Consent (7 page)

“Excuse me?”

“You mentioned the other day that you were thinking of pursuing pre-law at university. Why?”

“Well . . . um . . .”

His ocean eyes flit across my face as he waits for my response.
This
is what he wanted to talk to me about? And how am I supposed to answer?
I have zero interest in pre-law, it's just something I made up to explain why I'm not going to be a piano performance major. Ever.

“My dad is a lawyer. I think I'd be good at it too,” I say, improvising.

“I see. What kind of law does your father practice?”

“Mostly criminal defense.”

“Is that what you'd like to specialize in? Criminal defense?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe?”

“And what does your mother do?”

“My mom is . . . she passed away.”

Dane gives a start. “Oh! I'm very sorry. I had no idea.”

“That's okay. It's pretty much ancient history.”

“Yes, but still . . .”

He sits back in his chair and gazes pensively out the window. How did we get on this subject? I don't talk about my mom often, or ever—not even with Plum.

“Beatrice?”

“What?”

“I hope I'm not speaking out of school. It's just that I've never met anyone like . . . anyone your age with so much musical potential. You belong at a conservatory, not a regular college. You have a great future as a pianist, if you choose to go that route.”

You have a great future as a pianist.
No one has ever said those words to me before. For a fleeting moment I'm insanely pleased, before the warning bells start going off in my brain.

“Hasn't your Mrs. Lugansky told you as much? Surely, she's offered to advise you on conservatories and help you prepare your applications?” Dane goes on.

I fold and unfold my napkin, which has
Café Tintoretto
printed on it in gold cursive. I take a few deep breaths to try to quell my growing anxiety. If only I'd taken photography with Mrs. Lutz instead.

But then I might have never met Dane.

“There is no Mrs. Lugansky,” I confess.

“Sorry . . . what?”

“There is no Mrs. Lugansky. I don't have a piano teacher. I've never had a piano teacher.”

“You're not . . . are you telling me you're
self-taught
?”

“Yes. From books and online and stuff. I invented Mrs. Lugansky a long time ago.”

“Why in the world would you do such a thing?”

I fold my arms across my chest defensively. “I didn't want to tell people that I taught myself piano because . . . well . . . how you reacted just now. It makes me sound like a complete freak. So I created a fictional piano teacher.” I don't add that sometimes lies just come out of my mouth for no good reason, and then I have to tell more and more lies for maintenance purposes. I also don't mention the thing about my mom and dad.

“You're self-taught,” Dane says with a stunned expression. “Do your parents . . . I mean, does you father . . . is there some reason why he didn't enroll you in lessons when you were a child?”

“It's complicated.”

His brow furrows. He seems to be considering something.

“Listen. Beatrice. I'd like you to play for someone I know,” he says after a moment.

“Someone who?”

“My teacher. My former teacher. I can ring her and ask her if she would be willing to hear you.”

“Does she live around here?”

“No, she lives in New York. She's on the faculty at Juilliard.”

“Juilliard?”

The warning bells are going crazy now.
God.
I should never have taken music history. I should never have snuck into Dane's classroom to practice. I should never have agreed to join his little trio.

Tears well up in my eyes. I swipe at them quickly so he doesn't see.

He frowns, alarmed. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, of course not. I have to run now. Thanks for the coffee.”

I stand up to go. Dane stands up too and catches my wrist in his hand.

We stare at each other. The room disappears.

What is happening?

“I'm so sorry,” he murmurs.

“Sorry for what?”

“For upsetting you. That's the last thing I wanted to do.”

He moves closer, and his hand travels up my arm, leaving sparks of fire in its wake. He is a millimeter away from . . . what? Hugging me? Kissing me?

And then I feel a sudden cold void as he jerks away.

“I shouldn't have . . . I'm sorry. See you in class.”

He scoops up his laptop and pile of music scores. And then he is the one to run.

Later, I'm due at Plum's for a sleepover. Actually, it's a sleepover/Common-App-essay-writing party, which was of course her idea.

As I walk to the Sorensons', my backpack slapping against my side, the air is cool and smells like moss. The leaves on the trees are beginning to tweak gold and orange. The sky is the color of metal.

My neighborhood looks different. Unreal. Hazy and shimmery, like the inside of a kaleidoscope. The cookie-cutter houses of the Pleasant Meadow development, the SUVs parked in the driveways . . . they have become interesting and even beautiful in this weirdly altered light.

I am a mess right now. Buzzy and tingly, rattled and agitated. Something has changed between Dane and me. I'm not sure what it is, but . . .
something.

We didn't hug or kiss this afternoon at the café. He barely even touched me. But that moment we shared was more profound, more electric than anything I ever experienced with the inconsequentially few guys from my past. Andy McDermott, who I used to make out with in eighth grade, clothes on, whenever I was bored. Gil Northman, who I dated for a semester sophomore year because he was smart and funny, but whose kisses were all barbed-wire braces and peanut-butter breath. Braden, who I almost lost my virginity to over the summer—not because of love or even lust, but because I thought I should get the experience over with, and he's an okay person.

Plum always said that she and I were too good for Eden Grove boys, that we would find our soul mates when we were older and living glamorous, successful lives in some big city.

What is she going to say when I tell her about today?

Although what
is
there to say about today? How can I tell her that nothing happened and everything happened, all at once?

I've gone nearly six blocks before I realize that it's raining and that my hair and clothes are soaking wet. In fact, I've turned down the wrong street—I'm on Lake, which leads to downtown rather than to Plum's street. Are my feet retracing the way to Café Tintoretto?

Part of me wants never to see him again,
because.
And there
is the Juilliard business too, which absolutely can't happen.

Another part of me wants to fall into his arms right this second. Because isn't this how two people start? A spark of attraction, a shared passion, and then one thing leads to another . . . ?

But we aren't just “two people.” Also, I wonder how old he is.

This is all very complicated and confusing.

Headlights glimmer at me through the rain. A car pulls up to the curb and stops. The driver's-side door opens, and a man gets out. For a brief, wild moment I think that it's Dane. He has followed me to explain, to console me, to confess his feelings. . . .

No, not Dane.

The man circles around to the passenger side door and opens it. He holds up an umbrella as a woman gets out and teeters on high heels. He catches her in his arms, and they laugh. He starts to kiss her on the forehead, but she tips her mouth up to meet his, and they kiss for real.

Arm in arm, they cross the street and walk into a restaurant.

The sight of them makes my heart hurt. They seem to have figured out this relationship thing—this
love
thing—and right now I feel as though I will never, ever comprehend it. How do people
know
? What is it that I feel for Dane, exactly? Is it a dumb crush? Daddy issues? Am I flattered by
his attention? Desperate for someone to encourage my piano playing? Or am I genuinely drawn to his intelligence and talent and kindness?

Or is love just one big, messy combination of all of the above?

As soon as I knock on the Sorensons' door, Plum flings it open and pulls me into the hallway. Shakespeare trots up to us, nails clicking against the hardwood floor, and barks dutifully at me.

“Shakespeare, be
quiet 
! Bea, you didn't answer my texts. How was your date with Kit Harington?” Plum demands.

Mr. Sorenson wanders into the hallway, cradling a bowl of popcorn. He is six foot six and towhead-blond, a veritable Nordic god.

“Kit Harington? Who had a date with Kit Harington?”

Plum sighs. “No one, Daddy! It's just a joke!”

“Yes, of course it is. I apologize for my obtusity—or is it obtuseness? Hello there, young Beatrice, how goes the pursuit of truth?”

I never know quite what he's talking about; also, he pronounces my name the Italian way,
Bee-ah-tree-chay,
even though
I'm half Korean and half Ukrainian and zero Italian. But he's so jovial and nice that I don't mind any of it. “Fine, thanks, Mr. Sorenson. How is your work?”

“I've been commissioned to design a new museum in Los Angeles. I'm thinking of using paper tubes as building materials. Of course, they all think I'm crazy.”

“You
are
crazy, Daddy!” Plum says with an eye roll.

“Lars, darling! You're going to miss the big scene!” Mrs. Sorenson trills from the living room.

“I believe that's my cue! I bid you adieu, ladies.”

Mr. Sorenson drifts back into the TV room, munching noisily on popcorn. Plum hooks her arm through mine and drags me up the stairs.

Once we are in her room, she closes the door and turns to me with an expectant grin.
“So?”

“So. I don't know. It was . . .” I drop my overnight bag on the floor and sink onto the bed. “He, um . . . there was this moment.”

“What sort of moment?”

“Well, we were having this kind of intense conversation about music, and I got up to go, and he grabbed my wrist.” I demonstrate. “For a second I thought he was going to kiss me or something.”

“
Did
he?”

“No. It got awkward, and then he left.”

“It
was
a date, then!” Plum cries out.

“Shhh, your parents will hear you.”

“It
was
a date, then,” she repeats in a hushed voice.

“I don't think so.”

“Teachers don't just go around grabbing wrists and acting awkward and so forth.”

I lean back against a mountain of mismatched pillows: green velvet, orange silk, Chinese calligraphy, Hello Kitty, a stegosaurus. “Maybe I misinterpreted.”

“He's not married, is he?” Plum asks.

“No. Or at least I don't think so. He doesn't wear a wedding ring.”

“Where does he live?”

“No idea.”

“Where is he from, then?”

“England, maybe? He has a British accent, and he said this thing about Tootsie Rolls.”

“Tootsie Rolls? What? Wait, you haven't Googled him yet? Beatrice Natalia Kim, what is
wrong
with you?”

“Everything?”

Sighing, Plum grabs her laptop and plops down on the bed next to me. “Okay. All right. What's his first name?”

“Dane.”

She begins typing furiously. “Dane . . . R-O-S-S-I.”

After a moment she slants the screen toward me. “There's a Wikipedia page on his family. Oh, and he's one of those middle-name people. His full name is Gabriel Dane Rossi.”

“What? Really? Let me see.”

We read the page together, our heads bent close. It says that Dane's parents and also his sister are professional musicians. His mother, Dominique Kessler, plays violin with the London Philharmonic. His father, Gabriel Aldo Rossi, is a cellist and a member of the Bella Musica Quartet, which has won a bunch of Grammys. His sister, Lisette Rossi, is an opera singer in Paris.

Holy cow.

There is a small mention of Dane: that he was born and raised in London and that he earned his bachelor's at Juilliard as a student of—I startle—Annaliese van Allstyne. Seriously? She is a famous pianist. I had no idea that she was also a professor.

The brief bio on Dane goes on to say that after Juilliard he taught here and there—private lessons and also at a prep school outside of New York City called the Greenley Academy—and gave a dozen or so concerts, mostly in Europe, mostly in places I've never heard of.

And now he's in Eden Grove.

I do some quick math. He's twenty-seven—so, ten years older than me. Nine, if you consider the fact that I'll be eighteen in December. We're not that far apart, really.

Plum points to the Greenley reference. “I know someone who goes there.”

“Who?”

“Lakshmi, my neighbor. I guess it's a pretty fancy place. I'll have to ask her if she ever had Mr. Rossi for a teacher.”

“I wonder why he left there to come to A-Jax?”

“Because he was destined to meet you, obviously.”

“Obviously, ha-ha.” I pick up the Hello Kitty pillow and hug it tightly. “I can't believe he thinks Annaliese van Allstyne would be willing to hear me.”

“Huh?”

“At the café. That's why he wanted to meet with me. He said he wants me to play for his old teacher at Juilliard.”

“You mean, like a recital?”

“No, not exactly. Like privately. Like in a lesson. People sometimes do that if they're interested in applying to a music school for college.”