Chapter 11 Marigold #2
My dad is grinning like he’s never been so proud of me, lifting his glass for a toast, and I lift mine, too, and drink, and say thanks and wow and I’m so grateful and all the right things, even as my heart clenches tighter and tighter until it’s a tiny, throbbing knot in my chest.
It’s not nepotism.
It’s pity.
After Cessy falls asleep that night, I retreat to my room, leaving Jamie full rein over the piano if he wants it. Once alone I drop onto my bed and fall back, staring at the light fixture above me.
I’m lucky. Some people would kill to have a father who pays attention to them. Who gets them soloist spots at the Phil.
Some people would kill to have a father at all. And here I am, deconstructing a gift horse like I might find an army in its mouth.
Of course, that simile never made much sense, as the whole point of the Trojan Horse was surprise urban warfare.
It’s not like I’m the first person I know to perform with the Phil as a guest soloist, either.
Naoki Yoshida did. He attended Tokyo University of the Arts and graduated a few years before I entered Parker.
I’ve run into him a few times on the competition circuit.
He’ll be at Stockholm, in fact. You collect enough accolades, the invitations start rolling in.
But I hadn’t thought I was at Naoki levels just yet.
What makes you think you don’t deserve this, too? My father had asked.
I could think of a lot of reasons. But that wasn’t productive. What would be the point, anyway? Make myself feel worse? Kneecap my own confidence?
It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s not like I plan to email Ruoxi Zhang, the artistic director at the Phil, and decline the invitation with a list of my failures appended as an attachment.
What I want is to be good enough that I really, truly do deserve it.
My foot is starting to fall asleep again.
I wiggle my toes in my favorite fuzzy sock, trying to focus on the feeling of the warm fabric against my skin.
Who knows how long I’ll get to feel that?
How long I have until I lose sensation there entirely?
Not before Stockholm, I know that much. But the neurologist said that the progression of multiple sclerosis could be variable.
That we’ll figure out if my MS is progressive or more of the relapsing-remitting type over time.
I basically have to wait to discover exactly what flavor of disability I’ll have for the rest of my life.
Fuck this. I can’t lie around feeling sorry for myself; I have a competition to prepare for. And—as someone wrote on the Reddit multiple sclerosis sub—worrying about the future won’t make the future suck any less when it happens. It just means you’ll have spent that much more time being miserable.
I stop by Jamie’s room on the way. His door is open, but I still knock twice on the frame, getting his attention.
“Hey,” I say. “I was going to go practice. I was wondering if you might be willing to listen and give me some feedback?”
He lets the book in his lap fall shut, not even bothering to mark the page. “Is there food?”
I snort. “What are you, fourteen years old? I mean, sure, you can help yourself in the kitchen. You don’t need me for that.”
“Great. I’m in.”
He assembles himself a bowl of cereal—I wrinkle my nose just because it’s such a stereotypical guy snack—and then joins me in the living room, where I’ve already settled on the piano bench, flipping through my sheet music.
A part of me—a pretty large part of me—knows that I need to tell him about the Phil thing. The longer I put it off, the worse it’s going to get.
And yet I can’t open my mouth and have those words fall out. Jamie seems so…happy right now. I can’t bring myself to yank the rug out from under his feet.
So instead, I play.
As usual, Jamie is fabulous at giving criticism.
A little too fabulous sometimes—it’s like he has no bluntness filter that tells him Hey, okay, maybe this one is a little too harsh.
At this point, I’m about…90 percent certain he doesn’t mean to be insulting?
Hard not to block out that part of me that didn’t know that before, though.
The version of me that took everything he said and invented all kinds of cruel motives behind his words, and despised him for it.
But eventually, even I break.
“Ugh,” I moan, dropping my head over the keyboard. “It’s hopeless. I’m only going to humiliate myself at Stockholm. Maybe I should drop out now and save us all the drama.”
“Don’t even joke like that,” he says.
“Make me.”
“I wouldn’t challenge me if I were you. I would most definitely make you.”
I am suddenly filled with images of Jamie pushing me down on that bench and straddling me, keeping me firmly in place as he silences my mouth with his own.
Good thing my head is already down so he can’t see the look on my face.
“Let’s do something a little more low-key,” he says. “Like…just play something for fun. Not a Stockholm piece, not some stupid étude series. Just basic no-strings-attached fun.”
I arch a brow at him and play the first few crashing chords of the Phantom of the Opera overture.
A grin spreads across his beautiful face. “Oh, okay, I see what you’re putting down. But can you mash up Phantom with some good old Johann Sebastian Bach?”
“You intrigue me.”
“Think about it,” he says. “The staccato Bach. The ‘Angel of Music.’ It would be kind of perfect.”
I turn toward the piano, trying to pick out a melody that fits. A little easier said than done, composing a mashup on the fly—I glance over at Jamie again. “I have a better idea. Get over here and do it with me. You take the Bach.”
His smile widens and he obeys, sliding onto the bench beside me and poising his fingers over the keys. He plays out a few measures, and when the time seems right, I join in with the first loud D minor chord.
Jamie is right. The piece comes together beautifully, and I find myself swept up in the sheer joy of it, especially when Jamie starts singing along to the part of the Opera Ghost—I can’t help but laugh and add a little flourish to my next notes.
The song ends far too soon. My fingers linger on the keys for a moment before falling away as I turn toward Jamie. “That sounded unexpectedly amazing.”
“Agreed,” he said. “And you know, I was thinking…we should film it.”
“Uh…why?”
Jamie shrugs and fiddles with the keys, playing a little jazzy ditty. “I dunno, it just seems like a good idea. It’s very Celia Chen advice, right? Film yourself, watch it later. Figure out how much you suck.”
“I already know we didn’t suck.”
He snorts. “Well, sure. Fine. Maybe I just want the secret proof that I can play things that aren’t snooty classical music. Yeah?”
It’s not a very good excuse. But something about Jamie’s presence makes me feel heady, like I’ve been drinking too much—willing to do or say just about anything. And if he wants to film us playing our dumb little duet, well then, I’m game.
“Oh, all right.”
“Splendid. Grab my phone. It’s over there on the sofa.”
Once I get the whole thing set up—balancing his phone against one of my father’s decorative vases over on the bookshelf—I gesture for him to take his spot on the bench once more, sliding in next to him.
“This time, don’t mess me up on the triplets,” I warn him.
“This time, don’t get messed up on the triplets. Ready?”
“Only if you are.”
I press the “start” button on my Bluetooth remote.
The duet is even better this time. Just like when we have played together before—for our capstone, and again since Jamie moved in here—our music flows together almost too perfectly.
Jamie shifts the timing of a particular measure on his Bach piece just slightly, and the new contrast between those unembellished notes and the dramatic soar of Lloyd Webber’s score makes me laugh out loud.
Jamie elbows me in the side, and when I look at him, he’s grinning, sharing a quick glance with me that says it all—we’re killing it.
We hit the final notes and Jamie leans back on the bench, tilting his head to expose the length of his neck with a dramatic flourish. We’re both laughing again by the time I hit the remote to stop recording.
“Better than the originals?” Jamie suggests.
“Better than the originals,” I agree. “Somebody nominate us for a Tony.”
“I’ll accept our admission to the classical music canon any day now.”
I’m distracted enough that it takes me longer than usual to notice how close we are.
You’d think I would have learned from last time how dangerous it is to sit this close to Jamie, thigh against thigh and breath against skin.
Of course, Jamie doesn’t seem to notice at all.
Maybe for him, he doesn’t need to. Maybe for him, there’s nothing to notice.
Because the days when he was interested in me like that are long in the past now.
Now I’m just Goldie Gensler, the girl whose rich dad is letting him stay here out of the Upper West Side Liberal urge to give lonely Midwestern boys a home for the holidays.
The thought is enough to turn that heat in my veins lukewarm. I slide off the piano bench and head over to retrieve the phone from the bookshelf, pretending to be interested in rewatching our video. But I don’t need to. I already know it’s good.
What I need is enough space to make my heart stop beating so fast. And to remind myself, once again, that I won’t always get what I want.
No matter how badly I want it.