Page 3 of Not Another Love Song

“My brain isn’t going to process sarcasm right now,” Ama said brightly, “so just…If we had a cello brought here, could you play it?”

“That’s not how it works,” Jacob said, when Gwen failed to respond right away.

She did play cello a little bit. Her violin mentor had given her a few lessons when she was just starting out, testing her at all the strings to see where she would fit best. And Gwen needed this job, especially after that Uber ride. Jacob needed this job. And they both needed the tip, which could be zero dollars if they didn’t do this right.

Chelsea scoffed in the silence and said, “Clearly, she can’t. Hope you’re not paying them much.”

“I can do it,” Gwen said, the words laced with the same spite that she reserved for men who say, “Watch it; that’s heavy.”

Ama searched the resolve on her face. Gwen heard Jacob start to protest.

Chelsea rolled her eyes and said, “I’ll see if Alex has left yet.” She pulled out her phone and walked away.

Squeezing Gwen’s arm, Ama whispered, “Thank you, thank you.” She pivoted away from them, and Gwen could just catch her whispering to herself, “I never thought I’d appreciate Alex running late, but…”

“Gwen.” Jacob was standing at the piano, mouth agape. “They’re two completely separate instruments, right? It’s like an entirely different muscle.”

“I know.” Gwen plopped down in the chair, flipping open the music binder with shaking fingers. She stared down at the sheet music, scanning page by page, imagining the fingering.

This was one of Gwen’s best and worst qualities: people pleasing. Overcommitting. Most of the time she shone and truly delivered. But other times were truly disastrous. Double-booking herself for a wedding and a gig subbing on a Broadway pit; skipping doctors’ appointments for last-minute rehearsals; picking up dog-walking gigs with seven leashes and only two hands.

“When was the last time you played cello?”

“Eight…maybe nine years ago.” She continued to focus on the notes in front of her.

Unfortunately, her violin music was in treble clef, which meant she would need to turn off part of her brain, just read the note on the page, and tell her fingers to play that note, regardless of the octave.

Jacob grabbed his iPad and started looking online for the cello music for the pieces they were playing, but he needed the Wi-Fi to do it. Just as he jumped up to ask someone for the password, the first guests arrived. He had to start playing the preceremony music.

Gwen knew she probably looked very foolish. With no cello, she was forced to sit silently, studying the music instead of playing along. She didn’t know how long she sat there, staring down at her music. Her heartbeat was racing with each new well-dressed guest entering the backyard, and her mind was whirring with the transpositions she was mentally doing.

Maybe they wouldn’t get a cello here in time. Maybe they would be stuck with violin.

She heard a pickup truck rattle up the driveway, and Gwen looked up to see a valet take the keys from a dark-haired man. The guy pulled open the small door to the back seat, tugging out a cello case.

Well, fuck. It looked like she was doing this.

She stood to greet this “Alex,” and her muscles froze in place when Xander Thorne turned toward her, cello case hanging from his thick arm.

Alex. She’d never thought his name was actually Xander Thorne, but…

He was more than just a cellist. He was a recording artist. She’d been introduced to him for the first time last August—an awestruck wave in the upstairs of Carnegie Hall and a stammered greeting that sent her spiraling in embarrassment for hours afterward. Xander Thorne had just joined the new season for the Manhattan Pops. Hiring him had been a marketing strategy more than anything. Outside the Pops, he headlined an electric strings band called Thorne and Roses, and it had always been clear that his priority was there. He showed up late to every rehearsal, even missing one or two performances, which meant emergency subs had to be called. He rolled his eyes at the song choices, barked at his cello section, and never spoke to anyone except the conductor or the first chair, and that was only when he questioned a bowing or a tempo—loudly, proudly, self-righteously.

He was also the most amazing cellist of Gwen’s generation. She’d first discovered Thorne and Roses in high school and had downloaded every song faithfully ever since. She had just been listening to him in the Uber, for god’s sake. And it wasn’t just the electric strings band that she loved, or the bare-chested thirst traps posted to Instagram. She couldn’t take her eyes off him at the Pops either. He moved with the music, like it couldn’t help but pour out of him. Her violin mentor, Mabel, had always told Gwen she was too tense and needed to flow more, showing her videos of Hilary Hahn and Sarah Chang, whose violin solos seemed to take flight. But Gwen couldn’t ever feel the music like they did. Like Xander Thorne did. It was all very dramatic. She preferred a quiet passion.

Sometimes she could feel it when Xander Thorne played, with his wavy black hair swaying and flipping. She could see how important it was to have the music flowing through you like water.

And now he was bringing her a cello at a backyard luxury wedding in New Jersey.

Wonderful.

Gwen felt like a rabbit caught in the eye of a rifle as he strolled down the driveway, heading directly for her—cello case in one hand, garment bag in the other. He stopped in front of her, his dark brown eyes passing over her once. “You needed a cello?”

It was obvious he didn’t recognize her. Unsurprising, as he didn’t socialize at rehearsals, and she was good at blending into the background.

“Yes, thank you.” She looked away from his drawn brow and down at the case. Thank god it wasn’t the Stradivarius cello that he used at Pops. That one was worth almost a million dollars.

Bending swiftly to his knees, he popped the locks on the case and looked up at her through a curtain of his dark hair. “Did you forget to bring yours?”

---