Chapter 7
SEVEN
THE SONG OF CONNECTION
ALEX
Sebastian’s humming drew me out of my room.
At first, I thought I was imagining it. Sometimes, when I wrote a song about someone, I would hear their voice replay in my head, as if they were sitting right next to me.
It wasn’t until I played the melody three times and the humming tried to keep up, always trailing a beat behind the piano, that I realized I wasn’t imagining anything.
The second I opened the door, Sebastian jumped back and bumped into the sideboard behind him. One of Laura’s precious dried flower arrangements tipped over. Luckily, the vase didn’t shatter when it hit the carpet, but the leaves and blossoms scattered across the floor.
“Shit,” Sebastian muttered, freezing like a deer in headlights. His quick breaths filled the air like crashing waves during a storm.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said, gripping the doorframe. “Are you okay?”
“Other than having to explain this mess to Mom? Yeah.” He picked up the vase, set it back on the sideboard, and reached for the scattered flowers.
As soon as he touched them, they crumbled in his hands and broke into hundreds of tiny fragments.
“Effing…” The next word dissolved into a frustrated groan that used all the strength of his voice.
He gathered the leaves into a pile, as if they might magically fuse back together if he wished for it hard enough. “She’s going to kill me, right?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said, crouching beside him. My hands brushed over the carpet as I pushed more brittle leaves into a second pile. “Just pretend you have no idea what happened.”
“It’s right outside my old room. Who else would she think did it?”
“We can throw your nephew under the bus,” I said on impulse, not entirely sure what had possessed me. “He’ll deny everything, which will only make him look more suspicious.”
That made him chuckle. “You’re a lot more cunning than you look.”
“They don’t say ‘be gay, do crime’ for nothing.”
We each scooped up one of the piles.
“Is there still a trash can in my… your room?”
“Yeah, but for our story to hold up, we have to hide the evidence in the room where your nephew’s sleeping,” I said, doubling down. This wasn’t like me—but it was surprisingly fun.
“You’re a menace, Alex.” His giggles made the air around him vibrate. “Which room is it?”
Since it was too late to back out, I led him to the guest bedroom at the end of the hallway. Only the faint light from my room guided our way.
The door was ajar, and I pushed it open with my hip.
A foldout guest bed was crammed beside a queen-size bed.
Two suitcases blocked the path to the trash can in the corner.
I gently nudged the suitcases aside with my foot, just enough for us to squeeze through, and let the flower confetti slide into the bin.
Sebastian followed suit, and once he had dumped his half as well, we put the suitcases back in their original positions.
“Hurry up,” Sebastian whispered as he rushed into the hallway.
Our stifled giggles echoed through the house as we bolted back to my room. My hand reached for the knob on instinct and pulled the door shut behind us, locking it as if we were actually in danger of being caught. My heart drummed to the beat of our insignificant mischief.
Laura loved those flower arrangements because she knew they wouldn’t last forever.
She once told me that she liked the reminder that everything ends—even the beautiful things—because it forces us to cherish them more.
That was also why she would never get mad about something like this.
But if pretending she would get angry made us feel this alive, then it was worth it.
My back slumped against the door. Sebastian stood beside my bed, his head tipped back, throat exposed. We were both panting.
“You’re good at taking my breath away,” Sebastian said, sticking out his tongue, his chest still rising and falling as if we had run a marathon.
“You’re one to talk,” I shot back, still catching my breath. “I wasn’t the one who knocked over the vase.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re complicit now.” His brows twitched, and his tongue hung out as he winked at me. “So… I guess the cat’s out of the bag?”
“What cat?”
“That I was eavesdropping while you were playing?” He glanced at the piano keyboard on the floor in front of him. “In my defense, it was absolutely beautiful.”
“I was just messing around.” I couldn’t tell him he had inspired the song I was working on.
All afternoon, my attention had been pulled toward him as if he were magnetic.
I had slipped away from the party more than once to secretly jot down melodies and lyrics he sparked.
Usually, I use an app on my phone, but when I came up here after our walk, I couldn’t resist sitting down at a real instrument.
“You can’t fool me,” Sebastian said, stretching his arms over his head. “You weren’t merely noodling around. I can hear the difference.” His gaze flicked from the keyboard back to me. “Mind if I listen a little longer?”
“Oh, um.” Heat rushed to my face. “I can play it for you. It’s not finished, though.”
“And?” He shrugged and sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bed. “I don’t mind.”
I dropped down at the piano and placed my fingers on the keys, but paused before hitting the first note.
“Is this okay?” My hands circled in the air, gesturing to the floor beneath Sebastian. “You could sit on the bed, if you want to be more comfortable.”
“I’m very comfortable. Now, at least.”
“Huh?”
“I actually came up here because I was worried I might’ve done something earlier that made you feel like you couldn’t join the party with me there. Knowing you simply got carried away playing puts my mind at ease.”
“Why did you—?” I stopped, realizing I didn’t need an answer. I was so used to slipping away that it hadn’t occurred to me it might worry anyone. “Thanks for checking on me. I really did just get carried away.”
“So carried away that you didn’t even set up an extra bed.” He rested his left arm on the mattress behind him and grinned, glancing at the empty stretch of floor behind me—the only place where a second mattress would fit.
“Yeah, that, uh… I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
His eyes lingered on me for a few seconds before drifting down to my hands.
“Right. The song,” I said, placing my fingers back on the keyboard.
I played a few chords with my left hand and layered the melody in with my right—as I couldn’t sing the lyrics myself in front of him—filling the room with the verse and the pre-chorus I had already worked out.
Just before the chorus was supposed to come in, I stopped. “That’s all I’ve got so far.”
“Do you have any lyrics yet?”
“A few scribbles.” I reached for the notebook beside my laptop, where I always jot down words when they come to me. They’re usually fragments I arrange later into something that at least sounds meaningful. This time, though, I already had a handful of lines.
“Can I see?”
I handed him the notebook and pointed to the scribbles in the lower left corner. His eyes moved over the paper again and again.
“Can you play it one more time?”
“Sure.”
I played the opening chords. Just as my right hand was about to pick up the melody, Sebastian drew in a breath and sang the words I had written:
“I see him at the bus stop, laughing in the rain / I want to give him a ride, ease his lonely pain.”
His voice melded with the sound of my piano.
Goosebumps spread across my arms, hands, and neck.
As if he had heard the song a hundred times already, he sang exactly what I had envisioned.
He even paused at the right moment during the pre-chorus.
When we reached the nonexistent chorus, he kept going.
His voice jumped an octave and held the note I had been cutting short for the past hour, letting it ring above the chords.
Suddenly, the melody moved on, and the chorus unfolded as if it had been there all along.
“Oh, I wish I had a way to take you there / through the valleys, through the mountains, through the midnight air.”
My fingers moved instinctively, playing the right chords to accompany him. It all came together—my piano, his voice—as if this was bound to happen, as if the universe itself had been waiting for this song. The song of the guy who swore he’d never sing again.
When we reached the end of the chorus, and my fingers automatically moved to play the verse again, Sebastian chuckled.
“See? It wasn’t that hard, was it?”
I stopped playing. His voice still echoed in my head. I knew I had to record this right away so I’d remember it—just in case I was dreaming, and none of this was real.
“Would you…” My hands were shaking. “Damn, would you mind if I recorded this real quick? That was… I’m not sure I can recreate it if I don’t capture it.”
Sebastian glanced at the door, then at me. “I promised earlier, didn’t I?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, let’s do this. Just hurry so we’re done before the party ends.”
We worked together as if our lives depended on it. In only twenty minutes, we recorded a rough first demo that recreated what we had improvised, and a proper version with the piano and vocals on separate tracks.
I couldn’t believe it. For the first time, I had a vocal demo to build on.
Sure, the lyrics weren’t perfect, and the recording setup in my bedroom was less than ideal, but Sebastian’s voice made up for everything.
I knew by now why he had vowed never to sing in front of people again, but hearing him like this made it feel like a waste.
He claimed my music should fill stadiums, but in my opinion, it was his voice that deserved to be heard even more.
After the second recording, I played around with the equalizer on his vocal track until I noticed him sitting quietly next to me, watching everything I did.
“I’m sorry. This is rude,” I said. “I’ll stop now.”