Absolutely Not in Love (Sweater Weather, #7; Appies, #2)

by Jenny Proctor

I lose myself in the music just like I always do. I am grateful for the audience, but I don’t think about them when I’m playing. It’s just me, the music, the dips and swells of emotion. People argue classical music is boring, but if they truly listened, they’d hear the stories, the heartache, the celebration. In the moment of silence right at the end of a piece, when I’ve just lifted my bow off the strings and the vibrations are still echoing through my body, that’s when I feel the most wholly like myself. Applause fills the auditorium as the conductor bows, and the same satisfaction that comes after every performance pushes through me. But tonight, there’s an unexpected hollowness around the edges of my emotion that leaves me feeling slightly off-kilter. Maybe it’s the expression on Joyce’s face when her husband waves from his seat in the second row. Or the way the first chair violist moves to the back of the violin section to help his wife, who has a broken foot, get off the stage. I do love playing in the symphony. And for the past few years, it’s been enough. But it suddenly occurs to me that it might be nice if there were someone here to enjoy it with me—someone who was here for me.