Page 18 of Not Another Love Song
Nathan stood. “Gwen, I’m going to give you a piece of music you’ve never seen before. Is that okay?”
“Um, sure.”
She’d done this plenty of times in lessons. She knew she could sight-read. But as Nathan grabbed a music stand and laid out two pages, she realized she’d never sight-read for an audience before. She thought about Xander, who apparently sight-read at the Pops just for kicks.
“Mark the bowing,” he said softly. He dropped a pencil on the stand. “Take your time.”
Take your time was the worst expression in the human language. Take your time, but everyone is watching. Take your time, but don’t take too much time.
Gwen picked up the pencil and made a few notes indicating the up-bow and down-bow for herself. She glanced over the phrases, noting the tempo markings, and lifted her instrument under her chin.
The four people in the front row were silent.
She pulled, and then devoured the music notes with her eyes, skipping through sixteenth notes, sliding over tied quarters— barely listening to the melody while simply sight-reading the page and her own markings.
She just stared at the page and played. She couldn’t take the time to get nervous or tense—her brain was elsewhere.
A deep voice floated into her ears.
There’s something exciting about sight-reading. Don’t you agree?
Gwen let her heartbeat sync to the drawn-out rhythms, tumbling over the staccato notes and arpeggios. She came to the end, bow falling away from the violin, and just as she lifted her eyes to find Nathan in the front, smiling at her, a hulking shadow in the corner of the balcony, two hundred feet away, shifted in his chair.
Oh god.
Oh god oh god oh god. Xander Thorne had just watched her sight-read, possibly watched her play Beethoven.
She stared at his figure, hunched over in a chair, elbows on his knees. She couldn’t see his expression from here, but she was sure he was scowling down at her, watching her audition to lead the string section. A place he was no longer welcome, she guessed from the limited conversation she overheard.
He sat up, running his hands over his face, leaning back into the too-small chair and crossing his arms again just as she realized Ava was speaking.
“Gwen, darling. Come sit with us down here.”
She stumbled like a newborn fawn down into the audience, ignoring the dark figure in the balcony, and took a seat next to Ava as the older woman took her hand.
“Gwen.” Nathan took her other hand, smiling widely at her. “On behalf of the Pops, myself, and the board of directors, we’d like to offer you the position of concertmaster. First chair.”
Gwen waited for the words to form in her ears. Waited for the phrases to glue together into something intelligible. An entrance. A bow. Nathan smiling at her from the conductor’s platform, extending his hand to her like he did for Ava, presenting her to the world like a proud mentor. A proud parent—
“I’m sorry,” Gwen whispered. “You’ll have to say it again.”
Ms. Michaels chuckled behind her.
“First chair, Gwen,” Nathan said again.
Her heart started to beat again.
“I think you should know, in all transparency,” Ava said, pulling her around to face her, “that a twenty-two-year-old in first chair would be excellent publicity for the Pops—”
“Oh, don’t…” Nathan interrupted. “Don’t tell her that.” His face pinched, and he glared at Ava.
“She’s not a child,” Ava snapped. “She can handle it.” Gwen whipped back around to listen to Ava. “On top of the fact that you are one of the singularly most talented musicians I have ever encountered, Gwen, the press and the subscribers will eat you up.”
Gwen buzzed with the praise and blanched at the prospect of that kind of attention.
“The Pops…” Ms. Michaels began, “is not having our best season. Financially.”
“She doesn’t need to hear all this,” Nathan said, standing.
