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After some back and forth shit talking, he leads me and Takeshi to the studio that will always hold a special place in our relationship. I set up the track and show Takeshi what to do in the control room before entering the booth.
Once I sit at the piano, put on my headphones, and test the microphone, I ask, “Do you remember how we first met?”
He rests his elbows on the edge of the mixing station and cups his chin. “As if I could forget. Your impetuousness nearly got you killed that day.”
“I regret nothing.” I wink and send him a salacious grin.
“Do you ever?”
I shrug away the response because there is one thing I haven’t been able to erase from my past. I’ve learned to not dwell on it, and it’s not something Takeshi or I can change. “Not when it comes to you.”
“So you brought me here to remind me of our third date?”
“Yes and no. Do you remember what you confessed to me the night before I brought you here?”
Takeshi quiets for a moment and I almost see him flipping through the images of our most memorable moments together.
“Something along the lines of you confound me to an unhealthy degree.” He twists his lips, arching his mustache.
“And?”
“And it would be best not to pursue anything deeper.”
“So I begged you to give me one last date before you cut me out of your life.”
“How many times do I have to explain I only said those things because I believed you deserved someone better?”
“Your reasoning was a pile of bullshit then and it’s a pile of bullshit now.”
“I still don’t know why you were determined to have me, but I’ve accepted your choice. Not like you gave me much of one.”
I often forget Takeshi’s control and self-confident air is a mask to hide the scars of his past. How else can someone so perfect in every other way not see himself the way I do?
“Well, you kept talking about how if I chose to be with you, I would wake up one day not recognizing who I am. That I would change into a shell of myself.” I motion from my head to my waist. “I could never.”
“How many times do you need me to admit when I’m wrong?” His mouth quirks, and I have to fight myself from leaving the booth and kissing the self-deprecation off his face.
“Only when you go down that path again. You don’t have to force anyone to accept you. Lakeshia will because no one in their right mind would risk losing you. Keep the overcompensating under control, at least until she’s enamored with your other qualities, and she’ll be in my position, irrevocably in love with you.”
Takeshi removes his elbows from the panel to fold his arms. “And so you brought me here to remind me with the song you wrote eight years ago?”
“No, I have a new song.”
Before I met Takeshi, I’d gone through a transition where I reinvented myself as a jazz lounge singer. Writing music is an outlet for my emotions when the words won’t come out right. It’s saved my life too many times to count, and performing for Takeshi was one of those lifesaving moments.
“When did you write this one?”
“The night you agreed Lakeshia was ours.” I caress the keys, reliving the joy, hope, and desperation of that moment.
“God, you know how to push my buttons.” Takeshi pushes back into his chair to slightly rock himself. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I do a few vocal exercises to warm my voice before giving him a nod to flip the switch.
Music filters through my headphones, and everything falls away except the music and my husband. I play the song and sing about a man whose heart is big and gentle, who’s at war with himself because his head says one thing while his heart wants another. I pour my hopes of him getting what he needs while it stares him in the face before happiness slips through his fingers and leaves him living with regret. The outro ends on a hopeful note.
As the last notes echo in my mind, I tear away from the emotion swimming in my husband’s eyes.
“What do you think?” I stare at the black and white keys.
