Page 569 of Not Over You

Michele cleared his throat, successfully cutting him off. This wasn’t the time nor the place. I knew it. Everyone did. But I’d said it. It was out there. She knew this wasn’t over.

Dinner was mostly quiet after that. Only ma and Minnie made conversation with me. After seconds (actual dinner), ma asked me to do something she hadn’t in a while.

“Play the piano for me, Brio,” she said, barely having the strength to touch my arm. She looked at Lucila. “Will you sing?”

Lucila wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. She knew how much ma enjoyed the sound of her voice. We all did.

I slid onto the bench. She hesitantly slid next to me. It wasn’t huge, but she put as much distance between us as she could. My fingers ran over the keys, and my arm brushed against her breast.

She sucked in a breath but released it quietly. Her eyes met mine, the cinnamon glistening in the light. But if tempers could change the color of eyes, hers would have turned red.

What the fuck was she thinking about, though? She’d been lost in thought all throughout dinner. I had purposely touched her, but it was like I’d touched a nerve. A memory that was close to the surface of her thoughts.

“Just play,” she said through clenched teeth.

I went to play the song Lucila had been singing the first time I’d ever heard her, but she shook her head.

“Not that one.”

“How ‘bout ‘Better Man’,” Sebastiano said, crossing his arms.

“Don’t know that one,” I said.

We could play this subtle cut for cut game for as long as he wanted.

Michele cleared his throat again, taking a seat on the sofa, next to ma’s wheelchair. Unc had taken a seat on a chair in the room, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He rarely said anything. He listened and he watched. He told me once that he’d heard a million voices and more than a million issues in the span of his cabbie career. It turned him into a listener.

“What do you want to hear, ma?” I said.

She smiled. “Ooh, lady’s choice. Okay. How about…‘Fast Car’?”

Lucila’s face turned somewhat pale, but she nodded. Her nerves were exposed to the room, but as my fingers started to entice the keys, she relaxed and gave the song what it deserved—her voice and everything it could never say in plain words.

I couldn’t stand to stop. I couldn’t stand for her to stop letting me in.

Instead of finishing, I went straight into the song Lucila had sung to me the first time. I went straight into the memories.

She became still and then, in a burst of energy, stood and rushed toward the bathroom.

The silence that replaced her voice turned the room into a version of hell.

The ice in Michele’s glass clanked. Ma turned her face. The sadness in her eyes was highlighted by the dimming light. Minnie had fallen asleep next to Michele on the sofa. Aren nodded his head, like he’d dozed, and the silence had woken him up. But his eyes were still half closed.

“How about ‘Take a Bow’…” Sebastiano said, his voice trailing off when Michele narrowed his eyes.

Norah moved out of my way when I followed behind Lucila. She’d locked herself in the bathroom. I expected to hear a wrapper tearing, but I heard nothing.

That room was like my chest. Not a damn sound coming from it. I only reacted when she made a move.

Giving her some privacy, I walked away. I passed the music parlor, where Michele and Sebastiano laughed. Unc was sleeping with his head back and his mouth open.

Ma caught sight of me. “Leaving already?”

The desperation in her voice rammed through the numbness and nicked something vital.

“Nah,” I said, “just going outside for some fresh air. I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“Make sure you don’t,” she whispered.

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