Joan Kilby - Meant To Be Hers

Her breathing slowed and after a moment she sat up. “Thanks. I was afraid for a moment I was going to lose the hangover cure.”

He brushed the hair out of her eyes. Soft and silky, it slipped through his fingers as he tucked it behind her ears. “Sit here. I’ll go get my car.”

“No, just give me a minute. I’ll be all right.” She straightened and pushed his hands away. “I still don’t get why you walked out of the café.”

Finn’s sigh was more like a groan and came from someplace deep and dark. He wasn’t ready to spill his guts to Carly, not even after she’d witnessed his anxiety, so he continued talking about the side issue. “This is going to sound egotistical but I can’t stand hearing my music played by other people. Not the artists I sold it to, not even my friends.”

“Why not?” she asked. “It’s such a compliment. Aren’t you proud?”

“No one ever plays my music the way I hear it in my head.” His hands clenched. “It...grates. I try not to make a thing of it, but that’s the way it is.”

“That’s not egotistical,” she said. “That’s wanting to express your vision. You should play your music yourself, show the world how it’s supposed to sound and what it means to you. Why didn’t you take the opportunity today?”

“I wasn’t prepared.” But it was more than that, of course. Even now he could feel the band tighten around his chest and he struggled for breath. “After that failed concert I never performed before an audience again.” Not successfully, that is.

Carly lifted her head, eyes wide. “But...that’s totally messed up.”

“That’s me, messed up.”

“Wait, I’m confused,” Carly said. “The difficulty breathing, the perspiration on your forehead. That looks like anxiety to me. Are you saying you don’t want to perform, or that you can’t?”

“Can’t, don’t want to, what’s the difference?”

“Big difference. Huge.”

“It comes to the same thing.”

A crease appeared between Carly’s eyebrows as she tried to puzzle him out. “You played last night at Irene’s wake. You were right into it, enjoying yourself.”

True, but there hadn’t been an audience per se. He’d been surrounded by other musicians all singing or playing. He hadn’t even thought about it, just headed for the piano and tried to conjure Irene from the keys. Put him in front of a room of people watching and he would have frozen, as he knew from painful experience the few times he’d attempted it in Los Angeles bars.

“Well?” Carly was eyeing him like a therapist trying to bring her patient to the brink of a breakthrough.

“Don’t go getting any ideas that you can help me, or change me,” he said. “Your aunt tried to do that. It didn’t work. And I owed her a whole lot more than I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Carly touched his chest with her fingertips. “Irene didn’t believe you owed her anything, either.” Sadly, she added, “She loved you.”

“I loved her, too,” Finn said quietly. He hated that he’d hurt her. And he hated that he’d let his mother down. But he’d also vowed that he wasn’t going to try to live up to anyone’s expectations but his own.

As if she’d read his mind, Carly said, “It’s yourself you’re hurting by not fulfilling your potential.”

Not fulfilling his potential. How many times had he heard that? Way too many. His life was not a tragedy.

“I’m better off than a lot of people.” And he was grateful for it every single day. Rising, he said, “Ready to go?”

They trudged up the steep hill, Carly half a step behind, silent, no doubt still taking in everything he’d said. Finn walked faster, his shoulders bowed by the weight of everyone’s unfulfilled dreams for him. Ahead, his Mustang beckoned. He longed to sink into the soft black leather, turn the music up real loud, and head on down the road. Out on the highway, all by himself, his problems wouldn’t exist. But he couldn’t leave town so soon after the funeral when Carly was still bereft over Irene and she hadn’t found Rufus.

He slowed as he approached the car, reaching into his pocket to jingle his keys. “Do you want to drive around, look for Rufus some more?”

Carly hesitated, glancing toward the house. “I should probably go inside, see if anyone’s still there.”

“Okay, well, I’ll cruise around for a bit before I go over to Dingo and Marla’s.”

“They’ll be worried about you,” Carly said.

“They’re cool.” But he felt bad about the way things had played out. Dingo would never deliberately make Finn feel uncomfortable. He’d only played the song as a nod to him. It was Finn’s fault for not confiding fully in his friend. He’d told Carly more in the past five minutes than he’d told Dingo in twelve years. How had she managed that?

“How will I get in touch with you?” she asked. “You know, if Rufus comes home.”

“Give me your phone.” When she fished it out of her pocket, he programmed in his cell number. “I’ll be in town for a few days. I’ll touch base later tonight, see how you’re doing. Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks for helping me search, and for well, everything.” Her smile came and went quickly. “I wouldn’t have survived last night if not for you.”

“You were doing just fine.”

“No, I was floundering.”

“All you needed was a stiff drink.”

“Or five.” She made a face that was half grimace, half grin. “Thanks for the hangover, too. It’s a doozy.”

“Hey, I poured you two glasses. You did the rest.” She rolled her eyes but there was a sparkle there. Always leave ’em laughing. He opened his arms. “Come here, Maxwell.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped into his embrace. He folded his arms around her. With her head tucked beneath his chin and her cheek pressed to his chest, she fit just right.

“Everything’s going to be okay.” The words came out more gruffly than he’d intended. Truth was, he needed her emotional support as much as she needed his. Now he didn’t want to go but it was too late to make an excuse to stay.

“I know.” She hugged him hard, then kissed him briefly on the cheek before easing away, hands jammed in the front pocket of her hoodie. Her face worked and moisture filled her eyes. He was about to reach for her again when with a wave of her hand, she turned and walked swiftly up the steps. The front door opened and shut with finality.

He took a step toward the house then stopped. She’d said she was okay. Don’t push it. Things were better off uncomplicated. And the last thing he wanted was for her, or anyone, to try to fix him. His career and his relationship with his parents might be broken but he wasn’t.

* * *

CARLY CLIMBED THE front steps as the Mustang’s engine growled to life. From the porch she watched Finn do a U-turn and roar off. Here and gone, kind of like her whole experience of him. In the twenty or so years that she’d known him, she’d only seen snapshots of his life.

Childhood and long summer days when the sweetest music was the jingle of the ice cream truck. Then came the teenage years and the excitement of a new awareness. She’d eyed him covertly, managed the odd fumbling touch of hands, then that kiss in the tower...

She’d known nothing of the trials he went through during the rest of the year when she wasn’t around. He must have grappled with schoolwork that took a back seat to music, parental pressure and expectations, his family struggling to make ends meet.

In her limited viewpoint, his musical progress had come in spurts. One year he was a boy tenor playing simple pieces on the concert grand. The next summer his voice had broken and he’d graduated to longer, more complex music. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that he no longer performed. At the café he’d shown the classic symptoms of an anxiety attack. Maybe it wasn’t surprising considering how that concert had ended. It was a crime that his talent was lost to the world, whether he would have gone on to play his own music or classical.