Free In Harmony by Helena Newbury

all. As soon as the door closed, everything felt different. Alone with him suddenly became alone with him.
    My entire life felt like it was teetering on the brink: my future, because without his help I didn’t have one; my past, because without his help it had all been a waste.
    He pointed me to a stool, its peeling seat patched with tape. As soon as I sat down, he moved over to me and I tensed as he drew close….
    Very close, his body inches from mine as he leaned over me. Our faces were almost touching. Oh my God! Is he going to—
    The rubbery gasp of a refrigerator door opening behind me, and the clink of bottles. And then he was leaning back and offering me a beer.
    You idiot, I told myself angrily. I took the bottle without thinking, and sat there shredding the label.
    “So,” he said, opening his beer. “Here you are in my dressing room.” Again, that Irish lilt making everything sound innocent, yet filthy.
    There was no delaying it any longer. I took a deep breath. “The recital…you haven’t chosen your piece yet.”
    He shrugged. “Didn’t seem much point.”
    “I need you to do it. With me.”
    He paused, genuinely thrown by that. “Like a duet?”
    “Yes. A duet.”
    “You know I play guitar ? Electric guitar. Not violin or piano or…you know. Anything that goes with a cello.”
    I was surprised, for a second, that he even knew what instrument I played. Weirdly, a part of me felt flattered. Then I realized that a cello was pretty hard to miss, and I’d been carrying it on my back my whole time at Fenbrook. Of course he’d know that.
    “It’s sort of an emergency,” I said. And I told him about Dan.
    When I’d finished, he got up. “But why not just skip it? You’re Miss Uber-Geek—no offence. You can’t need the grades.” And then he peeled off the vest he’d been wearing.
    His narrow waist flowed up into a powerful back layered with muscle and broad shoulders that reminded me of an athlete—maybe a boxer. He didn’t look like the pretty-boy male model types Jasmine posted on her Facebook page. He looked somehow raw and real, his muscles for use, not show. He was lean rather than huge, everything tight and defined, his stomach hard with muscle.
    “It is my dressing room,” he told me.
    I realized my mouth was open. Had I gasped? I had a nasty feeling I had. I tried to focus. “I had some issues with my presentations,” I told him. “I need a good recital, or I won’t graduate.” I stared at his arms. There was another tattoo above the Ruth one, a tangled clump of barbed wire, and I wondered what it meant.
    He looked around for something. Hopefully a t-shirt. I was trying to keep my eyes off his upper half, but that left me starting at his crotch. “But the recital’s not for months,” he said as he searched. “And I’d have to be here to do it….”
    He finally found his t-shirt and lifted it, though he didn’t put it on. He was waiting for my answer.
    I nodded slowly. “You’d have to stay in Fenbrook. And graduate.”
    He laughed out loud. Not a cruel laugh. A laugh of disbelief. He pulled on the t-shirt—a band name I didn’t recognize stretched across the broad curve of his pecs.
    “I could help you,” I said desperately. “I could help you get your grades up.”
    “What makes you think I want to stay?”
    I just looked at him dumbly. My whole life had been so focused on doing well that the idea of just casually allowing yourself to fail seemed…insane.
    “You’ve been here over three years,” I said. “Surely you don’t want to waste it?”
    He shrugged. “I’ve had three years living in New York, with enough money to pay my rent and put food in my mouth. I play my guitar and that makes me a little more. That wasn’t a waste. Now, working my arse off until I graduate, only to fail anyway— that would be a waste.”
    I nodded slowly. Suddenly, all his partying made sense. I’d seen it as him throwing his degree away, but it wasn’t that at all.