Page 54 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door

I shrug. “Not anymore. Not compared to you.”

There’s a beat of silence. Alina seems confused, but she shakes the baffled expression off and moves toward the chair.

“I’ll decide once I hear it,” she says.

There’s a faint challenge in her tone, but it’s not hostile. If anything, she seems curious. Maybe even intrigued. She’s used to being told what to do when it comes to music. She doesn’t have decision-making authority at the CSO.

And maybe that’s what I like about this career I’ve built for myself. Maybe this is what I was meant to do all along. Composition always fascinated me. I just never thought that the road to get here, the journey to becoming a professional composer, would involve so much heartbreak.

That’s life, though.

I settle at the piano, the keys cool under my fingers. The melody that I’ve been laboring over for days flows naturally now, and I start playing without preamble. The opening bars emerge softly, filling the room with something simultaneously tentative and bold. It’s like I’m coaxing the music out of hiding, which is exactly how the piece should feel.

Alina sits quietly and folds her arms across her chest. Out of the corner of my eye, I can tell that she’s listening intently, her head tilted slightly to the side.

As I transition into the next section, she shifts. One glance in her direction tells me that the frown on her face is not the kind that comes from dislike, though. It’s the frown of someonedissecting every note, every chord. The frown of a scientist unraveling dense data, of a weaver unknotting a tangle of thread.

When I finish playing, I turn to her.

I feel exposed. Raw. A little too vulnerable for my liking.

“Thoughts?”

She’s quiet for a long moment, her fingers tapping a restless rhythm against her arm. Finally, in a clinical tone, she says, “The melody is strong, but the transitions feel unresolved. It’s like you’re building tension but refusing to let it release. You’re keeping the music leashed, to its own detriment.”

It’s a fair critique—and exactly what I’ve been telling myself for days now. I nod, jotting a quick note on the sheet music in front of me.

“Okay. That’s helpful. Anything else?”

Her gaze flicks to the violin case at her feet, then back to me. “Play it again. I want to hear it once more.”

I oblige, starting from the top. This time, I try to smooth the transitions by throwing in some free-styled notes, to find some semblance of resolution. Halfway through, I hear the unmistakable sound of a case opening. I don’t look up, afraid of breaking the moment, but my heart skips as the familiar sound of strings being tuned fills the air.

When I finish, she’s ready. Bow in hand, violin poised against her shoulder, she meets my gaze.

“Let’s try it together.”

I swallow hard.Together. It’s a foreign word to us. When we were younger, playing together was something we did begrudgingly. Something that we insisted was akin to torture. We were like magnets of the same pole, and our instructors were constantly doing their best to force us together.

Choosing to cooperate like this feels like going against that comfortable, familiar grain, and yet I get the sense that it’s what we should have been doing all along.

I almost laugh. Imagine if Alina and I had chosen to be allies rather than enemies. Everything would have been different.

The room falls silent as I begin again, my fingers moving over the keys with practiced ease. Alina joins in after the first few measures, her bow gliding over the strings with effortless precision.

Just like that, the rough edges of my composition smooth out under the weight of her accompaniment. Her violin doesn’t just fill the gaps; it elevates the entire piece, giving it depth and texture that I hadn’t even realized it was missing.

She plays like it’s instinctive, like she’s been practicing this tune for years rather than having just been introduced to it.

It strikes me, as we play, that this is the first time we’ve ever truly played in cooperation with each other. At school, our collaboration was bitter and tense at the best of times. Now, it’s different. The music isn’t just a shared language; it’s a forged connection that we’re finally willing to acknowledge. For the first time, she’s not my rival, and I’m not thinking about her as my enemy.

I’m just thinking abouther.

The gentle curve underneath her pouting lower lip as she focuses on the sheet music laid out in a disarray before us. The subtle pinkness in her cheeks as she lets the melody sweep her away into a version of herself that is less reserved, less careful. The flutter of her eyelashes as she goes off script and, perhaps for the first time in a while, plays for the thrill of it, rather than for the purpose of giving a performance.

I wish I could just sit here and watch her. Admire her. I wish I had the words to explain how brilliant she is, and I wish I had the courage to then speak those words aloud to her.

When the music finishes, the final note hangs in the air, and we sit in companionable silence. Alina lowers her violin, her expression unreadable.

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