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should make
sure the house is in order, and I’ve got to get some practice time
in.”
    “Good – you can’t let the violin slide.
She’ll get jealous of me,” Bronwyn joked lightly, and strode to the
door with an obvious message – there would be no repeat of last
night’s emotion this morning, despite how he had hoped the
morning’s departure would go.
    “Coffee’s on downstairs,” she tossed over
her shoulder as she retreated out of the bedroom to let him dress
alone.
    The thought of hanging around for a friendly
coffee between strangers with the woman he knew more intimately
than any other human on the planet seemed about as appealing as
having a doctor’s exam in front of a lecture hall full of his
classmates, so he dressed quickly and prepared an equally blithe
excuse for his hasty departure as soon as he got downstairs and
retrieved his instrument.
    It was then that he realized his error – he
had told her he loved her, and that didn’t fit in with her plans
for a weekend of fun.
    Now, feeling used and discarded, it was up
to him to make his getaway, indicted for the crime of letting
himself feel more than they had agreed upon when they entered into
their weekend liaison.
    And enjoy the burn of regret for having said
too much, too fast.
     
    ***
     
    Luckily, his mother never really pressed on
how his weekend went, because he found himself without enough
energy to lie effectively. She was too busy flouncing around with a
disturbing swish to her step, humming, and he could only assume her
Valentine’s Day had been more productive than his, though his
father still maintained his seclusion behind the wall of newsprint,
as always.
    At least his sister’s Valentine’s Day dance
had been a bust, filled with the usual junior high drama, but he
was even too preoccupied with his own thoughts to glory in her over
the top misery.
    But one thing was now starting to go right
for him, and, two weeks after the rise and collapse of his first
love affair, he finally received a satisfied nod from his violin
instructor over his rendering of the tango medley. But, frankly, if
it took this much pain to understand the tango, accompanying the
stinging memories of pleasure that suffused the notes with new
meanings, then he’d rather flunk.
    One afternoon, lugging his weary body home
from class, undecided if his sluggishness was from emotional lull
or a budding head cold, he spotted Warren’s car in the drive and
nearly fell over at the sight.
    “Oh, now – that’s exactly what I needed,” he
muttered to himself, with an irrational bubble of laughter in his
chest. How much more perfect could his rejection get?
    When he did something, he sure did it
right.
    Shrugging off his mother’s concern over his
haggard appearance that night, Daniel felt himself shrinking
further into a shell, though unwillingly. He wanted to take it like
a man and move on with nothing more than a sense of triumph for
scoring some action, but he had come to accept that he wasn’t built
like most men seemed to be. Or maybe all men felt this way, but
nobody wanted to admit that love and agony sprang as fiercely in
the male breast as in their female counterparts.
    In any case, the bitter irony was that he
seemed to feel ten times more love for Bronwyn than did Warren, yet
it was the hunkish blockhead who was now enjoying her company,
while he steeped in his own unmanly grief.
    For the hundredth time, Daniel clutched his
short hair in his hands and tried to focus on the paper flickering
on the computer screen before him. But what did the baroque period
matter to him any more?
    Ping-click-clackety, something pelted
against the glass of his window, sending a thrill of shock through
him, and bringing him to an immediate stand, which resulted in a
serious thunk of his head against the slopped ceiling of his attic
room.
    “Dammit,” he cursed, rubbing his goose egg,
until another clatter at the window recalled him to the matter at
hand.
    He spotted her