He met her eyes and they gazed at each other. “I feel the same way about the piano,” she said. “I just would have called it a compulsion instead of an addiction.”
Sara had never understood this part of him. She’d thought of music as something that took him away from her. She seemed to think she was competing against music for his affection, not that it helped make him the man she loved. It was nice to meet a woman who understood how vital music could be to a person.
Dawn flipped a second piece of French toast onto a plate before adding a third to the pan. While it cooked, she set a tub of butter, a bottle of maple syrup, and his plate before him. He inhaled deeply.
“This smells heavenly.”
“My grandmother’s recipe.”
Kellen’s first bite had his eyes rolling into the back of his head in delight. “This is amazing. What’s the secret?”
“Vanilla,” she said. “And day-old, fresh-baked bread.”
“Lucky I happened along the day after your trip to the bakery.”
Her cheeks went pink, and she paid extra close attention to the toast sizzling in the pan.
Had he discovered another button? He wasn’t sure where to push. “Is there a bakery nearby?”
She shook her head. “I baked it,” she said. “Baking is a huge stress reliever for me.”
“Lucky me,” he said. “What are you stressed out about?”
She hesitated for a long moment and then let out a sigh. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m supposed to turn in a completed composition tomorrow,” she said. “I was commissioned for a piece to be used as the main theme in some feel-good summer blockbuster. I’ve been working on it for months and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it right.”
“Maybe that’s your problem,” he said, trying to remember his manners and not talk with his mouth full, but the French toast was so delicious that he couldn’t stop shoveling it in.
“My problem?”
Oh, another button? Poke. Poke. Poke.
“One of many, I’m sure,” he said.
She leveled him with a heated glare, and he warmed from the inside out. He hadn’t even realized he’d been cold.
“Maybe you’re just trying too hard,” he said. “Sometimes the best inspiration hits when you aren’t paying attention. Let your subconscious write the music. It’s purer that way.”
“And what would you know about writing music?” she said, flipping her piece of French toast to an empty plate. She turned off the burner and reached for the tub of butter. He couldn’t resist moving it out of her reach.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why did he get the impression that she was counting backward from a hundred so she didn’t slap the shit out of him with her spatula?
“I’ve written a few songs,” he said. “The band’s lead guitarist, Adam, is our main composer, but he allows the rest of us to come up with a note or two.”
“What do you know about writing piano music?”
“Absolutely nothing,” he admitted.
She collected her plate and moved around the counter to sit beside him.
“I’m sorry I’m so testy tonight,” she said. “I’m under a lot of pressure. I just… I don’t want to fail at my own dream.”
“You’re not failing,” he said. “You’re just a little stuck. It happens to everyone.”
She shook her head as she slathered butter on her French toast. “It doesn’t happen to me. I can’t permit it to happen to me.”
“Reality check, Dawn. It already has.”
“I can still finish the composition tonight,” she said.
“And if you can’t?”
Her lower lip trembled and she refused to meet his eyes, even though he was staring her down like a panther watching a tender young deer wander unknowingly beneath his tree.
“I’m not allowed to fail,” she said. “Absolutely not allowed.”
Allowed? Why would she say it that way? He placed a comforting hand at the base of her spine and she jerked so hard, she nearly launched herself straight off the stool.
“I can’t promise you anything, but I will help, if I can,” he said. “Relax, okay?”
“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled under her breath.
He removed his hand from her back, cursing himself for touching her as he could still feel the tension in her muscles against his palm. She picked at her French toast and after a moment of appearing defeated, straightened her shoulders and turned slightly to look at him.
“So you and your friend Owen became guitarists to seduce naive young women. What about the rest of your band? Did they also suffer from an inability to pick up girls based on their looks and personality alone?”
He sighed at her obvious subject change. “Owen didn’t really like guitar, so he switched to bass, which is the rock-band position least likely to get you laid.” Owen, however, had stopped having that problem soon after they graduated high school. “We’re not as shallow as I make us out to be.”
“Why didn’t Owen like guitar?”
“I’m not sure he was being completely truthful. I think he claimed that he didn’t like the guitar so he wouldn’t steal my thunder. He’s actually a good guitarist, but he has this way of putting everyone before himself. Especially me.”
“So he didn’t want to beat you at your own game.”
“Something like that.”
“How many are in your band?”
“Five. Jacob is the lead singer, and Adam plays lead guitar. They’ve been friends since they were young. They’re a couple years older than Owen and me. They’d started up a band with a drummer named Quint and were looking for a bassist to make up the fourth member of the group, which was called Desperation Normal. When Owen answered their ad on a bulletin board at a bar in Austin and agreed to join as their bassist, they had no intention of including me; they weren’t looking for a second guitarist. But Owen has a way of getting what he wants, and he refused to be a part of anything that didn’t include me, so they let me play along. Turns out two guitarists can be better than one. I couldn’t outplay Adam Taylor as a soloist, so I switched to rhythm guitar and let him have the limelight.”
“Are you satisfied playing rhythm guitar?”
“Yeah. I guess. I’m satisfied being a part of Sole Regret.” He never really thought much about why Adam played lead and he continued playing rhythm. It just worked best that way. “And then Quint met a girl, got married, and left the band. And Jacob recruited our current drummer, Gabe. Well, more like kidnapped him.” Kellen chuckled at those early weeks with Gabe and his constant whining about not having enough time to study for his quantum physics midterm. Perhaps the world had missed out on a fantastic engineer when Gabriel Banner had eventually dropped out of school after struggling to do everything for a semester—school, work, the band, and his girlfriend at the time. Missed out on an engineer, but gained one of the most skilled drummers to ever pound the skins. “We changed our name to Sole Regret a couple of weeks after the band was fully formed.”
“Why do you regret your souls?” she asked.
“Huh?” He looked up from his plate, which had somehow become empty while he’d been running off at the mouth.
“Your band’s name is Soul Regret. Why do you regret your soul?”
“Sole Regret. Sole meaning one or single.”
“Oh, one regret.” Dawn speared the final bite of her French toast. “You only have one?”
“Well, at the time. I was young.” He smiled sadly. He had dozens of regrets now, all centering around the things he should have done with Sara. He even regretted that he’d respected her too much to grope her early in their relationship. Maybe if he’d given in to those urges, he might have found the lump in her breast in time. Maybe her treatments would have been more effective. Maybe they could have saved her. Was it strange to regret not being after only one thing with the love of your life? Maybe, but he couldn’t help it.