Rose
“How long has it been since you played?”
I let out a startled laugh. “Was I that bad?”
Our cello instructor, Macy, shakes her head and leans forward in her chair.
She's around my age, with beautiful caramel skin and hazel eyes that seem to catch everything.
This is only my fifth class, so I know I'm still rusty compared to most of her other students.
I haven't played since college, and twenty years away from an instrument does, in fact, have consequences.
But God, I used to love it.
I'd forgotten how much until I picked up a bow again.
The vibration beneath my fingertips, the concentration it takes to get the sound exactly where I want it, even the frustration when my hands know something my brain hasn't quite remembered yet.
There's a familiarity to it that I didn't expect after so long.
“No, not at all,” Macy says. “You just seem like you're reconnecting with it rather than practicing it. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.”
She laughs a little after she says it, almost nervous, like she's worried she's overstepped.
“No. It makes sense.” More than she knows. “It's been about twenty years. I played in college, but then life happened. You know?”
Macy nods, and I appreciate that she doesn't ask what life happened means. People tend to hear something like that and immediately start digging, convinced you've cracked open a door instead of simply acknowledging there is one.
“Well,” she says with a smile, “welcome back, then.”
“Thanks, Macy.”
I start packing up while the rest of the class mingles around us. I haven't gotten to the social part of this whole endeavor yet. The Hi, I'm Rose. Wanna be friends? part.
There are only ten of us, but eight are clearly a close-knit group.
They came in together, have inside jokes I don't understand, and already seem to know who is ordering what whenever someone mentions going somewhere after class.
Then there's a teenage girl, seventeen maybe, who always seems about as unsure of where to stand as I am.
At least she has the excuse of being seventeen.
I'm a grown-ass woman waiting to be adopted by a friend group.
Laughter spills in from the hallway as everyone starts filtering out, and I take my time securing my cello in its case. I've been doing that every week, letting everyone else leave before me, and I'm not entirely sure why.
That's a lie.
Maybe some part of me is hoping one of them will turn around and ask if I'm coming too.
Or maybe I don't want that awkward moment where they're all deciding where to go while I stand there pretending I have somewhere else to be.
It's ridiculous. I can negotiate an eight-figure contract without blinking, but approaching a group of adults and asking if I can join them for a drink is where Rosalie Bennett finally finds the limits of her courage.
“Rosalie?”
I don't even register that Macy is talking to me until I realize the room has gone quiet.
I blink and look over at her. “I'm so sorry. What were you saying? I'm distracted today.”
“I noticed.” She chuckles.
“Was it that obvious?”
“A little.” She reaches for her bag. “I was asking if you'd like to join me for a drink. There's a wine bar two streets over that stays open late, and you're packing up your cello like a woman who doesn't have anywhere to be.”
My hand stills on the zipper.
Well…she's not wrong. I just have a standing appointment with my own thoughts, and those bitches never cancel.
“You don't have plans with everyone else?”
Macy glances toward the hallway. “Them? No. They came together. I'm just the woman they pay to tell them they're flat.”
I laugh. “Then I'd love that, actually.”
And I mean it, which catches me a little off guard.
“Good.” She swings her bag over her shoulder. “Because I could use a drink, and drinking alone on a Tuesday feels like something people start asking questions about.”
“It's Tuesday?”
Macy stares at me as I grab my cello.
“Yeah. I definitely need a drink.”
Her laugh follows us out of the room.
***
“Noooo. Don't look at me like that, Macy. I'm fine now, I swear.”
Macy is fighting back tears, staring at me like I've just casually informed her I survived a shipwreck.
The wine and my newfound freedom from giving a fuck had me running my mouth about how I ran away from my life and ended up here.
Michael, my parents, Jackson, James, the breakdown, the decision to disappear without telling anyone where I was going. The whole fucking lot of it.
What started as a casual explanation of why I came to Catalina somehow turned into the abridged version of every traumatic thing that's happened to me in the last twenty years, and now she's on the verge of crying while I actively try to talk her off that particular ledge.
“I'm sorry. God, Rosalie.” She wipes underneath her eyes with slender, manicured fingers, blinking rapidly like she can force the tears back where they came from. “Can I hug you?”
“Uh... sure, I think?” I laugh and reach my arms out, but I barely get them open before she's moving.
Macy slides along the booth and wraps me up so tightly I can barely breathe. I freeze for half a second, mostly because I wasn't expecting quite this much commitment to the hug, before chuckling and hugging her back.
“Jesus, Macy.”
“Shut up. I'm having a moment.”
“Apparently.”
She giggles against my shoulder but doesn't let me go, and after a few seconds I stop feeling awkward about it and just let her hug me.
It's unexpectedly nice.
Macy barely knows me, and somehow that makes the whole thing easier.
She wasn't there for any of it. She doesn't have an opinion about what I should've done differently or which decisions were mistakes.
She doesn't know the version of me from before, so she isn't looking at me trying to figure out how I became this one.
She only knows the woman sitting across from her, drinking too much wine on a Tuesday night after cello class.
Eventually she pulls away, although she keeps both hands on my shoulders while she looks at me with those big hazel eyes.
“You have to be the strongest fucking woman I've ever met. And it's not the wine talking.”
“Maybe it's a little of the wine talking?”
“Maybe,” she cries, wiping at her eyes again. “But it's also true, damn it. I mean, fuck, Rosalie. You just picked up and moved away by yourself after all of that?”
“Well, you're making it sound very brave when the reality involved a lot more crying and significantly less dignity. Plus, I'm a ferry ride away. It's not like I moved across the country.”
“I still think you're incredible.”
“You've known me for five weeks.”
“And?”
“And I could be a terrible person.”
Macy gives me a long, exaggerated look over the rim of her wineglass before taking a sip. “Are you?”
“Probably not.”
“Then we're good.”
I laugh and take another drink, shaking my head at her. “You're very trusting.”
“No, I'm an excellent judge of character.”
“Based on five cello classes and three glasses of wine?”
“Four.”
My eyebrows lift. “This is our fourth?”
“Don't judge. We've been through a lot tonight.”
My laugh is loud enough that the couple at the next table glances over. “How will we ever recover?”
“I don't know. Probably another glass.”
She reaches for the bottle, and I slide it toward her.
“Now that,” I tell her, “I can help with.”
Macy fills both of our glasses before settling back into the booth, and somehow the conversation simply moves on.
No awkward silence afterward. No look that says she sees me differently now that she knows everything.
Five minutes later she's telling me about one of her students who spent an entire lesson insisting the cello was out of tune when he was actually playing the wrong fucking note.
And somewhere between laughing with her and finishing another glass of wine, I realize I'm having fun.
Not distracting myself. Not performing okay.
Actually having fun, and I'd almost forgotten what that felt like.