Ten #2
“Someone’s trying a little too hard,” Katrina says. I can see what she means: He’s dressed way nicer than us, and we’re paid to be here. Still, there’s something sweet about how he went all out to make Mrs. Makinen and her friends feel important, to make this night feel special.
He settles into a chair, and Mrs. Koski deals him in.
The ladies at the table begin explaining the rules of whatever game they’re playing, and he listens intently.
At one point, someone says something funny and he laughs, throwing his head back, his whole face wrinkling with humor.
He’s not faking this, I realize. He’s enjoying himself.
“Enz?” Trevor waves his hand in front of my face. “Are you going to count us in or what?”
I realize my quintet has held an entire conversation that I haven’t heard. I wrench my gaze away from Garrett. Katrina watches me, eyes narrowed, and I’m worried she’s doing that thing where she sees through me like an X-ray.
“Right,” I say, bringing my oboe to my lips, forcing her to pick up her own instrument and look at her music instead of me. I count us off, and then we’re playing.
It’s a movement from Handel’s Water Music, bright and springy and energetic. I try to focus on blending with the group and making my articulations clean and crisp rather than focusing on Garrett a few yards away.
When I reach several measures of rest, I steal a glance at him. He’s looking at his cards, chewing his bottom lip, his brow furrowed. As I watch, his eyes drift up and over to our quintet, landing on me. We both look away.
I miss my entrance, and Katrina shoots me a glare over the top of her clarinet.
We finish the piece and take a break. Everyone except Katrina and me gets up to stretch and refill water bottles. As soon as they’re gone, she leans over Trevor’s and Marcy’s empty seats and whispers, “Oh my god, Enzo. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
She looks meaningfully at Garrett, then at me.
“What?”
She squints at me, not letting me get away with this nonanswer.
“He’s straight,” I say.
“We know this?”
“I mean—” I gesture at him, his legs spread wide under the table, lounging with an arm over the back of his chair. His posture is answer enough.
“But if he were gay, would you be into that?”
“He’s straight,” I repeat. “He and Dana are tied at the hip, remember?”
Katrina shakes her head. “They broke up yesterday. Jessica Walters couldn’t stop talking about it during our clarinet sectional.
Apparently Dana was just using him to piss off Owen Ellis for breaking up with her over the summer.
But then Owen broke up with his new girlfriend, and like five hours later he and Dana hooked up in the bathroom on the third floor. So now Garrett is single.”
My hands have grown sweaty. I wipe them on my pants.
Katrina shrugs. “Whatever. Just let me know how we feel about him. Because at first I thought you hated him, but now I can’t tell if you’re okay with him or if you’re just being nice because you’re his host brother.”
“Can we not use sibling terminology in reference to him?”
She gives me a thin, triumphant smile, her left cheek twisting up. “I knew it.”
“He’s okay,” I finally admit. I keep my expression passive, but she continues searching it like a prospector looking for iron.
Luckily, the rest of our quintet tumbles back into their seats, bringing an abrupt end to Katrina’s interrogation.
Mr. Johnson shuffles past. “They’re not paying you to sit and talk.”
So we pick up our instruments and slide into the second segment of our set, easing into some of the movie soundtracks I’ve arranged for us.
I know they aren’t my original compositions, but I’m still proud.
I’ve taken music written for a full symphony orchestra and distilled it down to five parts, preserving the most important harmonies and countermelodies.
I’ve made sure the fun sections rotate between each of us so that no one is stuck with off-beats or droning chords for too long.
Still, it’s not my own music. Every time I’ve tried to write during these last few weeks, I’ve only been able to jot down scattered melodies that drift through my head, none of them fitting together into anything coherent.
It’s the pressure, I think. The knowledge that if I did decide I wanted to get out of Irontown and pursue music composition, I would need to impress the admissions panel at a school of music.
And I’m not going to do that with a medley of How to Train Your Dragon music.
I need to write something of my own, something raw and real that resembles the genius of Garrett’s photography.
I steal a glance at him in the middle of my arrangement of the Interstellar soundtrack and am shocked that he’s watching me again.
Not us. Me. He doesn’t look away this time, his face impassive, unreadable.
I hold his gaze for a second, only a second, but in that span of time, I feel a current pass through the air between us.
A jolt of reckless courage courses through me, allowing me to maintain this eye contact that feels like more than just eye contact.
And then I have a solo line and I need to read my music, and the moment is broken.
As the evening passes, the casual seniors peel out from their tables, and the hardcore ones—including everyone at Garrett’s table—get more and more raucous.
At the end of the night, as people pack up their winnings and we pack up our collapsible music stands, Katrina brings her clarinet to her lips and starts playing the bridge of “Pink Pony Club.”
She does this sometimes when we clean up after gigs, calling it “The Encore No One Wanted.” Trevor says it’s unprofessional, but I think it’s a fun way to end the night.
So I reassemble my oboe and join her, jumping in just in time for the chorus, hopping up a third to add in some sassy harmonies.
We stand there, facing each other, jamming out and not caring what the geriatric haters might say.
Marcy straps on her bassoon and lays down a buzzy bass line, and even Ryan and Trevor join in, and then all five of us are standing in a circle improvising over Chappell Roan.
I’m feeling daring and goofy, so I jump up an octave and slide into “Good Luck, Babe!” and Trevor joins me, and the mashup of the two songs somehow works, and all of us are having a blast and being ridiculous.
I lean forward, holding my oboe almost like a trumpet, while I do a stupid butt-scootching dance backward. Just as I add in a showy trill on a high note, my ass hits something solid.
I turn around.
It’s Garrett’s crotch.
I’ve grinded backward into Garrett’s junk.
I stop playing mid-phrase. One by one, the rest of the quintet peters out as well. I straighten. Lower my oboe.
“Hey,” I say.
He wears an amused, wry grin, looking so freaking put together and perfect in that damn navy suit. But before he can say anything, Mrs. Makinen stumbles over to us, eyes unfocused, an overstuffed coin bag in one hand and an empty water bottle in the other.
“I doubt Garrett would let me dance with him,” she pouts.
Garrett didn’t let me dance with him. What just happened was not consensual.
She gives me a mischievous grin. “I don’t blame you. It’s hard to resist him in that suit. Doesn’t he look handsome in his suit, Enzo?”