Page 35 of Not Another Love Song

“Don’t. Just keep walking.” She looped their arms and dragged Mei through the crowd. Her mind was working fast to parse what had just happened.

“How long has this thing with Xander Thorne been going on?”

“It’s not a thing. There are no things.”

“Gwen, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you both were panting. I thought I was too late. I thought you already had your hand down his pants—”

“Jesus, Mei. At the Plaza?”

“Hey, you tell me. You’re the one Xander Thorne followed into the bathroom to pant on.”

Gwen twisted them through the crowd, trying not to think about what he might have said, or the way his hand had been light on her jaw, or how she’d lifted her mouth to him just as—

“Are you kidnapping me?” Mei asked. Gwen blinked. They were almost at the doors. “Please kidnap me. This crap is so boring.”

“Yes, I’m kidnapping you.” She dragged her onto the street, letting the biting wind cool her down. “Now take me somewhere I can get a shot for under ten dollars, for the love of god.”

CELLO SUITE NO. 2

In high school Alex didn’t have friends—he had partners. Benjamin Kim, his duet partner—playing piano with him until Alex outgrew him. Hamish Schwartz, his chemistry lab partner. Hazel Renee Brown, his first sexual partner (for one night only)—she was now a happily married lesbian and a budding movie star. Nigel Hoffman, partner in crime (one stolen history exam). Heather Lee, his competition partner until he outgrew her. Heather Lee—again—a romantic partner. And a handful of other musical partners over the years.

He made the mistake of assuming that these partners were friends. They were on his birthday invitation lists—all of them attended because of who his mother was. He gave them all Christmas gifts—only two returned the gesture. He invited them to spend a week in the summer at his father’s house with his only friend from elementary school, Sonya—only Hazel came. She then became good friends with Sonya, and they started doing things without Alex.

When he insisted to his mother that he had no friends, she created some for him. Daughters and sons of Pops players. Violinists who’d lost competitions to him. Yo-Yo Ma’s niece. These weren’t friends. It wouldn’t be until he said goodbye to Alex Fitzgerald and hello to Xander Thorne that he’d find partners who wanted to be friends.

At Juilliard, he found different types of partners. Classmates who wanted to talk Brahms for three hours and then go back to his dorm room with him. He remembered looking in the mirror and trying to figure out what it was that the freshman class found so attractive about him. He had unremarkable features and no muscle definition. His hair was growing out, and he was six-foot-four, but without confidence, those things were just accessories to being a music geek. He was sleeping with girls, but by the middle of freshman year, he realized that none of them were sticking around.

So it wasn’t his personality.

What he understood early on was that they didn’t want to fuck him. They wanted to fuck the music. The flawless Beethoven violin Sonata No. 9 he executed in class that day. Just like in high school, he had partners, not relationships. Alex’s main problem with socializing was that he was always seeking partners. He was always seeking potential that could match with his own.

Alex had been writing music since he was nine, arranging popular songs in ways he thought played better before eventually starting to write original compositions. He was no stranger to waking up with melodies in his head, but he’d never resisted one like he had in the days after the Brooklyn wedding. Because if he wrote down the melody that swam in his veins every time he remembered her parted lips, her quick gasps as the bow tumbled, her eyes darkening as they sank into his…

If he admitted that entire symphonies had unfurled in his mind when they played together…

It felt like the music wouldn’t be his anymore.

It had been torturous to go home after the wedding. He’d almost asked her to stay and keep playing with him even after the ceremony was over. It wasn’t until he’d gotten in the shower later, hearing a melody he refused to write down, distracting himself with a hand around his cock, that he realized he hadn’t just wanted to continue playing music with her.

Alex hadn’t thought about the Chaconne by Vitali in seven years—hadn’t played it, hadn’t watched his old videos. Hearing it slither out of Gwen Jackson’s violin and cross Carnegie Hall to him was like drawing a line from point A to point B and sending a vibration down the string.

He’d sat forward with his elbows on his knees, ignoring the older woman behind him who huffed about his head being in her way. It wasn’t until she was twelve measures in that he realized this wasn’t the Chaconne. This was his Chaconne. The one he’d arranged and edited and perfected.

Where in god’s name did she find this?

He hadn’t planned to go to the Plaza. But he needed to speak to her. To watch her cheeks blush that pretty pink again. He needed to tell her she was worth more than a pops orchestra.

He didn’t get a chance to truly say it, but the way she curled her fingers into his shirt at the Plaza, breathing hard against collar…

She wanted him too.

Alex came home from the Plaza in a flurry of movement. His body screamed for a chance to come again, with her open mouth and flushed skin behind his eyelids.

He held off. And instead he hit the record button on his music writing software and picked up his bow. When he was done, when it was out of him, he clicked save. The computer asked him what to call it. He didn’t want to title it yet, but the file needed a name. He typed:

Not a Love Song.

And he believed it for a few weeks.

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