Starting from Zero (Starting from 1)

“Gross.”

“Right? My b-brother was talking about making his own. R-Rory is a good cook, and he’s a mathematician. The combo leads to interesting experiments. Good thing Christian doesn’t mind. They’re looking for a house in Long Beach to move in together after Christian’s lease is up on his apartment. He keeps saying he needs a big window with lots of sunshine for his tea experiment. F-fuckin’ weirdo,” he said affectionately.

“Are you cold?”

“I’m f-fine.”

I glanced up at the gathering clouds in the gray sky, then set my arm over the bench and motioned for him to slide over. “No, you aren’t. You’re always cold. That jacket isn’t warm enough. Come closer.”

“You sound like a parent,” he huffed before obeying.

Well, sort of obeying. I tugged him against me and wrapped my arm around him.

“You sound like a brat,” I retorted. “Better?”

“Yeah. Do you think you’ll ever want to be a dad?”

I scoffed. “Where’d that come from?”

“This place.” He gestured toward the father and son throwing a baseball on the opposite end of the playground. “I think our timing is off today. I see more families than couples.”

“Hmm. Do you?”

“What?”

“Do you want to be a parent someday?” I asked.

“No. I don’t think so. Never say never, but it’s a big job and I wouldn’t want to do it on my own.”

“You don’t know that you’d be alone. You might meet someone and fall in love and—”

Justin rolled his eyes. “Hmph. You know how I feel about that. Beside, I didn’t exactly have a great role model. I wouldn’t want to be anything like my father. What was yours like?”

I regarded him thoughtfully before replying. “He was a good guy. A little distant and hard to know but I think some of that was the parenting style my folks grew up with. Hover without getting too close. They were protective and sometimes overly invested in my achievements. When I was a kid, they checked every homework assignment. If I got a math problem wrong, they’d point it out and tell me to fix it. Maybe that’s not a great example, but it was a theme. There’s a right way and a wrong way. Do the right thing.”

“What about your music? Did they make you learn piano when you were a toddler?” he joked.

“No, that was something I found on my own. Neither of my parents played an instrument but they wanted to expose me to the arts early, so they took me to museums and to the theater all the time. And concerts too.”

“Rock concerts?”

I chuckled. “No. Glorified local talent shows at Town Hall. We had a few of them every winter. It was a good way to get the community together and keep spirits high when there was literally nothing to do besides play in the snow. The kids sat in the front on the floor, and I always made sure to get a spot by the piano. I’d watch Mrs. Murphy’s fingers when she played. I started to memorize the notes and the corresponding keys of the songs in her repertoire. It was mostly simple stuff, ranging from easy classical music to “Over the Rainbow.” At the end of one show, when everyone started mingling and feasting on cookies and punch, I hopped onstage and started to play. That was officially day one of my music career,” I said with a self-deprecating half laugh.

“Wow. So you were a prodigy.”

“I don’t know about that. But I was drawn to it. Like the instrument called to me. Weird, isn’t it?”

Justin shook his head. “No. It’s cool. What song did you play?”

“ ‘Ave Maria.’ ”

“What? That’s crazy!”

I snickered at his dumbfounded stare. “Don’t be too impressed. It’s the same chord progression over and over. Fairly simple.”

“Yeah, right! You might as well be from Mars. I cannot relate. My mom didn’t have time to hover. If Rory and I had homework issues, we helped each other. He was a math whiz, and I was always good at English…y español también,” he said with a wink. “I never even touched a piano until I was a teenager. I’m a poor kid from a beach town. I lived in apartments all my life. And not nice ones in the sky with views of Catalina and Palos Verdes. Our building had gang tag graffiti on the sides.

“Rory and I were latchkey kids who went to the YMCA after school to avoid the drug dealer who lived two doors down and was always asking if we wanted to work for him. When the neighbors fought or had parties or hell, had sex…you could hear through the paper-thin walls. We’d turn on our mom’s old records and turn up the sound to drown out the noise. Fun fact…I joined my first band when I was fifteen so I could go to my friend Cam’s house to practice. He had an actual house and a dog. He also had a pretty younger sister and a hot older brother. They asked me what I played, and I said guitar. Total fucking lie. I’d never even held a real one before then.”