Page 71 of Crescendo

Lydia

Ella caught me on my way out of the hall, a single rose in her hand as she swept across the reception hall to capture me in a kiss. Normally at the end of a run of performances, she’d bring me a whole bouquet, but now wasn’t exactly the time.

“You were incredible,” she said, stepping back from the kiss and holding me by the waist, looking up at me with eyes sparkling—those damn eyes that still had me suckered in as badly as they did on that first day.

“Wasn’t I, though?” I said, and she rolled her eyes, smiling brilliantly.

“Of course, darling. Nobody would have ever expected anything else. And I’m very proud of you, but of course, that’s just a given, isn’t it?”

“It had better be,” I said. “You’re more or less stuck with me at this point.”

She smiled wider, corners of her eyes crinkling. “I think I might be able to live with that.”

“All right,” Cynthia’s voice said from behind me, and I looked back at where she stepped out into the reception with us, giving me a tired smile, “I hear you’ve got places to be, now, don’t you? Off to go sprawl on sunny shores while the rest of us wade through the rain…”

“You could always come,” I said brightly, turning to slip a hand to Ella’s back, pulling her into my side. “Ever tried surfing?”

Cynthia sighed good-naturedly. “I suspect I would rather die. Which is likely what would happen were I to try. Go off and get married again. I suppose it’s no surprise that Lydia Howard Fox of all people must do it on repeat.”

I laughed, turning and pressing a kiss to the side of Ella’s head. “Well, you heard the old lady,” I said. “We’re getting kicked out of London. Shall we get back to the house and get changed, or are you planning on flying in your concertgoing dress?”

“As much as I love dressing up to see you on stage… at this point, the only thing I want is sweatpants and you.”

That worked for me. Even if there was an eight-hour flight in the middle.

I’d spent long enough in London by this point to know the Tube inside and out to get back to Ella’s and my London flat—three and a half years now since I’d first arrived at Crescendo, spending the winters here working with the orchestra while Ella worked at the hospital, and then taking off for California summers alternating between our composition work and cocktails on the beach.

It had been entirely unsurprising seeing how far she’d come as a composer.

Despite my offers to introduce her to the right people, she’d insisted on going through the process herself, and she’d gone off the back of her highlight performance at Crescendo to start with small projects, writing music for independent studios.

Our first time back in California with the two of us had been a blissful haze of creative flow, Natália joining us while the three of us worked, and Ella was a sponge picking up more techniques from both of us.

It hadn’t been too long before the spillover was inevitable, and I’d been just a little bit obsessive introducing Ella to all my friends and colleagues as my girlfriend with the smuggest expression in the world.

It hadn’t even been two summers before it got out into the wider awareness that Ella was one half of Ella Hendrickson and Lydia Howard Fox, and she’d immediately been inundated with requests, calls looking for her work.

Which was hardly fair. They should have been clamoring at her doorstep because she was her, not because she reminded them of me. Nobody ever gave her enough credit, the bastards. The world was learning, though.

Ella and I rushed in a haze of exhaustion through getting back to the flat and getting ready for the flight—we’d already packed up most of our things, and sense dictated that I wouldn’t go in to conduct a performance today, but it had been the last scheduled show of my six months here in London.

People turned out for my goodbye performances, my see you in six months concerts, and at this point, I didn’t feel right leaving the UK without a concert.

Plus, I wanted to conduct so everybody could see I had two rings on my finger.

The end result, though, was that between wedding planning for a big celebration at Cliveden House for everyone we knew in the UK, a run of concerts, flying a third of the way around the world, and the planning for a wedding in California too, I was so exhausted that I felt like a moody toddler who was refusing to sleep because she was too tired to go to bed.

And I wasn’t the only one—by the time we were on the plane together, Ella in her promised sweatpants, she groaned, leaning to the side and resting her head on me.

“I feel like I haven’t sat down to make music with you in years,” she murmured.

“Too busy off saving lives and curing cancer.”

“I don’t want to save lives, I want to take a nap.”

I laughed, kissing the side of her head.

“I know, darling. And I think Cynthia has had as much as she can take of me meddling with her orchestra. But soon we’ll be done with it all and we can sleep, have ramen, and knock out a masterpiece or two.

And I’ll get to brag to everybody in LA about how talented my wife is. ”

“Doubly wifed up. Aren’t I lucky?”

“To have shackled yourself to a washed-up has-been?”

She laughed, swatting my knee as the movement around us slowed in the plane, the last people settling into their seats.

“Oh, stop that, would you? Do I need to start listing off the awards you’ve won since that time you did come crashing in all dramatically, protesting that you’d never make music again… ”

“Hey, anyone’s going to make good music when they have such a hot muse for a wife. I wasn’t expecting that to be how Crescendo got me making music again, but you never know where life will take you next.”

“Ah. You’re insufferable. You’re lucky I do love you.”

Well, no arguments there. On either point.

As much as I didn’t love this flight route, the one I was now very familiar with, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, settling in next to the woman I loved, the woman I now got to call my wife, and just taking it in.

Nowhere to run to, nothing to check in on—just laughing and talking together with this woman I was so desperately in love with.

I was still glad when the plane landed, though.

Even though it was Melinda and Natália, as always, here to pick us up at the airport, the two of them insufferably cute and happy together—I suppose I could let them have it.

Melinda had treated my daughter well so far, so pending literally anything I didn’t like, I couldn’t be too mad, even when Natália was practically hanging off of her side when Ella and I turned the corner into the arrivals gate to find them there, the two of them giggling about something.

Natália detached herself from Melinda and launched herself at us, giving me a crushing hug before turning to do the same with Ella.

“You’re home,” she gushed, already tearing up. “Aí, meu deus. Look at you! You’re married! Now I have two mothers!”

“Natália,” I said, “you already flew in to gush at our actual wedding and nearly ruin Ella’s dress by sobbing all over her, and I imagine you’re going to go sobbing all over her in a couple days at our wedding here, so can we not sob all over her again in the meantime?”

“Okay. I’ll sob all over you,” she said, turning and burying her face against me. I patted her head.

“Yeah, that’s fine…”

Melinda joined her to give me a fist-bump, never one for hugging. “Finally taking two seconds out of your busy schedule marrying doctors and leading great orchestras to come see your friends again, huh?”

“Don’t be too jealous of my glamorous lifestyle. I’ll ply you with ramen. Ella and I have been daydreaming of it the whole flight over and now that we’ve pulled an all-nighter in our time zone, ramen’s the only thing keeping us going.”

Natália immediately forgot her intention, squeezing Ella in another hug and sobbing all over her. Ella laughed, hugging her tightly. “I’m very glad to see you again, Natália. I did miss you in the five days since I saw you last.”

“That doesn’t count! That was off in London, where it’s rainy and miserable and sad! It’s been years since you were here back home!”

“It has been… six months. Same as it always is. But I suppose that’s just semantics.”

Natália wasn’t wrong, though—LA always felt so nostalgic when we got out of the airport and into the big open desert sky, a rare night of clean air letting us see the mountains peeking out in the distance as we picked up ramen from our favorite vegan spot and crashed back at our Santa Monica townhouse, all of it feeling like it was from years and years ago and not six months.

Gathering around the kitchen table chattering and laughing together over wedding drama, hospital drama, orchestra drama, and Melinda’s and Natália’s lives—the wedding had been such a big deal that we’d barely had any time in the UK to talk about anything else, and it felt like there was years’ worth to catch up on in Natália gushing about the mentorship program now that she was the one mentoring an earnest, talented, but sometimes clueless French girl who wanted to learn from the legacy of Natália Torres, Ella Hendrickson, and Lydia Howard Fox—the legacy that had been behind the world-famous score of The Quiet Ones .

And Melinda, of course, as always when I was doing well, was in a career slump.

Studio cuts had hit her team hard. But these things came and went, and two months from now she’d be on top of the world again, and she was doing a whole lot better than she used to when she was in a rut, which may or may not have had something to do with the way she still looked at Natália like the girl had hung the moon.