Wise men say
Only fools rush in.
My first semester at college, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a wild child. I spent most of my time holed up in my room, facetiming with my high school boyfriend who was at Dartmouth. (My SAT scores didn't take me anywhere near Dartmouth, in fact they couldn't even drag me out of state. Barely phased, Greg packed up his lacrosse gear and headed to the Ivies without me.)
Luckily, my roommate, Cate, was a social butterfly, and rarely wanted alone time, so I was free to sigh and swoon over my phone by myself. I went to class, ate in the cafeteria, studied with a small group of girls who had the same ambitions as I did (med school or bust), and wrote embarrassingly-long messages to Greg about how much I missed the way he touched me.
The first couple of months rolled by and the leaves began to turn to rust and sunset-orange. Greg's messages became increasingly shorter and less loving, and I fell further into absolute denial.
So when I first saw Charlie, I barely registered his existence.
I was walking with Cate to lunch, and we were running across the quad, because the first cold snap had settles across campus and we were way underdressed. When we finally made it into Williams Hall we were freezing cold, desperately trying to rub some feeling back into our numb fingers. I didn't even notice the music until Cate craned her neck to see over the crowd that had gathered.
In the lobby of Williams, just outside the entrance to the cafeteria, there's this great big piano. Left over, I guess, from when people had better things to do than stare at their phones all day. Usually people only used it to plunk out Heart and Soul or show off to their friends by playing some section of a sonata they learned when they were twelve. Once in a while some guy will try to impress a giggling pile of girls by mangling Ben Folds. But mostly, the thing sat untouched (much like me).
Charlie's fingers were dancing across the keys, his back straight, his whole body practically vibrating with the energy of the piece. But his eyes were closed, and there was an almost blissful expression on his face.
"Wow," breathed Cate. "He's good."
I would be lying if I said I didn't notice the way his hair fell across his face, the way he leaned into the music. But I'd also be lying if I said my heart beat faster or I thought about anything other than how much studying I had to do for Bio.
"Yeah, he's okay," I said, shifting the weight of my backpack onto one shoulder. "Come on, I don't want to miss the cheesecake."
I didn't think about Charlie again for two weeks. I wouldn't have thought about him ever again, except for the fact that he ran straight into me while I was coming out of a Chem exam.
Papers flew everywhere, sheet music intermingling with my ten page Communications midterm and my notes from Bio that morning. I wish I could say we'd both bent down to pick up the same piece of paper, and our fingers had brushed, and we'd both looked up and that's when I knew. But that's so not how it happened.
I stood there for a minute, totally stunned, while he scrambled around on the floor trying to grab everything. And then when I finally recovered my senses and tried to walk across the hallway to gather the papers that had fluttered away in the draft from the wall vent, I stepped on his hand.
He sucked in a breath and pulled back his hand, just as I bent down and let out an "Ohmygod I'msosorry Ididn'tmeantodothat" while wringing my own hands like a useless idiot.
"That's okay," he winced, flexing his fingers. "I think I'll live."
"I'm so sorry," I said again.
"It's really okay." He started gathering up the papers again, his hair doing that thing where it fell into his face.
"Will you still be able to play?"
"Huh?" He shot me a slightly suspicious look, as if I might be some kind of stalker.
"The music," I said quickly. "Sheet music, everywhere, not mine so it must be yours."
"Right," he said, handing me a page of my essay.
I handed him a page of his music and happened to glance at the composer printed along the bottom.
"Rachmaninoff," I said, impressed. "Ambitious."
"It's giving me a lot of trouble," he admitted. His face relaxed into an easy grin, clearly mistaking me for a fellow music nerd. "Here, I think this is yours." He was holding a page of my Bio notes, all my little questions and doodles scrawled in the margins.
"Yep, that's mine," I smiled back. "Thanks."
Having successfully sorted my work from his, I stood up to go.
"What's your instrument?" he asked.
"I don't have one," I said, tucking my papers and notebook into my backpack where they should have been in the first place. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Not disappointing at all," he smiled, raising his eyebrows. "Actually, it gives me a lot of hope for my future career to know that someone who doesn't play music actually knows who Rachmaninoff is."
"Fair enough," I said with a wave, and turned to go. I didn't bother telling him that my father had been a violist and my mother had been a dancer, before they'd moved here and opened an antique rug store. For one thing, it wasn't information I shared regularly-too many bullies in elementary school had found it beyond ironic that I was the daughter of such a beautiful, romantic love story. And for another thing, I preferred to let him live with the idea that random people off the street knew Rachmaninoff.
"Hey!" he called after me. I spun around, and he jogged up, offering me a hand. "I'm Charlie."
"Nadya," I said, shaking it. His hand was warm and firm around mine, and a tingle inched its way up my arm.
"See you around," he said, with one last grin.
I didn't see him before Thanksgiving break. I returned home to catch up with high school friends, eat too much mashed potatoes, and try to forget that Greg had chosen to go to Aspen with his new lacrosse friends from Dartmouth rather than spend the long weekend with me, curled around each other in my parents' basement. I watched Tom Hanks movies. I checked my phone for text messages that never came. I went shopping with my mom and bought a new coat. And on Sunday, I packed away all of my summer clothes and loaded woolen tights and fisherman sweaters into my suitcase. Snowflakes had blown around our neighborhood flag football game (traditional, every year it took place post-parade but pre-turkey) and the skies had turned blustery and grey. Winter was whispering its imminent arrival around every corner.
At school, nothing much had changed, but I sometimes saw Charlie in the honors lounge. He was usually staring at his computer, his brow furrowed, his fingertips racing across the keys much like they did on the piano. I didn't want to bother him, but when he saw me he usually waved.
"Rachmaninoff!" he'd call, ignoring the dirty looks from the other students. I'd smile, and wave back. And he'd hustle over to where I was sitting, plop down in the chair next to mine, and get back to work.
We never really talked, other than to exchange a question or two about whatever we were working on and a dumb joke here or there. There was no electricity or spark, but a kind of warmth and comfort wafted over me when I was around him. Friendship, I told myself. Just friendship. Nothing more.
That was about it, until finals week.
It was one of those days when nothing seemed to go right. I had a terrible feeling about my Bio final, I'd spilled tea on my favorite sweater, I wasn't packed at all for my trip home in the morning, and That Girl had shown up in Greg's Insta stories again.
I didn't even know her name. Blonde, curvy, all-American with a giant smile. When I'd asked him about her the month before, he'd replied that she was "just a friend," and I'd been prepared to leave it. But then he'd gone on to say that she was "super smart" and "very ambitious and driven" and even "serious about her future," AKA all of the things I most definitely was not. And I'd gotten suspicious.
Again and again she'd appeared in his stories. Never tagged, never mentioned by name. Just little clips of her, usually with another one of their friends, doing stupid stuff that they evidently thought was funny. Failing at tiktok dances. Today it was a study session with her and a few other people, one of whom was chugging a massive bottle of Coke, apparently in an effort to stay awake for more studying.
But one of his friends
was
tagged in the story, Josh. And Josh's profile was public. And Josh had some stories about their study session, too. And there, in the background of the ambitious Coke-chugger, was Greg, also filming. With his hand on That Girl's knee.
It could be nothing. It could be NOTHING. But . . .
