Chapter 11
The cream white grand piano tinkled away gaily as they approached a forty bar rest which featured the rest of the orchestra. This rash decision she made in performing tonight had been a serious mistake. She wanted to be over with it and done with. Impatient and humiliated, she counted the rests with furious concentration.
"Since you're up here, enjoy the music you make, Tiffany. If you listen carefully, you'll find that it's really quite beautiful," he breathed, with all sincerity.
Back home, she had received a fair share of compliments regarding her musical ability from Lawrence, envious friends, and occasional visitors. This simplistic sentence of praise, though, was different from all the other florid proclamations offered. It had a certain gravity to it, a steadiness that made it seem so right. Her thoughts were supremely disorganized at the moment, and she knew not what to think anymore. All evening, her thoughts had been fluctuating between peaceful adoration for the man beside her and chaotic frustrations concerning reality. Worn out, and tired, Sébastien's wholehearted advice seemed simply logical and irrevocably true.
Soon enough, she had rediscovered her love of performing. Savoring the rich blend of tones and the depth of feelings every member of the orchestra contributed, the audience, the ballroom were all some surreal image. Reality was music. Fantasy was him.
His solo was perfection. It was so sentimental, it made tears sting her eyes, and the orchestra gave his sparkling clear music a mellow layer of support. Standing there, admiring him, some dark untouched chamber of her romantic heart glowed, like a key turning some rusty, forgotten lock to her soul. Although her conscious self had not the courage to accept it, she had undoubtedly fallen, irreversibly, into a deep abyss, where a most crucial part of her being now solely depended on one single, special person.