Page 95 of Finding a Melody
For some reason, having Bryan in the room ended up making it harder for me to focus. I was too aware of him, unable to get lost in my projects. Every time he flipped a page, I could hear the rustling. Whenever he adjusted his position, I could hear the chair move. When his gaze was on me, I swore my skin prickled in awareness. It kept me from focusing. Then because I was too distracted, it left me open to other thoughts too.
No matter how hard I fought them off, they kept slipping in. Dark thoughts about everything. I kept wondering about my dad, what he was up to, if he was still healthy, what he thought of me. When he’d get my letter. I kept going back to that car chase and how close to dying I was, how it could have been different if Seth wasn’t with me. A car chase so closely after a break-in left a hard rock in my stomach.
All those thoughts kept my fingers from moving across the piano keys.
“Cadence?”
I jumped, pulled out of my head by Bryan’s concern.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because you’ve been staring at the keys for like twenty minutes, looking like you want to cry.”
“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “I got a little stuck in my head.”
Bryan grabbed one of the extra stools and pulled it over. “Want to talk about it?”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing the last few days, talking about it? I don’t want to really talk about it again.”
“Okay. Then what do you want to do?”
I pressed the piano keys, but they felt dull to my ears.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Is it a habit to just stare at the piano when you don’t want to work?” he asked.
“More like I just don’t know what to do with myself. I know I need to keep working but there’s so much in my head that I can’t focus.”
“Then we don’t work.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I need to work.”
“Yes, but what work are you going to get done right now?” Bryan asked. “We need to motivate you, do something to get your mind going.”
“Motivation.”
“Exactly. So let’s go eat. I’m hungry.”
He didn’t really give me a chance to say anything as he hustled me out of the room and back downstairs and into the kitchen. It didn’t take him long to realize food wasn’t much of an option and by the way he opened cupboards, dug around, and grumbled, he wasn’t happy about my meager options.
“How are you eating?” he asked, finally sighing and sitting at the table with me.
“Seth’s place.”
Bryan chuckled. “Well, let’s go crash his place then.”
“He’s not home though, is that a good idea?”
Shrugging, Bryan said, “I have a key. It’ll be fine. He’s used to seeing me there anyway. I’m pretty sure he only keeps a box of chocolate oatmeal bars in his house for me. No one else eats those.”
I grabbed my keys and we headed out to Seth’s. The whole time, I watched how comfortable Bryan was with entering Seth’s place. He didn’t hesitate unlocking Seth’s door, and even knew the code to turn off the alarm.
“Let me let Bebe out,” he said, disappearing into the garage.
There was some excited barking until Bebe came running through, nearly jumping on me.