Page 33 of Crescendo

Something about the look in her bright blue eyes said she was telling the truth.

But that didn’t make sense. She’d played with…

well, anyone who was anyone in the composing world, I was sure.

She’d gone to Berkeley to study with some of the best musicians.

She was playing with people from our course who were far better than I was.

But she didn’t look like she was lying.

I struggled to breathe and looked away. “Well, you’re very good. And, for the record, Eliza is indescribably wrong in all of her criticisms.”

She laughed. “I’m not particularly concerned with what she has to say about my playing, honestly.” She held the phone out. “What do you want?”

“Oh, anything’s fine,” I started, but my eyes caught on a dish that looked like the food of my dreams and I stalled.

She smiled and flipped the phone back around. “Arrabbiata it is. Do you want dessert?”

“Oh, no, that’s okay.”

“I’m ordering dessert. And Bruschetta al Pomodoro.”

I laughed. I didn’t have the energy to fight her but I found I didn’t want to anyway. Food sounded good. I had to hope I’d keep it down, but, for the first time in days, it sounded really, really good.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked, waving the phone at me again.

“Uh.” I looked around, my eyes catching on the scotch glasses we’d both now abandoned. “You know, tea sounds great.” Hot and comforting and great .

Lydia laughed. “My British girl through and through, huh? Let’s not tell Italy you’re having a British cuppa with your Bruschetta.”

My heart jolted at her words. She was focused on her phone, on putting in our address and paying for the order.

She’d just said it as an offhand comment.

It didn’t mean anything. We were casual.

And this evening, I’d already been way too much for a casual fling.

She wasn’t trying to start anything by calling me her girl .

But I couldn’t stop the way it made my insides flame.

I tried to put the feelings away, to hide what must have been written across my face, by standing up, but that just made things worse. She dropped her phone, her hands flashing out to grip my waist through the blanket and pull me back to the floor.

“Stay right there, you,” she said, her eyes boring into my soul.

“But… tea…” I said, a little breathlessly.

“Can you just let a woman look after you?” she laughed. “I’ll get your tea. Exactly the way you like it. And I’ll even have tea with you, and we can both eat Italian food and drink tea while sitting on the floor.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. And even the King of England himself can’t stop me from doing exactly as I want.”

I laughed. “I believe it. But, honestly, I don’t think he really cares what we’re doing right now.”

“Well, then he’s missing out, isn’t he?”

She disappeared around the wall towards the kitchen and I finally looked at the piano and the violin. I couldn’t describe what had happened on the two of them. I couldn’t describe what had happened at the piano when I’d been solo, let alone what happened when Lydia had joined me.

It hurt and it made my head ache just thinking about it, but… it was good, too. At least, I thought it was.

My dad had told me I needed to feel it all.

My therapist had been telling me that for years—not in so many words, perhaps, but the point still stood.

And, when I’d played, I’d felt it. When Lydia had played with me, it had been like the final latch being released from the lid of everything I’d held back over the last four years.

And, at least in music, it felt like she’d understood that.

She’d somehow known exactly what to do, what to play, exactly how the song was meant to go—a song I didn’t even know I’d needed.

For those reckless, blazing moments, we’d been speaking the exact same language, knowing the exact same things.

I wondered what it would be like to tell her. The part that had played that song with her wanted to tell her.

Maybe other parts did too.

It still didn’t scream casual , though. And that was a problem.

If we’d just been friends, would I have been ready to tell her? I didn’t know.

But, if we were just friends, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to, wouldn’t have needed to. She’d have been like Bansi or Clara. She wouldn’t have been able to play that song with me, and everything would have been different.

She joined me on the floor again, two of the biggest mugs in the place filled with scalding tea.

Something about the way she looked at me, talked to me, made me feel like she understood more than she possibly could have.

Music could do a lot but it couldn’t tell her everything I was working through.

If she’d just been a friend, we wouldn’t have been here. The music wouldn’t have told her anything.

I didn’t know how to navigate all the things she was with the fact that we were being casual.

“I’m really sorry for the last few days,” I said as she gingerly sipped her tea, still a little hot for her liking.

Her eyes flicked up to mine, something unfathomable crossing her face for just a second. “It’s okay. I missed you.”

If she’d just been a friend, she wouldn’t be saying that. Not like that, not with that tone, not with that look.

“I missed you too.” My heart pounded. “I just had some… stuff to work through.”

“Yeah, Cadogan Hall gives you a lot of inspiration, doesn’t it?” she asked lightly. She knew we were close to something I still wasn’t sure we could talk about. She was walking us back so I didn’t have to.

“I didn’t get sick the last time I was there.” It was the scarcest of acknowledgements. A reference to a time I didn’t talk about, hadn’t explained. But it was something. I was giving her something—a part of me I carried, quiet and alone. “Must have been something in the water.”

“Uh-huh. Remember? It was the drinks beforehand. We talked about this.”

“Oh, right.” I laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think I even drank water at the show.”

There was something terrifying in talking about it, but there was something freeing, too. As if, the more I joked about that night, the less power it had to break me—to break us.

I shouldn’t have even thought that. We weren’t an us .

But I couldn’t help feeling like we were.

I’d played myself inside out for her, with her, and she’d understood it, understood me.

I’d broken on the floor and she’d stayed with me.

She was still staying with me. And that didn’t feel casual or inconsequential at all.

The doorbell buzzed, and I flushed, remembering that it had earlier, too, and I’d screamed like a feral animal at it. That was embarrassing.

“I’ve got it,” Lydia said, hopping up.

I heard her talking to the delivery person, and, as they retreated from the door, heard her laughing.

I frowned as she called, “Ella, you have a gentleman caller.”

“What?”

She reentered the room with a paper bag in one hand and a presentation box in the other.

“A gentleman caller,” she repeated, gesturing to the box. “I guess we know who rang the bell earlier.”

“What?” I repeated, staring at it.

“Who sends a gnome in a presentation box to someone’s house? Where do you even get those?”

“Oh, my god,” I groaned. “I think I might know.”

She laughed. “You know where to buy gift-wrapped gnomes? Aren’t you a woman of many secrets?”

I shook my head, looking at the tiny figure with a white beard and a deep red hat. “Not that. I think I know who sent it.”

Her face lit up and her eyebrows shot up her head. “Who?” she asked, setting the box in front of me.

“I don’t think I even told them the apartment number,” I muttered. “Did they text Sian or Alisha to get it? To send me a gnome ?”

Lydia was clearly bursting to know as she sat in front of me again, pulling food out of the bag.

“I talked to my dad earlier,” I told her.

“Ah.” She didn’t sound surprised, or particularly confused that they’d send me a gnome. They’d probably like her—Papa especially. She’d like him too. And Dad.

I opened the envelope that had been tied to the box with a ribbon.

Hello, dearest, darling daughter of ours,

This is Atlas. Don’t you think he looks a little like me (Papa)? (In a few years when my beard is whiter!) It’s like we’re there, looking after you.

You are stronger than you know and more loved than you will ever understand.

Dad and Papa xxx

“Atlas,” I told Lydia, a little croaky, as I pointed at the gnome.

“Atlas?”

I hummed and handed her the note. There was nothing in it that she couldn’t see.

She laughed and tilted Atlas towards herself. “This is what your Papa looks like?”

“No.” I shook my head, laughing. “He’s just… really into gnomes right now, apparently. I guess it’s aspirational.”

She looked at me with the softest, warmest smile I’d ever seen. “I like them.”

“I thought you might.” My voice was whisper-quiet.

“Atlas is a good name. Like they’re telling you you’re the whole world.” She said it reverently, like she thought I was the whole world.

My heart ached in my chest. “Atlas was forced to hold up the sky in Greek mythology. His punishment. Holding the whole thing on his shoulders.”

My voice was loaded, pouring as much as I was ready to tell her into the words, to let her know I was carrying something heavy and painful.

I didn’t expect her to understand, but she looked at me like she did exactly.

Her eyes shimmering and filled with far more understanding than she could have possessed.

She was good and patient and warm. And she handed me a container of hot food while looking at me like I was holding up the whole sky—and, this time, it wasn’t a punishment.