Page 43 of Not Another Love Song

He looked up from her fingers and blinked a few times. “There isn’t one. The piece…doesn’t exist yet. Do what feels natural to you.” He swallowed, and he held her eyes as he said, “Don’t worry. It’s not a love song.”

His lips twitched, and she felt herself smile back.

Gwen looked down at the sheet music. She was tempted to take it very under-tempo, just so she could save face and not make mistakes. But the first few measures were blurring together in a swirl of notes and arpeggios.

She set the bow to Ruby’s strings, and chose her heartbeat for a tempo, dragging the bow across, listening to the speakers hum back at her. An aggravated tune, twisting like wind and biting like the cold.

And then peace. Gwen placed a rallentando at the end of the measure, pouring the sound into the next, soothing the tension.

A quick pull into another storm, but calmer, with structure. And then her eyes flickered to the next page, and she found fingerpicking notated, quick rhythms like rain.

She slowed, fumbling to free her fingers of the bow for the plucking, and found the pace again while her fingers pulled at the strings, the electric bass pulsing the air with notes and rhythms.

A quick change back to the bow—Gwen could tell it was supposed to be sudden; the raindrop rhythm didn’t even complete the phrase.

She felt her breath catch as the end ramped up. A challenging progression toward another arpeggio, fumbling down, down—to something low and almost incomplete.

Then the tonic, the resolution. And then peace.

Quiet. Gwen stared at the page, wondering at its completion. After so long in aggravating phrases, to end so softly…She double-checked that she hadn’t missed an accidental.

“Was I even close?” She laughed, turning to him.

Elbows on his knees again, leaning forward like his body begged him to be elsewhere. His eyes were dark, deep brown locked onto her face.

She watched his throat move and his lips press together before he asked, “Why did you choose violin over cello?”

She stared back at him, her neck craned to the right to see him.

“I was better at violin,” she whispered.

She looked away, feeling very open and vulnerable under his stare, feeling something twisting in her stomach, low and dark. Like music.

“What about you? Why did you choose cello over violin?” she asked, glancing at him.

In the pause, he took a deep breath, and she did the same.

“I was better at violin,” he echoed.

She blinked at him, watching his eyes slide over her face. There he was. She thought she could maybe see Alex in him then. A perfectionist, always striving to be something better. The person who started the Cello Suites over when he found one small issue. Xander didn’t strive. Xander didn’t need to prove himself.

“Play it again?” he asked.

She glanced over the music again and began, very aware of intonation and vibrato. And his eyes on her. She began. When she was sight-reading, she couldn’t focus on anything but the page. But now that she was more comfortable, she focused on every little movement he made, and whether it meant she was doing it right or wrong.

He stood suddenly, and she cut off. He knelt next to the amp, twisting dials, and then jumping to lean over the computer, clicking at a few programs. “You don’t feel it, do you?”

“Sorry?”

“Play it again,” he muttered, clicking through to a new screen. He turned back to her, stepping close and pushing his hair back. “Everything is too precise. You don’t feel it.” He looked down at her, taking in her posture, seated forward, practically falling off the chair. “Start from the beginning.”

She turned back to the music, back to the arpeggios and gliding rhythms. She placed the bow to the strings, and the room thundered. She gasped. He’d turned everything up, rocking the room.

She started over, wincing at the noise. The cops would be here soon. Her shoulders tightened against the vibrations.

“No,” he called out over the sound. She pulled the bow off, but there was an echo setting on, pulsing. “You don’t have to be so tense.”

She tried again, and the chair jerked as he pulled her and the cello backward, closer to the speaker. She gasped soundlessly under the screech of the cello as the bow jumped, scraping against the strings in an odd shriek.

---