“He couldn’t have known this.” Marius shakes his head.
“I know. I don’t blame him. At all.”
There’s a pause. And we both look out at the horizon. The sun is almost reaching its peak height in the sky and the glare off the water is blinding.
“But he does. Blame himself.” Marius muses. He understands. Of course, he does. He knows Jez probably as well as I do. In some ways probably even more.
“Yes. But he shouldn’t. He saved me. I mean, he literally saved me. Rescued me. Broke his hand doing it, too.” I grimace at the memory of taking him to the hospital, his knuckles bleeding, his hand swollen like a grapefruit. His hand, his livelihood. And him just smiling at me, like it was nothing. Like he would do it again for me, a hundred times.
“Oh my god. When he broke his hand about a year ago when he disappeared for a week, that was… that was with you?”
I nod. I don’t know how much they know about me, or what he told them about that.
“We gave him so much shit about that. We had to postpone a tour for two months.”
“I know. I felt terrible.”
Marius starts pacing in front of me, his head shaking wildly, the memories coming back to him, finally making sense. “He was a mess. We all thought he’d been sleeping with someone’s wife and their husband had come home at the wrong time!”
“Ha. No. He broke it being my hero.” I shrug. There’s no other way to describe it.
“Yeah. That he is,” Marius sighs. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I thought you needed to know.”
“About you, or about Jez?”
“About us both. And why we are the way we are.”
“And why we… you and me, can’t be the way we want to be?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, just the opposite. After Jez got me away from the Maestro, it took me a long time to get better. I barely recovered enough to pass my senior year, but I did, because I just wanted to be done and start living my life. And when Jez offered the chance to come play with you guys, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do it.”
“But you did. And you’re killing it. You did it!”
I shake my head. “No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m doing it because of you. And only you.”
“Me?”
“You helped me. That first night. And then you kept helping. You literally taught me how to breathe again. And now I can play. I can finally do what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. Except there’s one small change. Now I want to play for you. With you. You’re the reason, Marius.”
“Anca.”
“So as much as I owe Jez for saving my life. I owe you for giving it meaning again. For giving me the power to take my own destiny into my own hands again. I don’t want to lose that, Marius. And I don’t want to lose you.”
He comes over and pulls me against him. And I’m home. “What do we do about Jez?”
“I don’t know.” I really don’t. “But we will figure it out. Together.”
“Together.”
I lean my head on his chest, and the thump thump that meets me spells out everything I’m feeling about him too.
***
“You’re late.” Jez scowls at me as he sees us walking into the band’s suite at the hotel together.
“5 minutes!” I reply, every cell in my body already tensing at his mood.
“5 minutes is 5 minutes. This is serious work, Anca. If you can’t be professional then you can’t be here at all. We’re not fucking around. A lot of people are relying on us.”
“Whoa, man.” Marius steps in before I can step in. “We were just downstairs talking to Hailey. She had some fan mail for give to Anca.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Marius. My little sister needs to learn some better work ethics if she wants to make it in this industry. It’s not all stars and candy.”
“Hey…” Marius cuts in again, and I stop him with a hand on his chest. It’s hard, as tense as I’m feeling.
“It’s ok,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, before turning back to address my brother. “Fine. Sorry I’m 5 minutes late. What are we doing now?”
“If you’d been here…”
I cut him off. “You’re wasting time lecturing me, just tell us what we’re supposed to be doing now.”
“Get your gear ready. They’re taking it down to the stage in an hour,” he snaps at me.
“Fine. Done. Come on, Marius.” I pull on his shirt, but he doesn’t budge. He’s locked in a stare battle with my brother.
“Marius!” I raise my voice to get his attention, and he sighs and relents, and follows me to our instruments.
“That was bullshit, Anca,” he whispers when we’re out of Jez’s earshot.
“I know, he’s just… he’s just processing. Ignore it.” I tell him, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. My whole life I’ve been the apple of my brother’s eye. Now I’m the thorn that causes him pain.
Marius turns to where Jez is holding up his cello, running his fingers over it, checking every inch of it, before turning back to me.
“But he can’t speak to you like that, Anca, brother or not. I’m not going to tolerate him being rude to you, you know that, right?”
The butterflies in my stomach tell me without words how much his words mean to me.
“Funny, you should say that. Because I recall someone once telling me my conversation skills couldn’t keep a chair stimulated.” I say, trying to lighten the mood, giving him a little nudge with my foot and winking at him.
The look on his face is priceless as he moans at the memory and palms his face. “Don’t remind me! I was trying to be so clever.”
“And you were. You were a surprise.”
“As are you, babe. Every second.”