I gave him a moment to get some air into his lungs and began putting food on his plate for him. Normally, I wouldn’t have bitten into mine before he’d served himself, and my parents would kill me if they’d seen me doing it, but I guess my brain had drowned in the rain and mud.
I’d just finished serving him when he asked, “How many instruments do you play?”
I shrugged, trying to hide my discomfort. “A lot of some, a little of others.”
Scooping up some salsa on a chip, he looked at me before he popped it in his mouth. “What does that mean?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said I was a child prodigy, Marcus,” I said quietly, staring at my plate. “I’ve spent all but the first three years of my life learning to play instruments quickly and well. I’m not saying I’m a freak of nature who can pick up a new one and just play music, but if you give me some time to understand how different notes work on one I haven’t played before, and I teach myself how to play a couple of songs I know on them, I can pretty much take it from there.”
“Why are you so embarrassed about it?”
“When you were in high school, you were one of the popular kids, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, sounding genuine about it. “I didn’t really give a shit about that. I had my brothers, Remy, and other friends, but I didn’t focus on the scale of my popularity.”
“Yup, you were one of the popular kids,” I whispered. “Do you remember any of the kids in band?”
He was quiet a moment. “Yeah, I knew a couple of them, I think. They were in my classes.”
“How popular were they?”
“I don’t remember, Addy. What’s this got to do with you being embarrassed about having a natural talent with music and instruments?”
“I was the kid who was always in the music room playing something, Marcus. I wasn’t in the band because I was ahead of them all, but I helped out when they put on concerts. It wasn’t until I stood up during one of them with an electric violin with a neon blue light around it that people even wanted to speak to me.”
“Well, that’s their loss,” he muttered, and I heard him biting into something crunchy. “Fuck ‘em. You know, popularity is only as good as the setting you’re in. Do you think, after school and college, employers and people give a shit about how popular you were in high school or middle school? Like they ask to see your yearbook before they offer you a job?”
He snorted, and I finally looked up at him to see him shaking his head. “What a bunch of bullshit.” Then, looking back at me, he said seriously, “All the people who didn’t talk to you have probably heard your work on the radio or television by now. When this animated movie comes out, they’ll hear it when they watch it, and they’ll see your name come up in the credits. There might even be an interview with you about it, and they’ll all text each other when they watch it. Did you ever think about that?”
“No,” I replied quietly. “To be brutally honest, I don’t even care if that’s what happens.”
Leaning closer to me, he nodded. “Exactly! You don’t care because that was school and has absolutely nothing to do with the Adrienne Valtolina you are today. Their opinions mean jack shit to you.”
Searching my face, he smiled softly. “Baby, I don’t know how to play one instrument, but I’ll bet you anything I wouldn’t be able to learn how in a matter of days or weeks. You were born with a talent, like I have the talent with my job, and there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I think it’s fucking amazing you can do that.”
“Really?” I breathed, feeling relieved.
I wasn’t ashamed of what I did, but I was all too aware of the ‘band geek’ reputation people like me had. Regardless of how established we were with our chosen careers, we were still young, and I guess I’d been subconsciously worried about his opinion about my ‘band geek’ abilities.
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely! And know what else occurred to me this afternoon when I went to collect the food?” When I shook my head, he smirked. “That Glo Beam toothpaste jingle wasn’t the cheesy bullshit you normally hear in ads on the radio.” Picking up a nacho, I smiled as I chewed it. “I shit you not. Some of them are the most irritating things you’ll ever hear, and you just can’t get them out of your head. That one was catchy and classy, babe.”
“They wanted something like that, but their head of marketing was an angel who said no.”
Winking at me, he went back to eating. “Guess that makes me a nerd, too, now that I think about it. I spend all day working with horses.”