AJ watched as she picked her way through dinner. He took her plate away and covered it to wait for her in the fridge. Every time they ate together he put it away, hoping she'd realize she was hungry later. Each morning, when he woke up alone, he threw it out.
"I'm thinking of getting a dog." He began lightly as he returned with the steaming teapot.
"Hmm?" Olivia raised an eyebrow but he knew the look of quiet apology on her face. "I'm sorry."
"If you're ever really sorry, I'm not going to believe you." He quipped as he poured and offered her the pitcher of cream. "I'm becoming completely desensitized to the words "I'm sorry.""
"I'm-" She stopped and furrowed her eyebrows in thought. "That's unfortunate."
"I said I'm thinking of getting a dog." AJ repeated as he yelled from the kitchen. "He'll be able to get fat on table scraps."
"I'm s-" Olivia bit her lip and forced a smile. "Maybe you should get a dog."
"See, it's not that hard, is it?" AJ set the chocolate cake in front of her and settled comfortably into his chair with his own.
"What?" She dragged her finger through the butter-cream frosting and licked it clean absentmindedly.
AJ was already half-way through his piece but he paused thoughtfully with an upraised fork. "Letting things not be your fault."
"Oh-" Olivia took a bite of cake and favored him with a small smile.
AJ let her eat in silence as he relished his cake. After he finished he retreated from the dining room. Olivia relaxed slightly, letting her tea cool as she ate her cake slowly. As if finishing it was something to be avoided at all costs. She was getting used to the silence, even enjoying it a bit after the noise in her head. The cacophony that demand she'd do something about Gregory. Something about Gregory and Bette. Gregory and- She couldn't think about it. She just couldn't.
Then the piano started. Tentative, even mournfully, a loving hand tapped out the melody one note at a time. It was distracting, even from the tangle of thoughts she couldn't put away for more than a moment. She picked up her cake. AJ would stop hovering if he knew she'd finished something.
She'd seen the piano in his living room, neatly covered with a dark green dust cloth. Olivia thought it was for show, something that came with the apartment to add to the value and spike the rent. She and AJ never talked about his apartment. Usually she responded to AJ's polite invitation to dinner, ate quietly and left as soon as it was polite to do so. He never pressed her. Never asked her to stay. She knew the disappointment in his eyes every time he walked her out to the taxi.
It seemed he was changing his tactics. His back was to her as he sat on the bench of the baby grand piano. It's smooth finish spiraled away from him like black silk. It was beautiful, and from the sound of it, a fairly expensive, well-kept instrument.
AJ added another hand, slowly finding the chords that fit his melancholy piece. "Maman made me learn to play." He explained as he nodded to her reflection in the finish in front of him. "All properly brought up young boys can play an instrument. We started with piano-" He dropped to the lower register and teased a deep minor chord out of the instrument. "I never really showed much talent, so I stayed with piano."
Olivia took a step towards him, leaving her desert plate on the coffee table as she watched him fall into the music.
"I spent so much time hating to practice as a little boy that I'm afraid I never got very good." He stopped, pulling his hands into his lap for a moment thoughtfully. "But then-" He started into the tentative melody that had drawn her into the room in the first place. "A day came when I was lost. I'd been wandering Europe. I didn't care who I was, or whom I spent the night with. and one lonely evening I retreated to the piano in the lounge."
"And it was like coming home." He chuckled softly as he fumbled a difficult chord progression. "The devil you know and all that. I still wasn't any good, but it was familiar. When I sat there-" He fell into an etude with exaggerated care. Mocking his own boyhood as she took another step towards him. "I could hear Maman in the background."
AJ hunched over the keys in mock terror. "Practice practice practice! Armando James Deschanel Junior- you'll never amount to anything if you don't practice." He winked at her impishly. "And she was right. Here I am with a son I barely know and a life as empty and dusty as a neglected piano."
He turned away, keeping his pain to himself. "But-" Beethoven's moonlight sonata erupted from his fingers. He leaned into the piano and closed his eyes. "I have been taking lessons."
Olivia watched his face in the reflection. Wondering if he'd cheat and open his eyes. AJ was calm, lost in his music. She watched his fingers float nimbly over the ivory and black keys. It was comforting. The rhythm of the piece was soothing, and the notes just tragic enough to avoid grating on the wounds of her heart.
She followed AJ's lead. Sitting down next to him on the piano bench and watching his fingers. Letting the sweep of the music take her away from herself. Away from the emptiness. If only for a moment.
The music swelled, growing in volume like the increase in the sea as a storm blew in from the east. There was a darkness in it that spoke to her, resonated within her chest. Olivia let her eyes close.
The piece ended and the notes faded from the room with an ease of passage she'd never found in life. Why couldn't she just fade away? Float to the bleak unknown and give up on the pain of this life?
AJ's eyes were open when hers finally brought her back. They were centimeters away. He was centimeters away- He leaned in, closing the distance between them.
The scattering of notes as her hand pushed off the piano in terror echoed in discord through the apartment. Breaking the stillness. Olivia fled to her purse and the front door. AJ was only a step behind.
"I'm sorry. She closed her eyes and shook her head as she fumbled for the knob and her way out. "It was a lovely dinner. I'm just not ready for that. I hope-" Olivia tried to pull herself together but only made it seem like more effort was required.
The door clicked shut before AJ even had a chance to say goodbye. "Thank you for sharing it with me." He offered to the door as he shook his head foolishly. "And no Olivia. It's not you that's sorry."
She didn't know how she'd ended up there. She'd just been walking, fleeing AJ's beach-front apartment in the desperate hope that somewhere else was better. It wasn't. The pier felt like Gregory. The lights reminded her of a hundred indistinct walks down to the end. How many sunsets had they seen together? How many times had she opened her eyes to find him a breath away and moments from kissing her.
It wasn't that she didn't want AJ to kiss her. She wasn't as cold and dried up as she wanted to be. She wasn't cold at all. Her heart screamed as it burned in her chest. Flames that never went away. Guilt, self-reproach, remorse, envy, hatred- they all added to the fire. A fire with a will of it's own. A hunger that wouldn't rest until she was consumed by it. Eaten alive by the blaze within.
She shuddered. The wind of the ocean was cold, and she'd fled AJ's in an airy silk blouse. She'd left her jacket behind. Olivia shook her head and let the rock beneath her take the weight of her feet. She'd have to apologize better in the morning. She let her eyes close, trying to bring back the moment of peace that had come with music.
Hands closed on her shoulders, easing the tension out with practiced, gentle fingers. "This is a place for lovers. Secret rendezvous. It's a cold, lonely place by yourself Liv-"
She didn't have the strength to jump away. Olivia sighed and lowered her head to give him access to her neck. "I hate you."
"I know." His hands left her neck for a moment and returned with warmth, his jacket went around her shoulders in the most familiar of comforts. "Bette's beside herself whenever Caitlin mentions your name."
"You don't?" She cut back. Olivia didn't think he deserved the luxury of eye contact.
Gregory settled his fingers into the knots of her neck. The warmth of his hands spread up under her hair. It was enough to make her shivers return. "I don't." He responded with a surprising vulnerability.
Silence between them held more comfort than anything he could have said. It was quiet, and the quiet couldn't have an accusing tone. It didn't have anything they needed to say, but at least it was free from what they couldn't.
"I still hate you." the words were bitter, more acrid than she remembered them tasting. "It hasn't even been more than a week. Just six days. Six days and you're living with my best friend. What kind of game are you playing Gregory?"
She left the rock, ready to whirl on him to tear him apart. Olivia could rip the smug look from his face with her bare hands and she'd enjoy it.
"It's not about you." Gregory offered as if that was all she needed to know. She could picture the complacent look on his face. His hands would be in his pockets.
"Isn't it? My bed- My best friend- My-" She stopped short, realizing how much she'd almost given away. "It's revenge for Del isn't it? it's some sort of sick revenge."
"It's not revenge." He was standing behind her. She could feel his presence. He had to be-
Olivia turned around and stared at the empty wall of the grotto. She crossed her arms over her chest and shivered in the wind.
She was alone. She was always alone. He'd been gone from her reach the moment he'd left her hospital room in that horrible clinic. Gregory was locked in himself, so deeply he might never find his way out again.
The laughter bubbled up bitterly and became tears before she realized what was happening. They were both lost. She'd wandered the world and he'd cut it out. Her heart burned so terribly she felt she'd been destroyed and Gregory already had been.
He'd married Bette for money. Stock, AJ had explained over dinner. It was nothing to him, just a means to an end. AJ was worried about Bette. Her heart had been broken so many times in the past- She'd been cruel.
"What's one more heartache?" Olivia covered her mouth when the true irony of it lanced through her with a fresh stab of agony. "How much can one more possibly hurt?"
Even the phantom Gregory didn't want to answer her.