Page 14 of Crescendo

Cautiously, I cracked the door, pushing open just enough to peer through—Ella hunched over the piano, her posture slack, defeated, small.

Maybe Clara was right, maybe Melinda was right, and maybe I needed to give her space, but…

I was human. I couldn’t help myself when I saw someone looking that broken, bleeding into even the simplest melody.

I slipped through, moving carefully, and with a quiet touch, I knocked on the open door.

Ella jolted, looking back with a tear-streaked expression, and—damn, the woman even cried beautifully.

One eye dark as a lake at night and the other one shimmering with refractive tears, picture-perfect streaks down her cheeks, she looked like a movie poster, and I felt the tug of heartbreak looking at her as if I was experiencing whatever was haunting her.

“Oh, god, Lydia, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize—”

“Hey,” I said, shutting the door and stealing across the room to her, laying a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. “You’re picking up the piano chords quickly. Can I sit and listen if I bribe you with tea?”

She laughed, thick through tears, wiping her face. “I’m so sorry, I’m all… I’m such a snotty mess.”

I waved her off. “Ella, please. You should see me when I cry. I’m actually in awe of how dignified you look when you cry. I’ll put some tea on for us both.”

She choked out a quick laugh, shaking her head. “God, Lydia, you don’t need to just drink tea now you’re in the UK, you know—you’ve already given up meat. You’re American. How can you possibly survive without coffee and hamburgers?”

“Hm. I’ll let that comment slide, but only because you’re sad. Don’t get used to it, Ella.”

I brought a tray back from the kitchen a minute later with a pot of English breakfast tea and two cups, and a little plate piled with Rich Tea biscuits, Ella’s favorite.

She’d stopped playing when I got back, slumped over the piano instead, and even tea didn’t pick her up.

I hesitated, just for a second, before I pulled up a stool next to the bench and sat by her side.

“I’m not going to make you practice anything,” I said quietly. “But I’m here if you want any advice or direction.”

She shook her head, quietly, with a shaky breath out, and she said, “Lydia… I’m really sorry I’m like this.”

I pushed my luck with, “Like what?”

She gestured frustratedly to the piano, sitting up taller.

“I’m a bloody disgrace, that’s what. I’m not an idiot.

I swear. But I feel like one, with classes…

everything… it’s not like that,” she said, her voice thin, reedy, as she hugged herself.

“I promise I know music. I know these things. I should know these things, but… it’s all…

locked away. Like it’s right there. Just out of reach… ”

I studied her for a long time before I heard myself say, quietly, “That is what it feels like.”

She shot me a wide-eyed look. “Like everything is out of my reach?”

“I’m not that mean to just up and say that to someone even if it were true.

No. That’s…” I picked up my tea, sipping delicately at it.

“That’s how it’s felt for me, lately, too.

Looking at a score sheet telling myself I’m supposed to know how to do this, but it all…

slips between my fingers. Like I’m reaching for it, and my fingertips brush the edges of the music, but I’m just short of reaching. ”

She looked at me, wide-eyed. “I can… hardly imagine you not able to compose.”

“It’s not that I can’t compose. It’s that everything I write is hollow.

No amount of compliments from other people, no amount of money I make from it, can fill that void.

It used to be a big… beautiful thing, full of magic, full of dreams. These days, I’m only ever going through the motions.

” I looked down at the piano keyboard, stroking the keys softly.

“I’m not trying to relearn how to write music, not really.

I’m trying to… to grasp that feeling of what it’s like to love the music.

To have it expand to fill every crevice of your mind, of your heart, of your dreams.”

“Lydia…”

I smiled lightly at her, and I took one of the napkins from the tray and, moving softly, I dabbed at her cheeks. “As prettily as you do cry, let’s clean you up.”

She laughed, cheeks coloring, but she didn’t fight it—ducked her head a little, tilting her eyes up to watch me dab her tears away. “You often go complimenting girls by telling them how pretty they look when they cry?”

“You’re also very pretty when you don’t cry, Ella, do not go twisting my words, now,” I laughed. “Say, Ella?”

“Mm?”

“Sorry for pressing you. You don’t need to tell me anything. Maybe you want to now, maybe later, maybe never, and I’m open to hear it whenever, but you don’t have to.”

Her lips parted, and she looked wide-eyed at me for a minute before she softened into a sweet little smile.

“Thank you… I’m sorry. I swear I’m not trying to be cagey, to be…

difficult. It’s just… when I had music lessons and classes before, it was…

” Her face tightened, a cool mask as she looked past me.

“I have some… difficult memories… associated with that time. Studying chords just makes me think…”

She… wanted to tell me. I could see it there in her expression, in her eyes, but her jaw clenched, her body holding it back.

I slipped a hand to her back, fingers curling softly against her shoulder blades through the soft fabric of her sweater, and she softened, relaxing a little.

“I have an idea,” I said softly. “For my little the key of music spontaneous writer.”

She hung her head, laughing softly. “You’re never going to let me live that down, though, are you?”

“Not in my life,” I laughed. “I told you I came here for a change, a new perspective. Someone who feels music like you do—I think you’re exactly what I need, Ella.”

Her cheeks colored deeper, blinking quickly at me, and that was—well, interesting. She got easily flustered at comments like that, which implied—maybe Clara was right about the way she looked at me.

Ella Hendrickson was attracted to me? It should have been a bigger concern than it was. Having to live in the same apartment for two months with someone this stunningly pretty, someone who was attracted to me, and someone I shouldn’t go there with—that sounded like a problem.

But damn, I could get used to her looking at me like that.

“I think you might be overselling me, Lydia,” she laughed softly.

“Mm. No.” I stood up, walking around her, and I slid onto the bench on her left, my side pressed up against hers.

I felt the slight draw of breath as our sides touched, saw her swallow out of the corner of my eye, and I pretended I didn’t see it.

Pretended I didn’t want to try pushing that reaction to see where else I could take it.

“If you lock up at theory instruction and all the numbers associated with whatever happened… then we’ll go at it a different way.

Chords should be something you feel, not just something you know. Pick a key for us?”

She flickered a smile at me. “The… the key of music?”

“Beautiful idea. And from these lovely keys we’re presented on this piano, which one would you like?”

She laughed. “I’m… partial to… F Major.”

“Good choice.” I lay my left hand on the lower register, and I played an F Major chord, softly, before I raised to the fourth, playing the Bb Major. “I’ll play the chords. You play the melody.”

“I don’t… know the melody.”

“That’s because there isn’t one yet. Let’s find it together. Once you know the personality of each chord and what sounds good on top of each one, I’ll tell you their names.”

She welled up a little bit, looking at me. “God, Lydia, I don’t understand,” she said, her voice thick. “I’ve been so… so unbearably stupid this whole time since classes started. I hate being stupid, not understanding. Why are you being so… good? So gentle? So… like this?”

Because just under the surface, locked away below whatever happened to you, is the inspiration I’m looking for. Wouldn’t do to say all that right now and scare her off. “I’m very willful,” is what I settled for saying, and she laughed.

“I’d say. Lydia… thank you.”

She lay her right hand on the keys, and slowly, methodically, she began to plunk the keys, matching up to the rhythm of my chords—first playing full chords, and then arpeggiating them as she started to get into the flow of it, her fingers moving more naturally over the keys, dancing over notes fluidly, and I saw it.

Just a little slip of the cover she kept up, and underneath it, the spark of something special as she drew out complex, intricate melodies, returning to the same heartfelt motifs again.

I added my other hand as she got into the flow of it, low rumbling chords in the deep bass register, and she picked up, that locked-away look on her expression fading, finally, as I saw the glimmer of something more in her eyes, melodic lines flowing.

We only broke quickly to drink tea and have biscuits, and before we knew it, we were back on the next song, a dramatic i-iv-III-iv progression in A Minor, and before I knew it, the evening had slipped completely away from us, night settled in outside the windows, and I was enchanted.

We made small talk in between pieces, but we said a thousand times as much without words, the interplay of my music and hers saying so much it felt like we linked on a level deeper than words could reach.

It was somewhere well into the evening that the countermelodies I worked in on the alto range felt like a dance with her, call-and-response answers to her melodic motifs feeling like flirtation, and I was a little drunk on the sensation when we finished another song and Ella’s eyes met mine, gleaming.

It was absolutely unfair how her brown eye seemed to darken with excitement while her green eye seemed to light up, glow brighter. Like she was just more striking, more radiant, the more feeling she had in her.

“Ella—”

“That was—”

We both started speaking at the same time, and she stopped, biting down on a smile and a quiet apology. I moved without thinking about it, laying a hand on top of hers in the middle of the keyboard.

“Let’s have lessons more like this from now on,” I said, and she blushed, smiling wider through it.

“Is that really okay? I’d hate to monopolize all your time…”

“If anyone’s going to monopolize my time, I want it to be you,” I said. A little too flirtatious. The gleam in her eyes said she knew that too, and that she didn’t mind, giving me a charged look, and I thought I wouldn’t mind too much if she kissed me right now, even though—

The doorbell rang, and Ella and I jolted away from each other, both of us up to our feet turning back to the door.

“God, it’s already dark out,” she said. “Our friends have probably been wondering where we’ve disappeared to.”

“No one can go long without my company, turns out,” I said, and she paused at the door, glancing back at me with a gleam in her eyes.

“Least of all me,” she said. I raised an eyebrow, and she turned back to the music room door, opening it and walking into the foyer. “More lessons like this one sounds… I think it sounds wonderful.”

Hm. This woman could be trouble.

I didn’t mind that.