Love at First Note (5 page)

“Way to hit a home run.” Trav spoke without looking up, his eyes glued to his Scrabble tiles.

“Shut up.” I went into the kitchen and glanced over his
shoulder. “Helix—right there. I
t’ll give you a double-word score.”

“Ooh, good word. Thanks.” He added the tiles to the board, then counted his points. “Pretty sure that gives me the lead.” He looked at Lilly. “Want to bow out now before it really gets ugly?”

“It totally doesn’t count. You can’t use Emma’s word and then rub it in my face like you’ve beaten me. You never would have come up with
helix
on your own.”

I pulled a bowl out of the cabinet and retrieved the ice cream from the freezer. Playful bickering was the cornerstone of Trav and Lilly’s relationship. They seemed to thrive on it, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to them squabble. I’d just ruined my one good chance to be friends with
the only other single Mormon in all of Asheville. At least the only one who wasn’t an eighteen-year-old girl. Or Darren Fishbaum. Add that to my unnerving dinner with Grayson, who made me feel like my life was one giant heap of failed potential, and the only thing I wanted was a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a marathon of
Friends
reruns.

“Oh, hey, Emma,” Lilly said. “Your sister called while you were next door.”

I turned. “Did she? Did you talk to her?”

“Yeah. I answered your phone since I knew she wouldn’t leave you a message. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, I’m glad you did. What’d she say?”

“She wants you to call her. Something about an audition piece? I think she wants you to play it for her so she can hear all the dynamics and other blah blah musical terms I don’t understand.”

As far as I knew, Ava didn’t have any auditions coming up
, which meant she was probably working on the Barber Concerto for the video I’d offered to send to my professor at CIM. Ava working on the piece was a good thing. Ava asking me for help? That was a miracle. “Okay, thanks. I’ll call her back right now.” I grabbed my phone and my ice cream and headed for my room.

“Emma,” Lilly called before I was out of earshot. “Don’t give up on Elliott. Next time will be better, I’m sure.”

I waved my spoon in the air before rounding the corner of the kitchen. “Yeah, yeah.”
Better like a toothache.

I didn’t see Elliott for
the rest of the week. It wouldn’t have been hard to scheme my way into a casual run-in. I heard him in the entryway more than once, and I could have found a reason to go outside at just that moment to check the mail or take out the trash or, I don’t know, take pictures of an angry squirrel. But I’d already set myself up as a twitterpated, lovesick fan. The next time he saw me had to feel completely organic. I couldn’t make it happen;
it had to just . . . happen.

But all my scheming to not seem like I was scheming? It totally backfired. So much so that I actually started avoiding him. Every possible encounter seemed like something I could have set up, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him thinking I would do such a thing. It was much better to be guilty of avoiding someone on purpose than it was to be constantly seeking them out. Less weird anyway. Or so I told myself on Thursday afternoon when I sat in my car, my seat all the way reclined so
Elliott wouldn’t see me as he crossed the street in front of our house and went inside.

I pressed the heels of my hands over my eyes and groaned. I was being ridiculous. I knew I was being ridiculous, but—

A sharp rap sounded on the driver’s side window, and I jumped.
Ava stood beside my car, her hand propped on her hip and her eyebrows scrunched up in question. She looked annoyed, like she couldn’t believe she was related to someone who would do
something as outlandish as recline the seat in her car. Never mind the fact that I was actually hiding from my super-hot neighbor. I sat up and looked past her, making sure Elliott was all the way inside, then motioned for Ava to move around the car and get in.

“What are you doing?” The tone of her voice matched her eyebrows—all scrunched up and
judgy.

“Nothing. I was just . . . resting.”

“It looked like you were hiding.”

“I wasn’t hiding. I live here. Who would I be hiding from?”

“Right. You live here. Which is why it doesn’t make sense that you’re resting in your car. Why not just go inside and rest on your couch?”

Suddenly I was thirteen years old, trying to reason a five-year-old Ava out of the sandbox at the park and back onto the sidewalk so I could walk her home. She could dig her heels in better than anyone I knew, stubborn to
an I-will-drive-you-crazy fault, and she never backed down. Even when it was something stupid like her big sister sitting in her car a little too long. “What’s with the inquisition? It’s nice outside.”

“Hmmm. I don’t buy it. Your windows weren’t down. I think you were hiding from your new famous neighbor. He’s in the same house, right? Is he home? Is that his car?”

“What? That’s ridiculous.” I knew I shouldn’t have said anything
to Mom. “I’m not hiding from anyone.”

“It’s that black one, right? It looks expensive.” It took me a second to figure out she was still talking about Elliott’s car. It was an expensive car, more expensive than mine anyway. But this was stupid. Even if I did want to gush about Elliott’s car, it wouldn’t be with my little sister. I loved her, but she insta-posted everything—
from the flavor of her breakfast cereal to the eye color of her current crush. She knew social media better than I knew music theory and wouldn’t let something as juicy as her sister living next to a famous pianist go unmentioned. I felt the need to call her off. I didn’t know for sure why Elliott had moved to West Asheville. Despite Lilly’s claims that it was cool and hip, which it totally was, it wasn’t exactly a popular haunt for the rich and famous. It made more sense that he really was trying to lie low and be off the grid for a while. Which meant Ava blabbing anything to her whatever-hundred followers was not what Elliott would want. Just what I needed to lock in my lovesick fan persona: a little sister revealing his secret location all over the
Internet.

“You haven’t posted anything online about Elliott, have you?”

“What? No. Why would I?”

“Because he’s famous, and . . . I don’t know why else. Isn’t that enough?”

Ava shrugged. “I guess it’s kind of exciting, but it’s not like he sings or anything. None of my friends would even know who he is. I mean, he’s just some old guy who plays the piano.”

“Old guy? He’s only a year older than me.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Yeah. I know.”

I sighed. “So what’s up with you? What are you doing here?”

She pulled a loaf of bread out of her bag and handed it over
. “Mom’s baking again.”

“Really? She said she was feeling good on Tuesday but not baking-bread good. I’m surprised.” I pulled the loaf to my face and breathed in the familiar yeasty smell. Baking was a good sign, though it made me nervous that Mom had done it without me there. She liked to think she didn’t need me around, but it made Dad nervous too when she tried to do too much on her own. Six weeks before I moved home, she fell in the grocery store and broke her wrist. She hadn’t slipped or tripped or stumbled in any way. She
’d just . . . fallen. Her legs had stopped working and then she’d been on the ground. I would never forget the way Dad sounded on the phone, like it killed him that he couldn’t just be there for her all the time. He couldn’t, not with his work schedule. But I could.

“Yeah, she’s had a good day. She was making cinnamon rolls when I left,” Ava said.

“For real? Is she alone? She’s been on her feet all day. She shouldn’t be doing this if she’s by herself—”

“Chill,” Ava interrupted. “Dad’s home. She isn’t alone.”

“Oh. Well then, why didn’t you wait an hour and bring me a cinnamon roll too?”

“Whatever. You’re only getting bread ’cause I have rehearsal and Mom insisted I bring it over on my way. Are you coming over on Sunday to help with my concerto?”

“Yeah
, I’m planning on it. I also thought we could look at Juilliard’s audition list. Have you looked at it yet?”

She pulled out her phone without responding, her fingers flying over the keys. I waited a beat longer, then huffed out her name. “Ava.”

“What? Oh. No, not yet.”

For a second, I only stared, feeling the familiar Ava-tinted
tension building in my neck and shoulders. “It’s not that different
from when I auditioned,” I finally said. “You’ll need a Paganini Caprice. Do you know any Paganini?
” She didn’t look up from
her phone, but at least her fingers stilled. “We’ll find you a good one. I like number twenty-two, but seven is good too, or fourteen, maybe. And a Bach sonata. Number three in C Major would be perfect.”

Ava still didn’t respond. She stared out the passenger-side window, biting at her thumbnail with enough ferocity I was surprised I didn’t see any blood.

“Hey. You okay?” I reached over and nudged her shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

“I know you’ve got a year before you audition, but you really do have to start thinking about all this now. I pr
omise I won’t be pushy about it. You can totally pick your own Paganini.”

“It’s not that; it’s just . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’s fine. I’ll do whatever you think is best.”

“Ava, what are you not telling me?”

She reached for the door handle. “I gotta get to rehearsal. Feinstein hates it when we’re late.”

She had a point there. Gerald Feinstein had been conducting the Asheville Youth Symphony for as long as I could remember. He’d been ancient when I’d been in the orchestra; it was hard to believe he was still going strong. It was not hard to believe his distaste for tardiness had done anything but intensify with age.

Ava got out of the car and shut the door without saying good-bye.

I wound down my window and called out to her, stopping her in the middle of the street. She turned around, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her hoodie. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

She turned and climbed into the tiny hatchback she’d inherited after I’d graduated. I could see her violin—another of my hand-me-downs—sitting in the backseat. I tried to wave as she drove past, but she kept her eyes forward, not even glancing in my direction. I didn’t need her to glance at me to see the tears though. My heart sank. I remembered all too well the pressure of college auditions, the hours of practicing, and the endurance required by schools like Juilliard and CIM. I could only hope
Ava wasn’t buckling under the weight of it all.

With her gone and Elliott safely inside, I finally climbed out of my car.

Fifteen minutes later,
Lilly found me in the kitchen waiting for my toast to pop, a fried egg sizzling in a pan on the stove.

“Seriously, Emma, do you ever eat anything else?” She sank into a kitchen chair and kicked off her shoes. I glanced over my shoulder, noting how tired she looked.

“Protein, whole grains, butter. Ready in five minutes. It’s the perfect meal. You want one?”

“Yes. No. I’m starving, but Trav is coming over in an hour. I think he’s bringing sushi from Green Tea.” She dropped her head onto the table.

“
Mmm, Green Tea. Tell Trav if he brings me a Dragon Roll I’ll feed him Scrabble words for the rest of forever.”

“Will you even be here to eat it? Fried eggs mean rehearsal. I know the drill.”

“Just chamber group, but have him get one anyway. I’ll be hungry when I get home.”

“Chamber group again? Didn’t you just do that on Monday?”

“Yeah, but we have a wedding this weekend, with new music, so we’re getting together one more time.” I sat in the chair across from her and dug into my food. “What’s up with you? Long day?”

“Sooo long,” she said. “We had this dad today who was seriously
the most obnoxious baby daddy I have ever, ever dealt with.”

“Yeah? Do tell.”

“There’s too much to tell, really. Suffice it to say, he was all
about getting naked and getting in the tub with his wife while she was laboring.”

“Like,
naked
naked?”

Lilly nodded.

“Please promise you’ll stop me if I ever come close to marrying
someone who thinks getting naked during labor is a good idea.”

She laughed. “
You going to add that to your string of first-date questions? What do you do for a living? How many siblings do you have? When your wife is in labor with your first child, would you or would you not feel comfortable taking off your pants?”

“Oh, I’m gonna
. I might wait for the second date to ask, but this’ll be a deal breaker for me.” I finished eating and took my plate to the sink, rinsing it off before sliding it into the dishwasher. “I gotta run. Dragon Roll! Don’t forget to text Trav!”

* * *

Vibration still pulsed through my hand as I dropped my bow,
exhilarated to have hit that high note just right. Rehearsal was going so much better than last time. It helped that I was no longer shocked over Grayson’s presence, but also, we played through the sister of the bride’s
psycho-awful composition only once before we considered it good and moved on. The rest of the typical wedding stuff we knew well enough not to worry about practicing, which left us time to play around a little. We played one of my favorites—Puccini’s Crisantemi—a piece I hoped we would play for our spring concert. It definitely wasn’t wedding music. The Crisantemi was composed as an elegy honoring some Italian-born king of Spain from the 1800s
, Amadeo something or other. But it was a piece that hit me all the way down to my soul, and I was in a good mood
for having gotten to play it.

I placed my bow carefully in my case and took a few extra minutes to wipe the excess rosin from my violin strings, mostly because I kinda wanted to let Grayson get good and gone before I went to my car. I was pretty sure our impromptu taco dinner the week before had been a one-time, nice-to-see-you-
again-let’s-catch-up kind of deal, but what if he wanted to go out again? What if he wanted it to be a regular thing and I was going to have to endure casual, semijudgy questions about my life choices over and over again? Caroline and I talked over our instrument cases long enough I thought for sure Grayson had left. This made it all the more surprising when I found him leaning against the driver’s side door of my car, a fancy white envelope
in his hands. He must have already put his cello in his truck because he just stood there, turning the envelope over and over and looking . . . nervous, maybe?

What the heck was he holding?

“Hey.” I unlocked my car and put my violin in the back. “What’s up?”

“I, um, well, I just wanted to give you this.” He held out the envelope. “I don’t want you to feel weird, so if you don’t want to come, you really don’t have to. But I didn’t want you to think you weren’t invited, and now that you’re back in town
, you should be invited. So just . . . I guess I’m just saying it’s up to you. If you’d
like to come, I think it would be nice to have you there.”

I pulled a thick piece of cardstock out of the envelope and
started to read. “Grayson, are you getting married?” I read a few more lines of the invitation. “I can’t believe you didn’t mention it on Monday.”