I told myself it wasn’t jealousy; you can’t be jealous of something you never had.
Right? Right.
It was just frustration that this asshole came out of nowhere.
But damn ... when he wrapped his arms around Katja, I wanted to pull him apart, limb by limb.
“What’s your problem?” Katja asked behind me.
I stared down at the sheet music. I thought I had handled myself pretty fucking well considering I kept myself from telling that guy to get the fuck out of here.
“I’m trying to do this thing called my job. You having a reunion with Lenny isn’t part of the job description.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s Lukas.”
I shrugged like it was no difference to me. And it wasn’t. “Lenny, Lyle, Lukas—whatever the fuck his name is—he isn’t my student. So he doesn’t need to be here.”
“He just came over to say hi!”
“Well, your little friend can say hi later.”
“He’s not my little friend,” Katja muttered.
That’s where she had it right. Lukas wasn’t her friend. He wanted to be much more. I noticed what he wanted the minute he walked into the room. He had a look of determination that showed he didn’t have Katja now, but he planned on having her in the future.
“Is he going to be a distraction to you?” I asked.
“No.”
“Sure about that?”
“He won’t distract me,” Katja said through gritted teeth.
“Don’t bullshit the bullshitter, Katja.”
Katja narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean? Is that some American saying?”
In spite of myself, I smirked. That seemed to enrage her more.
“It means that you’re lying to me and that I know it because I’m a pretty good liar myself,” I explained.
“I’m not lying to you.” She was silent for a second, her head tilted to the side as she stared at me. And then she smiled. “Mr. Sloan, why are you so concerned?”
I hated when she called me Mr. Sloan. So sweet and innocent when she said it. But I knew better. I know she does it to get a fucking rise out of me. It worked every time.
“Katja, you’re my student. When he distracts you, you won’t play as well. And if you don’t play well, I hear from Tobias.”
I ground my teeth together. I had no right to care. I knew that. Yet she was mine.
She held my gaze.
She fascinated the hell out of me. Most people backed down and cowered around me, yet she stood up to me. A fire ignited in her eyes, and I realized that she was the only female that had ever stood toe to toe against me.
“Just for the record, Lukas is obviously distracting you. You’re the one who brought him up in the first place.”
“Why did I bring him up, Katja?” I walked over to the piano even though I knew I should’ve stayed put. When I was next to her, I leaned in and said very slowly, “Because your personal life is spilling into here.” I whirled a finger in the air. “That’s why I brought him up.”
“I don’t think either one of us can be all high and mighty about our personal life spilling into this.” She mimicked my last gesture.
I cleared my throat and moved away.
K A T J A
The weekends were my only days off.
On those days, I was completely useless. I slept in and moved at my own pace, relishing in the small break that my mind got.
But on that Saturday, I was spending time with Lukas. It’d been a few days since Mathias more or less kicked Lukas out of the studio. We still needed to catch up.
Someone knocked loudly on the door.
“Coming!” I said as I put my jacket on. I swiped my keys from the table and opened the door.
Lukas stood there, with a wide smile. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah. But where are we going?”
“What do you want to eat?”
“Schnitzel,” I said as I shut the front door.
Lukas laughed as we walked down the stairs and out the front door. We could’ve driven, but I wanted to walk. I wanted to spend all the time I could with him. Lukas and I had a special relationship. One that I’d always cherished.
After my parents died and I moved to Garmisch, I felt like I had no one. But Lukas was there. Right next to his mother as she stood at the entrance and introduced herself and her son to me. He was there when all the kids at school wouldn’t speak to me. I was the quiet girl no one could understand. And Lukas was this skinny, little boy. But he was like a firecracker. Alive and bright.
When he was in France, we kept in contact, but not nearly enough. He was busy with his life and I was busy with … Mathias.
At the mere thought of him, my pulse sped up. My blood coursed through my veins like it was on fire. Walking next to Lukas, I felt like a traitor. This was Lukas’ time.
Not Mathias’.
I pushed him out of my mind.
The walk to the restaurant went by too quickly. I told Lukas about my summer with Simone.
But he seemed more interested in Mathias in general. I tried to tell everything I knew, which wasn’t much.
Lukas frowned as he held the door open for me. I stepped into Lautenschlager—a restaurant that had been around for as long as I could remember. The walls were mostly wood paneling. But on the right side was a mural of Zugspitze Mountain. Open wood beams ran across the ceiling.
Unsurprisingly, it was fairly busy.
“Love this place,” I said excitedly.
“I know. That’s why I chose it.”
A frazzled woman wearing a dirndl greeted us and showed us to a small table in the middle of the room.
I had barely scanned the menu before Lukas resumed his interrogation. “Tell me more about your instructor.”
I lowered my menu into the table. “I’ve told you all I know.”
Lukas opened his menu, scanning the options idly. “I don’t like him.”
“Really? Because yesterday you both seemed to have hit it off,” I said dryly.
My comment rolled off his shoulders. He looked me in the eye. “He looked like he wanted to rip me to shreds yesterday. Is he always such an Arschloch?”
My shoulders stiffened. “He’s just hard to get to know at first.”
There was absolutely no reason for me to defend Mathias. Yet, here I was. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Maybe it was because there were these small moments when we poured over music pieces that I felt this connection to him that went far beyond the physical aspect. The passion we had for music, and for the piano, pulled us together and thrust us into our own world. He understood that music was more than just a sound. It was this unstoppable power that gave you breath when it felt like you were drowning. Our world was one that most people would never understand and I wanted to protect that.
From the way Lukas’ lips went into the thin line, I knew he wanted to say more, but the waitress arrived and the subject of Mathias was dropped … for now.
When she left, I immediately started to ask questions of my own: how was Strasbourg? How was his family? The weather?
The longer we talked, the more mundane my questions became.
Our food arrived shortly after. I dug in with gusto, barely taking breaths between swallows. Lukas took a long drink of his beer and glanced at me. His eyes were intense and serious.
Underneath the table, Lukas’ knee brushed against mine. I didn’t pull away, not immediately; I wanted to see how I responded. Would my body react the same way it did when I touched Mathias?
There were minor flutters but nothing was rioting wildly inside me.
Nothing like Mathias made me feel.
Discreetly, I pulled my leg back, feeling like a fool.
Lukas took another drink, staring at me above the rim. “So how is he-”
I stabbed my fork in his direction. “This better not be another Mathias question.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just looking out for you. He looks like a strict teac
her and I want to make sure everything is okay.”
“He is,” I said slowly. “But that’s just his way, I guess.”
“Does he always look at you that way?”
His question threw me off guard. I gave him a funny look. “What way?”
Lukas took a drink of his beer, looking at me over the rim the whole time. He put the mug down. “Katja,” he said softly, “you’ve had to notice.”
I adverted my gaze and moved my food around. “My concentration is on the keys and notes. I don’t spend all my time watching him.”
Which was probably the biggest lie I’d ever told, but whatever.
“Then let me tell you what I saw.”
I wanted to cover my ears and tell him I didn’t want to hear it. But my hands remained in my lap.
“One word: inappropriate.” Lukas leaned in. “He looks possessive of you. Like you’re his and only his.”
“That’s a little dramatic.”
Lukas lifted a brow. “Is it?”
I never answered him. The silence stretched between us. The waitress came over and asked if we were done. My schnitzel had sounded so good an hour ago, but not anymore.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked weakly.
Lukas sighed. He sounded defeated and frustrated. “Yeah.” He stood up and grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go.”
When we stepped back outside it was much colder than earlier. I hugged my jacket tighter around my body. Lukas was silent beside me. I didn’t want to end today on a sour note. So I flashed him a wide smile and spread my arms out. “Didn’t you miss all of this?”
His lips pulled, but stayed together. It was like he was fighting the instinct to smile. Finally he gave up the fight. The awkwardness slowly started to fade. “I did. But I didn’t miss the tourists.”
“No one would miss the tourists,” I said as we walked slowly down the sidewalk. I had no desire to get back to my apartment. When the week started up, the chances of getting together were slim to none.
“You can always spot them,” I said casually.
“The tourists?”
I nodded and scanned the people walking past us. I spotted a family stepping out of a car and looking around as if they’d been blind their whole life. I discreetly pointed at them and leaned into Lukas. “Tourists.”
“That’s too easy. The camera and perfect English gave them away.”
For the next few minutes we went back and forth between tourists and the locals. This was the carefree fun that I was used to with him. “There’s one over there,” Lukas said. He pointed across the road, on the other street.
I smiled, loving this little game we were playing.
My smiled dissolved within seconds.
Mathias was standing there. Even with sunglasses on, I could tell he was staring in this direction. He didn’t crack a smile or wave. In fact, he just stood there, motionless. People put extra space between them as they walked around him. That didn’t surprise me. He looked too big and solid standing there, like he could crush you with just one hand.
I lifted my hand and gave him a friendly wave. It felt silly standing here, acting as if we were all strangers. He didn’t raise his hand. I thought he was going to brush me off before he gave me a blunt nod and walked away.
I watched him with a frown. I watched him until the crowd swallowed him up. I watched him until Lukas cleared his throat.
We resumed walking.
“He’s not a tourist,” I said after a while.
“Then what is he, Katja?” he asked quietly.
I heard the double meaning of his words. I stared straight ahead. Mathias’ words on the first day we formally met floated through my mind.
We have to push past everything that happened last night. It never happened. We stick to music. We stick to piano. That’s all.
“He’s someone that’s here for a job,” I replied.
Lukas didn’t say anything after that.
K A T J A
Any truce I thought Mathias and I might’ve come to disappeared the moment Lukas reappeared in my life.
He was back to being snippy and short tempered with me, but now it was worse than ever. He was ice cold, never making small talk. Never looking my way.
We might as well have been strangers.
I struggled with the urge to shake him and beg for things to go back to how they were. Granted, being friends wasn’t how I pictured our relationship. But anything—and I mean anything—was better than this treatment.
There were moments where I found myself trying to pinpoint the exact moment when everything went to hell, but it was impossible to figure out.
That shouldn’t come as a shock to me. Mathias was an impossible puzzle. People met him and tried to put him together. A few pieces clicked in place, but when the luck ran out and there were no more matches, the novelty started to fade. Soon they gave up, telling themselves that they’d come back.
But they didn’t.
I didn’t give up easy, though.
Right now, I couldn’t say if that was one of my weaknesses or strengths.
Sometimes, I caught him staring at me, an unreadable expression on his face. Sometimes, it looked liked he wanted to say something to me. Sometimes I didn’t care, but most times I did.
My feelings for him remained as strong as ever. When we first met it was nothing but lust. The dinner at his grandparents’ house showed me there was an entirely different side of him.
I wanted to see more of that side. It was real and true. But would I ever?
God, I hoped so. But Mathias’ walls were back up. Impenetrable and impossible to climb.
So many times I found myself thinking about the article I read online. Maybe that was the reason he was so guarded and distant, but something told me there was more to his pain. Something bigger and darker.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Dropping my hands onto my lap, I shot him a look. Mathias Sloan is what’s wrong with me, but I didn’t tell him that. “Nothing is wrong.”
“You’re really bad today,” he said in his typical blunt manner.
Completely ignoring him, I started to skim through the sheets of music in front of me.
“Didn’t sleep well,” I said. It was a weak excuse but it was all I had.
Muttering a curse underneath his breath, Mathias walked over to me and plucked the papers, giving me no choice but to look at him.
“It doesn’t matter if you didn’t sleep well. You can’t use that excuse in December, can you?”
I reached for my music. Mathias held it out of reach like we were playing a game. “I won’t use that excuse in December.”
“What excuse will you use then?”
“None!” I said, my voice going up an octave.
For a good second, Mathias didn’t reply. “Play it again,” he demanded.
He still held my papers. So I still held back from playing. “Give me my music.”
“Make me.”
I crossed my arms. “What are you, a child?”
Mathias rested his elbows on the very edge of the piano. “No, I just want your undivided attention.”
“You already have that,” I murmured.
God, didn’t he already see that? Even when he wasn’t around me, he held my mind and body captive, making me think he was all around me.
His lips parted. Undoubtedly a sarcastic retort was on the tip of his tongue. I didn’t care; my eyes were rooted on his lips. The lower one was plump and I knew from experience it was softer. Much softer than it looked. I wanted to forget everything. The anger and the student/teacher boundaries. Draw him to me, so I could kiss him. So I could gently bite down on his bottom lip.
Mathias swallowed loudly. My eyes drifted up to his eyes and I saw nothing but stark need. His free hand was gripping the edge of the piano so hard I’m surprised the wood didn’t crack.
Finally, he held the sheet music out to me. I snatched it out of his hands, hoping that he got multiple paper cuts.
The thought made the corners of my mouth lift up before I poised my fingers above the keys and pressed down. The first note rang out…
“Stop!”
“I’ve hardly played a single note!”
“Exactly. You’ve hardly played a single note of that piece and it was so flat that if I was in the audience, watching you play, I would be bored already. Emotions. Give me something! Anything! You were playing so well last week. I thought, ‘It’s about time she showed me her talent.’ But now you’re back at the beginning!”
“Wow,” I said dryly. “For a minute I thought you were going to compliment me.”
Mathias peered at me. “What is your problem today?”
“You’re my problem,” I snapped.
We’d tossed back sarcastic words since the day he became my instructor. But I’d never actually flipped out on him.
Mathias rocked back on his heels. He stared at me with that quiet intensity of his, and then, out of nowhere, he smirked.
Smirked.
With the sun shining through the window, his face was nothing but planes and angles. Outlining the sharp line of his jaw and his broad cheekbones and those lips that drove me crazy.
He looked away for a moment and cleared his throat, like he knew what I was thinking and returned my gaze.
He pushed himself away from the window and swiped his keys from the table. “Come on.”
I stood up, confused. “Where are we going?”
He opened the door. “We’re getting out of here.”
“But where?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said as he walked behind me. “We both need a break,” he muttered.
K A T J A
I had no idea where we were going.
But that was the fun part of this random trip. My legs bobbed nervously as Mathias flew down the road. I stopped myself from looking at the exit signs. Maybe a sane person would’ve refused to go anywhere with Mathias. Especially after how tense things had been between us lately.
But since I met Mathias, I stopped caring. Stopped questioning. And I loved it.
He showed me that sanity is safe.
Boring.