Page 32 of Crescendo

Ella

She reappeared holding two glasses—longer pours than a single shot.

My lip was bleeding. I hadn’t realised I’d been chewing it that hard as she’d desperately run to the kitchen with the scotch.

I didn’t even like scotch. But it would burn. And it would take the edge off the panic of knowing she’d heard—and the frantic, anguished way she’d begged to accompany me. There was no world in which Lydia Howard Fox should be accompanying me.

If I’d realised how long I’d been sitting there, streaming every emotion I had in my body into the piano, I’d have stopped. I’d have made myself decent, presentable, tidy before she’d gotten home.

She held out a glass, her eyes still pleading and glistening.

I took it. “I don’t even know what I was playing,” I whispered.

“That’s okay,” she replied quickly, holding her own glass up in the air. “Whatever it was… just… tap into the same thing again? Whatever comes out when you do that is exactly what I want to hear.”

I recoiled and quickly locked my body down, hoping she hadn’t seen it.

Something in her expression wavered, just for a second.

“Okay,” I said, looking away. She’d already heard it. I’d already let enough people down today—let her down for the last three days. It was enough.

I downed the scotch. It was disgusting, but that was okay.

Everything was okay.

Lydia stared at me. “Yeah?” she breathed, her eyes wide.

I nodded. “I don’t…” I sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t know how to play like that in front of other people.”

“That’s okay—”

I laughed once, a sharp, spiky sound. “We’ll see if you’re still saying that when you’re stuck accompanying… crap.”

I tried not to look at her directly, but I could see it in my peripheral vision, the way she looked so frantically and vitally alive, like she’d seen something far more wondrous than me screaming at a piano, like she was barely holding onto a million massive things she wanted to say.

She downed her drink, making a small sound as she swallowed, and practically threw herself at the violin.

I hadn’t seen her play that yet. She’d been placed into the advanced strings workshop, separate from the rest of us, and I hadn’t gotten to hear.

A distant part of my mind thought it fascinating that it was the first instrument that spoke to her when she’d… heard me.

Maybe there was something about it that matched the screaming, desperate energy I’d been pouring out of myself.

Professionals made the violin beautiful—hell, even students made it beautiful—but I could still remember primary school music lessons and concerts where a row of seven-year-old beginners lined up and scratched our way through ‘Frère Jacques’.

That felt closer to whatever the mess I’d been playing was.

She nodded, positioned beside the piano. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I sighed. Would I ever be ready?

The keys stared back at me, so composed and proper and judgmental. And I had no idea how to play them. Had no idea how to do anything that was going to elicit those emotions she’d burst through the door with.

She was patient, waiting as I stared at the piano until my vision became fuzzy.

I knew she was still there, of course, but the room blurred into the background, the day crashing in on me, the feeling I’d had when I’d sat myself here after running from class.

And my body moved, found the keys, and they yielded to my touch.

They weren’t laughing anymore, weren’t judging, weren’t anything other than vessels.

And, the more I played, the easier it became. The rage and fear flowing freely again, screaming from the keys and pounding in my head.

Nobody could ever say Lydia was a one-trick pony, that she was washed up and had lost her creativity.

This composer who had broken a million hearts and put them back together, who’d made the hair on the back of a million necks stand to attention, and who’d soared above the greatest triumphs, took a boiling, breaking mess, and put something beautiful over the top of it.

A violin score like I’d never heard that howled over my messy notes, that screeched and softened, that sent us racing through a song I hadn’t even known I knew.

Once I let it all go, the song found itself, and I hated it but I needed it.

It was wind whirling past a young man’s body as he sped down a motorway.

It was the sound of tyres on asphalt, the pounding music of the cars going by, the looping CD the onlookers had reported to newspapers as the sirens had hurtled to the scene, everyone else at a standstill.

It was the frozen, frigid moment the police had shown up at the house.

My tiny holdall by the door, waiting to go up to my childhood bedroom.

How smug I’d been that I’d beaten him home that night—one of a thousand weekends we’d agreed to both be home for family time and he usually arrived before me.

It was a funeral I couldn’t remember, hundreds of awkward condolences.

It was the memory of his laughter—the big, bright way his whole face smiled.

Crinkled brown eyes and a face full of freckles that it was a coincidence we shared.

And it was that picture of his bike strewn across a motorway I now refused to drive on, plastered across every report about it.

I heaved and threw myself from the piano, collapsing to my knees on the floor.

“Ella!” Lydia’s frantic voice called as she knelt beside me, her arm wrapping over my shoulders. It was so warm. I was so cold.

I shook my head.

“I’m here, you’re safe,” she said. Just like my dad.

The doorbell buzzed and a screaming sob tore itself from my body. “No! No more.”

“It’s okay. We’ll ignore it.” She stroked my hair back from my face. “It’s just you and me.”

I didn’t have anything left to give. Tears ran down my face, dripping towards the floor, and I followed them down, folding myself into the fetal position and concentrating only on the warmth of Lydia’s crossed legs pressed against my back, protecting me, and her hands—one brushing my hair, the other my arm.

And she let me cry it out, didn’t say a word, didn’t rush me.

Just waited and held me until the whole world went dark and my body didn’t hurt.

∞∞∞

She was still sitting beside me when I woke up.

I’d probably pay for falling asleep on the floor later, but I’d needed rest, my body had needed to shut itself down to deal with everything. I guessed that was worth the physical pain in exchange.

“Hey,” Lydia whispered when she realised I was awake again. Her voice was so soft.

“I didn’t mean to…” I dragged a shaky breath through my teeth. “You didn’t need to stay on the floor with me.”

The only sign she’d moved at all was the blanket that lay over me. I was grateful for it, my body still freezing.

“I wanted to.” She watched me as I slowly rearranged myself into sitting position. “Do you want to talk about… what happened?”

My head buzzed. “I don’t know.”

I didn’t know anything.

“That’s okay.”

I pressed my eyes together. “I ran out of class.”

“That’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

I looked at her. “I never run out of class.”

She breathed a laugh, looking more like herself. “Ella, this is a voluntary programme that you’re paying to participate in. I don’t think they’re taking attendance.”

Perhaps she had a point.

I looked her over.

She was so… alive. Huge personality, unafraid to take up space.

She understood the world so much more clearly than I felt like I had in years.

How did she stay so good in the face of how much just being alive hurt?

Feeling blocked, travelling across the world to feel successful again, Eliza and her nonsense, me and my breakdowns… How did she stay so vibrant, so kind?

“You’re a great violinist,” I said quietly.

She scoffed. “That is so deeply unimportant right now.”

“It’s important to me.”

She watched me, moving her mouth like she was going to say something but stopping herself.

And my stomach growled. Loud. The first time I’d felt hungry in days.

“Sorry,” I said quickly, pressing a hand into my midsection.

“Shit,” she said, looking around wildly for the time. It was later than I’d realised but I didn’t think I’d slept for too long, which was a relief. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“Oh. Er. No.”

“Let’s get you somethi—”

“Food’s been a bit… difficult the last few days.” I looked away, picking at the edge of the blanket. “I haven’t had much appetite or, um, really kept much down.”

She hummed like that wasn’t surprising news to her. “Does anything sound good right now? Anything that feels safe?”

Safe … that was an odd way to phrase it. Something in my gut clenched unpleasantly.

I breathed deeply against it. Everything was fine. As fine as it was getting, at least.

“Pasta,” I said eventually. “I could really eat some pasta.”

She smiled. “You got it.”

“What are you doing?” I asked as she leaned away to grab her phone and started tapping at it.

“Finding an Italian delivery place near here.”

I shook my head and a dizzy sensation shot through me. “I can just make it.”

She snorted. “Ella Hendrickson, I am not letting you cook right now. We’re staying right here on the floor and I’m buying you whatever pasta you want.”

I laughed nervously. “You don’t need to do that. I can pay.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let me treat you. It’s the least I can do after you let me accompany you.” She shot me a look, purposefully keeping things light. “I did tell you I’d give you anything you wanted for it.”

“You don’t have to give me things, though. It wasn’t… anything, really. Just… slamming keys.”

She looked at me like I’d said the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but that was one of the most incredible pieces I’ve ever heard—one of the best experiences I’ve ever had playing.”