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a spiral which derailed my life. He’d been a model citizen elsewhere. How could I not have been taken back by the interest of a tall, dashing pre-med student, who supported his family and even had time to volunteer teaching kids after school? All that stress had to come out somewhere, though. That somewhere turned out to be me.
    I wish he could have seen just who I’d picked to ravage me and make me forget all about him.
    No , I thought suddenly. I wish he were in the room last night.
    I would have loved to see what that dynamo of muscle would do to a coward like Rico. He would have stood for me. A man who wore his strength out in the open like that wouldn’t cotton to a coward who saved his rage for people who couldn’t fight back.
    Once the sheets were in the dryer, I sloughed off the rest of the night under the shower up by my own room. The heat felt glorious on my worn muscles. I rubbed my sore legs with more and more pleasure, thinking of stronger forces that had recently been at work nearby. That boy had rattled my brain loose. I felt free.
    I threw on a foolishly flamboyant red dress and practically bounced back down the stairs. The morning light trickled in through the blinds and the den glowed warm, but that wasn’t nearly enough. I danced over and tugged the shades up to ceiling so that the pure Georgia sun could start cooking me to perfection.
    I checked my phone and felt punctured a little. Darryl had left me a text. Ugh, I was just lucky he hadn’t bust down the doors last night. No telling what he would have done upon seeing bare white flesh – tattooed, nonetheless - weighing down his little sister.
    Well, it hadn’t happened – no need to dwell on it. I texted Marissa to see if she wanted to get lunch and waited.
    A giddy energy bubbled through me, something I hadn’t felt in years. It was the crisp morning light waking me after a night well spent. It was six months of self-imposed romantic isolation lifted. It was me finally casting aside the last pieces of the cocoon I’d wrapped around myself after the horrible end to that last relationship.
    I didn’t want to unleash this uncaged energy on the streets, but I knew just what could take it. I took my phone and went into dining room. The place had nothing to do with food – the only seating available was the bench for the dark teak Grand piano that sat in the center. Our landlady had left it when she moved out to a smaller place and opened the house for rent. She misted up looking at it whenever she stopped by. I’d gotten a similar feeling when I first saw it.
    I’d been playing since I was young. One Christmas, long ago – back when Dad was still alive – he’d showed up with a long cardboard package that said Casio. I doubt he’d gotten ahold of it through legal means, but I was 5 then, and all I knew was that I had a keyboard. He’d managed to get a few sheet books too. We never had money for a single class, but it didn’t stop me from practicing almost every day.
    It may have been the one single thing that kept me sane as that dim flicker of family life died out – first with his death, then Mom’s OD. Darryl had barely been able to keep us under a roof and get warm food in our stomachs, but he never once tried to get me to sell the keyboard. It wasn’t till I got my scholarship and started undergrad that I finally laid off practice – even though I had access to real pianos at school.
    Later, after I left Rico and was looking for a new life alone in a new place, finding this had sealed the deal. The grand piano healed me just as my old keyboard had. Bit by bit, I’d learn to play it the way I never had when I was a kid.
    I set the phone on the rack by the sheets of music and flipped open to a random page. The notes jumped out in my face and my hands took off along the keys. The house rumbled under the weight of my opening chords. My left hand ran off to patter an octave higher, and I missed a couple notes. This piece was way