V-Day Read online

  The music swelled under his talented hands, thanks to his mother’s early training on the piano. He yearned to catch sight of Bronwyn heading off to work. Her car was still in the drive, so perhaps she had the day off. Or wasn’t home, he considered… Oh God! What a horrible thought! Perhaps she already had another boyfriend.

  The music stopped abruptly, and he shook his head clear of the silly thoughts. Whatever Bronwyn did had nothing to do with him, as the chance of her ever seeing him as anything more than a 19-year-old with a crush was exactly zip.

  Damn Valentine’s Day, anyway, he sneered, closing the piano with a snap. Commercial nonsense built up to make single people feel like wastes of flesh.

  He briefly considered retiring to the shower, consoling himself with the notion that he could always cheer himself up with a quick jerk off, but the thought only made him feel more like a loser, and he stood quickly to dispel the dark clouds over his head.

  He very nearly pulled a Scrooge and shouted bah humbug at his gloom, and moved to the glass. There must be something enjoyable he could do with his weekend that didn’t involve girls.

  Well, if sex wasn’t a realistic goal, and masturbation was only depressing, he finally decided comfort food was his only option. He was just about to mope into the kitchen when he heard a clatter of equipment and cursing coming from his neighbor’s driveway. Sliding open the sun porch door, he stepped out into the brisk air, and there she was.

  Bronwyn Everett. In a tight red and black ski suit put on this earth for the sole purpose of driving him insane.

  And she was mad as hell.

  “E-excuse me!” he spoke up, raising a hand, seeing her struggling with a ski bag and a back pack, and not doing a great job of it. “Can I help?” Lopping over the drift between their halves of the lawn, he was immediately set upon by Goldfish, who was possibly the world’s worst guard dog, and generally loved everyone. Laughing and patting the retriever’s shaggy coat, Daniel turned from the dog to its owner. He took the long nylon duffel containing her skies and poles from her, and she gave it up without a protest.

  “Are you okay?” he hazarded. She certainly didn’t look it – the weather was cold enough to raise roses in the cheeks, but the twin spots of red in her face spoke more of high emotion than weather, as did the sheen in her huge green eyes.

  “About as well as can be expected,” she finally admitted with a watery chuckle. “I… I think I can assume from the glares I got from your mom the other day you guys heard about my break up with Warren?” He gave an awkward little shrug in response, and Bronwyn took another big breath before continuing. Reaching into the car, she hauled out two bags of groceries, which he quickly relieved her of with his free hand, and she anxiously pushed some stray wisps of hair out of her face.

  “Are you still that upset over him?” Daniel asked. “I mean… It’s been, what? A week?”

  “Yeah,” she laughed. “To a kid, that likely seems like forever.”

  Her voice wasn’t really kind, but he forgave her. Clearly, she wasn’t having a great day.

  “No,” she finally said. “I’m not really all that broken up – in many ways, he was an asshole.”

  Daniel figured his total agreement was not exactly something she would appreciate, so he remained silent as they took her provisions and equipment up to her back porch.

  “Have you been away?” he asked.

  She gave a funny sort of wry laugh. “Kinda,” she said with a puff of breath. “See, Warren – my boyfriend… ex-boyfriend – and I had booked a cabin for the weekend, you know – for a ski break. Anyway, I had the time off work already arranged when we broke up, so I decided to go anyway.”

  “Hey, that sounds like a good idea,” he offered.

  “Yeah, well…” she turned and unlocked the French doors leading into her half of the duplex. “It would have been, had Warren not had the same idea.”

  “Oh wow…” Daniel cringed for her.

  “Yeah,” she nodded. “Only, I guess he figured he may as well bring a friend.”

  “Ouch,” Daniel hissed under his breath.

  “Yep,” she released a breath that expressed embarrassment, hurt and pissed-off female.

  “Are you okay, though?” he asked, reluctant to leave her there after such a lousy morning.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she dismissed his concerns. “It was a long drive there and back today, so I just want to go inside, eat four quarts of ice cream, and forget everything that reminds me that it is fucking Valentine’s Day this weekend.”

  Dumping her backpack on the floor and turning towards the backyard, she spread her arms and called out, “Hear that world? Valentine’s is officially canceled!”

  Daniel couldn’t help but chuckle – he never knew a girl could be so cute when so upset.

  “I guess your mom won’t like that, huh?”

  “No worries,” he smiled. “She’s away for the weekend.”

  “And left you home alone?” Bronwyn lifted an eyebrow.

  “Thanks, thanks,” he rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “I am an adult now, you know?”

  “Ah yes,” she laughed. “All of what? Twenty?”

  Nineteen, he mentally corrected. “Something like that, yeah,” he said aloud.

  “Time flies,” she focused her pretty eyes on his face. “When I first got here, you were just a kid. Peeking at me through the hedges.”

  “Ah, yeah – for the record, I never did that,” he laughed nervously. “I just used to trim Mrs. Bonhauser’s bushes there… you know, for money. It’s not like I was staking the place out…”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” she laughed. “I was joking.”

  “Well, good,” he said, not sure what to say next. “But can you call me Daniel? Or Dan? Really, anything but “kid,” really…”

  “I think I can try that,” she smiled, but then a cloud of sadness came over her face. “It’s not even like I thought he was The One, you know?” she sniffed, and there was a touch of defensiveness in her voice. “It’s just… He was okay for now, if that makes sense. That son of a bitch had the nerve to run around behind my back…” Angrily, she wiped a tear off her cheek, and shook her head. “I knew he was a jerk, but I didn’t expect that, that’s all.”

  “He’s crazy,” Daniel assured her, putting so much yearning into that short line that his earnestness created a moment of awkwardness between them, as if he had confessed too much against his will.

  “Yeah, well,” she shrugged in defeat. “He’s officially the third guy who’s cheated on me, so maybe I should just get used to it, right?”

  “Or maybe find a different kind of guy…” Daniel suggested, an encouraging smile tugging on one side of his mouth.

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “Or just stick to dogs. Or get cats. You know, six cats… Really wallow in my singleness.”

  “Well, that my mother would love, for sure,” he joked, trying to prolong the lightening mood her heard in her voice.

  “Thanks, Daniel,” she said, covering his hand with hers as she took the ski bag from him. “You’ve been a big help, and I don’t just mean with the luggage.”

  “I’m glad I could be here,” he said, truthfully, suddenly feeling so much better about life in general. Bringing a smile to her face had made his day, and now even spending Valentine’s Day weekend alone didn’t even depress him.

  “Bye,” she whispered, as she went inside.

  He stood on her back steps for a few seconds after she had closed the door, still feeling the brush of her glove on the back of his hand. Then he turned, and headed back to the house, but the comfort food idea didn’t really have much appeal any more.

  In a flash The Idea came to him.

  Dashing into the house and skidding to a halt in front of the hall closet, he snagged his performance jacket and crammed it on over his white cable knit sweater, and adding a red scarf against the biting wind. Brown cords and wool didn’t necessarily go all that well with a tux jacket, but s
ometimes you just had to do what you had to do. Scooping up a long black case from the sideboard in the music room, he paused long enough to grab a pink carnation from the vase on the piano. Carnations, being cheap and cheesy, sort of had a ninth grade romance to them, but any port in a storm.

  With his usual precise care, he freed the instrument from its case – a gleaming, cherry colored violin, so familiar to him she was like an extension of his left arm now. Whipping the bow with a snap, he bolted from the house and almost leaped over the snow drift to stand beneath Bronwyn’s windows. His heart was in his throat, as he was about to do something completely foolishly romantic, and, therefore, completely and utterly out of character. He was, for the first time in his young life, about to serenade a beautiful woman. But now, in broad daylight, and surrounded by the neighbors who had seen him eat mud pies in this very backyard, he was assailed by a more typical bout of bashfulness. However, as he recalled the joy of making her smile, he steeled his strength, and stood to his full height.

  And, sticking the cheap carnation stem into the snow at his feet, he shouldered his instrument and kissed the strings with his well practiced bow. Like an athlete, he paused the barest of moments before the talent of his muscles uncoiled into the equipment, and he began to play.

  Beethoven’s Romance no. 2 in F Major. Simple, and perhaps an obvious choice, but one he knew upside down and backwards, being one of his mother’s favorite pieces of all time. Deceptively light, with just a touch of sob to the notes, the tones swirled around him, only to lift to the sky. Reaching out of him and up to her – to Bronwyn, wherever she was in her house.

  Suddenly, as he opened his eyes a moment, there she was. Just as the music lifted, as if happy to see her. Daniel watched her open her second story window and saw the laughter of enjoyment and amazement in her face as she absorbed the scene below her. As rare as it was for him to serenade a girl, he guessed it was a fairly new experience for her, as well. He could tell from her eyes she admired his playing, so he threw himself into the strains, swaying with the emotion of the piece, playing for his audience of one, experiencing the unique joy of playing very well. It might not have been the most technically perfect performance of his life, but the passion with which he played, and the simplicity of his desire to please the woman listening, made it one of the most emotionally complex executions he had delivered, and had he not been in the trance of the notes, he would have understood in a flash what Kelly had told him about the tango.

  But, instead, he just played.

  At the end of the piece, he opened his eyes again to find Bronwyn standing at the open door, with one arm folded around her sweater-clad middle, and the other pressing her slender fingers against a delighted smile. He stood for a moment, shifting his weight nervously from one icy foot to another, unsure what the hero would do next. Coming up with nothing heroic, he did the only thing that came naturally to him, which was to pluck that sad, corrugated pink carnation from the snow. Walking towards her, he stretched it out to her trembling hand, and watched her brush his simple offering against one blushing cheek, and wished he could switch places with the flower.

  “That was...” she laughed again, and rubbed her upper arms. “Is it the weather that’s giving me these chills?”

  “Very likely, yes,” he had to admit. It was uncomfortably cold out, he was finding, now that the rush of enthusiasm was leaving him.

  “No,” she denied. “You gave me chills. I had no idea... How can you play that way? My God, I never actually knew someone who could do anything like that.”

  He felt anxious under her praise, but warmed to the bones, despite the shiver that went through him.

  “Oh, my God! I’m sorry,” she said suddenly, as if just noticing that he was ankle deep in snow and hunched against the wind. “Please, Daniel – come in, and warm up. Please.”

  Not needing a second invitation, Daniel nodded and clamped his teeth against their chatter and followed her inside.

  Pleasant and warm, the house looked like he thought it would. The furniture was overstuffed and welcoming, and the interior a bit cluttered but cheerful. Exactly the way he thought her home would look.

  Daniel placed his violin safely on a bookshelf top, and removed his slush-caked shoes on the mat and followed Bronwyn through towards the kitchen, discombobulated by the general layout being an exact mirror of their own half of the duplex, while the decoration was so unfamiliar.

  In front of him, she turned suddenly, and he nearly lost his balance as he tried not to crash into her. On instinct, he brought his hands up to her arms, and then for some reason was unable to bring them back down, but instead left his fingers resting gently on the soft fawn colored wool of her long cardigan.

  Her face registered the same jolt of electricity he felt at the unexpected contact, but she made no sign of moving away from his hands.

  “I just wanted to say again, that was really lovely,” she said, her tones sweet and soft to his ears. “Nobody’s ever done anything like that for me before... It was like something from a movie!” She laughed again, a chime of a sound that told him he had truly delighted her, and pushed back a heavy lock of her gold and reddish hair. “Just... thanks. My day turned out a lot better than I really thought possible this morning.”

  With that, she rose on her tiptoes and pressed a lingering kiss on his cheek.

  “Brunch?” she asked cheerfully.

  Daniel, choked up with emotion and feeling an embarrassing rush of heat in his loins, could only nod, and was grateful when she carried on towards the kitchen, leaving him a moment to collect himself.

  Get a grip, he scolded himself silently and tried to shake off the rush of excitement. One peck on the cheek, and his body felt like it was off to the races like a randy kid.

  One thing he had learned, though – he had grossly underestimated the usefulness of serenades in his lifetime goal of getting laid.

  ***

  “So, is brunch a formal affair around here?” he asked, joining her in the kitchen and comically dusted off his lapels, making her laugh again. He had retrieved his violin from near the door, fearing a draft on the wood, and he sat it carefully on the breakfast table. He shrugged out of his tux jacket and took a moment hanging it on the back of one of her dining room chairs.

  “So, do you play professionally or something?” she asked, whipping eggs and glancing over her shoulder at him where he stood, rather stiffly. “I mean, you’re really good, and I don’t know many people who own their own tux.”

  “No, not yet,” he shrugged, feeling out of place in her homey kitchen. “I am a student at the university – music program.”

  “I kind of figured that part out,” she smiled, pouring the egg mixture over the slices of French bread in the skillet.

  “If that doesn’t work out, though, I could always find work as a strolling troubadour at some tacky restaurant for couples on their anniversaries, though, I suppose,” he joked, weakly.

  “It’s always good to have something to fall back on,” she agreed in mock seriousness.

  Picking up the cherry instrument, he cleaned off a speck of moisture with his sleeve and ran his hands along the wood to take the chill off the grain, finding the curves and the creases fit to his hand like a familiar lover. Indeed, this instrument was closer to him than most people could boast of their bed partners; it was not only his livelihood, but his nearest companion since he and his parents had pooled resources to purchase it in celebration of his letter of acceptance to university. He ran a finger along his favorite line of golden wood down the front pane.

  Just then, he turned his eyes to Bronwyn, who was watching him with the oddest expression in her eyes, which he couldn’t place exactly. She cleared her throat and turned her face towards the sizzling food, and, embarrassed, he asked if she needed help making brunch.

  He watched her hair fall down again from where she had shoved the shorter front locks behind her ears and his breath caught in his chest. The simple line of her from
the nape of her neck to the curve of her hips was pure, natural art, and he could watch the sways and dips of her body forever. He knew a crazy desire to know what she smelled like, aside from the cold air, but when she was warm and close. To know all of her scents, as he was learning all of the different ways she could smile. He watched her tongue dart out against her coral lips, and longed to feel it against his own.

  He was very hungry now, but his appetite had little to do with the French toast she was sliding onto bright blue plates.

  Over brunch, Daniel struggled to keep up the light chit chat, though his mind kept wandering. Did her hair feel as silky as it looked? Was that hint of vanilla in the air from her or from the food? Did they design the spandex of her leggings to make that whispery slithery sound every time she crossed and uncrossed her legs just to drive him crazy?

  “You know,” she sort of snorted in a very unladylike way, “I should have guessed Warren would use the cabin – he always was a cheap jerk. I should have known he wouldn’t let the deposit go that easily.” She speared a piece of bread with a tad more viciousness than she really needed to, and bit into it with white, violent teeth, sending a thrill up Daniel’s spine.

  “I gotta be honest here,” he shook his head. “I mean, I know he was your boyfriend, and everything, but the guy sounds like his collar size was bigger than his IQ. Clearly, he’s an idiot, if he ran around on you, because, honestly, I’d die to be with you.” Coughing a bit at the way the words had come out, he backtracked awkwardly. “I mean... someone like you... And, obviously, I’d prefer not to die, you know... I mean... You know what I mean.” He finished lamely, and her bark of laughter in response to his verbal gymnastics was infectious. “Yes, I am that cool,” he nodded with a self-depreciating waggle of his dark brows, and took a long swig from his juice.

  She rested her temple against her propped up hand and contemplated him a moment. “So, how old are you, anyway?” she asked, a glint of humor dancing around the green and gold in her eyes.