Page 44 of Crescendo

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. She’s not even trying to be better than you.

She’s cheering so hard for you. All she wants is for you to be happy.

Even here, she tried to put her own music away to do what you needed.

It’s not a case of who’s better. You’re both amazing, but you have different musical goals.

Playing with Lydia and Dodge was simply a way for her to stay connected to that. ”

“Yes, well, did she tell you she got better feedback than I did on our last pieces?”

“She didn’t say a thing.” My heart raced. I wondered what the instructors had said to her. This had been Eliza’s dream even more than Hannah’s.

“Hm.” She paced in front of me. “ So lively and different. So fresh and attention grabbing. Do you know what they said about mine? Technically perfect but boring. Boring. So, I guess Lydia was right. We do different things and it creates contrast. Except that contrast is my piece being crap and hers being amazing.” She groaned loudly and gripped her hair so tightly with one hand I worried she might tear it out at the roots.

“And I want her to be happy. I do. I want her to do well. But she said I needed to be different. We left Liverpool and we agreed we needed to change—to do things differently… That we didn’t want to lose… We couldn’t…”

“Eliza, what happened in Liverpool?” I asked, sensing that it was key to everything.

“Lots of things. It’s a big city.”

“Eliza.”

She deflated and collapsed into a chair across from me, not quite directly. She still needed some space. “Our band broke up.”

“Right. I heard you’re a hell of a drummer.”

“ Was. Past tense.”

“Because?”

“I dated one of our bandmates.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “We were all friends. I dated him, we broke up, and it ruined everything. I destroyed my band, Hannah’s band. All of our dreams just gone.”

“So you found new ones.”

She shrugged. “I guess. We came to London and it’s so…

different here. People would hear us speak and immediately write us off for anything serious.

Like, just because we had common, Northern accents, we weren’t good for anything.

But I wanted to be bigger than that. I wanted to play the Royal Albert Hall.

” Her voice was so reverent when she spoke of it.

She shook her head. “I know people act like it’s not a thing, like they’re not prejudiced against Northerners or people who grew up working class, but… ”

“But that wasn’t your experience when you got here.”

She nodded. “And I wanted to compose. Wanted to prove I could do it.”

“So, you put away all the parts of you from home and tried to be something they couldn’t put down?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. The accent, the attitude… Sure, she’d done some things that were ill-advised, been mean when she didn’t need to be, but I understood where it came from now.

So insecure because of what she’d been through that she needed to be perfect.

She just didn’t know how to do that. As if any of us did.

“And Hannah?” I prompted.

She laughed but it sounded like a strangled cry of pain. “She’s my best friend. We agreed to come here and be something different together. She said she’d support me in all of it. And then—” She turned away. “Well, things got complicated.”

They’d fallen in love. We’d known Hannah had feelings for Eliza, but I’d thought the problem was that Eliza didn’t reciprocate. Now, I saw the problem was that she did, but they weren’t together.

“You don’t want to be with her?”

Her head whipped back to me. “Of course I do. She’s fucking exquisite.”

I smiled at her, fighting not to make it too big and annoy her.

She scowled. “But it’s not that easy. You and Lydia are playing with fire, acting like you can be together and it’s not going to ruin everything when reality sets back in at the end of the month.

What are you going to do, Ella? She’ll be going back to LA, and you’ll be stuck here all alone, knowing what it was like to be with Lydia Howard Fox—and what it’s like to lose her. ”

I sucked in a painful breath. She was right, of course.

We hadn’t really discussed what happened next.

We talked a big game about it just being casual and how the pain was worth the trade—and it was—but the longer we were together, the more feelings I was developing, and the end of the month wasn’t looking particularly appealing.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I know it’s worth the trade of being with her now.”

“Easy to say. I guess you haven’t known her as long as I’ve known Hannah.

That’s fine. But Hannah wants me to prove myself.

So, I’m trying and, instead of being by my side with that, she’s off hanging out with Lydia and setting me up on dates I don’t even want to fucking go on.

” She groaned again. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to sit across the table from someone I have no interest in, wishing it was her instead? And then, when I get back, she’s having a grand old time with all of you.

She doesn’t give a fuck about me. What am I trying to prove if she doesn’t even care? ”

I frowned. That didn’t sound like Hannah. From what I’d seen, she’d have given anything to be with Eliza. “She cares about you.”

“No. She doesn’t. It was all just excuses. She doesn’t want to ruin the friendship, wants me to change, prove myself, wants to support me without the distraction… It’s lies, Ella. All of it.”

I abandoned my tea on one of the small, circular tables, moving to the seat beside her. She flinched when I put a hand lightly on her back. “Hannah worships the ground you walk on, Eliza.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I promise she does. She’s probably breaking down in her practice room right now, too. She’s here because of you, because she cares and wants to do this with you. She wants you to succeed.”

“I wish.”

“Have you tried talking to her about this?”

“Of course I have,” she snapped. “So many times. And all it does is end up with me hurting again.”

I chewed my lip. When I’d been trying so hard to put Callum away, I’d had a lot of conversations where I’d shut people down, where their takeaway had probably been that I couldn’t give a shit about them—or maybe even Callum.

But it hadn’t been that. It was being overcome with pain and panic.

It was being human and struggling to say what was on my mind—for a hundred, thousand reasons.

None of which were an indication that I didn’t care about Callum or the person talking to me.

Maybe Hannah and Eliza were having a similar struggle.

“Eliza?”

“What?”

“This feeling, right now, isn’t going to go away by ignoring it.

You and Hannah are both really hurting, and I know she cares about you.

But, sometimes, we’re really bad at explaining ourselves to the people we love.

We shut down and run away, afraid. We try to protect ourselves and give the other person what we think they want, even if we don’t actually know what they want. ”

“What’s your point?”

“That it might be worth talking to her again.” I paused as she sucked in an angry breath. “I know it’s not going to feel good right now—maybe it even feels impossible—but you don’t want to lose her over this. And the two of you have something too important to give up over a misunderstanding.”

She turned to look at me, not bothering to hide her flushed cheeks or salty tears. “You know you’re not on doctor duty right now, right?”

I laughed. “Yes?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re just being nice, even after I insulted you and your girlfriend. And when everyone’s been saying you’re my real competition right now.”

I laughed again. “Well, everyone needs to let some steam off sometimes. I know and like Lydia more than enough for the both of us, so you don’t have to like her.

And… you can be in competition with your friends.

You just have to keep it healthy.” I hesitated, wondering whether she could handle the question.

I hadn’t wanted everyone treating me with kid gloves, maybe she didn’t, either.

“Besides, this whole time, you’ve been weirdly…

protective of me. Can’t I be protective of you too? ”

“I don’t need protecting,” she said quickly before pausing. “But, yeah, I guess you can. It’s not like I can stop you. Clearly.”

“Can I ask why?”

She shot me a sharp look. “You can ask whatever you want.”

I smiled. “Right, and you’re not required to answer. I am curious, though. Is it just because you’re worried about me going through the same thing you have with relationships?”

“Oh, is it just because we’re so similar I can see myself in you?

” She asked it as if the concept was laughable, but I could see the ways we were similar—in search of technical perfection, hiding from our emotions in our work, both hiding parts of our pasts to protect ourselves—and I knew she could too.

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this competition to get played in the Royal Albert Hall, and everyone else seems to have decided it’s going to be either me or you. So, yeah, maybe we’re not all that different after all.”

“Lydia’s having a terrible effect on you,” she said, but it didn’t sound as cutting as it might have, especially when she laughed. “Or is that just a doctor thing? Aren’t you lot known for having an ego?”

I laughed with her and it was nice, like the sound took some of the edge out of the room, out of the rejection she’d been feeling. “I suppose it does take a certain kind of person to believe they can save others, but we work hard for it. And I am good at my job, you know?”

“I know.” Her voice was so sincere that I couldn’t help but frown and study her questioningly. “Ugh, fine. When Hannah and I first moved down here, we ended up lodging with this eccentric PhD student from UCL.”