Westlake Soul by Rio Youers Read Free Book Online

was our third date. We’d done the SuperPoke thing on Facebook, I’d taken her to the movies and out for dinner. We’d kissed a few times, nothing more. But for Date #3 she’d invited me to her house (her parents were away for the weekend) and I knew that our relationship was about to hit the next level. I’d expected deep respect and intimacy—thinking, sensibly, that we were still a few dates away from falling in love.
    I was wrong.
    BAM!
    Her parents own a kingly, neo-Georgian home in Rosedale (Daddy was—still is—one of the big wheels at CBC). Nadia kissed me at the door, made me feel welcome, but I still felt—coming from our modest home in small town Hallow Falls—out of place. Not uncomfortable with the splendour . . . just unfamiliar with it. I’d never been in a house that had a statue in the hallway before. A frickin’
statue.
    “This is the shit,” I said to Nadia, and imagined the house shuddering with disdain. “I better not touch anything.”
    “Only me,” Nadia said with a smile.
    I kicked off my sneakers, dropped my backpack, and followed Nadia on the obligatory tour, which concluded not in her bedroom, as I had hoped (why delay the inevitable?), but in a room resplendent with funky artwork, sprigs of lavender, and a grand piano. An 1896 Steinway Model B, to be precise.
    “The music room,” she said brightly.
    How could I resist? I stepped to the piano and tinkled a few of the high keys, matched the notes with a warbling false. Nadia looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
    “What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?” I asked.
    She shrugged.
    “A-flat minor.”
Tinkle-tinkle!
    “Funny,” she said. “You get that joke from a Christmas cracker?”
    “The great Fozzie Bear,” I said. “Wocka Wocka.”
    Half a smile. “You’re playing B-flat, though. Now C . . . now B-flat again.”
    I stopped tinkling. “You play?”
    “A little.”
    “Show me what you got.”
    She considered for a moment, biting her lower lip, looking from my expectant face to the piano’s immaculate keyboard, then back to me. I thought a little shyness was creeping in, but this wasn’t the case; she was actually afraid I would think her uncool. All I had really seen of Nadia was a hottie who could kick the decks and kiss like a soul-breaker, but now I was going to see the flip side. The rich man’s daughter, who sat with her knees together and her chin high. Montessori schooling and tennis trophies. Piano lessons from the age of four . . . continuing until she was old enough to rebel, get a tramp stamp, and play music of a different kind.
    “I don’t know what to play,” she said, hesitating.
    “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Play anything.”
    She sighed and looked at me, her eyes deep and warm.
This is who I am,
that look said.
Take it or leave it.
I replied by touching her cheek, curling a wisp of hair behind her ear, making her smile. She sat at the piano, her back straight, her small feet poised above the pedals.
    “Okay,” she said.
    I didn’t know what to expect. As I’ve said, the Nadia I knew was punkier . . . wilder. This was a different version, but—as I was about to discover—no less alluring. She placed her fingers on the keys and they suddenly looked more elegant. Those fingers had tousled my hair and set turntables on fire, but now they were as light as motes of dust. This wasn’t the only change. A calm had fallen across her face. Her whole demeanour settled. She went from a river, tumultuous and white, to a lake, serene and blue.
    And then she started to play.
    Within moments, everything inside me lifted, teased into flight by notes as delicate as the fingers that played them. My skin flushed with sensation. My mouth dropped open. Heart floating in my chest as I breathed shallow sips of air. I’d never known anything so beautiful. Not just the melody, but to see Nadia so transformed, and to feel her oneness with the music . . . it was astounding. And as those notes