Page 74 of Best Year Ever

I text.‘I’m outside.’

Nothing in response.

Before I tell you what I do next, I feel like I need to remind us all that I’m not a creep. I’m not looking in windows or rattling the doorknob or stalking or anything.

I just put my ear to the door, that’s all.

I put my ear to the door and I stay there, listening. Because there’s music coming from inside her apartment.

I think she must be listening to a recording of something until I realize that the tune is repeating over and over. Like she’s practicing.

I know she doesn’t play anymore, because she’s told me that several times. Not that I keep asking, but people talk—it comes up because when she was a student here, that’s who she was. The violinist. I heard her play in a concert my first year working here. She was incredible. But she said she’s done with playing, so maybe it’s not her. Maybe she has someone else in her apartment rehearsing the same section of whatever beautiful melody this is, again and again.

No. It’s her. I just know it. And I stand here and listen until the repeating tune fades into silence.

I should give her a minute, but I don’t want to wait.

I knock again.

Standing this close, I can hear her move toward the door. I take a step back.

She doesn’t open up.

“Hello?” she says, as if she’s answering the phone.

“Hi. It’s Grayson,” I say. “Can I talk to you?”

She sniffles. Her voice comes out thick. “It’s not a great time.”

“Are you crying?” I try not to sound panicked by the idea, but it freaks me out to think that I did this. I ruined another date, and I made her cry. Look, I know I’m full of flaws, but I’m not usually a guy who makes women cry.

“Not very much,” she says.

“How much crying is very much?” I ask. Not because I think she can quantify tears, but because I want to keep talking to her, even if I have to stand out here on the wrong side of her apartment door to do it.

“Is there something you want?” she asks.

There are several things I want, and if she gives me a chance, I’ll probably admit them all to her right now. But something about her tone tells me that’s not exactly what she means.

“I want to check on you. I hate that I disappeared on you, and I need to know if you’re okay.”

She sniffles again. “You didn’t disappear. You answered an emergency call.” I hear a sliding sound, and I think she sits down on the floor. When she speaks again, her voice is closer to the ground. I sit down, too. The concrete step is cold.

“You can’t come in,” she says.

Am I supposed to ask why? I don’t need to know why.

“Okay. Is it all right if I sit here and talk?”

“Why would you want to do that?” she asks.

“I love talking with you.”

She sighs. “I mean, why would you want to sit outside my door?”

Should I be honest and tell her I really don’t? I’d much rather be on the same side of the door she’s on.

“I like being where you are,” I tell her. It’s true, and it answers her question, and it comes close to what I want to say to her.

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