Refrains of the Heart Page 4

  It kinda felt like a really good first date, when you’re left with an itch to see the person again, find out more. Louise laughed at herself, at the thought, then pushed it away. She hadn’t had that many really close female friends in college or as an adult. Maybe this was just what it was like.

  *

  Louise’s cell phone rang shrilly when she was on the bus on the way to Jennifer’s practice hall, her bag of art supplies and two canvases resting awkwardly between her knees and the back of the seat in front of her. It took her a frustrating long few seconds to dig the phone out from her pocket and she didn’t have time to check caller ID before she flipped it open.

  “Hello?” she said breathlessly, hoping Jennifer wasn’t calling to cancel.

  “Hey, babe.” For a moment the voice was unfamiliar, then very much not. Louise felt her hackles rise like a physical thing.

  “Mark, why are you calling me?”

  “Steve’s fed up of me in his guest bed. It’s been nearly a week. Can I move back in yet?”

  For a moment Louise was speechless. “I—what?”

  “I know you needed some time to cool off. I’m sorry. I’ll totally support your art. Let’s fix this, okay?”

  “I thought we made it pretty clear you were moving out. And if not, the fact we haven’t spoken once in the week since kind of cemented that.”

  “I—”

  “I mean actually moving out, for real, the end.”

  “I know you said that then. But that was in the middle of an argument, you never mean things when you say them like that.”

  “That’s your impression, Mark. I said it and I meant it, and surely even you could see we’d been together out of expectation and habit more than anything else recently? Tell me you’ve missed me this past week and not having somewhere nice to live.”

  There was a telling pause. “Louise,” he said plaintively.

  She sighed. “I don’t have a car and it’s a pain in my ass, but I’m taking the bus. You don’t have a house and it’s a pain in the ass, but you’ve got savings. Get your own place. Move on. We’re both of us going to be happier in the long run. I don’t want you to move back in and I don’t think you really want to either.”

  “You’ve met someone else, haven’t you.” His voice was ugly, which meant he knew Louise was right and didn’t want to admit it.

  “No,” she said calmly, though she went hot in the face like she was lying, which was stupid. The truth of it was that she had met someone else since Mark had left—or rather, she’d become reacquainted with someone she’d thought was gone for good. The old Louise, the girl she’d let fade into the background without realizing it, was back, and Louise had no intention of letting her go again. She sighed, itching to cut off the conversation before Mark said something else to draw this out, make her yell at him when really she didn’t want to waste the energy. “Mark, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around, maybe, but have a good life, okay?”

  She hung up before he could say anything further. She realized with a lurch that she was twenty seconds away from the stop she needed. She hit the button and scrambled her way down the bus, canvases big and awkward, the bag of supplies crashing against her hip, easel banging into her back and shoulder.

  Chapter Four

  She was breathless and frazzled by the time she made it off the bus and, of course, that was when Jennifer turned the corner half a block down to meet her, right on time.

  Louise bit back her irritation—her hair was probably everywhere and she’d wanted to put on some fresh lipstick—and smiled in greeting as Jennifer came over. “Hey.” She put the canvases down on the sidewalk a moment to gather herself. “Sorry,” she said, gesturing to all her stuff.

  “You should have said you’d be carrying all this. I didn’t realize you’d be getting the bus. I could’ve ordered a cab or something.”

  Louise shrugged, trying to subtly smooth her hair back. “No, it’s fine. The ex took the car, so I figure the bus is a small price to pay.”

  Her phone rang again then, shrill and demanding. Louise pulled it out, said, “Oh, speak of the fucking annoying piece of shit devil.” She hit the button to send it to voice mail.

  Jennifer winced. “He’s not as happy with the split? Sorry, God, I don’t meant to pry—”

  Louise shrugged. “No, it’s fine.” She took the bag and started to awkwardly grab the canvases. Jennifer made a dismissive noise and took the bag from her so Louise could have both hands free. “Thanks. No, I think he liked how easy it was, you know? Plus, I still have the house.”

  Jennifer laughed. “Ah, of course. He wants his laundry and food service back as much or more than he wants you back, you think?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Whereas I would love nothing more than to never have to wash his socks ever again,” said Louise fervently. Jennifer laughed, dropping her head back, hair tumbling and dimples digging in deep. For a long moment, Louise could only look at her, wanting to drink in the sight of her, before she realized what she was doing and made herself look away.

  Jennifer’s practice hall was in town rather than on the campus. It was a bright loft space she rented for practice and to sometimes compose when she was in town. “I don’t compose very much,” she said awkwardly, “but it’s something I love to do. I’m trying to get together the courage to do an album of my own pieces, not just performances of others, but I make my living doing recitals of others’ work so, at the moment, that’s what sells.”

  “I told you that you were creative with your hands. That’s amazing.”

  Jennifer shrugged. “Amazing might be an overstatement, but I like doing it.”

  Louise put the bag of supplies down in the middle of the room and looked around. “Okay. Where do you want me?” Louise wondered if she imagined the sly glance Jennifer threw her after saying that and a frisson of heat skipped down her spine. “Um.” She blinked, then looked around properly. It was a good space, with good light. “This place is great. The lighting and everything. It looks more like an artist’s studio than a musician’s.” The windows were big and clean, the ceilings high in the center and sloping down. The walls were plain, painted off-white with pale wood beams as features, and the grand piano was set in the east-facing corner of the room.

  Jennifer shrugged. “I’ve never liked hunching over a piano in a dark little room. The openness helps the music, too. Good acoustics.” She went to sit at the piano and lightly posed her fingers over the keys. “Something like this?”

  Louise unslung her easel from her back and pulled up one of the chairs dotted around to set up in the opposite corner of the room. “No, I don’t need you to pose or anything.” She looked at Jennifer thoughtfully. “Can you just play?”

  “What do you want me to play?”

  Louise lay down a sheet on the floor and started setting up her paints. She picked up a pencil and flexed her fingers around it, readying herself for the preliminary sketch. She thought about it. The pieces Jennifer had played the first night Louise had seen her seemed appropriate, as that had sparked her art so strongly, but this was a portrait. The music would feed into it and it was supposed to be of Jennifer, not of anyone else. “Maybe one of your own pieces? Something that has a feel that you think is very you.”

  Jennifer nodded and looked down at the piano for a moment, her face calm and thoughtful. She trailed her fingers along the piano keys, a caress, then started to play. Her face changed into something both intensely focused and immensely calm.

  She was wearing a black top with an elegant scoop neck and cap sleeves, and a flared dark red skirt. Her hair fell glossy and dark, tucked behind her ear on the side nearest to Louise, the other side falling down straight. She had a delicate silver necklace against the smooth skin of her throat. Thin tendons moved under the fine skin of her wrist as she played, and her long fingers danced over the keys, her leg moving softly on the pedal, her shoulders rising and falling with her breath, with the music.

  For a moment, Louise wishe
d, more strongly than she could remember, that she could truly paint people, capture them alive and lifelike and familiar, because the image of Jennifer here was breathtaking. But Louise never could. She could mimic things well enough, she was an artist, but it never had heart. Her talent lay in paintings that you felt things in, not that you recognized things in, and the urge to copy Jennifer as she was faded once Louise closed her eyes and listened.

  The music was playful and light, little tumbling piles of chords building up over and over, toppling down in waterfalls of bright sound, with a winding melody picked out from amongst them. It layered deeper, something somber and beautiful emerging underneath it. Louise didn’t register her pencil moving until she opened her eyes and she saw lines starting to swirl over her canvas.

  The way Louise worked had never owed much to sketching. Her hand flew over the canvas in broad strokes, setting up the framework for the piece, but it didn’t take long before the pencil had been set aside in favor of her preferred tool, the broad-headed brush. She painted feverishly, faster as the energy of the music picked up, then calming when it lulled. She looked between the canvas and Jennifer, sometimes closing her eyes. Her brain was bright and buzzing with electric energy, inspiration thrilling through as she took the beauty of the music, of the room, of Jennifer, and made it her own, into the bursting colors and shapes of her art. The connection between them felt tangible, somehow, all Jennifer’s passion bleeding into Louise’s. Their love for their crafts fueled each other. Louise was conscious of every nerve in her body, every inch of her skin. Art had made her feel this way, once upon a time, so caught up in it that it was almost like sexual arousal, making her breath quicken and her pulse pound. She’d forgotten.

  She was done, suddenly. Jennifer was still playing, but Louise was done. She didn’t want to add another drop of paint because it was all there, it couldn’t be any more true to what she was doing. She rinsed her brushes carefully as Jennifer kept playing, then sat and looked at her painting as Jennifer carried the music through to the end.

  The room rang with silence as the last note faded and Jennifer blinked, looked over at Louise nervously.

  Louise couldn’t think for a moment why Jennifer was nervous—Louise was the one sitting here with her heart trying to flutter out of her chest—when she remembered. Jennifer wrote that. Jennifer was showing her art in the same way Louise was.

  “That was incredible,” Louise said. “I don’t know anything about music, but even I know that was amazing. I don’t care who you have to shout at to get your own album made, it has to be.”

  Jennifer ducked her head and smiled. “Thanks. You know, hardly anyone’s ever heard that. It’s so weird to play it.”

  “They’re missing out.”

  “Have you—are you finished?”

  Jennifer stood up and Louise’s nervousness thudded back in threefold. “Yeah, I’m done. I’m not…I don’t really do, you know, normal portraits.”

  But Jennifer wasn’t paying attention to her, she was walking around to stand behind Louise and look at the art. All of a sudden it just seemed like a mess of paint, a child’s finger-smeared play. Louise wished she’d tried real-life mimicry after all.

  “That’s me?” Jennifer sounded incredulous.

  Louise’s stomach sank to her toes. “It is.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  Louise’s stomach rose and filled with light. The art stopped being a childish mess and resolved back into the wonder of Jennifer and her music. “Really? You like it?”

  “This is incredible.” Her arm moved over Louise’s shoulder. Louise was abruptly aware of the heat and presence of Jennifer behind her. “I can see the music. It’s right there. It’s all along here and down here.” She traced the fluttering notes of yellow and white Louise had painted down into the low darker blue beat. “And this is me, here, isn’t it?” Jennifer was pointing to the richer swirl on the left side, the one that was themed similarly to the painting Louise had done before of the talk, of Jennifer. Thick sheen of black, rich sensuous curves of red, bright sparks of white and gold. It made Louise feel incredibly self-conscious seeing it there, so sensual and intimate, when she barely knew Jennifer. But she couldn’t help how she painted her.

  “So beautiful. That’s what you see? When you look at me?”

  Jennifer had leaned in and down. Her breath was a light touch on Louise’s neck. Louise closed her eyes, her heart pounding, her little fingers tingling, a giddy unbelievable inevitability building in her.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  She opened her eyes and turned her head. Jennifer’s face was right there. Her skin was clear and bright. Her mouth was full and red and soft. Her eyes were dark and fixed on Louise’s with an intensity that made Louise’s face go hot.

  Louise opened her mouth, meaning to say something, she was sure. Or maybe she just opened it for the kiss which came. Jennifer’s lips pressed against hers, warm and real and so soft, softer than she could have imagined. When Louise moved into the kiss, her lips slid against Jennifer’s like silk, making her body flush and goosebumps rise in a nearly painful rush down her spine and along her arms.

  She breathed in through her nose, a needy gasp of air, and her hand came up thoughtlessly to the side of Jennifer’s face. Jennifer shifted and Louise gripped harder to keep her there, but she was just moving to kneel down at the side of the chair. Jennifer’s hand came up to rest on Louise’s neck.

  Louise caught Jennifer’s incredible lower lip between her own and sucked on it lightly, head spinning at how soft it was, how good this was. Her body was moving on autopilot, angling toward Jennifer. When Jennifer pressed her thumb gently to Louise’s jaw and slid her tongue along Louise’s bottom lip and inside her mouth, Louise’s whole body seized up in the surge of want. She made a small noise in the back of her throat. Jennifer kissed her harder, her lips giving against the pressure. Louise’s brain clicked back online and she felt like she was going to explode.

  Louise broke away from the kiss, air feeling cool on her spit-slicked and kiss-swollen mouth. She let go of Jennifer’s face and pulled herself from Jennifer’s grip, standing up on rubbery legs, staring down at Jennifer.

  “I—” she said. “Oh God.”

  “Louise, what’s wrong?” Jennifer stood up. Her mouth was so red, swollen like Louise’s, from Louise’s.

  “I didn’t—I mean—I…” She couldn’t spit it out, because she didn’t know how to say it. She hadn’t expected it? Wasn’t that a lie? She’d known it was going to happen just before it did. She shook her head.

  “Are you straight?” Jennifer sounded shocked, which was fair enough, considering the making out and the flirting Louise was pretty sure she’d been responding to. She was straight, or had been. She didn’t know. Her whole body wouldn’t shut up, heart pounding, mouth tingling, palms sweaty, and this urgent liquid heat in her belly telling her she wanted Jennifer close to her, touching her, kissing her again.

  “I don’t really know.” Louise finally got out a whole sentence, her voice small.

  Jennifer approached her carefully like she was a spooked animal, which felt accurate. “I—are you okay? Was that okay? I thought you wanted it.”

  “No, it’s not your fault. I’m just really confused right now. I need some time.” She wanted to lean toward Jennifer, let her touch her again. It was as if it would all feel better if she could, but she also wanted to get out of there, let herself calm the hell down and figure this out. She’d never felt like this about another woman before. Another person, before, not this much, said a small voice in her head, but she shook it away.

  “Louise, I think we should talk this out. I don’t want you to just go.”

  “Please, just let me.” Louise was desperate. She was sure she couldn’t withstand Jennifer asking again. Maybe this was just some twisted hero-worship thing. Some bastardization of how grateful she was to Jennifer for unlocking her art.

  “Okay,” Jennifer said. “Okay. Let’s get y
our things—”

  “No, keep the art. I’ll get my paint and stuff later. I just need some air.” Louise backed toward the door, like a damn coward.

  The bus journey home passed in a daze. She could have stayed in that daze, not thinking, not letting herself think, until she’d found the strength to push it down and away and maybe never think of it again. Maybe she could have, if she hadn’t walked home and seen the painting she’d done after Jennifer’s talk propped up in the middle of the living room.

  It was so obvious now that it was almost embarrassing. Her attraction to Jennifer was painted in deep colors over canvas, unaware and explicit. She closed her eyes. Involuntarily, the sensation of Jennifer’s mouth on her own flooded back and made her body surge and heat again. She sat down on the floor, hands gripping at the carpet as though Jennifer were here and she could grip her instead. She wanted to pull her close, let the warm reality of her body press flush against Louise’s, feel her softness and heat.

  Louise opened her eyes again and stared at the painting. “You idiot, fuck you, you goddamn idiot,” she whispered. She wanted to think it was any other reason—that it was because she’d just broken up with Mark, that her body was confusing one feeling for another, that it was just simple curiosity because she knew Jennifer was gay, that she was flattered because she thought Jennifer had been flirting with her—but her fascination with Jennifer had started that first evening. And it had been about the music, it had, but it hadn’t only been about the music. If it had been someone else, someone without those dark eyes and a luscious red mouth and sweet little dimples and her way of playing, then it might have come to nothing. It might have just been another boring recital. It had all fed in together and Louise couldn’t separate it out. She was completely and desperately attracted to Jennifer.

  She’d never thought of herself as anything but straight. If she’d been asked, she would have said it made sense that sexuality could be fluid, that there was nothing wrong with this attraction. It could be just Jennifer, or it could be just a few women, or it could be many women from now on. All sensible advice that she could have sagely offered to a friend.