( a little nod to my first drabbe as casey. )
"So you really wanna take that piano on tour…?”
“Yes.”
“Like that?”
“Yes.”
“So, you are 100 % done working on it.”
“Correct.”
I could tell Byron thought I was crazy, but I stood my ground. Byron was more than just a manager to me. He was the father I never had. He was the first person I went to when sh*t hit the fan with Sarah and Christian, and the first person I would go to the next time I inevitably found myself in trouble.
In typical fatherly fashion -- or at least, how I envisioned having a father would have been -- he stared at me with his arms folded, one eyebrow raised, silently scolding me. It took me a month to get my piano back from Sarah, and another month to fix it so it would play again. Byron and I stood in the middle of my living room, which it took up almost the entirety of, arguing over whether or not I should leave the scars Sarah carved in it in tact. I had my case prepared. I had all the facts lined up and ready to go should he oppose me, and he did oppose me immediately.
“Look Casey…” he sighed, pulling his glasses off his face and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know you loved this piano, but don’t you think people might look down on you for bringing it out like that?”
“People are already looking down on me,” I blunted, mimicking his posture by folding my arms. I glanced at the piano, then at Byron.
“Well, do you really want to exacerbate that? I’m not real sure where your head is at on this, but to an outsider might think you’re poking fun at Sarah, and you might get some heat for it.” Byron was trying, but I already considered everything he was telling me. I stared at him, waiting for him to go on, or try a different route. “You have the means to get a new, probably better piano now, so I don’t see why you have to keep this one.”
“Because this is my piano, dude.” I could tell he didn’t understand by the way he was shaking his head, but I didn’t wanna budge.
“Then why not repair the outside like you repaired the inside?”
That was a good try, but I’d already thought of that too. I had this. “Because this is a part of its history and mine, that’s why.” He stared at me for a second, maybe waiting for me to loosen up and say I was kidding. I knew he didn’t get it, but in my own way, this was how I could accept my mistake.
“If you’re trying to preserve the history, repairing the inside defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? If this were history, and that thing was human, it’d be dead.” Byron cracked a smile.
I glared at him initially, but I couldn’t help but smile too. “Okay, smart ass, but everyone has scars. I have a huge scar on the outside from appendix surgery, but my inside’s all good. I want to take it, and I already know what people will think of it. I just don’t care.”
“You know what this sounds like to me, kid?” Byron asked. I wasn’t fazed. I was far beyond ready to pass off whatever he had to say. “It looks like you’re punishing yourself.”
Uh oh.
I stared at him, wide-eyed. I felt my face heating up. I could literally hear the comedic record scratch inside my head. I’d been so confident at first, but I didn’t have anything for that. I must have looked pretty stupid because Byron started laughing. “Let me explain. Have you ever seen pictures online, where a kid gets caught doing something they’re not supposed to, and their parent makes them hold up a sign confessing to their wrongdoing, so all their friends can see it? That’s exactly what this looks like.”
I had to look away from him. In what I, again, assumed was typical of most dads, he’d seen through me before I even saw through myself. I couldn’t dispute that. That was probably the one argument I had not prepared for. I scoffed. I rolled my eyes as if he were talking nonsense, but it made so much sense it made me sick. I found myself staring at the ceiling, wondering what the odds were that it might suddenly collapse and rescue me from this conversation because I didn’t want to continue on with it. I didn’t want to continue on in general, but I knew that was ridiculous. I was being outrageous and I knew it, but why couldn’t he just let me have this? “I’m not a kid, Byron,” I muttered.
“Which is why you shouldn’t punish yourself with this,” Byron countered. He was growing wise to me. We’d probably known each other way too long. “Look, Casey, Sarah will probably never forgive you for what you did, but if you wanna continue on with your life, you gotta at least forgive yourself.”
Why did verbal confirmation that Sarah would never forgive me make my heart hurt so bad? Why was that what my mind immediately decided to focus on? Right, because I hadn’t moved on. I hadn’t forgiven myself. He was right. After a moment of excruciating silence, I shook my head. “I’m starting to think I don’t really know how to do that,” I admitted. When Byron was right, he was right, but I would never let him have the full victory. “Which is exactly why I want to take it. Think of it as a last resort.”
