Page 91 of Crescendo

“Eliza.”

She deflated and collapsed into a chair across from me, not quite directly. She still needed some space. “Our band broke up.”

“Right. I heard you’re a hell of a drummer.”

“Was.Past tense.”

“Because?”

“I dated one of our bandmates.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “We were all friends. I dated him, we broke up, and it ruined everything. I destroyed my band,Hannah’sband. All of our dreams just gone.”

“So you found new ones.”

She shrugged. “I guess. We came to London and it’s so… different here. People would hear us speak and immediately write us off for anything serious. Like, just because we had common, Northern accents, we weren’t good for anything. But I wanted to be bigger than that. I wanted to play the Royal Albert Hall.” Her voice was so reverent when she spoke of it. She shook her head. “I know people act like it’s not a thing, like they’re not prejudiced against Northerners or people who grew up working class, but…”

“But that wasn’t your experience when you got here.”

She nodded. “And I wanted to compose. Wanted to prove I could do it.”

“So, you put away all the parts of you from home and tried to be something they couldn’t put down?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. The accent, the attitude… Sure, she’d done some things that were ill-advised, been mean when she didn’t need to be, but I understood where it came from now. So insecurebecause of what she’d been through that she needed to be perfect. She just didn’t know how to do that. As if any of us did.

“And Hannah?” I prompted.

She laughed but it sounded like a strangled cry of pain. “She’s my best friend. We agreed to come here and be something different together. She said she’d support me in all of it. And then—” She turned away. “Well, things got complicated.”

They’d fallen in love. We’d known Hannah had feelings for Eliza, but I’d thought the problem was that Eliza didn’t reciprocate. Now, I saw the problem was that she did, but they weren’t together.

“You don’t want to be with her?”

Her head whipped back to me. “Of course I do. She’s fucking exquisite.”

I smiled at her, fighting not to make it too big and annoy her.

She scowled. “But it’s not that easy. You and Lydia are playing with fire, acting like you can be together and it’s not going to ruin everything when reality sets back in at the end of the month. What are you going to do, Ella? She’ll be going back to LA, and you’ll be stuck here all alone, knowing what it was like to be with Lydia Howard Fox—and what it’s like to lose her.”

I sucked in a painful breath. She was right, of course. We hadn’t really discussed what happened next. We talked a big game about it just being casual and how the pain was worth the trade—and it was—but the longer we were together, the more feelings I was developing, and the end of the month wasn’t looking particularly appealing.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I know it’s worth the trade of being with her now.”

“Easy to say. I guess you haven’t known her as long as I’ve known Hannah. That’s fine. But Hannah wants me to prove myself. So, I’m trying and, instead of being by my side with that,she’s off hanging out with Lydia and setting me up on dates I don’t even want to fucking go on.” She groaned again. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to sit across the table from someone I have no interest in, wishing it was her instead? And then, when I get back, she’s having a grand old time with all of you. She doesn’t give a fuck about me. What am I trying to prove if she doesn’t even care?”

I frowned. That didn’t sound like Hannah. From what I’d seen, she’d have given anything to be with Eliza. “She cares about you.”

“No. She doesn’t. It was all just excuses. She doesn’t want to ruin the friendship, wants me to change, prove myself, wants to support me without the distraction… It’s lies, Ella. All of it.”

I abandoned my tea on one of the small, circular tables, moving to the seat beside her. She flinched when I put a hand lightly on her back. “Hannah worships the ground you walk on, Eliza.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I promise she does. She’s probably breaking down in her practice room right now, too. She’s here because of you, because she cares and wants to do this with you. She wants you to succeed.”

“I wish.”

“Have you tried talking to her about this?”

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