The Second Chance Year(7)
His lips quirk into a half smile. “Did you think the giant instrument in my living room was for holding potted plants?”
I shake my head ruefully. “I mean, I guess I’m aware that you can play. I’ve heard your electronic music, and I know you use keyboards and stuff. But I didn’t know you played music like that.” I wave my hand at the piano. “Did you write that song?”
His eye twitches, almost like he’s surprised by the question, and inexplicably, a little hurt. Finally, he nods.
“It’s beautiful.”
Jacob looks down at his hands before meeting my eyes. “Thanks.”
It dawns on me I’ve never really said anything nice about his music before. It’s been in the background for my entire life, drifting up from the basement of my childhood or piped in as the soundtrack to whatever video game or other computer-y thing Owen was inventing when we were kids. I know Jacob’s made a living doing this, but I guess he was always sort of background music in my life, too.
“You’re home early,” he says, reminding me that he wanted peace and quiet, and my presence brings him a considerable lack of both. He was probably looking forward to an evening alone. Except for work and an occasional lunch with Owen or Kasumi, I’ve basically been moping on his couch for the past few months. I’ll bet he hears The Golden Girls soundtrack in his dreams. No wonder he never comes out here to play the piano.
My cheeks heat with shame. “I’m sorry to bother you.” I take a step backward, but my heel catches on the throw rug, and I stumble.
Jacob stands and takes a few steps toward me, but I manage to grab the wall before I land on my ass like a creepy clown and humiliate myself further. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I mumble in embarrassment. Jacob watches me, probably to make sure I’m stable—literally and figuratively—and when I’m back on both feet, he moves to the couch. “You’re not bothering me,” he says, folding his long limbs into the cushion at one end. “How was the party?”
Just like everything else about this strange night, the question surprises me. Our interactions mostly consist of six-word conversations about who’s buying milk. We don’t talk like this. But maybe it’s because it’s the end of the old year and the start of a new one. Or maybe it’s the late hour and the stillness of the room that masks the usual awkwardness between us. But something about the way he leaves space at the other end of the couch feels like it might be an invitation to sit down.
The last thing I want to do is slink to my bedroom and wallow in the mortification of my night. So, I slip out of my shoes and make my way over. “Kasumi was right. The party was epic.”
“Yeah?” he prompts.
I hesitate. Does Jacob really want to hear about my night? He seems genuinely interested. Could he be feeling as lonely as I am?
I tell him about the sword-swallower and the popcorn martini, and by the time I get to the part where the clown cornered me, my night seems less dire and genuinely funny. Jacob throws his head back against the couch with laughter, and I clutch my stomach against the uncontrollable giggles. As our mirth slowly dies down, he lifts his head to look at me at the same time I shift my body in his direction. Our eyes meet, and my breath catches. He holds my gaze, and just like earlier in the day, an awareness stretches between us like taffy. My heart raps painfully against my sternum, and that same emotion he evoked when playing the piano washes over me. Some sort of longing I don’t know what to do with, so I look away.
Jacob clears his throat, shifting in his seat. “So, if the party was epic, why were you home at eleven thirty?”
I grab a throw pillow and clutch it to my chest. “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t in much of a party mood.”
He rests a hand on the back of the couch, and my eyes are drawn to the muscles flexing in his forearm. It must be all that piano playing. “It’s been a hard year for you,” he says. “Maybe you didn’t feel like you had much to celebrate.”
Once again, I’m surprised that he seems to know me better than I realized. I mean, I guess he couldn’t miss the pints of Ben & Jerry’s piling up in the freezer, or my own Olivia Rodrigo playlist on repeat. But he’s not poking fun at my misery like Owen does. He seems to understand that I’ve really been struggling. And that means a lot right now.
“I know I haven’t exactly been easy to live with,” I say. “And I’m not sure I ever told you how much I appreciate you letting me stay here until I get back on my feet.” I trace a line of thread on the throw pillow with my finger. “If it weren’t for you, I would’ve blown through my meager savings by now. And I guess I’m still foolish enough to hope that someday I’ll get to use it to open my own bakery.”
“Why is that foolish?” He shifts his body in my direction.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should have gone to college. I could have an actual career right now, like Owen does.”
“Now you sound like your parents,” Jacob says. He’s sat through enough Thatcher family dinners to know Owen is the golden boy with his 4.0 GPA and his computer science degrees, while I’m the black sheep who barely scraped by with Cs. By the age of sixteen, I could craft a quadruple layer cake with lemon curd filling and vanilla fondant flowers worthy of the Great British Bake Off. But maybe I should have tried harder in school. Buttercream frosting was never going to impress my college-professor parents.