Page 125 of Crescendo

“I’m not avoiding you.” She winced. “Any more.”

Hannah raised her eyebrows, nodding slowly, and I could see the hope fighting to break out of her. “Well, okay.”

“Your piece…” Eliza’s breathing was racing and she fidgeted with the bass, stepping closer to Hannah. “Your piece was really beautiful.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly classical enough. I didn’t do what you wanted.”

Something inconsolable flashed across Eliza’s face. “I just… wanted to make you proud. You said things had to be different, that I had to prove myself here.”

“What?” Hannah frowned, her eyes teary. “I thought that was whatyouwanted. You wanted to come here and leave Liverpool behind us, to…make ithere.”

“I do want that, but I… I thought if everything was different, if I made it and could be good enough as a composer, then, maybe we’d… maybe I’d be… good enough for you. Then it wouldn’t be like before with—with the band and everything that went down.”

Hannah let out a wet laugh. “I just wanted you to be happy. For you to have everything you dreamed of here—I wanted to help you get that.”

If they hadn’t been standing in front of the door, I’d probably have slipped out and given them a moment alone, but, since I was stuck with them, I at least tried to be small and unobtrusive. This was a conversation they’d clearly needed to have for a long time, and they deserved to have it.

Eliza stepped closer to her again, swinging the bass around her back. “You said… we couldn’t be together because of what happened before, because we’re friends.”

“I thought that was what you were saying. And I don’t wanna lose you or our friendship, that’s true, but the feelings din’t go anywhere just because I was tryna let you build the life you wanted. And… we ended up here and I was losing you anyway.”

“That date you set up—”

“I wanted you to be happy.”

Eliza let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “I had a terrible time. Spent the entire night wishing I was out with you, wishing I could win this whole thing just to show you that I’d done it, that I’d changed, and maybe then you’d want to be with me. And I thought you just wanted me out of the way so you could hang out with Lydia.”

Hannah reached out, her hand finding Eliza’s cheek, her thumb rubbing gently over her skin. “It wasn’t like that. At all. Iwantedto tell you, wanted you to be there, but I thought you’d hate me for… hanging onto the past.”

“None of this is worth anything without you,” Eliza said softly. “We’d just… talked about it so many times—”

“Without really understanding what the other meant,” Hannah said, sounding frustrated with herself.

“I guess so.”

She laughed and tears ran down her face. “Hey, Eliza?”

“Yes, Hannah?”

“I think I want to have this conversation again—with us both on the same page.” She glanced down at the bass. “And I want to know what those drums would sound like.”

Eliza laughed. “Not like anything that would get me into the Royal Albert Hall.”

She looked at Eliza seriously. “I don’t think that’s true. I think you can get therewiththe drums, if that’s what you want.”

“Yeah? You wouldn’t be too disappointed in me?”

“Never. Besides, classical composition with some sound drums? You’d smash it.”

They smiled at each other and Eliza’s piece came back to me, the happy ending they both deserved, but this was a little messier than her piece, more real. And it was better because of it. A million words had been said through the music and now they were saying them out loud, finally, to each other.

Music really did have the power to change lives. I’d come here looking for something like that without realising just how much it was going to do. And I was just glad someone here was getting a happily ever after.

Still, I slipped my phone out of my pocket, foolishly hopeful that there would be a message from Lydia. Life was so messy and so ugly and so beautiful, and Hannah and Eliza hadsomehow managed to navigate that. So long as that was true, maybe there was a chance Lydia would message me back after all.

Hannah cleared her throat. “By the way, Eliza, d’you reck we should tell Ella to leave?”

“Ella’s here?” Eliza asked, sounding a little spacey and blushing when Hannah laughed, and she scowled at me.

---