24. Millie
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MILLIE
No!
I scream in my head.
Tofu's paw swipes at the glass on the counter, and I lunge for it just before it tips over the edge.
I sign to her: Be careful.
She looks at me. Not a shred of guilt. I sigh, set the glass further back where she can't reach it, and go back to my tea.
The apartment has been just me and a cat who knocks things off counters for sport. I used to live like this without minding. Tofu on the couch, nowhere to be and no one waiting. I used to think I was fine with—
A knock on the door. Three fast hits, loud and urgent.
I don't know why I don't check. Maybe it's the urgency. Maybe some part of me thinks it's Joseph. I open the door.
Vivienne.
She looks bad. Really bad. Her eyes are swollen and red-rimmed. Her hair is pulled back, but pieces have come loose, and they're stuck to her face. She's breathing hard like she ran here.
"I need to talk to you." Her voice is thin and strained.
I hesitate. Everything in me says don't. But she's Joseph's sister, and my friend, and she looks like she's about to fall apart on my doorstep, so I step aside.
She walks in. She doesn't sit. She stands in the middle of the living room, and her eyes move across everything.
Joseph's jacket on the hook. My tea on the counter.
Tofu's bed by the window. My violin case in the corner.
She's taking inventory of the life I've built in her brother's apartment. Every object is evidence.
"I know you heard what I said that night," she says, voice tight. "And yes. I asked Joseph to call Maestro Rios. To convince him to give me First Chair."
I stare at her.
"Joseph operated on Rios's son years ago. Saved his knee. Rios owed him. So I knew if my brother called, Rios would agree."
My stomach drops. That's why. That's why Rios said yes. It wasn't just a phone call. It was a debt. A favor returned. Joseph saved a conductor's child, and his sister cashed it in for a chair that should have been mine.
"You need to understand," Vivienne says. "Music is all I have. Music and my family. Those are the only two things in my life that have ever made me feel like I'm worth something."
I'm standing a few feet from her. My phone is on the kitchen counter across the room. Too far to reach without turning my back on her.
She starts pacing, short steps, back and forth.
"First Chair proved that. It proved I belonged.
That I earned something real. Something that was mine.
" Her hands won't settle, twisting at her sides.
She looks at me now, holding my eyes a beat longer than feels easy.
"And you were going to take it. Everyone knew you were going to get it.
The whole orchestra knew. I heard the rumors before the results even came out. "
I shake my head. I hold my hands up. I didn't take anything. I want to say that. I want to tell her the audition was blind, that no one really knew. But I don't know how to tell her. She can't understand me, and my phone is too far away.
"You don't understand what it's like." She's louder now, the words running together.
"To feel like your brain is working against you every single day.
To wake up and not know which version of yourself you're going to be.
" Her voice catches once, on a breath that comes too shallow.
"I've tried so hard, Millie. I've tried so hard to be normal.
To hold it together. And every time I think I'm okay, something rips it away. "
Tofu jumps off the counter. She's watching Vivienne pace, her ears flat, her body low. She lets out a long, loud meow. Vivienne doesn't notice.
"And now Joseph." Her voice climbs higher.
"Joseph is the one person who's always been there.
Always. When I was sixteen, and I ended up in the hospital, he was the one sitting next to me.
Not a friend. Not my parents. My brother.
He held my hand through everything." A shaky breath she can't quite swallow. "Everything."
She stops pacing and turns to face me, her eyes fixed on mine and unblinking.
"And now you're with him. You tried to get First Chair, and now you're trying to get him." She places her hand on her chest and tilts her head. "What's left for me?"
I shake my head again. I mouth no. I wave my hands. I'm trying to tell her it's not like that, that I'm not taking anyone from her. I try to mouth the words to her, to use my hands in ways she can understand me, but she can't.
She steps closer. I step back.
"My parents love you already. I saw it. My mother kept talking to you, smiling at you. My father asked about you like you're already part of MY family. You've been in their lives for five minutes, and they already look at you like you belong there."
She's crying now, tears streaming, but she doesn't stop. She steps forward again and I step back.
"First Chair is mine. My parents are mine. My brother is mine. My family is mine!" Her voice breaks on the last word. "Don't take them from me. I have nothing else. I have NOTHING without this!"
I'm backed against the counter and my pulse is loud in my own ears. Tofu is meowing from somewhere near the couch, loud and distressed, and I want to go to her, but I can't move.
Vivienne is talking faster. She starts a sentence, drops it, starts another.
Her thoughts are overlapping, colliding.
She's repeating herself. First Chair is mine.
Joseph is mine. You don't understand. I have nothing.
Please. Please. The words loop and tangle, and her breathing is fast, shallow, and she's pulling at her own hair now, gripping fistfuls of it, and she doesn't even seem to realize she's doing it.
I'm not angry. I'm terrified. This isn't Vivienne.
This isn't the woman who sat next to me on a bench and became my friend.
This is someone drowning, right here in my living room, and I can't call for help.
I can't shout her brother's name through the wall.
I can't dial 911 and tell them where to send the ambulance.
I'm standing three feet from a woman in crisis, and the one tool that could save her is locked behind my teeth.
"So, I need you to disappear, Millie. You need to leave because First Chair belongs to me, my parents belong to me, and my brother belongs to me! You can't have them!"
I'm frozen. My hands are shaking. I don't know what to do.
Then the door slams wide open.
Joseph.
He comes through the doorway and takes in the room in a single breath.
Vivienne in front of me. Me pressed against the counter.
Tofu yowling from under the coffee table.
His face does something I've never seen before.
Every trace of the charming, funny, warm man I know drains out in a second.
What's left is something harder. Focused.
He's been here before. He knows exactly what this is.
He moves between us, slow and deliberate, with the body language of a doctor approaching a patient mid-crisis, and places himself in her line of sight.
"Viv." His voice low and steady. "Hey. Look at me."
She doesn't stop pacing. She's still talking. Fragments. Nothing connecting.
"Viv. I need you to look at me."
Her eyes find him. Wild. Wet. Searching.
"I'm here," he says. "I'm right here."
"You LEFT. You said you were going to her. You chose her. You always choose her."
"I'm here right now. I'm standing right in front of you."
"Why? Because you feel sorry for me? Because poor crazy Vivienne is having another meltdown and someone needs to—"
"Because I love you. And I'm your brother. And I'm here."
She stares at him. Her mouth is open. She's breathing so hard I can hear it.
"Can we sit down?" he asks. "Just sit. You and me."
She shakes her head. She keeps talking. But her eyes are on him now, and her pacing has slowed. Joseph reads her the way a doctor reads a patient. Tracking her breathing. Her movements. The speed of her speech.
He doesn't argue with anything she says. He doesn't correct her. He just stays. Present. Solid. Saying her name between her sentences like an anchor she can grab when the current pulls too hard.
"It's okay, Vivienne. I'm right here. I'm here for you." Her breathing slows. "No matter what, I'll always be here for you, Vivienne. I'll always be your Gege."
Behind her, Mae and Rupert appear in the doorway. They must have followed Joseph. Mae sees Vivienne and crosses the room without hesitation, straight to her daughter. She doesn't say anything at first. She just opens her arms and pulls her in.
And that's when Vivienne breaks. The part that was holding the anger up collapses, and she folds into her mother.
The sound she makes is loud and exhausted.
Mae catches her. Holds her. Rupert is beside them in a second, one hand on Vivienne's back, his face tight and controlled, but his eyes are wet.
"It's alright, Vivienne. We're here," Mae whispers.
"I'm sorry," Vivienne whispers into Mae's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."
"Shh," Mae says. "I know. I know, sweetheart."
Joseph watches them. Mae has Vivienne. Rupert has them both. She's safe. She's held. They've got her.
He turns to me. He's only a step away, but his face looks like I'm a hundred miles from him. His eyes scan me, fast. My face. My arms. My belly.
"Are you okay? Did she hurt you? Are you alright?"
I mouth I'm fine. I hold his hands against my face, and they're trembling.
He pulls me into him. His arms close around me, careful of the bump between us, and he holds me so tight I can feel him trembling through his shirt. He's shaking hard, like everything he held together walking through that door is coming apart now that he knows I'm safe.
I hold him back. I press my face into his chest. Tofu emerges from under the coffee table and presses against our ankles, still meowing softly.