Chapter 146
The performance passed in a blur. I focused on keeping time with everyone else, playing the right chords, making sure I wasn’t missing my cues. I had been concentrating so hard on playing, it wasn’t until the show was nearly over that I finally looked around, and took it all in.
I was standing onstage, playing piano in a band.
That was a sentence that would have been incomprehensible to me when I’d first arrived here, but I was doing it.
The crowd was cheering and singing along with the choruses, and from the looks I could see Freddie and Doug exchanging, they also thought things were going well.
The adrenaline was coursing through me, and my heart was beating hard—but not in a panicked or scared way.
It was fun. I wasn’t sure I was going to run off and join a band, but for right now, it was fantastic.
I hit the last chord and Doug crashed his cymbal and the crowd cheered.
This was normally when the show ended—but not tonight.
I stepped back from the keyboard, and Violet hustled out.
She moved the keyboard to center stage, just behind the mic.
She gave me a grin as she melted back into the darkness of the wings—I had a feeling she was still grateful about her poker winnings.
Doug got up from his drum kit, and we both walked off, letting Freddie take center stage.
“Hey, everyone,” Freddie said. He smiled at the crowd, and you could practically feel it—the power of his genuine charm, how he was holding the audience in his hand.
I just hoped that the manager was noticing it, too.
“So for the last song,” he said, and I was pleased to hear some disappointed groans from the audience.
It meant they’d liked it! “For the last song, I wanted to play you something new. Something that I…wrote,” he said, not quite managing to keep the wonder out of his voice.
“But I never would be able to share it with you without someone very special,” he said, glancing back at me in the wings. “So thank you, Cass.”
Doug shoved me good-naturedly, and I shoved him back, feeling my cheeks get hot.
There was a smattering of polite applause, and then Freddie leaned forward and started to sing.
He was singing the song he’d written, even without knowing it.
All those fractions of lyrics that I’d saved for him—he’d spun them into a beautiful song, elegiac and yearning.
And even though he was singing it to the crowd—it also felt like he was singing it just to me.
He was a natural there at center stage, singing in his clear, gorgeous voice, smiling at the crowd, at ease. And I was so happy this was the version of him that the manager was seeing—Freddie in the spotlight, singing a song that was his alone.
The stage lights dimmed slightly, and suddenly, from the wings, I could see the crowd clearly. I could see Tabitha Keith and her friends, their arms draped around each other’s shoulders, no bad blood between any of them, crisis averted.
I saw Reagan and Zach and McKenna all listening to the music, rapt.
I saw Greta and Nora standing next to each other, Greta lifting her phone to take a selfie.
There were the Emmas, all in a line, dancing together.
The stress and strain that I was used to seeing on the two Emmas’ faces was totally gone—they were just having fun at Grad Nite.
I saw Ms. Mulaney, nodding her head in time to the music.
My eyes roamed over the crowd until I found Bryony—next to Bruce!
I couldn’t help but notice how close they were standing, the way he leaned down to say something that made her laugh.
I smiled as I looked at them and felt something in my heart expand as I took it all in.
No matter what happened later, I had made a difference.
My friends were having fun, singing and dancing, with no idea that things could have been very different.
Because of what I’d done—because of what I’d finally figured out.
Freddie played the last chord with a flourish, and the crowd broke into cheers and applause. Freddie took a bow, and then exited into the wings, the crowd still clapping.
“Great show!” Doug yelled, louder than I was expecting—but maybe that’s what happened when you played drums for an hour.
“You too,” Freddie said, and they exchanged a high-five-hug combo before Doug turned and headed down the hall, back to the greenroom.
“Cass,” Freddie said.
I smiled at him. “That was amazing! It was—”
But I didn’t get a chance to say anything else, because that’s when he swept me into his arms and kissed me.