Page 47 of Crescendo
She paused, looking at me with wide eyes, green eye glinting brighter. “Lydia… please tell me you’re not trying to call this off right after having talked to my friend about our sex life.”
“I’m not calling off anything. It’s just…
” I slumped backwards, against the plush back of the couch.
Ella’s posture was rigid next to me, holding herself small.
“What happens? To us? Then? I care for you, Ella. I told you I’m not good at casual, and it seems like I meant it. But… LA’s a long way away.”
She softened, slowly, her shoulders sinking, gaze falling to the floor. “I know,” she said, quietly. “A very long way away. And I imagine you’d miss all the sunshine and beaches if you spent too much time in London.”
“Clara already said she’d come visit me in LA,” I said, going for a light tone. “To try all the noodle places, and also to discover what sunshine was. You should come too. You know—for the noodles.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “I’m on sabbatical,” she said quietly. “It’s not like I usually have a lot of time to go flying off to California… not even for the noodles.”
I swallowed, hard, a lump in my throat. Maybe we should have been more careful. Maybe we should have tried to make sure we didn’t develop these feelings for each other. But even now, digging inside me like this, I couldn’t find one damn reason to regret this.
I still hated this, though. Much easier to regret having brought this up, when we could have just gone living in our little daydream instead.
“I see,” I said, finally, quietly. “I guess you’re planning to just go back to medicine after all this… not like it’s the kind of thing you casually share your life with.”
She pursed her lips. “I know,” she said quietly, and she shifted. “Honestly… I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why people are looking to me to win the competition and have my work played at the Royal Albert Hall. I’m not a musician. And I’m not even trying to be.”
“Just two agreeable months to refresh yourself.”
She winced, looking at me. “Lydia… I don’t want you to think you’ve just been a distraction. If you were—you know. If you were here, if you were in London, it would be different.”
“Even if I were on the other side of the river,” I said, my voice more wistful than I’d been trying for. She smiled sadly at me.
“I’d cross the river every day to see you if that was what it took. But the ocean’s quite a bit… bigger, isn’t it?”
“I’d cross it,” I said, my voice light, thin.
“I’d visit London so often that Adam would get tired of seeing me here and that Melinda would make jokes about me turning posh.
Might even visit enough it drives Eliza back to Liverpool, since I’m sure the girl can’t stand to be in the same city as me that much.
I’d be here all the time. But… I couldn’t just move.
My home would always be in California. My work, my contacts, my…
my friends. The ones I’ve known for years and years and years.
It’s all there. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t just leave it all behind. ”
She pursed her lips, nodding slowly, looking down. After a quiet eternity, she said, “I couldn’t blame you.”
I wish she would. Was it just me who felt so strongly, so intensely, that I wanted Ella to say please do, please make it work, I want it to work ? Was it just me falling for her, and I was just a sabbatical?
Or was it just that life was never quite so neat and tidy, that it didn’t all resolve itself like a song, and that we all had to make sacrifices and hard decisions?
“I’ll be… sad, you know,” I said. “Not just to not see you anymore, but to not hear you anymore. I’m sure there has to be some way you can still do music. Even just a little. You have a gift, a… a talent. One that it would be criminal to keep from the world.”
She laughed thickly, shaking her head, looking down. “Lydia, you just like me.”
“And Clara saying the same thing? All our teachers? Dodge saying it, Hannah saying it, Bansi saying it?” I shook my head. “Never mind, Bansi would say it about anyone, but—regardless—it’s true, Ella. And you know it is, don’t you?”
She didn’t say anything, staring at where she folded her hands in her lap. I sighed, putting a hand on her back, but she suddenly felt so far away, like a casual touch was the very most I could do.
I guess I wasn’t using a strap-on with her tonight. Damn.
“Nobody can only be one thing,” I said quietly. “Your mind might be in medicine, but your heart is in music. Please… don’t make yourself too small to be seen.”
“It’s not that I want it this way…”
“I know.” I kissed the side of her forehead, standing up with a heavy feeling in my chest. “Well—I’m going to get upstairs and talk to my boring Californian friend. I guess we both ate early, so let me know if you end up wanting to get food or something later.”
“Lydia?” she said, and I paused in the doorway, glancing back at where she looked up at me with that small, sad look in her eyes.
“Yes, Ella?”
“I’m… sorry it’s like this.” She laced her fingers together. “I feel the same way about you, you know?”
What did it matter what any of us felt, if those feelings only ever stayed buried deep down somewhere? If our actions never followed that?
“I know,” I said, truthfully. “And I don’t regret a thing.”
She smiled sadly at me. “Me neither.”
Ugh, dammit, I hated sad stuff. I trudged upstairs and flung my bag onto the bed once I got into the bedroom and I sat pouting on the foot of the bed like a petulant child, flopping back and staying there for a while before I took my phone and called Melinda.
I was greeted with the dulcet tones of nothing, and I sighed.
She was probably in the middle of working.
I had unfinished business with the both of them, though, so I went ahead and moved onto my next target, calling Natália, who picked up right away, switching to video call to show off her p?o de queijo.
“Lydia!” she said. “Oh my god, I hate you.”
“Mm-hm. I’m sure I’ve earned it. How come?”
“You’re spending too much time with your girlfriend and not talking to me!
” She leaned back in her chair—back in her own home, at least, and not bugging Melinda again.
I guess Melinda really was in the middle of serious work.
Natália didn’t look too good, herself, her eyes tired.
“I’ve been pissed off because of Brett Downing still having big creative visions about this stupid scene and the deadlines are getting really tight and the only person I have to complain to is Meli, and…
and… one person is not enough to bear the load of my complaining! ”
“Natália, it’s only been two days since I saw you.”
She glowered at me before she crammed another ball of cheesy bready carbohydrates into her mouth and talked through it.
“Okay, fine,” she muttered. “I’m just mad because he told me off earlier today.
Treating me like a little kid, inexperienced and stupid, and wanted to micromanage every part of this, and he doesn’t like the song, and it’s making me want to scream. ”
“He still threw it back in your face after the latest round of revisions?”
She nodded gravely. “He said it’s missing character.”
“Missing character?” I snorted, shaking my head.
Maybe I was just getting in Natália’s way.
Maybe she was just having a difficult interaction with a difficult client, like every musician did at some point, and I was taking the experience away from her trying to step in and fix it when I didn’t even know how to compose in the first place. “What a jackass. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Me neither,” I admitted, which felt scarier than it should have. “Honestly, I’m kind of stuck with this dickwad. Have you been able to talk to anybody else around him, see if better sense prevails on anybody else’s front?”
“I tried. The director trusts his word on all this. You know—Brett worked with the original series author so much that they see him as above reproach. It’s fucking stupid.”
“Ugh… I’m sorry, Natália. I genuinely don’t know. I’ve put all I can into helping with this piece, and I don’t know what else it needs. Character. I don’t get it.”
Her face said outright despair, a hand to her temple. “If you don’t know what to do, how am I going to figure it out?”
“I’m nothing that special. You’ve got your own set of talents that are completely separate from mine.”
“Cala a boca, caralho. You are something special. You’re Lydia Howard Fox. Meu Deus.”
“And you’re Natália Torres. I don’t doubt for a second you have it inside you to make something that’s just right. You just have to… you just have to love the art. If you love what you’re making, it’ll work.”
Her face crumpled. “I don’t know… I don’t know how to love what I’m making. I did for most of this project! But people telling you that you suck gets into your head.”
“It does. Yeah. But you don’t suck.” I paused. “If Melinda’s been telling you that you suck, let me know and I’ll fly over there to kill her right now.”
Natália laughed, some light coming back into her eyes. “Meli would never! She’s like a little angel.”
“In that she makes you drinks.”
“And I make her brigadeiros. It’s perfect.”
“Well, know that no matter what anybody says, I have never doubted you for one second, not since the day I first heard your music. So if Melinda believes in you too—which she’d better—then Brett’s outvoted two to one.”
She gave me a big, sappy smile. “This is why you need to call me more often! I feel better when you do.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I laughed. “We’ve been working together on this a lot, but I might not have the answer. Go give it your own best shot. I’m excited to see what you come up with.”
“I’ll try. Okay,” she said, looking up, “I gotta go! Something’s come up! I’ll talk to you later! Beijinhos!”