Her eyebrows went up. “Yeah. I know.”
I sighed. “So what’s up with you? What are you doing here?”
She pulled a loaf of bread out of her bag and handed it over. “Mom’s baking again.”
“Really? She said she was feeling good on Tuesday but not baking-bread good. I’m surprised.” I pulled the loaf to my face and breathed in the familiar yeasty smell. Baking was a good sign, though it made me nervous that Mom had done it without me there. She liked to think she didn’t need me around, but it made Dad nervous too when she tried to do too much on her own. Six weeks before I moved home, she fell in the grocery store and broke her wrist. She hadn’t slipped or tripped or stumbled in any way. She’d just . . . fallen. Her legs had stopped working and then she’d been on the ground. I would never forget the way Dad sounded on the phone, like it killed him that he couldn’t just be there for her all the time. He couldn’t, not with his work schedule. But I could.
“Yeah, she’s had a good day. She was making cinnamon rolls when I left,” Ava said.
“For real? Is she alone? She’s been on her feet all day. She shouldn’t be doing this if she’s by herself—”
“Chill,” Ava interrupted. “Dad’s home. She isn’t alone.”
“Oh. Well then, why didn’t you wait an hour and bring me a cinnamon roll too?”
“Whatever. You’re only getting bread ’cause I have rehearsal and Mom insisted I bring it over on my way. Are you coming over on Sunday to help with my concerto?”
“Yeah, I’m planning on it. I also thought we could look at Juilliard’s audition list. Have you looked at it yet?”
She pulled out her phone without responding, her fingers flying over the keys. I waited a beat longer, then huffed out her name. “Ava.”
“What? Oh. No, not yet.”
For a second, I only stared, feeling the familiar Ava-tinted tension building in my neck and shoulders. “It’s not that different from when I auditioned,” I finally said. “You’ll need a Paganini Caprice. Do you know any Paganini?” She didn’t look up from her phone, but at least her fingers stilled. “We’ll find you a good one. I like number twenty-two, but seven is good too, or fourteen, maybe. And a Bach sonata. Number three in C Major would be perfect.”
Ava still didn’t respond. She stared out the passenger-side window, biting at her thumbnail with enough ferocity I was surprised I didn’t see any blood.
“Hey. You okay?” I reached over and nudged her shoulder.
“I’m fine.”
“I know you’ve got a year before you audition, but you really do have to start thinking about all this now. I promise I won’t be pushy about it. You can totally pick your own Paganini.”
“It’s not that; it’s just . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’s fine. I’ll do whatever you think is best.”
“Ava, what are you not telling me?”
She reached for the door handle. “I gotta get to rehearsal. Feinstein hates it when we’re late.”
She had a point there. Gerald Feinstein had been conducting the Asheville Youth Symphony for as long as I could remember. He’d been ancient when I’d been in the orchestra; it was hard to believe he was still going strong. It was not hard to believe his distaste for tardiness had done anything but intensify with age.
Ava got out of the car and shut the door without saying good-bye.
I wound down my window and called out to her, stopping her in the middle of the street. She turned around, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her hoodie. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
She turned and climbed into the tiny hatchback she’d inherited after I’d graduated. I could see her violin—another of my hand-me-downs—sitting in the backseat. I tried to wave as she drove past, but she kept her eyes forward, not even glancing in my direction. I didn’t need her to glance at me to see the tears though. My heart sank. I remembered all too well the pressure of college auditions, the hours of practicing, and the endurance required by schools like Juilliard and CIM. I could only hope Ava wasn’t buckling under the weight of it all.
With her gone and Elliott safely inside, I finally climbed out of my car.
Fifteen minutes later, Lilly found me in the kitchen waiting for my toast to pop, a fried egg sizzling in a pan on the stove.
“Seriously, Emma, do you ever eat anything else?” She sank into a kitchen chair and kicked off her shoes. I glanced over my shoulder, noting how tired she looked.
“Protein, whole grains, butter. Ready in five minutes. It’s the perfect meal. You want one?”
“Yes. No. I’m starving, but Trav is coming over in an hour. I think he’s bringing sushi from Green Tea.” She dropped her head onto the table.
“Mmm, Green Tea. Tell Trav if he brings me a Dragon Roll I’ll feed him Scrabble words for the rest of forever.”
“Will you even be here to eat it? Fried eggs mean rehearsal. I know the drill.”
“Just chamber group, but have him get one anyway. I’ll be hungry when I get home.”
“Chamber group again? Didn’t you just do that on Monday?”
“Yeah, but we have a wedding this weekend, with new music, so we’re getting together one more time.” I sat in the chair across from her and dug into my food. “What’s up with you? Long day?”
“Sooo long,” she said. “We had this dad today who was seriously the most obnoxious baby daddy I have ever, ever dealt with.”
“Yeah? Do tell.”
“There’s too much to tell, really. Suffice it to say, he was all about getting naked and getting in the tub with his wife while she was laboring.”
“Like, naked naked?”
Lilly nodded.
“Please promise you’ll stop me if I ever come close to marrying someone who thinks getting naked during labor is a good idea.”
She laughed. “You going to add that to your string of first-date questions? What do you do for a living? How many siblings do you have? When your wife is in labor with your first child, would you or would you not feel comfortable taking off your pants?”
“Oh, I’m gonna. I might wait for the second date to ask, but this’ll be a deal breaker for me.” I finished eating and took my plate to the sink, rinsing it off before sliding it into the dishwasher. “I gotta run. Dragon Roll! Don’t forget to text Trav!”
* * *
Vibration still pulsed through my hand as I dropped my bow, exhilarated to have hit that high note just right. Rehearsal was going so much better than last time. It helped that I was no longer shocked over Grayson’s presence, but also, we played through the sister of the bride’s psycho-awful composition only once before we considered it good and moved on. The rest of the typical wedding stuff we knew well enough not to worry about practicing, which left us time to play around a little. We played one of my favorites—Puccini’s Crisantemi—a piece I hoped we would play for our spring concert. It definitely wasn’t wedding music. The Crisantemi was composed as an elegy honoring some Italian-born king of Spain from the 1800s, Amadeo something or other. But it was a piece that hit me all the way down to my soul, and I was in a good mood for having gotten to play it.
I placed my bow carefully in my case and took a few extra minutes to wipe the excess rosin from my violin strings, mostly because I kinda wanted to let Grayson get good and gone before I went to my car. I was pretty sure our impromptu taco dinner the week before had been a one-time, nice-to-see-you-again-let’s-catch-up kind of deal, but what if he wanted to go out again? What if he wanted it to be a regular thing and I was going to have to endure casual, semijudgy questions about my life choices over and over again? Caroline and I talked over our instrument cases long enough I thought for sure Grayson had left. This made it all the more surprising when I found him leaning against the driver’s side door of my car, a fancy white envelope in his hands. He must have already put his cello in his truck because he just stood there, turning the envelope over and over and looking .
. . nervous, maybe?
What the heck was he holding?
“Hey.” I unlocked my car and put my violin in the back. “What’s up?”
“I, um, well, I just wanted to give you this.” He held out the envelope. “I don’t want you to feel weird, so if you don’t want to come, you really don’t have to. But I didn’t want you to think you weren’t invited, and now that you’re back in town, you should be invited. So just . . . I guess I’m just saying it’s up to you. If you’d like to come, I think it would be nice to have you there.”
I pulled a thick piece of cardstock out of the envelope and started to read. “Grayson, are you getting married?” I read a few more lines of the invitation. “I can’t believe you didn’t mention it on Monday.”
“I was going to, but then it just sort of felt awkward bringing it up, and . . . I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“November. That’s not very far away.”
“Yeah, it’s coming up pretty quick.”
“Wow. I mean, that’s big news. I’m really happy for you.”
“Thanks.”
I tried to puzzle out the emotions battling inside my brain. Happiness reigned—I knew that much was true. Grayson was a good guy. He deserved a great relationship. I was maybe a little bitter he’d managed to find his happily-ever-after before I had, but I’d never admit as much out loud. I would admit, as soon as I was home and talking to Lilly, that underneath my shock and happiness and stupid old-girlfriend bitterness, there was also a tiny measure of panic. I didn’t have anything to wear to a wedding where I wasn’t a hired musician, especially not an evening wedding at the Grove Park Inn. More importantly, I didn’t have a plus one. And if there was one thing that was absolutely perfectly clear in my jumbled-up brain, it was that I was not going to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding without a date. Even if that date was Darren Fishbaum.
Okay. Maybe scratch that last part about Darren Fishbaum.
“So tell me about”—I glanced at the invitation—“about Jane.”
Grayson’s eyes got all bright and happy. “She’s great. She’s my boss’s daughter, actually.” He tugged on his ear. “She dropped by one day to bring him lunch, and that sort of started everything.”
“Did she grow up in Asheville?”
“Yeah. Then she moved away for school and came back a few years ago after she graduated. She’s the hospitality director at Hotel Indigo. Do you know it?”
“I love the Hotel Indigo. We played a gig there last—oh my gosh. I think I met her.”
“What? You did?”
“She’s teeny tiny, with dark short hair, right? We were playing for this swanky cocktail party, and she and I talked for a few minutes while we were setting up. She was really nice.”
“Yeah, that’s her. So, are you going to come?” He shoved his hands into his pockets and gave me a hopeful smile.
I looked back at the invitation one more time. “I’ll have to check my schedule. Weekends are generally pretty crazy with gigs and symphony concerts, but I’ll try. If I’m not busy, I’d love to be there.” I answered him with just enough conviction I almost believed it myself.
Chapter 6
Later that night, I sat across the table from Lilly, enjoying my Dragon Roll—I love you, Trav—while she studied the details of Grayson’s invitation.
“Theodore and Agnes Manigault Rockwell. Who even has names like that anymore?” Lilly reached across the table and snuck a piece of my sushi.
“The real question is who includes a pronunciation guide on a wedding invitation?”
“An-yez,” Lilly said through her nose. “I want to go to the reception and call her plain old Agnes just to see what happens.”
“At least they had mercy on their kid. You can’t get much simpler than Jane.”
“But she isn’t just Jane. She’s Jane Ravenel Rockwell.”
I tried not to laugh. “I’m sure they’re all very nice.”
“So what are you thinking? Are you gonna go?”
I snatched the invitation out of Lilly’s hands and gave it another once-over. “I don’t know. I kinda feel like I should, but he didn’t send me an invitation until now. Which means the only reason I’m invited is because we’re in the same chamber group and he probably felt guilty. Do you really think he wants me there? His ex-girlfriend? It’s a little weird.”
“It’s only weird if you’re still in love with him. But you’re not. You’ve moved on; he’s moved on. You should go. It’s free food anyway.”
“I’m not going to his wedding for the free food. And I’m also not going without a date, which, you know, probably means I’m not going.”
“Why do you need a date? Maybe you’ll meet someone there.” Lilly tucked her hair, still wet from her shower, behind her ear. I hated her a little for looking so good without makeup, wearing old yoga pants, and sporting an oversized sweatshirt. She pulled off messy casual way better than I did.
“That’s true,” I said. “I’m sure Grayson is inviting all kinds of eligible Mormon bachelors to his wedding.”
Lilly rolled her eyes. “You and your stupid requirements. Anybody could pinch hit as a wedding date though, right? He doesn’t really have to be Mormon. Not to take you to a wedding.”
“I guess not. As long as it’s not my wedding.”
“What about Buster?”
“Trav’s work friend, Buster?”
“Yeah. He’s nice and . . . sort of cute.”
For real? How desperate did she think I was? “His name is Buster.”
“That’s a stupid reason not to like someone.”
“Okay. His name is Buster, and he plays Minecraft twenty-three hours a day. And he smells like mushrooms.”
“But you like mushrooms.”
I pushed up from the table and dropped the sushi to-go box in the trash. “You’re not helping.”
“Fine, fine.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “What about Elliott? You’ve been making out with his YouTube channel all week. Maybe he’d go with you.”
“I’m not even going to dignify that comment with a response.” It was stupid how quickly my heart picked up speed just because Lilly mentioned Elliott’s name. It was almost as stupid as her comment about his YouTube channel. Because I wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . . Or maybe I did. But I was only listening. Not obsessing.
“Oh, whatever,” Lilly said. “You just need to go talk to him again. Give yourself another chance to make a better impression.”
“I’m not ever going over there to talk to him—not without a personal invitation or a really good, completely plausible, verifiable-with-physical-proof reason. Even if I did have a reason, I would never ask him to go to Grayson’s wedding. That would just be . . .”
“Amazing,” Lilly interjected. “It would be amazing.”
“I was going to say awkward.”
“Emma, just think about it. Everybody at that wedding is going to remember you as the Emma who was going somewhere. You said yourself Grayson acted like your star had dimmed. Who knows what kind of things he’s been telling people about your fall from Cleveland.”
“I didn’t fall from Cleveland. I left. On purpose.”
“I know that, and you know that, but no one else does. What better way to show everyone you’ve still got it than by showing up to the wedding with Elliott Hart?”
“So, use his celebrity to make myself look . . . what, more important? More accomplished? You know that’s not my style.”
She frowned. “Okay, no. It’s not your style. But . . . I dunno. He’d still be the hottest guy at the wedding. It might be fun for that reason alone.”
He would definitely be the hottest guy at the wedding. He was the hottest guy anywhere. But I still couldn’t ask him. Because asking required talking, and I wasn’t planning on talking to him ever again. It was the only surefire way to guarantee I didn’t humiliate myself.
“Have you seen him around at all?” I asked Lilly.
“W
ho, Elliott?”
I held my hands up and shot her a look.
“Calm down,” she replied. “I’ve just seen him once. He helped me carry my groceries in yesterday. Have you seen him around?”
I shook my head. “Only a few times, but I don’t think they really count. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”
“Yeah, I guess he wouldn’t if you’re hiding in the bushes.” Lilly stood and stretched her arms over her head, then stifled a yawn. “Emma, you live here. You can’t hide from him forever.”
“I know! But I still feel so stupid. You can’t know the extent of our conversation, Lil. It was quite possibly the worst conversation I have ever had with a man. Or maybe with anyone. Ever. There is no way to recover from that.” I flipped the light in the kitchen and followed her into the hallway.
“So that’s it, then? You’ll just never talk to him again?”
No.
Yes.
I have no idea.
“Maybe not forever. But the next time we talk, it has to feel completely natural. I just don’t want it to be forced, you know? It has to just happen.”
* * *
The irony of my comment was not lost on me when the following Sunday morning, just after sacrament meeting, old Sister Sheehan snaked her way through the crowd and snagged Elliott before he’d made it three steps away from his pew. She gripped his arm and had a gleam in her eye as she looked pointedly in my direction. I was in for a confrontation with Elliott that was anything but the organic encounter I’d been hoping for. With Sister Sheehan at the helm, his second impression of me might actually be worse than the first.
I hid behind the Stevenson kid, grateful for his high-school-linebacker–sized shoulders, and almost made it to the safety of the hallway, now bustling with people. But when my shield stopped to flirt with a girl lingering in the back pew (curse you, high school romances), Sister Sheehan managed to cut me off before I could make my escape.
“Emma dear. I’m so glad you’re here today.” When she finally released Elliott’s arm, he shook his sleeve and shoved his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. He didn’t look annoyed, really, just sort of . . . weary.
Love at First Note Page 5