Page 8 of Not Another Love Song

Panting, they dropped into the only two seats together and split a protein bar for the long ride back to Manhattan. It would be ninety minutes before they got home, and Gwen was already salivating for her mushroom chicken dish from Chinese 88.

Thirty minutes later they were off the bus, jumping onto NJ Transit—or the devil’s highway, as Gwen liked to call it. She searched Thorne and Roses’ Instagram for Mac, the groom, and found the hashtag for the wedding: #MackenzieFrenzy

Guests were posting pictures and uploading videos to their Instagram Stories. In one of them, she could hear herself playing “Jesu” in the background, and she quickly clicked out. Xander Thorne was right. Her intonation was shit.

She caught sight of him in one of the stories—a head of dark hair at the bar, towering over the people he was with. She zoomed through the rest of the tagged photos and videos, searching for more of him, before Jacob finally took her phone away.

“Stop obsessing,” he said with a smile. “You can put that poster back up if you really want to look at him—”

“Shut up.” She turned red as the train took them into Penn Station.

Their place in Washington Heights was small—a one bedroom converted into a two-bedroom by sacrificing the living room to the Manhattan gods. No dining area. Just a tight kitchen, a tighter bathroom, two rooms, and a closet somewhere in between. Her room didn’t even have a door, just a curtain. If Gwen had been living with a stranger, she never would have survived the close quarters, but Jacob had practically been her soulmate since sophomore year of high school. She’d thought they’d maybe fall in love one day, until he came out to her one champagne-hazed evening the summer after senior year. She’d hugged him and drunkenly helped create his Grindr account, excusing herself to the bathroom only twice to press back her tears. Later, she would laugh at the thought of them being in a relationship. He was a constant in her life—there for her when her grandfather passed the day before graduation, when her scholarships were denied. She was glad she hadn’t lost him over a doomed infatuation.

As Gwen crawled up the final of four staircases, Jacob opened their apartment door and placed their order with Grubhub. She turned on her fan and flopped down on her bed. It didn’t matter how cool a day it was, she always needed five minutes in front of the fan after climbing the stairs.

Gwen was in shape—tall and slim, with volleyball legs and violin arms—but even after four years in this apartment, she still couldn’t get her lungs to accept the fifth-floor walk-up.

To make rent, Jacob taught piano to Upper East Side kids, and before Gwen joined the Manhattan Pops, she played in subway stations with her case open for tips. She’d started in seventh grade, playing in the 14th Street subway station after school twice a week. She made about fifty bucks a day, enough to take to the grocery store on Mondays and buy food for her and Grandpa with a little left over for herself. Once, a lithe, beautiful woman with perfectly curled hair had approached her while the gathered audience had applauded, and she handed Gwen a one-hundred-dollar bill, saying, “Tuck this away, love. Don’t let this sit in the case.”

Gwen had stared up at her with wide eyes and said, “Do you…do you want change? You can have what’s in the case—”

The woman had smiled and patted her cheek. They didn’t officially meet until a year later at Mabel’s shop, but Gwen would always remember the day she first met Ava Fitzgerald, first chair for the Manhattan Pops and the most graceful and talented violinist of her time.

“Hey,” Jacob called across the hall, startling Gwen from her memories. “Declan wants to come over. Is that cool?”

Gwen scrunched her nose at the ceiling. “Yeah, of course!” Her voice was bright, but her face was blank.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Declan. She’d only met him once. He was fun, but Jacob was constantly dating, constantly introducing her to people she wouldn’t see again. It was a bit exhausting. After long days like today, she just wanted her share of the 400-square-foot apartment and nothing else. She rolled off the bed and set to unpacking her tote.

Declan burst into the apartment thirty minutes later with a rant about the A train. He kissed Gwen’s cheek in greeting between words, and pushed his tawny hair off his pale forehead as he took a deep breath and finally said, “How was the wedding?”

“Gwen learned how to play a new instrument today,” Jacob teased. He handed Declan an egg roll.

His eyes grew wide at her as he bit into it. “Really?”

“Not even. It was a scheduling mix-up and I had to play cello instead.”

“Oh my god, was that hard?”

“It should be,” Jacob said, “but not for Gwen.” He winked at her.

She was about to brush it off when her phone rang in her room. Waving at them to dig in and start the rewatch of their soapy vampire TV show without her, she ran to answer it and found Mabel’s name on the screen. Her chest warmed, and she answered it with a chipper hello.

“Hi, love. Wedding today, yes?” Mabel’s voice was rough with the timbre of a life lived solely in Queens, but that made her warm greeting for Gwen all the sweeter.

“Yep, out in Jersey. It was hell to get there, but they tipped good.”

“Well, that’s all that matters.” Gwen heard the click of the cash register. She must have been closing up. “Guess who came into the shop today?”

“Did Lindsey Stirling come back?” She braced herself on her dresser, hand pressed to her throat.

“No, no one famous. Dr. Richards from Juilliard.”

Gwen deflated. “Oh?”

Juilliard was a bit of a sore subject for them. Mabel was still hoping that Gwen would want to go back to school and apply for the fall semester. She’d gotten waitlisted at Juilliard when she was eighteen, but withdrew enrollment when her financial aid offer wasn’t nearly enough, especially after her grandfather’s funeral expenses.

Mabel had felt that like a wound—like she could have covered the costs in some way if only she had saved the money. But Gwen didn’t want her carrying that blame. Gwen wasn’t family, and there was no reason for Mabel to build savings for Juilliard tuition.

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