Chapter Two
Jacob was waiting for her on the sidewalk when she stepped out of the house. After a deep breath to clear the irritation buzzing in her veins, she jogged to him. “What’s the verdict?” she asked. “Any tip?”
“Seventy-five for both of us! Ama said she was really grateful to you.”
“Nice!” Gwen heaved her tote onto her shoulder and walked with him to the bus stop. “You know what this means…”
“General Tso’s and potstickers.” He raised his hand, and Gwen slapped it. “You got the cello back to that douche?”
“So…‘that douche’ was actually Xander Thorne.” Jacob turned left at the corner, and Gwen followed.
“Thorne as in the band you like? With the naked guys—”
“They aren’t naked.” Gwen felt her cheeks warm. “They just sometimes play shirtless. Besides, if I remember correctly, you were okay with hanging that poster in the hallway.”
She’d taken it down the second she got home from her first Pops rehearsal with Xander last fall. Much to Jacob’s dismay.
“Did he seriously not recognize you? From the Pops?” His perfectly manicured eyebrow was lifted at her.
“I sit toward the back,” she said, shrugging. “It’s not a big deal. I’m not super noticeable.”
Jacob nudged her. “Well, he’s noticing you now, for sure.”
“You mean, after I botched ‘Jesu’? I’m sure he’s calling the board of directors to get me thrown out as we speak.”
“Um, no? Gwen, he was looking at you like I’m about to look at the Grubhub delivery guy. Ready. For. A. Meal.”
“Oh, whatever, Jacob.” She snorted and shoved his shoulder.
But the rest of their discussion was cut off as they rounded the corner and found their bus pulling up to the stop two blocks away. They took off like rockets. Jacob pulled ahead of her, waving his arms and yelling. He caught the door just as it was closing and held it open for her as she sprinted the remaining half block.
Panting, they dropped into the only two seats together and split a protein bar for the long ride back to Manhattan. It would be ninety minutes before they got home, and Gwen was already salivating for her mushroom chicken dish from Chinese 88.
Thirty minutes later they were off the bus, jumping onto NJ Transit—or the devil’s highway, as Gwen liked to call it. She searched Thorne and Roses’ Instagram for Mac, the groom, and found the hashtag for the wedding: #MackenzieFrenzy
Guests were posting pictures and uploading videos to their Instagram Stories. In one of them, she could hear herself playing “Jesu” in the background, and she quickly clicked out. Xander Thorne was right. Her intonation was shit.
She caught sight of him in one of the stories—a head of dark hair at the bar, towering over the people he was with. She zoomed through the rest of the tagged photos and videos, searching for more of him, before Jacob finally took her phone away.
“Stop obsessing,” he said with a smile. “You can put that poster back up if you really want to look at him—”
“Shut up.” She turned red as the train took them into Penn Station.
Their place in Washington Heights was small—a one bedroom converted into a two-bedroom by sacrificing the living room to the Manhattan gods. No dining area. Just a tight kitchen, a tighter bathroom, two rooms, and a closet somewhere in between. Her room didn’t even have a door, just a curtain. If Gwen had been living with a stranger, she never would have survived the close quarters, but Jacob had practically been her soulmate since sophomore year of high school. She’d thought they’d maybe fall in love one day, until he came out to her one champagne-hazed evening the summer after senior year. She’d hugged him and drunkenly helped create his Grindr account, excusing herself to the bathroom only twice to press back her tears. Later, she would laugh at the thought of them being in a relationship. He was a constant in her life—there for her when her grandfather passed the day before graduation, when her scholarships were denied. She was glad she hadn’t lost him over a doomed infatuation.
As Gwen crawled up the final of four staircases, Jacob opened their apartment door and placed their order with Grubhub. She turned on her fan and flopped down on her bed. It didn’t matter how cool a day it was, she always needed five minutes in front of the fan after climbing the stairs.
Gwen was in shape—tall and slim, with volleyball legs and violin arms—but even after four years in this apartment, she still couldn’t get her lungs to accept the fifth-floor walk-up.
To make rent, Jacob taught piano to Upper East Side kids, and before Gwen joined the Manhattan Pops, she played in subway stations with her case open for tips. She’d started in seventh grade, playing in the 14th Street subway station after school twice a week. She made about fifty bucks a day, enough to take to the grocery store on Mondays and buy food for her and Grandpa with a little left over for herself. Once, a lithe, beautiful woman with perfectly curled hair had approached her while the gathered audience had applauded, and she handed Gwen a one-hundred-dollar bill, saying, “Tuck this away, love. Don’t let this sit in the case.”
Gwen had stared up at her with wide eyes and said, “Do you…do you want change? You can have what’s in the case—”
The woman had smiled and patted her cheek. They didn’t officially meet until a year later at Mabel’s shop, but Gwen would always remember the day she first met Ava Fitzgerald, first chair for the Manhattan Pops and the most graceful and talented violinist of her time.
“Hey,” Jacob called across the hall, startling Gwen from her memories. “Declan wants to come over. Is that cool?”
Gwen scrunched her nose at the ceiling. “Yeah, of course!” Her voice was bright, but her face was blank.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Declan. She’d only met him once. He was fun, but Jacob was constantly dating, constantly introducing her to people she wouldn’t see again. It was a bit exhausting. After long days like today, she just wanted her share of the 400-square-foot apartment and nothing else. She rolled off the bed and set to unpacking her tote.
Declan burst into the apartment thirty minutes later with a rant about the A train. He kissed Gwen’s cheek in greeting between words, and pushed his tawny hair off his pale forehead as he took a deep breath and finally said, “How was the wedding?”
“Gwen learned how to play a new instrument today,” Jacob teased. He handed Declan an egg roll.
His eyes grew wide at her as he bit into it. “Really?”
“Not even. It was a scheduling mix-up and I had to play cello instead.”
“Oh my god, was that hard?”
“It should be,” Jacob said, “but not for Gwen.” He winked at her.
She was about to brush it off when her phone rang in her room. Waving at them to dig in and start the rewatch of their soapy vampire TV show without her, she ran to answer it and found Mabel’s name on the screen. Her chest warmed, and she answered it with a chipper hello.
“Hi, love. Wedding today, yes?” Mabel’s voice was rough with the timbre of a life lived solely in Queens, but that made her warm greeting for Gwen all the sweeter.
“Yep, out in Jersey. It was hell to get there, but they tipped good.”
“Well, that’s all that matters.” Gwen heard the click of the cash register. She must have been closing up. “Guess who came into the shop today?”
“Did Lindsey Stirling come back?” She braced herself on her dresser, hand pressed to her throat.
“No, no one famous. Dr. Richards from Juilliard.”
Gwen deflated. “Oh?”
Juilliard was a bit of a sore subject for them. Mabel was still hoping that Gwen would want to go back to school and apply for the fall semester. She’d gotten waitlisted at Juilliard when she was eighteen, but withdrew enrollment when her financial aid offer wasn’t nearly enough, especially after her grandfather’s funeral expenses.
Mabel had felt that like a wound—like she could have covered the costs in some way if only she had saved the money. But Gwen didn’t want her carrying that blame. Gwen wasn’t family, and there was no reason for Mabel to build savings for Juilliard tuition.
“Dr. Richards remembers you,” Mabel said with a sly smile Gwen could hear through the phone. “She said she would be pleased to see you audition again for the fall. I mentioned the tuition issue—without making you sound pathetic, of course— and she said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that.’”
Gwen stared at her bedroom wall. She was supposed to jump for joy, but all she could say was, “Oh, wow.”
“Yes, wow,” Mabel said. “Have you given more thought to it? You haven’t signed your contract for next season yet, have you?”
“No, that’s next month. I’ll think on it, I promise. It’s just… it would be a big life change.”
A huge life change. Gwen wasn’t eighteen anymore. She’d been playing with the Pops for four years, building her own career from scratch. Going to school for violin wasn’t really at the top of her priority list.
But that night, as she watched the daily drama of vampires and werewolves, savoring each bite of her mushroom chicken, she wondered if Juilliard was the missing step on her ladder. Would she have been the next Sarah Chang, a violin soloist with so many of the world’s greatest orchestras? Gwen had joined the Pops straight out of high school, but how much closer would she be to professional solos if only she’d been able to attend Juilliard at eighteen?
The next morning, Gwen was on the D train at seven a.m. with a vanilla latte in one hand and a violin in the other. As a member of the Pops, she got a discount for rehearsal rooms at Carnegie Hall. She usually rehearsed there so she didn’t pester her neighbors at all hours with her first sight-read of pieces. If she did have to play violin in the apartment, like when she had last-minute sub gigs, she usually baked Bribery Brownies ahead of time, distributing them to the apartments above, below, and to the left.
In the beginning when she’d joined the Pops as an alternate, Gwen rented rooms every day of the week to practice. She always felt like she was playing catch-up, like she didn’t belong. That feeling never really went away, even as she moved up the chairs, closer and closer to the front. She played fourth row on the aisle now.
She liked Carnegie Hall on Sunday mornings. There were fewer people, and it was easier to reserve a good room. Her next Pops rehearsal wasn’t until Wednesday, but she had a lot of work to do on her own to prepare for their concert that weekend.
Slipping in through the side entrance, she headed upstairs to the admin office where she could book a room. The halls were empty, but there were a few rooms with doors closed, muffled music already humming through the walls.
Gwen felt just like she had as a kid, wandering the aisles at the music shop in Queens that Mabel owned, listening to private lessons in the practice rooms. She used to press her ear to the door to hear the violin music, haunting melodies and lively allegros. Entire universes unfolding—if only she could pass through the door.
She walked down the hall to the office and paid cash for studio five for the next ninety minutes. It was one of the largest rooms, usually reserved for full orchestras during the busier hours, but Gwen had lucked out by being here early. She headed to the other side of the building, and when she approached her room, she heard a cello purring from under the door. Bach’s Cello Suites. The fluidity, the precision…She didn’t even have to look through the small window in the door to know who it was.
Xander Thorne was sitting in a chair in the center of the room, his cello between his thighs and his fingers moving swiftly over the instrument’s neck. His eyes were closed and his usual scowl was in place, displeased.
As Gwen watched him play, she realized he was at Carnegie Hall before eight a.m., the day after a wedding where he had clearly partied into the late hours of the night, according to her Instagram stalking. She admired his discipline. But she also realized that he was in her room…and she’d probably need to interrupt.
Suddenly, the bow lowered, and the sound cut off in a strangle. He took a deep breath and began again from Suite No. 1. His torso seemed to pulse with every measure, like he and the cello were fused, breathing together. She stared, trying to understand it—trying to figure out how to incorporate that kind of passion into her own playing. She’d been criticized for being too wooden and unimaginative, and Xander Thorne was anything but.
She was just about to tear herself from the window and maybe ask the office if there was another room when he stopped again, his jaw tight. Without pause, he started from the top once more.
Gwen frowned. She hadn’t heard anything in the previous play that warranted the look of disgust on his face.
He’d barely gotten six measures in before he stood abruptly and moved to the opposite wall with his instrument. He stared out the exterior window and ran a hand through his hair.
A perfectionist herself, Gwen could understand the frustration, but not the cause of it. Bach’s Cello Suites were nothing to beat oneself up about, especially not the way he played them. He rolled his shoulders back, cracked his neck, and brought the bow to the strings lazily. While staring out over Seventh Avenue, he played a soft, familiar melody—“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
Gwen felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Of all the pieces he could have played—today, the day after the wedding. Especially after she’d played it so poorly.
Like he was correcting her, in his own way.
Embarrassment flooded her cheeks. Any thought she had about requesting a different room evaporated. This room was hers. And he was in her way.
Wrenching the door open, she watched with satisfaction as he jumped at the sound, letting his bow fall. She strode inside and kept her face impassive as she said, “I have studio five for the next hour and a half. So you’ll have to practice ‘Jesu’ somewhere else.”
The dig didn’t even land on him. His eyes were on her, almost shocked, and he didn’t move a muscle.
Gwen set her violin down and began unbuttoning the jacket she’d needed in the early April morning chill. She ignored his presence, making herself at home in her room. That she’d reserved and paid for.
“When did you start at the Pops?” His voice echoed to her across the perfectly designed acoustics.
“Four years ago,” she said briskly, turning her gaze to him with a challenging brow. “We met last August. Right outside this rehearsal room, actually.”
He didn’t look embarrassed. Just concentrated. He made no move to put his cello away and get out.
She ground her molars and grabbed a music stand from the corner. Moving to the chair he’d set for himself in the center of the room, she turned it in a new direction, and placed the music stand in front of it.
She would just ignore him until he finally packed up and left. Which should be any time now. Any time…
Placing her sheet music on the stand and clicking open her violin case, she moved to prepare her bow next, reaching for the circle of amber rosin.
“Where did you study?”
Gwen froze in her chair, bent at the waist, arm stretching toward her case. She turned to look up at him. He was still in no hurry to leave. In fact, it seemed he wasn’t done with yesterday’s interrogation. He’d leaned back to sit on the narrow windowsill, the neck of the cello in one hand, the bow in the other, resting across his thighs.
She sat up and began applying the sticky rosin. “I didn’t.” She swallowed. “I mean, I had a violin tutor, but I didn’t go to school.”
It felt lovely for him to rub that in, especially after her conversation with Mabel yesterday. Absolutely fantastic.
When she glanced at him, his brows were pinched together and his mouth was frowning, watching her drag the rosin across the bow. After a moment under his inspection, she reconsidered everything she knew about her rosin technique. He took a breath to say something, and abruptly stopped. He switched his bow to his other hand and ran his fingers through his hair in a frustrated way.
Gwen remembered very suddenly that this was not just her co-worker who was currently irritating her. This was the front man of her favorite band of the last five years. She knew the way he ran his fingers through his hair. Intimately. She cleared her throat and turned to her music before he could see the color rising in her cheeks and jaw.
“Are you working on the Bernstein medley?” he said. She heard him finally step away from the window and toward his cello case.
“Yes.” She started flipping her pages so she was ready to play the moment the door closed behind him.
His footsteps creaked on the old wooden floors. Her skin felt itchy and hot.
“Is it any good?” he asked, his voice vibrating low.
She turned over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes at him. “You haven’t opened it yet?”
He shook his head, watching her. He’d stopped less than five feet from her chair, standing in front of his case.
“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.
Gwen envied that arrogance. The idea that he had no one to impress—the confidence in his own skill. She didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t working twice as hard, running twice as fast.
“Do you want to work on it together?” he asked.
She blinked at him, trying to make sense of the words. Her body went into momentary shock, refusing to pull in oxygen. He wanted to play the Bernstein with her? Xander Thorne? And her?
“No,” she said quickly, voice cracking on the one word.
He tilted his head, eyes assessing her. “Why not?”
A laugh puffed out of her. Playing cello poorly in front of him had been hard enough. She didn’t know if she could take failing a second time. “I…I booked this room for myself. To rehearse. I’d love if I could do that for even a portion of the time I paid for, Xander.”
He held her eyes for a moment too long, then nodded and finally bent down to put his cello away. She faced her music stand again, ignoring the sounds of him packing up.
“Feel free to get started,” he said.
“I can wait.”
She absolutely was not playing anything while he was still in the room.
His shadow passed her, and she kept her eyes on the sheet music. She glanced up when he was at the door, and he nodded at her before leaving.
She dropped her head to her chest and took a deep breath, listening to his footsteps move down the hallway. Her skin was buzzing. There was no way she’d be able to concentrate now.
Had Xander Thorne really just asked her to play with him? And had she really said no? Gwen ran her hands over her face, wondering what could have possibly inspired him to want that. Remembering his commentary from the day before, she thought maybe he would have found little ways to dig at her, to imply she could be better.
She jumped up and walked around her chair a few times, shaking out her arms. Reaching for her phone, she played her stress-reducing song—which, unfortunately, was Xander Thorne playing “Benedictus” by Karl Jenkins. Regardless, it worked.
She practiced for the next hour, and as she was packing up, the woman from the admin office knocked on the door before letting herself in.
“Gwen? Xander Thorne paid for your rehearsal time. He said he took up most of it?” She held the cash Gwen had paid an hour and a half ago out to her.
She clenched her jaw. That wasn’t exactly incorrect, but just not in the way he was implying. She sighed. She wasn’t a charity case.
“Can you keep it? Pay it forward to one of the students maybe?” Gwen tugged her tote bag onto her shoulder and thanked her before heading home.