Page 24 of Crescendo

Ella

Sian had the decency to wait until we were squeezed in with the bustling dinner crowd in Mildreds Soho before she started.

It had been there on her face the whole time we’d been walking over and being seated, as we’d perused the menu and ordered.

But she’d let Alisha talk about a new consultant at work, and she’d even talked a little about a project she had going on at work.

However, once we were settled in and had our drinks and appetisers, she lifted her glass in a toast. “Here’s to our girl who’s all grown up now.”

I eyed her shit-eating grin. “I’m not twelve.”

“Indeed you’re not,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows and lowering her tone.

“Sian,” Alisha warned, clearly more than a little amused.

“What? We’re all just going to sit here and act like she isn’t more alive than we’ve seen her in years?”

I sighed, eating another bite of our rainbow pickled vegetables, hoping the sharpness of them would push back against the vise that threatened to lock around my chest.

Alisha sipped her own drink. “I was rather under the impression that it was one of those things we were better off not addressing directly.”

Sian threw her empty hand up into the air.

“No, no,” I said, cutting in. “It’s fine. We can talk about it.”

I wasn’t sure if I was really ready to, but they were my best friends. It would be okay.

Sian grinned. “Well, then. Shall we start with Lydia?”

I laughed, my insides still feeling tense and uncomfortable. “Must we?”

Lydia and I were keeping us a secret. She’d been right when she said everyone knowing would make it too real. But we couldn’t really talk about Crescendo and not talk about Lydia.

Sian hummed, scooping hummus up into a piece of pita. “Given that you turned up looking thoroughly satisfied, I’d say we must, yes.”

I felt myself blushing, glancing to the tables next to us to check they weren’t listening in. They seemed to be caught up in their own conversations, but it was still a little close for comfort and that was mortifying.

Alisha reached across the table to pat my hand that felt suddenly cold. “You don’t have to give us details. We’re just really happy for you.”

I smiled at her, my muscles feeling like they were working too hard for the simple gesture.

The whole thing was supposed to be simple, but I knew where this conversation led.

We talked about Lydia, and music, and ended up on Callum.

It was easier around her, like I could put everything else away and just do as she asked, play music because it was her thing, have fun, let everything else go, and let her be in charge.

But it never was going to be that easy, not really.

“But,” Sian said, leaning in across the small table, “if you want to give us the details, I would not say no.”

I barked a laugh. “Is this just because you think she’s hot? Are you trying to sleep with her vicariously?”

“Not no, honestly.” She shrugged and sipped her drink. “She’s objectively gorgeous and she’s got that… I don’t know, bratty, confident streak. I like that in bed.”

“Oh, my god, Sian.”

Alisha laughed. “In Sian’s defense, it’s not like we didn’t know that.”

“I know,” I groaned. “But it’s not something I want to be thinking about when I’m—” I stopped abruptly, my face going bright red.

Now, I’d done it. I’d given us up without even meaning to, without deciding I was going to. I’d still been of half a mind to just deny anything was happening.

Sian laughed, the sound dirty and victorious. “You owe me a tenner,” she told Alisha.

Alisha rolled her eyes but fished for her bag to pull the money out.

“Do I even want to know?” I asked, sinking down in my seat.

Sian grinned. “I bet her you two were fucking like rabbits. She thought you hadn’t quite gotten there yet.”

I scrunched my face up. “I can’t believe you.”

“Ha. Yes, you can.” She waited for me to open my eyes and look at her. “If you want to make me another fiver, you can tell us when you first did it.”

“Nothing’s going on,” I tried, uselessly. They knew me too well to buy it. “We’re just friends.”

“Like shit you are,” Sian snorted. “You can try pulling that on your little Crescendo friends, but we’ve known you your entire adult life. So spill.”

What difference did it make at this point?

They both knew and I wasn’t ashamed of it.

It wasn’t the first time we’d talked about who we were…

seeing? Dating? Secretly fucking in dark corners?

Whatever. And maybe admitting to one time would help.

If they thought we just had a one-night stand, maybe we could all move past it without it becoming something bigger?

So long as they knew it wasn’t anything serious, we’d be fine.

“Last night,” I sighed, not meeting either of their gazes. “But it was just a one-time thing.”

“What?” Sian said after a loaded pause. “Last night?”

“Yep.”

“How is that even possible?”

Alisha took her ten pound note back and swapped it for a fiver.

I shot Sian a look. “When did you think we’d done it?”

“The other night, when we all had dinner. Why do you think I waited until the next day to text you?”

“Huh.”

“ Huh , she says.” Sian shook her head. “I was so certain, too. You two could barely keep your eyes off each other.”

“Yes. Well.” I cleared my throat. “There you go.”

“Why’d you wait so long?”

I laughed, the sound a little wild. “I don’t think a week is particularly long…”

She bobbed her head, allowing that. “I’m just saying, if I was sharing a flat with someone that ridiculously hot and talented, I’d have jumped her bones way sooner.”

“We know that,” Alisha deadpanned, and we all laughed.

It was nice. Easy. Laughing with them and actually feeling part of it. The looming reality was still pressing at the sides of my skull and aching the muscles down my back, but this reminded me of uni, of how much I'd been a part of things back then.

When our laughter quietened, Alisha looked at me seriously. “Is it because you only have two months?”

I bit my cheek and shrugged. “A bit. Whatever was between us, you can’t make a big deal out of it because it was just casual. Quick. Simple. Easy. A one-off. Just fun, okay? You can’t start acting like we’re a couple. Because we’re not. We’re just friends.”

The two of them exchanged a look and there was a loaded silent moment between us before Sian asked, in a low voice, “Is it because of… Callum?”

I sucked in a breath. It felt loud and dangerous, even in the noisy restaurant. My heart was pounding in my bones.

I sniffed, holding myself stiffly. “Well, it does rather complicate everything, doesn’t it? Especially given that she’s only here for two months and we live on opposite sides of the world.”

“Have you told her?” Alisha asked quietly, her hand half extended across the table towards me.

I silently begged for her not to touch me. “No.”

“You don’t want to?”

“Not especially.” Was that even true? “Like I told you at breakfast, that’s a huge part of my life. Crescendo is two months. There’s no space for both of them at the same time. No time for them both. I just need to put that all away and… get over myself, be good at the music.”

Alisha put her warm, soft hand down on mine and Sian joined on top of that.

Tears burned in my eyes. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Alisha said. “And it’s okay that it’s not.”

I looked at her as my vision swam. “I wish…”

What? What did I wish?

So many things. I wished so many things had gone differently, that they were different. How much easier this whole thing would have been if Callum were still here.

How different it might have been if I’d listened to everyone around me and… I don’t know, processed it earlier. But how the hell were you supposed to process something like that in a way that ever made it manageable?

“We know,” Sian said gently. And I knew they did. They understood better than anyone else in the world because they’d seen it all. They’d even known him.

I nodded, swallowing hard against the tears and the burning pain and rage.

This wasn’t what tonight was supposed to be about.

I shook my head and sucked in a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Lydia doesn’t know and she… doesn’t need to. We’re friends for two months who just needed to get something out of their systems. It’s just casual—”

“Is that something you can do?”

I laughed, the sound a little wet. “Yes. We’re just friends.”

They swapped another look that felt like my exchange with Lydia this morning—the one where we’d both owned that we weren’t good at casual. That was the problem with people knowing you.

“I’m figuring it out,” I insisted. “She’s helping me with music and I’m not… failing like I was, disappointing everyone. It’s fine.”

“You weren’t disappointing anyone before, either,” Alisha insisted.

“You didn’t see the looks my instructors were giving me.”

“Well, fuck them,” Sian said. “You’re not doing this for them. You’re doing it for you.”

“And Lydia’s helping you find music again.” Alisha smiled softly. “That’s huge, important.”

“I know.” I did. I knew it deep in my core, in my soul.

I knew that whatever Lydia was giving me, whatever she was doing that was rewriting my brain chemistry and letting me feel the music again wasn’t something that came with casual.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you got over and threw away in a couple of months.

But a couple of months was what we had. And I would rather have a little bit of her than nothing at all.

Sian hesitated—unusual for her—and I knew she wanted to say something I didn’t really want to hear. I could have stopped her, but I didn’t.

It took a minute but, eventually, she murmured, “Lydia would probably be okay with it, you know?”

Part of me wanted to laugh at the idea that my friends who had met Lydia twice might know how she’d feel about someone dropping something as heavy as a dead sibling on them, but the other part of me suspected she might be right.

“It’s also okay not to tell her, of course,” Alisha said quickly.