Page 67 of Crescendo

Lydia

Brett Downing didn’t smile, because he was the sort of man who was constitutionally incapable of a display of joy or appreciation, but the slow nod was the closest anybody could ever get.

“I like it,” he said, once the music and the scene on the TV had stopped and the studio fell quiet around us, and Natália, sitting across the table from me, looked like she’d break out crying in relief.

On the video call, Hannah’s and Eliza’s faces lit up in the same relief—they’d done the final song together with Dodge, me in the room virtually, a throwback to the jam sessions we’d had back at Crescendo, but they wisely kept Dodge out of the conference call.

“Yeah,” Brett went on. “It’s got a lot of punch. A lot of energy. Suits the scene.”

“So, green light to work everything through to completion from here?” I said lightly, and he nodded, pushing his chair back, standing up from the table.

“I’ll talk to the rest of the production team, make sure we’re all moving forward. Can’t spare another second. Guess you’re as good as they say, Lydia.”

I smiled. “Wasn’t just me. Couldn’t have done it without a whole lot of help from a whole lot of people.”

Brett Downing gave me and my moving statement about three milliseconds of consideration before he left the room, that jackass.

Natália took about three more milliseconds before she jumped out of her chair screaming in excitement, threw herself on me in a hug, and I squeezed her trying to make sense of what she was saying in that upper octave I didn’t know humans could reach.

I was pretty sure it was neither English nor Portuguese but a secret third language that only Natália knew.

“We did it,” she squealed. “We’re scoring a movie!”

“You say that as if that’s not what we do all the time…” I still squeezed her back, though, and I humored her when she stepped back from the hug for a quarter second before she hugged me again.

“I’m so grateful for your help,” she said. “I thought I’d never make it through this and dealing with Brett being—”

“We don’t know if he can still hear you.”

She pursed her lips, miming zipping them shut, as she actually stepped back from the hug. “Thank you, Lydia.”

“Don’t undersell yourself. You’re damn good at what you do. Besides—I’m not the one who wrote this song. Scrappy little goblin who crawled out of a Liverpudlian gutter somewhere wrote it while pining for a girl who very obviously wanted her back—”

“Listen,” Hannah said, “I’m gonna need you to shut your bloody mouth.”

Natália put her hands on her hips, shooting them a look on the screen. “Don’t say that about Lydia. She’s officially tied for my favorite person in all the world.”

I really had made progress coming to terms with Natália and Melinda dating, because a month ago, that sentence would have given me a stroke. Now—well, I didn’t not twitch a little, but I could be excused for being a little protective.

“Great work, both of you,” I said, looking past Natália and at the screen. “And Dodge, too, I suppose, if we must acknowledge him… you all hit the nail on the head with this one.”

Eliza smirked down the camera. “I know,” she said. “There is a reason Hannah and I played together all the time, you know. I’m glad to know you acknowledge it.”

“I’m still confused by you playing the drums, but I guess here we all are. Anyway, it’s so damn late there, I’ll let you both go, but I’ll be in touch for the final recordings, the mastering, everything.”

“And you are telling her about it,” Eliza said, her voice sharp. I sighed, sinking back in my seat, giving them a tired smile.

“Of course. We still talk all the time. Even if it’s hard around her job and how much work I’m doing right now…”

“You know,” Eliza said quietly, “she’s basically just waiting for you to ask. I’m going to be quite upset if you hurt her.”

“Ah. Aren’t I touched by how much you care about our happiness together, Lizzy?”

I got the exact same scowl from both of them. It was cute how much they were in sync.

“I’m not planning on leaving it like this,” I said. “Just… it’s not the right time. Not with her just getting back to work. Not with recording getting into full swing.”

“That sounds like a neat excuse,” Eliza said lightly.

Yeah, it did, didn’t it? I knew full well it was because I was scared shitless. Because I had no idea how Ella would react—if she’d actually be willing to open herself up to someone when she was still wary that anybody close to her might leave forever.

I just wanted her to see I was serious. That there was something real between us. And maybe it was the fact that music was immortal—that medicine could make someone live longer, but music could make someone live forever. And if our music met, that was something that could never really die.

Of course, I also liked being extra.

“I love neat excuses,” I settled for saying. “Much better than messy ones, which is my usual. Anyway, Natália and I have a hell of a lot of work to do. Go to sleep.”

Natália chimed in cheerfully with, “Or whatever you two do before bed!”

Eliza sighed pointedly and gave another goodbye, promising to see me later for the work, before she left the call, and Hannah cleared her throat.

“Uh… Lydia…”

“Yes?”

“Thanks. For a lot of stuff. Not least of all this.”

I laughed. “For better or worse, we’re friends now. I’ll see you at the Royal Albert Hall. You will be there, right? To go wild when Ella’s piece plays?”

“‘Course. I actually like Ella, since she didn’t up and skip the whole damn country.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you too. Bye now.”

And I rode that high all the way to the moment when I finally got back to my house at ten that night, when I crashed on the couch up in the music room, sending Ella a text.

Brett’s happy, for once in his sad, sour life, I sent. I’ve asked the appropriate parties if I can send this. Be warned that it hits like a truck.

Ella responded in no time—she was up bright and early in the mornings these days, back to her old life working early shifts at the hospital, and I always made sure to squeeze in a message before she went into work.

We texted back and forth as she listened to the song, gushing about every detail of it—picking up on all the fine points Hannah and Natália and I had put in, all the points that most people would never pick up on consciously—and just like every night, I desperately didn’t want to let her go when she had to head into work.

It was getting torturous at this point. We talked every single day, having scaled up from just messaging when we had music to share—finding excuses to ramp it up, one thing after another, and it was already practically unthinkable for either of us to not reach out in a day, even if we had to work around the time difference.

We were, essentially, every part of dating except for actually talking about it, and I found I couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine—a life without her in it.

It burned under my skin, a fire in my veins, through all the times I had to drag myself into the studio early in the morning, when Natália and I had to meet with one suite of micromanagers after another, when we went in for recording sessions and Natália sat in the booth while I conducted for the musicians.

With each delicate flick or aggressive slash of the baton, each second listening back to audio tracks zeroing in on the tiniest detail, every word arguing with the talking heads in the studio to try defending Natália’s and my vision for the soundtrack—all of it just felt like it was in preparation for that moment I’d step out onto the stage at the Royal Albert Hall.

The Quiet Ones, a massive franchise where hundreds of millions of dollars were resting on every aspect of the production, was suddenly a small background element compared to what I was really here for, and it had me pacing my living room anxiously when the day for my flight finally came.

“Dude, you look like you’re going to throw up,” Melinda said once she got into the house. “Are you good? I didn’t think you were capable of performance anxiety.”

“I’m not anxious about performing in front of a crowd, I’m anxious about performing in front of a crowd that contains Ella Hendrickson.”

She laughed, rolling her eyes. “God, you’re so corny. I can’t believe you went and fell this hard for a girl. Come on, you total loser. Let’s get you to the airport so you can go get ready to dazzle the love of your life.”

And as luck would have it, Ella texted me not long after I saw off Melinda and Natália with tearful hugs at the airport.

I promised Natália that no I wasn’t leaving “forever and ever and ever” and I got to my gate at the terminal, sitting tapping my foot and listening to Across the River in my headphones, conducting with an imaginary baton, when her message pinged through.

Did your morning meetings go well?

I laughed to myself. I’d booked all my meetings for other days to clear me up for a flight today.

But Ella still thought I was going to arrive on Saturday to see the performance and had no idea I was flying today to rehearse with the orchestra before then.

terrible, I replied. Jason went on for ages rambling about his personal life and Natália and I had to find a way to make him stop without closing him in a cabinet and running

How many times is this now? I feel like at this point you’re entitled to close him in one.

I plan on doing it on my last day with the studio, I replied. So I take it you’ve finished work for the day?

We talked about little things—me telling stories from the past week, picked at random to sound like they could have been happening today—until I had to go into the rest of my meetings and boarded my plane.

And that asshole Adam had offered to have my travel covered as a performer and hadn’t mentioned it was in economy class. I should have booked my own damn ticket. I was too tall for economy-class legroom, dammit.