In Harmony(116)

I punched her on the arm. She was right. She’d be fine.

Natasha came in with a box of sheet music from the lounge. “Where do you want this?”

“Slide it under the bed for now,” I told her. Then, “Wait!”

But it was too late. She’d already knocked it against the other box under my bed, the one packed full of bodice-rippers. “What’s this?!” she asked, part shocked and part delighted. “’The Countess’s Dark Temptation’?”

I snatched the book out of her hand. “Nothing!”

Jasmine was already digging through the box, perilously close to where I kept the dildo. “Oh, wait, getting better: ‘Bound by the Pirate King’?”

I flushed and crammed the box back under the bed before she could dig any deeper. “Yes. Well. Anyway.”

Natasha shook her head. “You need to get with the program and get yourself a Kindle. Easier to read with the lights out.”

Jasmine frowned at her. “You turn the lights out when you—”

“Enough!” I pleaded.

“Come on,” said Natasha, dragging Jasmine away. “I hear Clarissa.”

I heard it too: the thump of a two-stroke engine. Clarissa had volunteered to go out and get groceries for the party we were throwing that night—a combined boyfriend-moving-in and housewarming party. I’d been in the apartment for three years, but this was the first time it was in my name. I’d be paying the rent and bills, now—another, slightly less romantic reason to ask Connor to move in with me.

In the week after the recital, when I’d had a long, serious talk with my father and he’d agreed that it was time for him to back off, I’d spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about operating without a safety net. Then I’d convinced myself that Nat, Clarissa and Jasmine had all managed jobs, bills and rent just fine their entire time at Fenbrook. Well, maybe not Jasmine. I’d leapfrogged them, going from having my life run for me straight to being out there on my own in the workplace, but it helped that it was the tight-knit and reassuringly kooky workplace of an orchestra. Musicians, it turned out, were musicians wherever you found them, and I was settling in with the rest of the dwarves already. And I realized that I did have a safety net; I’d always had one—I’d just never relied on it until these last few months. People don’t have to be related to you to be family.

As we stood there waiting for Clarissa and Neil to arrive, I pulled Natasha close. “Thanks,” I told her.

“I should be thanking you. You and Connor. Darrell’s like a different person—the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He’s had maybe one nightmare in a month and when he works it’s like…regular work, you know? I mean, I still have to drag him out of the workshop at 3am sometimes, but he’s doing it because he loves it, not because he feels he has to.”

“How do you drag him away from it?” I asked, puzzled.

She gave me a wicked smile.

Oh. “And you? How are you doing?” I asked.

Natasha gave me a slow, solemn nod. “Okay. I think. Better, at least. The pen helps, when I feel like I have to cut.”

A few days after the recital, confident in my ability to help my friends—or, at least, not screw up any more than anyone else—I’d gone online and spent a full day reading everything I could about self-harming and coping strategies. I’d eventually presented Nat with a gift-wrapped box containing a non-toxic red marker pen, and told her to use it instead of the razor blades, if she felt like she was going to cut. She’d looked at me as if I was crazy at first, but a week later had reported that it worked. She’d only needed it twice that I knew of and the slips seemed to be getting farther apart.

Jasmine opened the front door and Clarissa walked in, her arms full of grocery bags. Neil was right behind her, with two cases of beer. They walked straight through to the kitchen to unload and, even though I knew it was wrong, I couldn’t help but follow after them, staying in the hallway but pressing up against the doorway so that I could hear what they were saying. Things seemed to be better since my rant at Neil, but I wanted to check.

“—could at least help me, now you’ve put the beers down, instead of just standing there,” Clarissa was saying. “Why do you need that many beers, anyway? You and Darrell and Connor are going to get steaming drunk again, aren’t you? And then you’re going to start pawing me in front of them—”

Neil’s low rumble: “You like it when I paw you.”

“I—No! I mean, not in front of—”

“Like this….”