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Daisy is beautiful. Performing with her, even when there’s no one watching us, is a hell of a time for me to realize that. I’ve always known she was pretty, but this is different. She’s beautiful, and I know now, there is a difference between those two words.
She’s perfect. Bright and beautiful and complex in the way her violin is.
“I need to tell you something. Okay?” I nod, sniffling. “You are not what some pretentious asshole sees.” Noah crosses the room, sitting down on a rumpled bed. “He doesn’t know you and one day, you probably won’t even remember him. He doesn’t deserve to know you. Because you …” He pauses, his cheeks pink. “Daisy, you are beautiful. And knowing that—that I get to be with you again next week—just makes me so happy.”
“Just as you’ve helped so many people, Daisy,” Hope simpers. “By overcoming your cerebral palsy, I think you’ve reminded everyone that anything is possible as long as one is determined enough to prove themselves. You are disabled, but you still became a violinist.” Not but. My strings are reversed. My chin rest is on the right side. I am disabled and I am a violinist. I’m not overcoming anything, I want to say. But after what happened in the first segment, I don’t trust myself to speak. “Hope?” Noah asks, polite and composed as he’s been this entire time. “Can I say something, please?”
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“What I need is for the rest of the world to wake up and respect me. To see me as fully human, something my own boyfriend is apparently incapable of!”
“I love you,” she whispers, her words making me hold my own bow to her cheek. “And your anxiety, Noah, that’s as much a part of you as my cerebral palsy is of me. We don’t need to apologize for ourselves. Especially not to each other.”
Positioning my violin under my chin, I come in a second later, knowing as we fill this park with music that in this moment, right now, nothing else matters. Just me, him, and our strings.
