Love at First Note (3 page)

“Look. S
omeone’s getting out.”

The two halves of our house shared a front door and an entryway before the apartments split off in separate directions, ours to the right and the other to the left, so we were in the perfect spot to spy.

Still, it was dark, so the man was several paces up the
sidewalk,
keys jingling in his hand, before we were able to see his face in
the yellow glow of our porch light. It was his hands that made my heart stop—the graceful arch of his fingers as he fiddled with the key and fitted it into the old lock of our front door. He had the hands of a pianist.

I had known it was a possibility, but seeing Elliott Hart, a guy I’d watched on YouTube, a guy with artfully disheveled hair and killer blue eyes, two feet from my
apartment made my blood pound
and my mouth go dry. All I could manage to say was, “Oh my word. It’s really him.”

Lilly stood up and moved from the window. “Let’s go meet him.”

She was fast, but I was faster. I slid myself between her and the door, blocking her way. “No! We can’t go out there right now. It’s ten thirty.”

“But he’s out there right now, and he’s our neighbor.” She glanced back through the curtain. “You think he’s staying here tonight? He doesn’t have any luggage.”

“Maybe he left it in the car.” Elliott was inside now, but since he’d gone in empty
-handed, we waited and watched, anticipating his reappearance out front. “He’s probably just checking stuff out.”

“Come on. I’m going over to say hello, and you’re coming with me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Emma, you’re a grown-up now. You can’t hide just because you had a few bad experiences as a teenager. If it were just some random guy and not Elliott Hart, you’d totally go out there.”

“But it
is
Elliott Hart, and I’m still freaking out a little.”

She shot me a look that told me just how ridiculous she thought I was. She was right, but I’d expected a few days to compose myself and prepare for the moment we’d meet. To jump right in at ten thirty on a Sunday night, wearing yoga pants and my tenth-
grade
Summer Strings T-shirt, with no makeup on and my hair in a messy topknot wasn’t exactly the scenario I’d had in mind.

“Chicken,” Lilly muttered as she snuck out the door. I watched through the window, hiding behind the curtain as she walked down the sidewalk and met Elliott, who must have reemerged during our debate, just as he hauled
a suitcase and sleeping bag out of the back of his car. They shook hands, and he smiled, not quite the nerves-in-the-bounce-house smile from the photo, but one broad enough to make my fingers curl into tense, trembling fists. They talked for a few more minutes,
then Lilly gestured back to the house. Elliott shook his head, but Lilly motioned again, nodding her head with emphatic certainty. He hesitated a moment more, then glanced at his watch and finally nodded. Something in the tilt of her head, the way she cocked it toward the right side of the house—
our
side of the house—gave it away. She was bringing Elliott inside.

I made it around the couch, across the living room,
and into my bedroom just in time. I sank to the floor, leaning against the back of my door as I listened to Lilly and Elliott continue their conversation. The light in my room was off, and I left it that way, hoping Lilly would get the hint.

“Sorry you missed my roommate. She’s already gone to bed.”

Bless you, Lilly
, I thought to myself. I’d make her brownies for not blowing my cover.

“That’s okay. It’s pretty late.” His voice sounded deeper in
person. I’d seen online interviews enough to recognize his speaking voice, but hearing it nice and resonant and echoing around my tiny apartment sent shivers up my spine. Oh, this wasn’t good. I was not hiding in my room in the dark swooning over the sound
of a man’s voice—a man I wasn’t even brave enough to face.

Or maybe I was. I lowered my head onto my knees and took a
deep breath. I
was no better than a star-struck fangirl. I had resolved
to go out and say hello, introduce myself, and be nice to the guy when Lilly’s voice piped up right outside my door.

“This is the bathroom. There are extra towels under the sink, and here’s a blanket. I’ll grab you a pillow from the closet.” Her voice grew farther away as she moved
down the hall. Towels, blankets, pillows—it sounded like Elliott was going to stay in my house.
In my house!

“I really appreciate this. I would have been fine sleeping on the floor for one night, but I admit, your couch does look more comfortable.”

“It’s not a problem,” Lilly said. “Do you have movers helping you unload tomorrow?”

“Yeah. They’re supposed to be here with the truck by nine.”

As I listened to their conversation, I had to wonder if Elliott knew Lilly was aware of who
he was. I was fairly certain Lilly wouldn’t have invited a total stranger into our house to sleep on our couch and use our bathroom if she hadn’t already known he was a member of my
church with a squeaky-clean reputation.

I wondered if Elliott was so much of a celebrity that he simply assumed wherever he went people knew who he was. Had he been shocked when Lilly had invited him to stay, or was he used to people going out of their way just for him? I hoped he wasn’t used to it—it might be harder to like him in person if he expected that
kind of treatment.
Granted, he’d been planning to sleep on the
floor in an empty apartment with nothing but a sleeping bag and
one piece of luggage. That hardly seemed like entitled behavior.

Regardless of what he did or didn’t expect, from my position
on the floor, the impromptu sleepover seemed pretty brave on both their parts. And there I was hiding like a total coward. I could hear Lilly’s voice in my head.
You sound like your mother, Em. Just live a little.

“Well, I’ll be around tomorrow afternoon after I get off work,” Lilly said. “And my roommate should be home then too. I can even get my boyfriend
, Trav, to come over. If you need us, just say the word.”

“Yeah, that would be great,” Elliott said. “Thanks again. It was great to meet you.”

I stayed there, sitting on my floor, for several minutes longer.
If movers were coming at nine, he would probably be up around . . .
what, seven? Eight?
With my luck, he was a naturally early riser, awake at five thirty to read his scriptures, do yoga, drink a green smoothie, and see me exiting the bathroom in a towel.

I wasn’t completely opposed to running into Elliott but kinda wanted to be at my best when I did. And, you know, also be wearing clothes.

Knowing Elliott was less than fourteen steps away from my
bedroom door didn’t make it easy to get any sleep. I tossed and turned all night, jumping awake at every little sound. When
my alarm finally went off at six thirty, I bolted out of bed so fast I banged my knee against my nightstand and knocked a nearly full glass of water onto my pillow, where it rolled, then crashed onto the hardwood floor. I stood breathless and still, listening to see if the ruckus had woken
anyone else up, but the rest of the house remained silent.

It stayed that way too.

Even after I’d showered and dressed and blown my hair dry. Even after I banged around the kitchen making breakfast, then made a big production of retrieving my violin out of the living room. The guy didn’t even stir.

I was disappointed. I’d worn my best jean/boot combination
and curled my hair, thinking surely he’d wake up before I was gone
.
But no such luck. When I finally left just before eight, I passed right by the couch to get to the front door. All I saw was the back of his head, his dark hair tousled a little more than usual, and his arm flung up over the side of the couch. I probably stared a little too long at the curve of his shoulder, his bicep visible below the sleeve of his T-shirt.

Totally lame, I know, but even that made my heart pound.

I tripped out of my
car, wrenching my foot one way and my favorite boot heel the other. Leaning against my door to survey the damage, my stomach sank. Broken. Which felt appropriate considering how my day had gone. Fate had been against me since I’d climbed out of bed, my broken boot just one in a string of unfortunate moments.

I’d hoped to make it home in time to meet Elliott and offer help with his move, but my afternoon lessons
had run long, which had made me late to my chamber rehearsal. With the music I knew we had to practice—an original composition sent over by the sister of the bride at next weekend’s wedding—there was no way I was getting out of there at a reasonable hour. I jerked off my boots and shoved my feet into a pair of old running shoes I found in the trunk of my Jetta. They were Lilly’s, I guessed—a size too big and smelling faintly of beer—but they weren’t broken, which made them a decidedly better option. I slammed the trunk closed with a mournful glance at my boots and headed into the church, where my quartet was waiting for me.

I hated being late to chamber rehearsal. It always made the
violist cranky, but that night, I was already in such a foul mood, I hardly needed her surliness on top of my own. I pointedly ignored
her glare when I finally made it into the practice room.
Whatever.
I was less than
ten minutes late. Besides, she was the only one ready to play. No one else was even sitting down. I mumbled a halfhearted
hello, then dropped to my knees to pull out my violin.

“Emma?”

I looked up. A tall black man had materialized on the other side of the room. No, not just a man.
Grayson Harper
had materialized on the other side of the room.
The chairs set up for our practicing
must have obscured my view at first, but there was
no hiding him now. He smiled a broad, familiar smile, and my stomach
clenched, acting a little like it wanted to crawl out and see everybody. I forced a swallow and took a deep breath, determined not to lose control.

“Grayson?” I finally squeaked.

He nodded as he sat down, pulling his cello into position. “It’s good to see you, Emma. I had no idea you’d be here.”

“No, I . . .” I shook my head. “Me neither.” The longer I sat there, my hands hovering over my violin case like I’d somehow forgotten what I was doing, the more confused I became. Grayson didn’t even live in Asheville. How was he suddenly in my quartet
? Quartet. As in four people. We already had four people.

Plus, this was not the way things were supposed to happen with Grayson. When I saw him again, I was supposed to be living in one of those beautiful modern-but-old houses with a multimillionaire husband and our genetically perfect children. Not bedraggled after a horrible day, wearing running shoes that smelled distinctly of stale alcohol.

The silence stretched into awkwardness before I finally managed a complete sentence. “So, what . . . How
. . . I mean, you’re here?”
Okay. Almost a complete sentence.

Hannah, the grouchy violist, responded with a typical frown. “Bruno’s in Florida. We needed a replacement, and he suggested Grayson. You two know each other?”

Uh, yeah, we knew each other. As in junior-prom, senior
-prom,
and every-weekend-in-between knew each other.

“We played together growing up.” Grayson’s eyes stayed on me as he spoke. It was a slight understatement, but for Hannah, there was no reason to say more. I mean, I could tell her I’d made out with Grayson in every corner of the youth symphony hall, but that might make for an awkward rehearsal.

In nine years, his appearance hadn’t really changed. He looked a little older, his shoulders broader, and his hair longer,
tight curls falling onto his forehead and over the top of his ears. But everything else was the same. His deep, charcoal eyes matched his dark-brown skin, his wide smile bright against the contrast. “Is . . . um.” I tried to focus. There was a reason Grayson was here,
and it had something to do with Bruno. “Why is Bruno in Florida? He just . . . left?” I
pulled out my violin and slid my sheet music out of my bag.

“He had to go stay with his granddaughter. I don’t know all the details. Something about his daughter going to China for work and the regular babysitter backing out last minute. He said he tried to call you,” Hannah said. “You didn’t get his message?”

I shook my head.
“I’ve been teaching.” I’d heard a voice mail come in halfway through my last lesson, but I never listened to my voice mails anymore. Most people just hung up and sent me a text anyway. Except
Bruno
. At sixty-three, he still carried a flip phone
and probably couldn’t send a text if it meant a million dollars.

Bruno. Of course.
Suddenly Grayson at group rehearsal made sense. Bruno had been his childhood cello teacher. Funny I hadn’t made the connection when I’d joined the group the month before. But, then, I hadn’t thought about Grayson—not really—in years. The way his presence now filled the room, it was hard to imagine how he hadn’t at least crossed my mind once or twice.

“He says three weeks, but I don’t know,” Caroline added. “The way Bruno talks about Florida, it won’t surprise me if he doesn’t come back at all.”

I took my seat next to Caroline—the fourth member of our group—and put my music on the stand in front of me. I could feel Grayson’s gaze and sense the questions he likely wanted to ask, b
ut there wasn’t time to catch up. I had already arrived late, and Hannah and Caroline were ready to get started.

Two hours later—two hours of dismally bad music later—we finally called it a night.

“It shouldn’t be allowed,” Grayson muttered as he put away his cello. “Music that bad . . .”

Caroline laughed. “Can we really even call it music?”

“No complaining from me,” Hannah said. “The bride is paying
four hundred extra bucks for us to play her sister’s stuff.”

“Still.” Grayson snapped his cello case closed. “I feel like I just sold my musical integrity at a flea market.”

I pulled my phone out of my purse to see if I’d missed anything during rehearsal. There was a text from Lilly.
Elliott’s moved in. Sorry you weren’t here. :( He’s really nice. Bought us all pizza to thank us for helping.

Well, that was awesome. While I had endured an awkward rehearsal playing bad music with my ex-boyfriend, Lilly had been hobnobbing with our famous musician neighbor.

Fantastic
, I thought to myself
.

Grayson lingered by the door while I finished packing up.
Once my violin was stowed away, he surprised me with a big hug, equal parts awkward and familiar.

“I should have done that when you first walked in,” he said. “It really is good to see you.”

I only managed an awkward smile. Grayson hadn’t just been my teenage boyfriend. He’d basically
been my entire high school experience—what little there’d been of it anyway. I’d graduated a couple years early, with special tutors and online schooling making it possible for me to focus more fully on my musical training.
Everyone else had treated me like an oddity, calling me crazy
for skipping basketball games
or parties and dances in favor of rehearsing, but Grayson had never made me feel like my dedication had been anything but normal. Plus, he was a musician too. Maybe his trajectory wasn’t quite the same as mine, but he still understood.

Our breakup
had been inevitable. When he’d headed off to NC State to study engineering, the age difference between us suddenly seemed larger than ever before. It didn’t matter that I was heading to college myself—I was still only sixteen. Our last morning together, we stood in his driveway next to the little Honda Civic he’d bought with money he’d earned teaching guitar lessons to neighborhood kids. The car was weighed down with boxes crammed full of his life, ready to cross county lines and land in Raleigh. I was leaving for Ohio the following weekend.

I wished out loud we could make the distance work, and he shushe
d me with gentle reassurances. But we both knew we were at the beginning of our end.

A few months later, I was glad we’d lost touch. The challenge of matriculating into a college campus weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday provided more than enough of an emotional challenge. Keeping up with a boyfriend would have been a killer. Still, Grayson was my first love. No matter the logic behind our breakup or the amicability of our parting ways, he was still a boy I’d kissed and loved and trusted with my heart.
And the surge of emotion his touch stirred up now? The one that kept me standing still and silent in front of him? I didn’t like it. I just wanted to shake it off and head home.

Instead, I stood there, my heartbeat erratic and wholly unreliable. It was dumb. I was a grown woman—who’d had plenty of experiences and boyfriends to demonstrate just how insignificant high school boyfriends really were.
And by plenty, I meant two. Or maybe just one and a half since kissing the associate conductor in Cleveland probably didn’t qualify as an actual full-scale experience.

“I, um . . . yeah,” I finally stammered. “It’s good to see you too. Unexpected but good. Are you living in Asheville now?”

Grayson shook his head. “I live in Hendersonville, but I work here in the city. At Deerbourn—it’s an engineering firm downtown. Do you know it?”

“No. That’s great though. Good for you.”
I swung my violin over my shoulder and followed Grayson into the parking lot.

“I saw the article in the paper about you moving back home,” he said. “Concertmaster of the Asheville Symphony. I guess you’ve made the big-time now.” His words weren’t exactly rude, but there was a sharpness to his tone that felt judgmental.

My eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean
?”

He held up his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound critical. I was just surprised. I mean, I kinda understood when you stopped soloing and settled in Cleveland. All that touring couldn’t have been easy. But I wasn’t expecting this kind of move from you. Asheville’s
great, but it’s a pretty big step down from Cleveland.”

I sighed.
There might be truth to Grayson’s words, but there was also a lot he didn’t know. He didn’t know my reasons for leaving or my motivations for moving home. And who was he to dog on Asheville Symphony? It was smaller, yes, but it was still a great orchestra.

“Plans change.” I didn’t even try to smooth the edge out of my voice as I stalked past him toward my car. He’d struck a nerve, and I was happy for him to know it. “I’m happy to be back.”

“Emma, is it your mom?”

I spun around to face him, my eyes wide. The question
had caught me totally off guard.

He tilted his head to the side and tugged on his ear. It was a gesture I recognized, which made me feel all weird and unsettled.

“How is she?” he asked.

That he’d managed to land on my biggest reason for moving home in less than five minutes of conversation was annoying. But my mother’s rapidly progressing MS wasn’t allowed to be on my list of reasons for moving to Asheville. At least not the list I talked about
. If Mom thought I moved home for her, she’d buy me a ticket
back to Cleveland and come over and pack my suitcase herself.

I shrugged. “She has good days and bad. More bad lately, but you know my mom, always wearing a brave face.”

He stared at me, hard
, his eyes looking deeper than I wanted them to look. “Do you want to go get some coffee somewhere?
Wait—” He paused and smiled. “Not coffee. Dinner? Maybe some
frozen yogurt?”

I didn’t want to have dinner with my ex-boyfriend. I wanted to go home and casually but completely on purpose run into my new neighbor. Plus, I was bugged by Grayson’s slight. I could handle my family and friends expressing concern over my career choices, but I hadn’t talked to Grayson
in nine years. He didn’t have the right to question anything. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Come on. It’s just dinner. If we’re going to play together for the next three weeks, we might as well catch up. I’d like us to be friends again.” A part of me suspected Grayson really just wanted to hear more of why I’d derailed my life plan and landed back in Asheville, but he
did have a point. I didn’t want every chamber rehearsal till Bruno’s return marred by awkwardness. “Okay. I guess dinner’s fine.”

He laughed. “Don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“It’s not that. It’s just . . . been a long day.”

“Come on. Let’s go to Rico’s
Taco Truck. I haven’t been there in ages.”

“It’s not Rico’s anymore. It’s Rosa’s, I think, but word is it’s still just as good.”

“Then Rosa’s Taco Truck. Come on. What do you say?”

I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, I guess. It’s on my way home, so yeah. Let’s go get tacos.”

We sat on a bench just down the sidewalk from the taco truck that for two years had
served as our favorite post–symphony rehearsal hangout. We held on to steaming to-go boxes filled with
Rosa’s finest: corn tortillas held together with a thick layer of melted
cheese, overflowing with onions and cilantro, grilled chicken, and spicy chorizo. I squeezed lime juice on my first taco and took a bite.