Page 32 of For The Record

“Thanks for all your help. You saved me… I mean, saved me a lot in fees, and repair.”

“It’s okay, you can say I’m your knight in shining armour.” He reaches past me, his—still-bare—forearm brushing my hip. I realize I’m leaning on the mini-fridge. “Excuse me, Miss Holland.”

I scoot out of the way as he grabs the bags of ice cream. “I don’t think knights in shining armour are supposed to brag about saving the damsel in distress.”

“That’s what all the heroic epics are about.” He hands me the tote with my pint of Neapolitan for Poppy. “The knight bragging about how he rescued the fair maiden from her vehicular vicissitudes.”

My chuckle morphs into a choking fit. Between coughs, I manage to ask, “Were you… or have you ever… been an English major?”

“Business at UCLA, but I did have to take one English class.” His green eyes fill with concern as he watches me cough. “I can’t perform the Heimlich maneuver, Skye. You would have to wait for CPR.”

My coughing subsides somewhat. I wheeze out, “You just want an excuse to give me mouth to mouth.”

His smile dazzles me. “Guilty as charged.”

“Can you give me a ride?” I say. “I feel bad since you’ve done so much for me, but….”

“I already promised,” he says. “Of course, I will.”

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@Ttang: @ENews leave the poor girl alone already

@ZR789: @ENews Who cares??? Ryder Black is barely even famous

Chapter 16: Skye Holland

We stop at Leo’s house in Larchmont to put away the ice cream. It’s not far from where I grew up. He has a grand piano and for some reason, I mentioned that I used to play. Which is how I ended up here, in his living room, playing my childhood classics.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone play the piano with so much technical skill and so little emotion,” Leo says.

His presence hovers behind me where I sit on the piano bench like a shadow, a ghost, barely there yet all too present. All too real.

“Thank you,” I say, finishing Fur Elise with a flourish. Placing my hands in my lap, I pivot to look at him, suddenly aware of the sunlight slanting across the living room, casting his face in shadow. “I think.”

He sits next to me on the bench. “It was a compliment. Or, at least I wanted it to be. It sounded better in my head.”

I pause, unsure of what to say, instead letting his citrusy cologne wash over me, his body heat wrapping around me as firmly as his arm rests on my shoulders. “I don’t have any real musical talent. All I have is practice and muscle memory.”

I think of the nights I spent growing up, as a child, then ten, then as a teenager, hammering into the keyboard. Playing scale after scale, arpeggio after arpeggio, practicing Hanon and staccatos and Beethoven and Bach until I felt like my fingers would fall off. No matter how long I practiced, it was never anything more than stiff and robotic to me. Rhythms and notes in a scientific cadence of beats and tones and pitches.

Playing piano was not the escape I had hoped it might be. It didn’t transport me to another world. Like Leo said, no emotions suffused the black and white keys, bringing them to life in the way that so many of my friends and family talked about dancing or painting or acting. No colour entered my mind as I played, no matter how my fingers and hands and wrists ached. I was good at it, but it was in the way that I was good at running or doing sit-ups. It was just another exercise. There was no mindless release or art to it. It was a purely mechanical motion. I had hoped that being good at it meant I had some talent. Instead, it was just methodical. Clinical.

“Skye?” He squeezes my shoulder, bringing me back to the present moment. I blink, turning my head to look at him. “You okay?”

He knows me too well, now. With this one performance. Yet I can’t bring myself to leave, not quite yet. Just one more time, I tell myself. One more date and I can cut off this thing with him, this thing that is more than a mere relationship, more than two people in the ‘talking stage’.

“I’m fine,” I say, my face so close to his at this angle that my lips brush against his unshaven jaw, the stubble scraping against my cheek.

Kiss me,my heart says.

Hell no,my head says.Do you really want to get attached toanotherguy in the music industry?

It’s not the same… Is it? He’s not Ryder. He never will be, and he’s proven that to me.

One of his hands reaches over, his thumb brushing against my knuckles. His large hand dwarfs mine, making me feel small. Protected. But is any of it real? “I… I have an early morning tomorrow.”

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