Chapter Thirty
Bo was nervous before Max’s concert. So nervous that she regressed to biting her nails like an angsty fifteen-year-old about to sit a French oral exam.
So nervous, that she opened a pack of gummy bears and skittishly ate half of them until Lisa knocked the bag out of her hands.
So nervous that she nearly backed out of going to the concert entirely, standing outside the Sydney Opera House with her arms crossed petulantly over her chest, refusing to move.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to see Maximilian Fitzroy play Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto,” Lisa snapped at her, pulling on her arm. “I am not missing out because my little sister shagged him and then had a lover’s spat afterwards.”
“That’s not exactly what happened,” Bo argued back, slapping her sister’s hand away.
Lisa paused. “Did you shag him?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Did you then argue with him?”
“Well, yes, but you don’t understand—”
Lisa proceeded to pull on her arm again.
“I am not missing out because you shagged him and then had a lover’s spat.
Come on, Bo, don’t be a baby. This is the Sydney Opera House, for heaven’s sake.
There are six thousand seats inside. He’s not even going to see you.
Not in the seats I booked, anyway. If you want him to see you, we could always sit in the front-row seats he sent to you . . .”
Bo paled. It was one thing to go to Max’s concert. It was quite another thing to go to Max’s concert and have Max know about it.
“I said no to that already. We’ll sit in your seats. You paid for them, remember? Hundreds of dollars.”
“Your free seats are better.”
“They might be better, but they weren’t free, trust me,” Bo bit back. “I paid for them in heartbreak and tears.”
Lisa sighed. “He sent you those seats for a reason, Bo,” she offered quietly. “Did you ever think that maybe he’s had heartbreak and tears of his own?”
Bo stared at her. “He wasn’t like that about me.”
“Like what?”
“You know.” Bo waved her hand. “In love with me or anything.”
“But you were in love with him?” Lisa gazed at her, and when Bo made no immediate answer, her eyes narrowed even further. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
Bo frowned, looking at the ground. “Where are my gummy bears? If you’re going to ask me stressful questions and drag me to stressful events you should at least let me eat my stress-relieving food.”
“Gummy bears aren’t food.”
“What are they then?”
“An avoidance measure,” Lisa replied evenly.
With a sigh, she looped her arm through Bo’s tightly crossed ones.
“Just like this,” she added, nodding to Bo’s unmoving feet.
“You have to do this, Bo. You’ve tortured yourself enough over this man.
See his concert — the concert he wants you to see — and start working through whatever it is you need to work through. ”
“I’m scared,” Bo admitted, her voice small, and Lisa looked at her in surprise.
“Why? Of what?”
“Of this being the end,” Bo replied. “Which is silly, isn’t it? Because Max and I . . . we already ended, months and months ago. I just . . .” she sighed. “It just always felt like there would be more. The way we left things . . . it wasn’t great. Terrible, in fact.”
“Oh, Bo.”
“What if Max sent me these tickets as a final goodbye? What if he sent me these tickets just to let me know he’s okay and moving on?” Bo looked at her sister desperately. “What if that’s all this is? What if, after tonight, I have to say goodbye to him in my heart again?”
“I don’t know.” Lisa’s face was unaccountably soft, her eyes thoughtful.
“I don’t know what to tell you here, because you’re right, that might be all this is.
Max might have sent you the tickets as a final goodbye, and he might have sent you the tickets to show you how well he’s doing.
He might even have sent them as a goodwill gesture, Bo.
I don’t know. But neither do you, and you aren’t going to know unless you start putting one foot in front of the other and walk into that hall.
Face the demon, okay? If it’s a final goodbye, you’ll soon know, and the sooner you know, the sooner you can start exorcising it.
But you have to go in there and find out. ”
Bo exhaled hard. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the opera house steps and wait for Lisa to collect her when the concert was done. At that moment, she wanted to crawl into her coat and sleep for years and years.
Lisa was right though. She needed to face the demon and start exorcising it from her soul. Shaking her head, Bo gave a deep sigh before moving towards the doors.
“You better buy me a big bag of gummy bears from the concession stand,” she grumbled to Lisa.
“I will,” Lisa agreed, “and then every time you complain tonight, I’ll shove one into your whining gob. Sounds great to me.”
* * *
Lisa was right. The front-row seat tickets Max sent had a better view than the two seats Lisa had purchased, right in the middle of the concert hall. Bo settled into her seat, trying to peer over a tall man in front of her.
“This place is really busy,” she complained, but Lisa only shrugged.
“Well, Maximilian Fitzroy is a big deal. You know he first recorded the Emperor Concerto when he was seventeen? He’s a prodigy, and he’s only played Australia once before.”
Max. A big deal. Bo had known that without really knowing it.
Strange, she remembered sitting in Geoffrey’s study, listening to Max play.
Looking around her now, she realized that six thousand people had paid hundreds of dollars each to listen to what she had already witnessed so blithely.
Six thousand people were here to hear what she had heard so many times before, in a much more intimate setting.
Six thousand people were here to see Max, to hear Max.
Six thousand people were here for her Max.
She sighed, shifting in her seat. The stage before them was large, with musicians seated to the left, right and back of a large piano.
A large piano Bo had definitely seen before.
A large piano Bo had played once herself.
A large piano she’d had sex on at least twice.
Lisa saw Bo’s look of concentration and leaned towards her.
“All pianists have their preference of piano. Liszt played a Bechstein. Tchaikovsky used a Steinway. Max Fitzroy prefers to play a—”
“A Yamaha,” Bo finished for her, “and it cost him eighty-five thousand pounds too.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. That’s the same piano he kept at Geoffrey’s.
He ships that thing around the world to wherever he happens to be playing.
Something about muscle memory.” Bo repressed a blush at the thought of how well Max had played her; how his muscle memory of her body brought her all kinds of pleasure.
She gave Lisa a sideways look. “He let me play it once too.”
“You’ve played that piano?” Lisa looked amazed.
“Yes. I’ve also had sex on it.”
Lisa’s look of amazement quickly turned to one of disgust. “Give me a fucking gummy bear. You can’t say things like that in the Sydney Opera House, for Christ’s sake. Dame Joan Sutherland once sang here.”
Bo hid a grin, looking back to the stage. “The other musicians are all ready, but Max isn’t there yet.”
“He’ll come out with the conductor,” Lisa remarked through a mouth full of gelatine. “He’ll shake hands with the concertmaster, who’s the lead violinist, bow to the conductor and then bow to us. Then he’ll sit at the piano and wait for the conductor to begin.”
“He’ll come out with the conductor?”
“Yes. The Emperor Concerto is a difficult piece, and Max and the conductor will have to work together to keep the timings right.”
“Oh.” Bo felt remarkably inept. She’d had Max to herself for weeks and weeks, and what had she learned about classical music in that time?
That Beethoven was potentially a virgin?
Bo scowled at her own idiocy; at the lack of time and energy she’d given to learning even a little bit about Max’s chosen career.
You learned he has sex after a performance, Bo’s mind reminded her, and her stomach flopped at the thought.
Max was performing tonight, and she knew, from his carefully curated Instagram account, that he’d performed substantially over the past six months.
He hadn’t taken the year off he’d waxed lyrical to Bo about; hadn’t taken any time off to write his own music at all, in fact.
No. Max had gone from concert to concert and tour to tour, the busiest he’d been in years.
He’d even announced a new album. Was there someone new in his life?
Was there someone he was sleeping with after all these concerts?
Someone to help relieve him of the tension performing inevitably brought on?
Maybe that’s why he sent you the tickets, Bo thought uncomfortably. To show you how well he’s doing, and how well he’s moved on. To show you who he’s moved on with.
No. Max wouldn’t be that tacky, Bo decided. He wouldn’t be that cruel.
“It must be about to begin,” Lisa interrupted Bo’s wonderings. “Look.”
Lisa gestured around them, where people were beginning to rush to their seats.
Within a minute, the concert hall’s lights had dimmed, and a hush fell over the room.
A hush which didn’t last long, as two figures emerged from the wings into the bright lights of the stage.
The audience burst into rapturous applause, and Bo stared in amazement at Max standing before her, looking neat, tidy and decidedly un-Max like.