V-Day (3 page)

“I think I can try that,” she smiled, but
then a cloud of sadness came over her face. “It’s not even like I
thought he was The One, you know?” she sniffed, and there was a
touch of defensiveness in her voice. “It’s just… He was okay for
now, if that makes sense. That son of a bitch had the nerve to run
around behind my back…” Angrily, she wiped a tear off her cheek,
and shook her head. “I knew he was a jerk, but I didn’t expect
that, that’s all.”

“He’s crazy,” Daniel assured her, putting so
much yearning into that short line that his earnestness created a
moment of awkwardness between them, as if he had confessed too much
against his will.

“Yeah, well,” she shrugged in defeat. “He’s
officially the third guy who’s cheated on me, so maybe I should
just get used to it, right?”

“Or maybe find a different kind of guy…”
Daniel suggested, an encouraging smile tugging on one side of his
mouth.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “Or just stick to dogs.
Or get cats. You know, six cats… Really wallow in my
singleness.”

“Well,
that
my mother would love, for
sure,” he joked, trying to prolong the lightening mood her heard in
her voice.

“Thanks, Daniel,” she said, covering his
hand with hers as she took the ski bag from him. “You’ve been a big
help, and I don’t just mean with the luggage.”

“I’m glad I could be here,” he said,
truthfully, suddenly feeling so much better about life in general.
Bringing a smile to her face had made his day, and now even
spending Valentine’s Day weekend alone didn’t even depress him.

“Bye,” she whispered, as she went
inside.

He stood on her back steps for a few seconds
after she had closed the door, still feeling the brush of her glove
on the back of his hand. Then he turned, and headed back to the
house, but the comfort food idea didn’t really have much appeal any
more.

In a flash The Idea came to him.

Dashing into the house and skidding to a
halt in front of the hall closet, he snagged his performance jacket
and crammed it on over his white cable knit sweater, and adding a
red scarf against the biting wind. Brown cords and wool didn’t
necessarily go all that well with a tux jacket, but sometimes you
just had to do what you had to do. Scooping up a long black case
from the sideboard in the music room, he paused long enough to grab
a pink carnation from the vase on the piano. Carnations, being
cheap and cheesy, sort of had a ninth grade romance to them, but
any port in a storm.

With his usual precise care, he freed the
instrument from its case – a gleaming, cherry colored violin, so
familiar to him she was like an extension of his left arm now.
Whipping the bow with a snap, he bolted from the house and almost
leaped over the snow drift to stand beneath Bronwyn’s windows. His
heart was in his throat, as he was about to do something completely
foolishly romantic, and, therefore, completely and utterly out of
character. He was, for the first time in his young life, about to
serenade a beautiful woman. But now, in broad daylight, and
surrounded by the neighbors who had seen him eat mud pies in this
very backyard, he was assailed by a more typical bout of
bashfulness. However, as he recalled the joy of making her smile,
he steeled his strength, and stood to his full height.

And, sticking the cheap carnation stem into
the snow at his feet, he shouldered his instrument and kissed the
strings with his well practiced bow. Like an athlete, he paused the
barest of moments before the talent of his muscles uncoiled into
the equipment, and he began to play.

Beethoven’s Romance no. 2 in F Major.
Simple, and perhaps an obvious choice, but one he knew upside down
and backwards, being one of his mother’s favorite pieces of all
time. Deceptively light, with just a touch of sob to the notes, the
tones swirled around him, only to lift to the sky. Reaching out of
him and up to her – to Bronwyn, wherever she was in her house.

Suddenly, as he opened his eyes a moment,
there she was. Just as the music lifted, as if happy to see her.
Daniel watched her open her second story window and saw the
laughter of enjoyment and amazement in her face as she absorbed the
scene below her. As rare as it was for him to serenade a girl, he
guessed it was a fairly new experience for her, as well. He could
tell from her eyes she admired his playing, so he threw himself
into the strains, swaying with the emotion of the piece, playing
for his audience of one, experiencing the unique joy of playing
very well. It might not have been the most technically perfect
performance of his life, but the passion with which he played, and
the simplicity of his desire to please the woman listening, made it
one of the most emotionally complex executions he had delivered,
and had he not been in the trance of the notes, he would have
understood in a flash what Kelly had told him about the tango.

But, instead, he just played.

At the end of the piece, he opened his eyes
again to find Bronwyn standing at the open door, with one arm
folded around her sweater-clad middle, and the other pressing her
slender fingers against a delighted smile. He stood for a moment,
shifting his weight nervously from one icy foot to another, unsure
what the hero would do next. Coming up with nothing heroic, he did
the only thing that came naturally to him, which was to pluck that
sad, corrugated pink carnation from the snow. Walking towards her,
he stretched it out to her trembling hand, and watched her brush
his simple offering against one blushing cheek, and wished he could
switch places with the flower.

“That was...” she laughed again, and rubbed
her upper arms. “Is it the weather that’s giving me these
chills?”

“Very likely, yes,” he had to admit. It was
uncomfortably cold out, he was finding, now that the rush of
enthusiasm was leaving him.

“No,” she denied. “You gave me chills. I had
no idea... How can you play that way? My God, I never actually knew
someone who could do anything like that.”

He felt anxious under her praise, but warmed
to the bones, despite the shiver that went through him.

“Oh, my God! I’m sorry,” she said suddenly,
as if just noticing that he was ankle deep in snow and hunched
against the wind. “Please, Daniel – come in, and warm up.
Please.”

Not needing a second invitation, Daniel
nodded and clamped his teeth against their chatter and followed her
inside.

Pleasant and warm, the house looked like he
thought it would. The furniture was overstuffed and welcoming, and
the interior a bit cluttered but cheerful. Exactly the way he
thought her home would look.

Daniel placed his violin safely on a
bookshelf top, and removed his slush-caked shoes on the mat and
followed Bronwyn through towards the kitchen, discombobulated by
the general layout being an exact mirror of their own half of the
duplex, while the decoration was so unfamiliar.

In front of him, she turned suddenly, and he
nearly lost his balance as he tried not to crash into her. On
instinct, he brought his hands up to her arms, and then for some
reason was unable to bring them back down, but instead left his
fingers resting gently on the soft fawn colored wool of her long
cardigan.

Her face registered the same jolt of
electricity he felt at the unexpected contact, but she made no sign
of moving away from his hands.

“I just wanted to say again, that was really
lovely,” she said, her tones sweet and soft to his ears. “Nobody’s
ever done anything like that for me before... It was like something
from a movie!” She laughed again, a chime of a sound that told him
he had truly delighted her, and pushed back a heavy lock of her
gold and reddish hair. “Just... thanks. My day turned out a lot
better than I really thought possible this morning.”

With that, she rose on her tiptoes and
pressed a lingering kiss on his cheek.

“Brunch?” she asked cheerfully.

Daniel, choked up with emotion and feeling
an embarrassing rush of heat in his loins, could only nod, and was
grateful when she carried on towards the kitchen, leaving him a
moment to collect himself.

Get a grip, he scolded himself silently and
tried to shake off the rush of excitement. One peck on the cheek,
and his body felt like it was off to the races like a randy
kid.

One thing he had learned, though – he had
grossly underestimated the usefulness of serenades in his lifetime
goal of getting laid.

***

“So, is brunch a formal affair around here?”
he asked, joining her in the kitchen and comically dusted off his
lapels, making her laugh again. He had retrieved his violin from
near the door, fearing a draft on the wood, and he sat it carefully
on the breakfast table. He shrugged out of his tux jacket and took
a moment hanging it on the back of one of her dining room
chairs.

“So, do you play professionally or
something?” she asked, whipping eggs and glancing over her shoulder
at him where he stood, rather stiffly. “I mean, you’re really good,
and I don’t know many people who own their own tux.”

“No, not yet,” he shrugged, feeling out of
place in her homey kitchen. “I am a student at the university –
music program.”

“I kind of figured that part out,” she
smiled, pouring the egg mixture over the slices of French bread in
the skillet.

“If that doesn’t work out, though, I could
always find work as a strolling troubadour at some tacky restaurant
for couples on their anniversaries, though, I suppose,” he joked,
weakly.

“It’s always good to have something to fall
back on,” she agreed in mock seriousness.

Picking up the cherry instrument, he cleaned
off a speck of moisture with his sleeve and ran his hands along the
wood to take the chill off the grain, finding the curves and the
creases fit to his hand like a familiar lover. Indeed, this
instrument was closer to him than most people could boast of their
bed partners; it was not only his livelihood, but his nearest
companion since he and his parents had pooled resources to purchase
it in celebration of his letter of acceptance to university. He ran
a finger along his favorite line of golden wood down the front
pane.

Just then, he turned his eyes to Bronwyn,
who was watching him with the oddest expression in her eyes, which
he couldn’t place exactly. She cleared her throat and turned her
face towards the sizzling food, and, embarrassed, he asked if she
needed help making brunch.

He watched her hair fall down again from
where she had shoved the shorter front locks behind her ears and
his breath caught in his chest. The simple line of her from the
nape of her neck to the curve of her hips was pure, natural art,
and he could watch the sways and dips of her body forever. He knew
a crazy desire to know what she smelled like, aside from the cold
air, but when she was warm and close. To know all of her scents, as
he was learning all of the different ways she could smile. He
watched her tongue dart out against her coral lips, and longed to
feel it against his own.

He was very hungry now, but his appetite had
little to do with the French toast she was sliding onto bright blue
plates.

Over brunch, Daniel struggled to keep up the
light chit chat, though his mind kept wandering. Did her hair feel
as silky as it looked? Was that hint of vanilla in the air from her
or from the food? Did they design the spandex of her leggings to
make that whispery slithery sound every time she crossed and
uncrossed her legs just to drive him crazy?

“You know,” she sort of snorted in a very
unladylike way, “I should have guessed Warren would use the cabin –
he always was a cheap jerk. I should have known he wouldn’t let the
deposit go that easily.” She speared a piece of bread with a tad
more viciousness than she really needed to, and bit into it with
white, violent teeth, sending a thrill up Daniel’s spine.

“I gotta be honest here,” he shook his head.
“I mean, I know he was your boyfriend, and everything, but the guy
sounds like his collar size was bigger than his IQ. Clearly, he’s
an idiot, if he ran around on you, because, honestly, I’d die to be
with you.” Coughing a bit at the way the words had come out, he
backtracked awkwardly. “I mean... someone like you... And,
obviously, I’d prefer not to die, you know... I mean... You know
what I mean.” He finished lamely, and her bark of laughter in
response to his verbal gymnastics was infectious. “Yes, I am that
cool,” he nodded with a self-depreciating waggle of his dark brows,
and took a long swig from his juice.

She rested her temple against her propped up
hand and contemplated him a moment. “So, how old are you, anyway?”
she asked, a glint of humor dancing around the green and gold in
her eyes.

“Almost twenty,” he answered, looking away.
“Well, twenty in about ten months.”

“Oh man,” she groaned. “You just turned
nineteen?” He nodded and she closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Do you know how old I am?”

Daniel knew he could guess freely, but
decided against it. “I don’t know that your age makes any
difference to me,” he answered, honestly.

“27,” she supplied, anyway. “I’ll be 28 in
May.”

“Wow – so, we’re literally May and
December,” he smiled.

“Yeah, but the other way around.”

“You know, I don’t get the problem about
age,” he shrugged. “As long as both people are adults, what’s the
big deal?” He realized a moment of panic, wondering if he was
assuming too much, referring to them as if they were considering a
relationship. But the way she had been looking at him during brunch
made him think he wasn’t just falling prey to wishful thinking
here. “Besides, women live longer than men, anyway, so doesn’t it
make sense that the man be a little younger when the relationship
starts, and do it the reverse of how people usually do it?”