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“There’s something exciting about sight-reading,” he said. “Don’t you agree?” He lifted his brows at her, like they had something in common—like it had been her choice to sight-read for the cello yesterday. She scoffed. “As section leader? Really? You sight-read at the first rehearsal?” “Sometimes.” He shrugged.
Wow impressive
She didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t working twice as hard, running twice as fast.
alexa play the man by taylor swift
humming with the violas.
VIOLA MENTION YESSSS
“First chair is not a stepping stone, it’s a destination.”
But being utterly hypnotized by a nobody, playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” of all things, was unsettling. To hear that she’d received no formal training was maddening. And it added insult to injury to see her sitting in the fourth row of a pops orchestra.
He’d tracked her during rehearsal yesterday and realized exactly why she was in the fourth row. She had perfected the art of not standing out.
Because if anyone could topple him, it was Gwen Jackson. If anyone could take away his opportunities, it was a girl with a gorgeous face, perfect form, and an unpolished performance. Someone younger. Someone shinier.
Xander, or Alex, hadn’t always been a cellist. He had been, first and foremost, a violinist.
“He doesn’t want to be known as ‘Ava Fitzgerald’s son,’” she said with a faraway look. “He made that perfectly clear.”
“Mabel trained him, actually.” Her fingers paused mid-reach for the sugar. “Mabel? My Mabel?”
His gaze slid over her fingers, up her arm to her neck. She could almost feel it on her skin. When his eyes met hers, he held her there, and she felt pinned. He was focused, as though trying to solve an equation.
Her bow lifted, and she followed his cello line, turning off her brain and letting herself play. He joined her in two measures on what should have been her violin line, yellow diamonds in the sky. Her eyes moved over the page, following the notes, her brain unable to do anything else. She echoed him at one point, and the only thing she could think was, This is gorgeous. The cello line—her, on violin—was supposed to take the section in the song where the techno beat lifts, the part that you jump to in clubs—if Gwen were the kind of person that went to clubs. The bow danced over her violin,
...more
AHHHH THIS IS SO COOL
He watched her, not needing the music. And she understood. She lifted her bow, not needing the music either.
“Thank you so much for thinking of me, Ama. This gig was great,” Gwen said. “Sure! And actually…” Ama checked over her shoulder and whispered, “it was Xander who requested you.”
“And because I knew she would refuse if I asked her in advance,” Nathan said, “I was hoping to spring on her the opportunity to play something for you all.” She felt the blood leave her face. Her legs were full of air, the oxygen in her lungs slowly draining into her thighs.
ID BE SO MAD WTF
No one had told her applause was something you felt. And that when it was thundering, it was only a buzzing. Like your ears protected you from the sweet pain of it.
“Maybe it’s your mother I’m most interested in impressing.”
Oh shit
“It was an interesting arrangement. Where did you find it?”
ooooooh
But bragging to Alex Fitzgerald about playing the violin was like bragging to Jesus Christ about walking in waves on a beach.
Lmfao
“They’ve been keeping you hidden,” he said. “Ordinary. When you’re anything but.”
“But the second you get out of your head, you’re magnificent.”
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.
ARE U KIDDING ME
He didn’t want to title it yet, but the file needed a name. He typed: Not a Love Song.
and Gwen had to bite her tongue when she mentioned the exact same up-bow that Mabel had.
Were they more than friends...
This couldn’t be happening. Three people—all incredible musicians, all interconnected with Gwen as the axis—all of them fixating on the same point in the music. She echoed Ava’s reasoning back to him.
Elbows on his knees again, leaning forward like his body begged him to be elsewhere. His eyes were dark, deep brown locked onto her face. She watched his throat move and his lips press together before he asked, “Why did you choose violin over cello?”
“But if you worry about who’s listening, you’ll never be fully playing.”
decidedly not thinking about the sound of his breath in her ear, the way his fingers played her like music, or the way the untitled song haunted her.
She cleared her throat and said, “Xander, I think we could pull back a bit.” “Could we?” he mumbled sarcastically. Her eyes flicked up to him. It was the same tone he used with Ava. She stared him down and slowly raised a brow at him. “Did you need clarification?” She heard the orchestra hush. Something sparkled in his eyes, and his lips twitched. “No, ma’am.”
Hehhehehe
“Saturday Night Live isn’t important to you?” He swallowed. “No. I had something far more important going on that day, if you remember.”
LOL
He was never late again. Instead, he was consistently five minutes early.
“Are you seeing someone?” His eyes dragged over her face. “I never… I didn’t ask before.” Gwen thought of Chelsea’s Instagram, filled with selfies of her and him. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me, but—” “Anything.” Black eyes looked down on her, and he took a shaking breath. “Everything.” She felt the heat spinning in her again, blossoming from his lips and his breath, and twisting through her chest and low in her belly. “Tell me I can see you again,” he whispered, leaning into her. “For music or anything else.”
AHHHHH
Xander refused to look at her for the rest of rehearsal, not even for tempo. Gwen couldn’t decide which had been more distracting: his gaze on her face, her body, her instrument every moment for the past two weeks… or the absence of it now.
Then it hit her. Alex. She’d called him Alex.
GIRL
She woke up the next morning to one new follower: @Xander_Thorne.
Girl lmfao
She was hyper-aware of every little thing he did, while he seemed to have mellowed considerably. Like he’d been drowning, and had finally found air. She wondered if it was her turn to drown.
Alex stood, holding his Stradivarius in his left hand and reaching for her with the other. She pulled herself onto shaking legs and met him in the middle, slipping her fingers against his palm until he grasped her and guided her forward, presenting her to the audience. She laughed and inclined her head, nodding to each tier.
“If you don’t want to be with me, together with me, I can understand,” he said, and she felt her knees wobble. “But, Gwen, please make music with me. I need you in my life. I need to be in your orbit in some way, and if you don’t want me to touch you and kiss you and fuck you, then let me make love to you onstage every night because it’s the most alive I’ve felt in ten years—”
“I want to be clear,” he whispered, as she focused on the rose-colored smudges around her lips. “I want you. In every way.” She swallowed, and he watched her throat move. “I want to see you. And fuck you. And play music with you.”
“Tell me you want even one of those things.” His lips twitched, and she stared up at him. His brown eyes flickered between hers, a deep color. And really, what was the point of lying to him now. After she’d thrown herself at him. “A few of them, yeah.”
“Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it for the rest of your life.”
“You think Alex is who you fell in love with, but you wouldn’t have noticed me if I hadn’t been Xander Thorne.”
how excellently her orphan prodigy was doing.
Gwen
He slipped his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, and handed it over. He was already brimming with regrets. What was another?
BRUH ARE U SERIOUS RN
Maybe she liked love songs after all. As long as she was playing them with Alex.
The subscribers cooed. The kids in the balcony screamed. And Gwen watched as Nathan used her broken heart to make money. She was shaking.
ASSHOLE
“You called Lorenz?” Gwen said, knowing already that it was true. “You gave him the heads-up that I was coming to LA?” Nathan’s jaw clicked.
OH MY GOD
He was staring down at her like she was the sun. It was familiar. The same fascination she’d seen in him at the wedding, at the Plaza. Like she was an answer to a question he’d been asking his whole life.
A warmth filled her chest, and she swallowed back the lump in her throat. “I think I heard you. I think you’re the reason I wanted to play violin.”
“You don’t remember?” She felt her chest collapse. She stared at him. “I almost trampled you coming out of the practice room one day. You asked me what I was playing, and I told you to fuck off.” She gasped. “You did not. I would have remembered that!” “It was something like that.” He pulled up to his elbows. “You were, like, ten or eleven.” He smiled down at her. “I realized during the New York Times interview that you were Mabel’s brat.”
