Strings

The only sound in the room is the blunt whirring of the violin case being unzipped. Kneeling in front of it, she flips open the case and momentarily regards the instrument. Nestled in its bed of white foam and satin sheets, the dark wood shines dully.

Reaching out, she lays her hand on the violin's body and finds it mildly cool to the touch. Softly and slowly, she runs her fingers over the black smoothness of its tailpiece. Her fingertips find the tense, cold beginnings of the strings, passing over the bridge, then the soft tensile feel of the slim metal strings as they stretch over the length of the violin's long, graceful neck. Then, wrapping her fingers gently around its neck, she lifts the instrument out.

Straightening up, she tucks the violin under the left side of her chin and holds it up as if she is about to play it. She lets its sweet, musky scent lightly caress her. The fingers of her left hand rest lightly on the four strings. Motor memory, almost forgotten, suddenly compels her fingers to spread out a little further across the strings. First position.

She closes her eyes.

And can almost hear his voice again. Feel his fingers shifting her own unschooled fingers over the strings. She'd hardly been able to notice how he was positioning her fingers. All she'd known was the warmth of his slim fingers, their calloused tips on her skin.

Then the sudden heat of his presence behind her now, his left arm stretching out alongside hers, his hand on her wrist, adjusting the height at which she held the violin. She'd tried hard not to tremble at the touch of his hand and the electric awareness of his proximity behind her.

And then his voice next to her ear. "First position."

She had been seventeen. She hadn't known how to react when she first felt his lips on her ear. She hadn't moved when his hand slid over the length of her arm and his arm wrapped itself around her. She hadn't known what to say when his lips moved from her ear to the side of her neck, or when he pulled her closer against his body.

It was only when he took the violin out of her hand and turned her around to face him that she'd started to say something. But he'd stopped her protest with a finger on her lips, and, laying the violin aside, he took her face gently in both hands and gave her her first kiss.

She opens her eyes, but the memory doesn't go away.

She remembers his hands cupping her face and the moist scent of his breath filling her senses. Then that lingering, electrifying moment when he'd paused, their faces almost touching, the sight of his lips terrifying yet exciting her. He'd paused for a second, just a second, but it felt like an eternity of desperate waiting; the battle waging inside her head - pondering the impossibility of the situation and the heart-pounding inevitability of it - all within a second.

And then he'd kissed her.

She lowers the violin and puts it on her lap. The ten years past feels like an eternity ago. She looks at the violin, remembering its music, remembering the boy. Remembering the bittersweet pain.

Shaking her head, she pushes the painful memories away, for now. She holds the violin close to her and closes her eyes again, remembering the kiss, remembering the blinding white heat of first love.

Slowly, she lays the instrument back in its bed of satin and closes its case.

[Random thought: As I was writing the last line, I suddenly had a vision of the violin case as a coffin.]