This is intended to be the final chapter, but I can't promise I won't be tempted to add something somewhere down the line!
Springtime.
At least, it is officially—and yet it is not. The snow and ice have thawed, but the sun is shy and the trees still bare, the earth gray and barren, reminiscent of a dystopian wasteland.
It hasn't deterred her, though; she has begun wearing lighter fabrics in soft pastel pinks and blues. Her boots she has cast aside for floral-patterned flats. "I'm dressing for the weather that I think it should be," she once told him with an impish smile.
Today, however, there are glimpses of sun, and the redbud tree outside his window is finally living up to its name. Soon, its branches will be flocked with clusters of tiny lavender petals. He is certain she'll adore it.
But when she arrives for their lesson, she has none of her usual cheer. She wears a gray hoodie with tattered jeans and sneakers, and her hair is swept back into a limp ponytail, her eyelids red and swollen. He immediately knows what has happened, but it's somehow worse to hear it from her lips.
"I didn't get a part."
"Pardon?" It's a ridiculous question. He knows she had an audition—they spent weeks preparing—but his brain can't process her statement. He ushers her inside and closes the door.
She unzips her hoodie to reveal a collegiate t-shirt beneath. "I mean, I'm in the chorus, but it's an off-season production. They'd probably take walk-ins for the ensemble."
"Don't be melodramatic."
She stares at him; her gaze is empty, longing, and he can't sustain eye contact. Perhaps he ought to be softer, more sympathetic, but it's too easy to slip into the instructor mode he's clung to since the day she danced with him. They've since grown more comfortable around each other, certainly; conversation is easier. But that occasion crossed a line that he can't bring himself to negotiate again.
She exhales through her nose. "I'm sorry. I just—maybe I shouldn't have come today."
"Nonsense." He pretends not to notice how she flinches at his clipped response. "This is when it is most critical that we go over your performance. Set down your things."
With weary reluctance, she hangs her hoodie and sets her backpack by the door. When she arrives at her usual place beside the piano, he is seated on the bench, waiting. "Now. Tell me everything."
But he knows. He's precisely aware of her strengths and her flaws, of the way her mind and vision tunnel when she's anxious. He can picture her audition with stunning clarity, down to each nervous tell: compressing her lips, wiping her palms on her slacks, her legs going stiff as she addresses her audience. She's doing these things now.
She gives him an honest assessment of everything he could ask for: breathing, pitch, posture, diction. Her technique has always been sufficient, though—perhaps too sufficient for a production of this caliber. There is nothing in her report to betray her. He must draw it out.
"You're hedging, Christine," he says. Her cheeks go pink, and she looks down at her shoes. He presses on. "You are not satisfied with your performance."
She shakes her head and whispers, "I'm sorry."
The way her lips tremble is a punch to his gut, and he wants to shake her by the shoulders and tell her he's failed her, and not the other way around. He should have spent less time on technique and more on overcoming her nervousness. More on how to emote, how to tear through the flesh of a song to get at the meat, to drown herself in it until it fills her lungs and she breathes it in and out, and she and it become the same entity.
"We will do the excerpt again," he states. "This time, don't focus on the technique. Focus on your interpretation and phrasing. We'll go from there." She swallows, nods. He leads her through a warmup, and then he launches into the piano intro to her piece.
The selection is "I Have Dreamed" from The King and I. It is not what he would prefer, but musical theater is what she loves and what this production demands. Her voice rings out as sweet as ever, but he can almost feel her curling in on herself. He cuts her off halfway through. "You are not fully embracing the music," he snaps.
"I don't know how." Her voice quivers, but it's defiant.
"I think you do. I think you are making a choice here."
She shakes her head and she is near tears, but he can't back down. There's a sudden flood of adrenaline urging him on, and he has to keep pressing her, has to ride this out despite its potentially devastating consequences. "Why do you hold back, Christine? What are you afraid of?"
"I ought to ask you the same thing!"
He stares at her; she does not shy away from his gaze now. A thick silence curls around them, and he moistens his lips. "What," he says crisply, "is that supposed to mean?"
Again she shakes her head, and he wishes her hair were down so it would brush against her shoulders, frame her flushed cheeks. "Nothing. Never mind. It was a mistake, coming here today." She crosses the room to the coat rack, but her fingertips manage only to graze her hoodie before he intercepts her, his bony fingers clamping down on her hand.
"Please," he says. "Stay." Her eyes flick from his hand to his face, still wary, and he presses on. "My anger was...misplaced. I apologize."
Her face softens; his heart quivers and balloons with hope. "But you weren't wrong," she concedes. "What if—" An errant tear has escaped the corner of one eye, and she quickly wipes it away. "What if I give it everything I have, and it's still not enough?"
His chest constricts sharply. "Impossible." When she eyes him curiously, he adds, "You are already enough, by virtue of existing." How empty the sentiment sounds to his ears, but he would apparently rather drown in his own hypocrisy than confess anything more meaningful. She is quiet; her mouth twists into the slight frown that appears when she's lost in thought.
He still has a hold on her hand. How easily it yielded to him, warm and soft and trusting. Before he can stop himself, he has absently brushed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles.
Her lips part, and she draws a sharp breath. He goes rigid. There must exist somewhere in his mind an excuse to explain this all away, but rational thought has abandoned him in his hour of greatest need.
"You, ah..." He clears his throat. "You said your father was a violinist, correct?" She nods, and he releases her. "Wait here one moment."
He silently berates himself all the way to his bedroom. When he returns, it is with his violin and an expressionless set of jaw to indicate he has moved on, that such tenderness of touch was nothing of consequence. He hopes it's convincing.
She has returned to her place next to the piano, and her eyes widen at the sight of the instrument.
"Let's try something different, shall we?" he asks. "We'll do the entire piece."
"But it's a duet!"
"Indeed." He lifts his bow to the violin strings and slips right into the song. His voice, rich and sonorous, fills the room.
I have dreamed that your arms are lovely
I have dreamed what a joy you'll be
It's more difficult to sing with the violin cradled under his chin, but he's still quite proficient, and her gaping mouth confirms it. He's never sung anything for her, nothing beyond a few notes at a time to illustrate a teaching point. Her incredulity over his voice is so reverent he has to look away.
When he finishes the tenor's solo, she nearly comes in late with her own lines.
Alone and awake, I've looked at the stars
The same that smile on you
Her delivery is rushed and timid. Perhaps it was too much to add his own voice, and instead of emboldening her, he's only intimidated her further. His suspicions are confirmed when she closes her eyes. He wouldn't allow this under normal circumstances, but he did tell her to forget technique and so he will overlook it, just this once.
But gradually, her lovely voice unfurls. It gains confidence, then momentum, and her hands—previously clenched at her sides—come alive. By the time her solo steers into their duet, she is soaring, and he leaps to join her in midair. Her eyes flick open at the sound of his voice, and she looks right at him, her gaze heady and unwavering.
In these dreams, I've loved you so
That by now I think I know
The affection he's worked so hard to suppress burns a hole in his chest as their voices build and curl around each other, tighter and tighter, until her voice, her very essence, thrums in his veins.
What it's like to be loved by you
I will love being loved by you
The final note is momentous. She belts it out with such passion he can almost believe she's in love with him, and his chest seems to cave in even as he matches her fervor. Does she now realize, then, how achingly in love with her he is?
Both voice and violin go silent at the conclusion of the song, but eyes remain locked. For a moment, time is suspended. Her eyes shimmer and her breathing is weighted, a counterpoint to the breath that has frozen in his lungs.
Finally, he clears his throat. "The, ah...the violin was effective, then."
"It wasn't the violin."
Hope flutters in his breast. "Stay with me," he says, the words rushed and breathless, not at all the nuanced critique he meant to deliver. "After the lesson, that is." He does not break eye contact as he sets down his instrument. "Please."
She hesitates. "I...I have class."
"And I have work."
The wall he's so carefully built around himself has crumbled, dissolving into dust, and he sees it in her eyes the moment realization dawns. He's suddenly lightheaded, sick to his stomach. Perhaps he has just ruined everything. Still, he can't stop staring at her face, nor at the astonished blue irises that reel him in at the same time they draw closer, and—oh God, she is suddenly right there—he tilts his head down just in time to meet her lips as they settle on his, light and soft and perfect. His whole body hums.
The kiss is over as quickly as it began. She draws back and peers up into his face. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "Was that wrong of me?"
He does not respond. He is still replaying in his mind the feel of his lips against hers, how it echoes the moment when his fingers first touched the keys of a piano: there is nowhere else he's meant to be. He snakes lithe fingers through the hair above her ear, until his broad palm cups her head, and he gently pulls her mouth back to his.
His lips ply hers, tender but unyielding, until she emits the tiniest whimper. He drinks it down and kisses her harder, spurred on by the way she's grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. Every breath he takes from her seals some part of him that has long been cracked and broken.
He kisses her until his lungs burn. It's with great reluctance, and a small groan, that he releases her mouth. He looks down to find her all smiles—her default disposition—and it's all he can do not to assail those pale-pink lips again.
She finds his hand and threads her fingers through his. "I suppose I could skip class," she says. "Just this once." She has the proud glow of someone who has emerged victorious from a challenge—someone who has proven her worth.
And for the first time ever, he begins to entertain the notion that perhaps he is enough, too.
