Page 13 of Coming Undone

She didn’t know why she expected her new affair with Danny to follow the same course as their wild encounter five years ago. But that’s kind of what she’d hoped for. They’d fall into each other’s arms and have sex until they couldn’t see straight. Spend every waking moment together – and sleeping moment, for that matter – and then she’d be a new woman when it came time for him to leave Norfolk again.

Now, brushing her teeth with one of the extra toothbrushes he’d pointed out in the bathroom drawer before he left, Stephanie stared in the cedar-framed mirror over the white pedestal sink and knew she’d been naïve to think an affair could unfold like that now. For one thing, they were both older. She’d known going into this that she was more world weary, more cautious. That was half the reason she’d had a tough time with relationships.

But she hadn’t really considered that he would be more wary too. As she pinned up her hair and washed her face, she reminded herself that he wasn’t the same fun-loving rocker who could take a week off from his father’s business because it was a family company. Danny was a Navy lieutenant, a Surface Warfare Officer with people who depended on him. He’d walked away from the lucrative Murphy holdings to join the military, no doubt taking one hell of a pay cut. For that matter, he’d walked away from his rock band too.

They’d gone on to make it big without him. He’d signed away the name and his rights to the group, and his band mates had taken a song he’d written to the top 100 four years ago. It made Stephanie sad to hear it on the radio, knowing it should have been his guitar in the studio track instead of some fill-in imposter.

Why hadn’t she asked him about that? Or about what had made him Mr. Serious since they’d been together?

Tugging a flannel bathrobe off the hook inside an armoire that he’d shown her when he’d shown her the spare bedroom, Stephanie slid it on and padded across the hardwood floor to find him. It was only eleven o’clock.

And it’s not like she was planning to seduce him. She just wanted to know.

Too bad he wasn’t in his bedroom. The door across the hall was open wide, the room dark. A light still glowed downstairs, so she followed it, listening for any sounds in the still house. The only sound she heard were the small creaks of the flooring as she made her way into the kitchen. A bottle of whiskey stood open on the counter that hadn’t been there earlier. Curious, she picked it up, as if it could provide a clue to his whereabouts.

That’s when she heard the strains of a guitar floating through a crack in the French doors. Following the sound, she stepped out onto the patio to find Danny on the edge of the planked deck, his feet in the sand. A shaft of light spilled out into the dark, the only illumination on the moonless night.

She didn’t say anything since he was in the middle of a blues riff, the chords sad and sweet at the same time. Sitting beside him on the patio, she wrapped the robe tighter around her legs and stared out at the ocean while he finished his song.

“It’s great to hear you play.” She’d forgotten how much she liked hearing his fingers working the instrument strings. “I remember you had a guitar at my house. It was fun to hear snippets of music while I was folding laundry or taking a shower.”

There’d been something intimate about that. Not just the romance of feeling like she was being serenaded. More like a small pleasure in knowing his habits. She’d enjoyed that glimpse into his world and discovering he would strum a guitar while he watched the news on TV or while he waited for his coffee to cool down in the morning.

“Playing relaxes me.” He danced his fingers silently over the strings, as if he practiced some chord progression.

The water swooshed against the shore nearby, the sound as calming after an emotional day. In the distance she heard a dog barking, but the houses nearby were silent.

“It’s odd that I found you playing the guitar since the reason I came looking for you was to ask you about your music.”

“Yeah?” He reached toward her and at first she thought he meant to touch her, but then she realized he gently tugged the bottle of whiskey from her hand.

She’d forgotten she still held it. He uncapped it and poured a short measure into the empty glass beside him. Then, instead of sipping it himself, he passed the drink to her.

“I always wondered why you gave up your band.” She tipped her face into a light breeze blowing off the water and wrapped her fingers around the glass. “You seemed to enjoy music so much.”

“Playing is an outlet for me. I never wanted it to feel like work.” His fingers tripped through a simple melody that she realized was a nursery school staple- “Twinkle Little Star.”

She smiled. “It’s definitely good to have a part of your life that feels like play time. But wouldn’t it be even better if your work felt like play?”

“Maybe someday.” He strummed idly for a minute before swapping into a bass line. “But I wanted to make a more tangible contribution to society first.”

For a moment, she simply sipped the fiery whiskey and watched his lower fingers keep the rhythm line while the others picked out a harmony on the strings.

“I’m just surprised you joined the military so soon after we met. I thought you were going to encourage the band to take their music to the next level.”

He continued the song for a moment before his fingers quit moving all together. The silence felt discordant, as if she’d pushed the conversation where she shouldn’t.

“They did take it to the next level,” he reminded her. “I signed over my stake in the band so they could do just that when I joined the Navy.”

Somehow, she knew better than to pin him down on this, even though his answers only gave rise to more questions. Like – why did he join the Navy right after she left the U.S.? Instead, she handed him the glass and waited while he took a slow drink.

“I signed my contract a few weeks after you were taken.” He set the glass down, but he kept the guitar perched on one thigh. He didn’t play it now, his elbows resting on the polished body of the instrument.

Her heart ached at the admission. She’d wondered about the timing before, but she’d written it off as a coincidence. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“I knew I wasn’t going to personally locate you or anything like that,” he spoke with a quiet seriousness she’d never heard him use before, like a guitar note out of synch with the rest of the song. She had a sudden sense she didn’t know this man half as well as she’d thought she did.

“But you didn’t join the Navy because of… that, did you?” She’d been about to say “because of me” but she could hardly dare to formulate the idea in her head much less ask out loud if it was true. She couldn’t bear to think her ordeal would have had such a profound effect on him. It had been bad enough she and Christina had to endure it. That their families had worried themselves sick – literally. Stephanie’s mother had a nervous breakdown that led to hospitalization, leaving Stephanie to come home to a much-changed family.

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