Page 105 of Sounds Like Love

Mitch shouted, “‘Wonderwall’!”

“Anything else?”

Mitch wilted. “Aw.”

Dad poked his head out between the backstage curtains. “How about some Elton John?”

“And that is why I love you,” Mom replied. “For your impeccable taste in music.”

“And here I thought you loved me for my good looks.”

She laughed as her hands fell across the keys, and the beginning of “Tiny Dancer” formed at the tips of her fingers. I hadn’t heard Mom play in …years. Mitch knew music and I knew theory, but Mom had the kind of rare talent that didn’t need either. She could play anything by ear. It was a talent I wished I had. Songs just came to life in her hands. They sounded bright and bold, scaring away the howling of the hurricane winds.

In the corner of the bar, the radio began to stutter and then died. There were some more batteries in the office, so I quietly slid off my barstool and left to go find them. The lobby was so dark now, my candle wasn’t enough and I had to use my phone flashlight to see anything. The light snagged on the photo of Roman Fell.

I hoped Sasha had made it inland. I hope he escaped the storm.

Don’t worry, he’s fine, I told myself, though it didn’t help. Maybe he was halfway to Raleigh by now. Maybe he could have even caught the last flight out before the hurricane grounded everything.

Maybe …

I shuffled through the office for batteries, but when I pulled open the top drawer,I found that photo of Mom onstage with that other woman. Beneath it were a few other photos from the box—the ones she wanted to keep, I guessed. I hadn’t really looked all that closely at it the first time I saw it, but on the back in Mom’s loopy script was the date it was taken—June 17, 1988. The night of the first Roman Fell concert here at the Rev—the night my parents met. An old friend, Mom had said. I studied the woman, with her pixie-short red hair and blue eyes. Familiar blue eyes.

Itcouldn’tbe …

A melody drifted through the Revelry. It drew me from my thoughts with a sort of nostalgic whiplash. I knew that song.

The one that, once upon a time, had played in my and Sasha’s heads.

My heart squeezed.Sasha?

I quickly closed the drawer and hurried out of the box office—

Finally, I wasn’t the one running away; I was runningtowardsomething.

Like a storm on the horizon, eventually everything arrived.

The front door slammed open.

The wind must have been strong. I rushed to push the door closed against the pouring rain. But as I approached, someone stepped into the doorway, their shadow blocking what little light came in.

I held my candle higher. The warm glow of it, the closer I got, chased away the gray darkness. And there was Sasha, dripping wet from head to toe. Rivulets of rain ran down his face and dripped off his edges, pooling on the tiles beneath him.

You’re here, I thought, and then remembered. “You—you’re here. I thought …”

“The bridge is flooded,” he supplied. “I can’t leave.”

But if he had just arrived, then …

His eyebrows furrowed as he finally heard the song, too. We exchanged the same look. No one else could know the song, could they? We chased after it, into the venue. Now that I really listened, it was in the wrong key, and slower than the tempo we had set. It was our song, but slightly warped, like a phrase through a game of telephone.

We opened the door from the lobby and stepped inside. Mom was still at the piano onstage.

Her fingers found the notes like they were old friends. The song was only half-finished, though, the melody only as far as it had gone in our heads.

I came up to the edge of the stage. “Mom?”

My voice startled her, and she glanced down. Smiled, lifting her fingers from the keys. “Do you have a request? Thatisn’t‘Wonderwall’?” she added with a pointed look back at the bar. “Oh, who’s this?”

---