t seem to notice, but I sure did. It distracted me momentarily from the fact that I still didn’t know his name. He took a step forward. “It’s good to see you, man. I think it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
I stood up from the bench, just to have something to do. “Yeah,” I said, hoping the word sounded as nonchalant as I was pretending to be. Then, for some reason I’ll never understand, I actually went toward him. I expected this to creep him out, but he just smiled wider and held out his hand. For holding? I thought. No, for shaking. So we shook hands.
“I’m Noah,” he said, still smiling. “Think I probably should have led with that. I know we were never really close.” He paused to chuckle sheepishly. “Sorry. This is weird.”
Noah. The name jogged a rusty mental gear. Now I remembered him. A year ago, he’d been—what? A sophomore? And he’d dated someone I knew better, a guy named Steven who’d graduated on time…unlike me. The thought made a cold horror creep into the pit of my stomach. Did Noah know? And if he knew, was he in the process of judging me?
“It’s not…that weird,” I said. “It’s weirder that I’m even here.” I don’t know why I said that, but just like that, it was out there.
Noah tilted his head. The stray lock of hair framed his face, and again, I was distracted. “Why’s that?” he asked. His expression brightened before I found a response. “Right, because you graduated.” He shrugged his shoulders. “No worries. I’m sure no one would give you a hard time.”
It would’ve been so easy to leave it at that. I had dreaded having to lie, but Noah did it for me, releasing me from the burden of being untruthful. Part of me wished I were the kind of person who could be okay with that. But I knew there was no way for me to walk away from this chance encounter knowing he believed something about me that wasn’t true. Don’t ask me what it was—I still couldn’t say. The way he said my name? The way he shook my hand? His megawatt grin, or that damn piece of hair?
What matters is that I blurted out the following: “I didn’t graduate.” I meant to be less forward about it, but it just sort of erupted outward. We stared at each other for a long moment of silence, which was pierced by the sound of an alarm going off.
“Oh, shoot.” Noah glanced at the smart watch on his wrist and pinched a button. When he turned back to me, his smile became apologetic. “I gotta go. But maybe we can pick this up later? Are you in town?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes. Yeah, I’m in town.”
“Cool. Meet me in front of the library at like, six. That sounds like a story and I’d love to hear the rest of it.”
Against my better judgment, I said, “Okay.” Then I stood there while he patted me on the shoulder and left, his footsteps echoing in the auditorium until I couldn’t hear them anymore.
And that’s more or less how I started to fall in love.