August spins her plate as if the cake will taste better from a specific angle. ‘Shut up and eat, Keverich.’
Beck pokes the cake with his fork. It doesn’t look indigestible – but he is used to Joey’s cooking – and it appears to be stuffed with nuts and dried fruit. The drink has a thick creamy froth with cinnamon dusted on top. It smells like … not chocolate or coffee. What is it supposed to be?
What has he gotten into?
August has already tucked into her cake with a few moans of deliciousness.
‘So,’ he says, forking up cake and staring at it, ‘am I eating Steve?’
‘It’s stevia.’ August licks her fork. ‘An alternative for sugar. But don’t say that S word here.’
Beck’s too hungry. He stuffs the cake in and mumbles, ‘Is there a swear jar in case I need to say – holy shit, what is this amazingness?’
August tips back her head and laughs.
Beck abandons the fork and just picks up the cake and takes a mouthful. It’s like fruitcake but also almonds and also small explosions of chocolate and the occasional chewy date. He’s never tasted anything so good and dense.
‘I could eat, like, nine pieces,’ he says with his mouth full.
‘I knew you’d like it.’
‘Actually –’ Beck licks his thumb ‘– you totally doubted.’
‘Fine. I did. But I was going to punch you in the face if you didn’t.’
‘Really? So you secretly wanted me to hate it so you could live that dream.’
August puts her elbows on the table and points her spoon at him. ‘You have such bad self esteem, it’s kind of sad but still adorable. The truth is, I tried to bring my friends here and they …’ She sits back in her chair, face clouded. ‘They were pretty rude about it all.’
‘That sucks.’ Beck only has half his mind on the fact that August maybe doesn’t fit with her friends like he always thought, and half on the fact his cake is gone. ‘I would never be rude, of course.’
August snorts, but she slips from her chair and disappears back into the kitchen. She returns with another slab of almond fruitcake, bigger than before.
Beck remembers to thank her, but then he has to concentrate because a clump of chocolate has melted in the centre and he needs it all in his mouth. Right now. This is so much better than a bite of fluffy sponge cake. This cake glues to his ribs.
The drink – a dandelion latte, August explains – isn’t as delicious, but he still drinks the entire thing and probably would’ve taken a refill. Or ten. Maybe he did like it? Maybe he likes everything. Maybe this is why August is so happy. Cake! And coffee – well, um, whatever-it-was! On a regular basis!
‘It could be a little sweeter, though, don’t you think?’ Beck says – at the wrong time, since Morris walks out of the kitchen to wipe another table.
The stiff look says he offended Morris.
‘I’m sorry,’ Beck whispers to August. ‘It’s just the tea had that something-is-dead-in-here vibe, you know?’
August punches him. ‘You’re uncultured. But we’ll build up slow. Today almond cake, tomorrow turmeric broth and alfalfa patties.’
‘I’d very much like to leave now.’
August disappears to pay and appease the hurt Morris, and returns with a paper bag of biscotti. She shakes it in Beck’s face. ‘For Joey. Now for a leisurely stroll back.’
Beck is horrified. He totally forgot about Joey. What kind of a horrible brother is he? This dampens his elation over a full stomach down and he settles into an easy walk beside August. He’s not sure what to think of their outing. Not sure what to think of her.
And maybe he should shut up, accept the cake and the olive branch, accept the insistent kindness. But, as they exit the shopping complex, bypass piles of stolen trolleys in a ditch and stumble on the cracked footpath, he has to ask.
‘Why are you really doing this?’ Beck says quietly.
Please, universe, don’t let her say because you’re pathetic and need a friend or you’re clearly starved and abused so I’m doing my duty. Although what’s left for her to say?
August doesn’t answer right away, which is good – she’s thinking seriously for once.
‘You’re interesting, Beck Keverich, even though you won’t tell me your full name or who hit you.’ She walks on the edge of the gutter, arms out for balance, bag of biscotti crinkling in the wind. ‘You’re kind, but you’re also mean – and that’s confusing. You get super crabby when you’re hungry.’ She flashes a cheeky grin. ‘But I fixed that for now.’
He considers shoving her into a puddle.
August sobers. ‘You’re like this overlooked shadow, always in the background, and you make me so curious. And your life obviously isn’t all peach pie and daffodils and I figure that equals a body needing a friend. You’re weird. I’m weird. Why not? Oh.’ She pauses. ‘Nearly forgot. You have freaking beautiful eyes.’
His throat knots.
August jumps off the gutter and turns to face him. ‘I don’t have to know. I won’t keep asking. But you know where I live, so if you want a break from –’ she waves vaguely at his face ‘– it, you can come over. Any time.’
Self-conscious, Beck touches his scabbed lip, his swollen cheek, and drowns in the suffocating knowledge that someone notices.
And cares.
The Maestro doesn’t end his unprecedented holiday.
Beck does.
For habit? To please her? Because, even though it hurts, he’s addicted?
Beck plays scales to unravel the stiffness in his fingers, to shake off the week he spent in silence. Then he tackles exercises that go faster and faster like a thousand marbles falling down the stairs. But the pieces? The Bach, the Schumann, the Chopin – every time he tries to play them, the notes blur and he has to scrub knuckles over his scalp in nervous agony. Because he sees –
the thrum of the audience,
the molten fury on the Maestro’s face,
the stagnant silence while he gropes for music,
the failure, strangling him.
Even after an hour of irritatingly repetitive scales, his fingers ache for his own music instead of the Maestro’s. But he doesn’t dare let his notes breathe.
He plays for hours. He forgets cake and freedom and August. It’s better this way.
He plays until eight and only stops because he hears Joey readying for bed. She shouldn’t have to listen to him pound out B flat scales while she sleeps. Instead, he searches for food – which proves harder than spotting a platypus. It looks like the Maestro had tinned spaghetti, so Beck heats a plastic bowl for himself and scribbles music on the back of an old docket while he eats.
Only the click of spoon against bowl tells the house he’s alive. He’s there.
So he daydreams about music – his music – and what it’d be like to have it written out. He mentally adds in a few strings, some brass, and wonders if he could juggle a whole orchestra in his head.
He wonders if he’d make the Keverich name proud by composing instead of playing.
As if the Maestro would let him. Ha.
There is his uncle, famous pianist and composer, but the fact that the Maestro curses and praises him all in one breath – because he can still play music and she can’t? – cements the fact that the Maestro would be furious if Beck started composing. Besides, she never composed, so why would he need to when she demands he follow in her footsteps? Beck can’t even play the études that the Maestro and her brother had perfected with their eyes closed at his age. How dare he write his own music? If he even whispered about dreams of composing, she’d see it as rebellion and descend into a rage.