Chapter 5 Marigold
Marigold
Jamie and I agree to meet Wednesday at seven p.m., which means I spend most of the intervening days in a slow-simmering state of dread, imagining all the ways this could possibly go wrong.
Which it will, without question. I saw the look on his face when I told him about Celia’s plan. It was like I’d just asked him to babysit my pet cockroach.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”
What an anticlimactic greeting. I don’t know what I was expecting.
I try to ignore the way he looks in those jeans—all boy-next-door Americana but somehow hot.
I’ve spent way too many nights imagining how those well-muscled thighs would feel if I could touch them, dig my thumbs in against his quads and tug the kind of sharp bite against his skin that would show him just how much I despise him, really.
That’s the other problem with Jamie Larson.
As much as I hate him sometimes—most of the time—I’ve had a raging crush on him since our first month at Parker.
I fell in love with the way he played Schumann—played like he was never going to play again, like he was bleeding himself out over those keys.
I’ve never heard him play like that since.
After that, some part of him lived under my skin. Even when he decided to dislike me. Even when he beat me at competitions. Even when I decided to dislike him right back.
There’s something both enraging and enthralling about having a huge, humiliating crush on someone who would rather you didn’t exist.
“You’re late,” I say, even though three minutes is nothing, even though in New York, subway and traffic delays mean nobody expects anything to start on time. I say it just because I like the apoplectic vein that throbs in his temple as he tries to decide whether it’s worth arguing back.
“You could have started without me.”
“What’s the point? We’re here to play together. I already know my part of the piece. Jury’s out on your half.”
“I know my half,” he grinds out.
“Well, now you get a chance to prove it.” I tilt my head to the piano. “Are you ready to get started?” I say, thanking god that I have a moderately good poker face to hide the satisfaction I feel watching his jaw twitch.
“Sure. Yeah. Let’s go, then.”
I give him first dibs at the piano and settle in on one of the chairs, a copy of the same sheet music propped up on my thighs.
I try to mark down the places I notice mistakes—but, of course, those don’t really exist. So halfway through, I give up on my bitter stewing and decide to circle the measures where it feels like Jamie is disconnected from the music.
I notice more and more the longer he goes on.
I can’t tell exactly why it’s happening, but I feel it all the same.
Maybe it’s something in his face, his expression wooden as he stares across at the sheet music.
Or maybe it’s his posture, his wrists held a little too stiff and his back too straight.
Often when people get really into the music, you see them weaving over the keyboard, listing forward like they wish they could sink into the ivory.
Jamie does none of that. He just plays, plain and straightforward.
I tell him this when he’s done, but from the flatness of his gaze as he looks back at me, it feels like my point doesn’t really land.
When he speaks, he basically confirms my suspicion. “So, you want me to do some kind of interpretive dance while I’m playing.”
I feel heat rising from my throat. “No. I mean—well. Sure, if you like. I just want to see that you care about the music. It doesn’t sound like you do, at least not right now. But maybe this is one—that is, you could try it. That’s all.”
He makes a rough, irritated sound and spins on the bench to try again, from the Adagio. Watching him sway over the keys, it really does seem comical. Too dramatic, maybe, or just too obvious that he thinks all of this is immensely silly. I make him stop early.
“Not like that?” he asks with his brows arching.
“No. Not like that. You look stupid.”
“Thanks.”
I roll my eyes. “You clearly think so, too. It’s so obvious you feel like an idiot up there. It’s embarrassing.”
“For me or for you?”
“Both.”
I get the feeling he wants to rip my throat out, but is too Midwest to actually do it.
“Have you tried watching the greats perform?” I ask, as gently as I can, although this is like asking an anxious person if they’ve tried meditation. “Maybe it would help to see the difference.”
The derisive look on his face only intensifies. “Have I tried watching the—do you think I’m a total idiot? I spent half of last night watching the greats. Don’t worry; I’m well aware of all the ways I don’t measure up.”
But then he twists away, just for a moment, glaring long and hard at his sheet music, and I see something else. Something I’m pretty sure Jamie doesn’t want me to see.
And the tiniest part of my heart—the part that isn’t frustrated and frankly offended by how much he continues to despise me—breaks.
“You’re still good,” I say, some kind of olive branch. “Really good.”
A burst of air escapes his throat, almost a bitter laugh. “Thanks for the pep talk, Marigold.”
“It’s Goldie, actually.”
He ignores me in favor of gathering his sheet music and sliding off the piano bench. For a second, I think he’s about to stalk right out the door. But instead, he opens his mouth and says: “Isn’t it your turn to play?”
Right. Somehow I’d forgotten, while listening to him play—during this entire…whatever this conversation was supposed to be—that the arrangement goes both ways.
I take his spot on the bench and open my own music. The black notes glare back at me, almost as furiously as Jamie had been a moment before.
But playing erases all that. I forget where I am, who I am. I forget to be mad at Jamie—or to feel anything except the music as it sweeps through my body and mind.
Maybe this is my problem, I think, as I hit the final notes of the piece and that glorious feeling fades away.
I get too lost. I can’t even remember what mistakes I made, half the time.
It means I have no way to evaluate my own performance until someone tells me after, or unless I’ve recorded it.
Hard to improve when you can’t tell what you did wrong in the first place.
Jamie is watching me with that same flat expression. I wish I had the capacity to reach inside his brain with searching fingers and diagnose exactly what he’s thinking right now. Is he impressed and trying to hide it? Jealous? Or merely irritated?
“Well?” I say, once the silence has gone on long enough to irritate me, in turn. “What did you think?”
He hesitates, that familiar crease drawing tension between his brows.
Then, at last, he says: “Same as always.”
And he packs up his sheet music and goes, leaving me sitting there wondering what the hell I did to make him hate me so much.
“So, how’s practice going with you and Mr. Snootypants, anyway?” Cessy says that Friday night, crashing back onto my dorm bed and propping her feet up on my pillows.
“Ew, can you not?”
She cackles, like it was just to get a rise out of me, but still moves her feet.
I roll my eyes back at her, but it’s hard to sustain anger at Cessy for long. Even when I try to fight, it feels like taking advantage of someone so genuine and good that I end up feeling like a worse person just for making her feel bad.
“It’s fine,” I say, although I’m already slumping lower in the desk chair I’ve appropriated instead of a piano bench. More ergonomic. “I wish he’d try a little harder, you know? It’s a bit painful seeing him struggle to connect.”
“Why does he still bother with music if he hates it so much, anyway? Like, I know therapy is expensive, but I can tell him that for free.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Inertia, maybe. Or maybe he’s put so much time and work into it that he feels like he can’t justify quitting now.
” I’ve seen that happen before: students who fall out of love with their art drip by drop until they’re drowning in cold air.
But instead of escaping, they stay, slowly smothering themselves, because quitting would be worse.
“So do you think he’ll drop out? I mean, Shrishti did.
” Cessy’s voice catches a bit on Shrishti’s name, although she rallies fast, jutting her chin forward and setting her lips in a flat line.
She and Shrishti have been on and off ever since their first date freshman year; I could set my clock by whether they’re broken up or together again.
Cessy presses on: “Maybe she’ll give Jamie a taste of the good life and spare you from having to be in his presence the rest of the year. ”
I roll my eyes. “It’s like you just said, though. The rest of the year. We’re seniors. He isn’t going to drop out with one semester left to go. Especially not if he’s going to Stockholm this winter. Like I said, sunk cost fallacy.”
“Sunk costs,” Cessy repeats. “Yeah. I guess I’ve been there.
And I know you have. Remember when we were sophomores and you bought some toolbox called the Screw Daddy to organize your screws or whatever because you thought the name was funny?
And then you had to go and buy all these screws to put in your Screw Daddy, even though you had nothing you needed to screw? ”
“Shut up.”
“Or speaking of screwing, back when you were sleeping with Alex the costume technology major and you knew you weren’t gonna, like, marry the guy, but you kept fucking him because you’d already put in all the effort for that phallus. Get it? Sunk cost phallus-y?”
“I just cringed so hard I think I herniated something.”