Page 1 of Unlocking Melodies

Prologue

You know those moments that change everything? The ones that split your life into neat little “before” and “after” categories? Mine happened at exactly 11:47 PM on a Tuesday in September, and it started with wrong turn.

I'd been wandering the arts building like a sleep-deprived zombie, trying to find my way back to the business school after a late study group. Leave it to me to get lost on a campus I'd been on for two years. But then I heard it—piano music floating down the hallway, raw and beautiful and absolutely not what you'd expect to hear in a mostly empty building close to midnight.

I followed the sound because, well, wouldn't you? The music pulled me along like I was caught in its gravity, leading me to Practice Room C. Through the narrow window in the door, I could see him: hunched over the keys, completely lost in whatever he was playing. His dark hair fell across his forehead, and his fingers moved across the keys like he was born to do exactly this.

I stood there for way too long, just watching. The piece wasn't anything I recognized—and trust me, after fifteen yearsof classical piano lessons, I knew most of them. This was something else. Something raw and honest and alive.

When he finally stopped playing, I did what any normal person would do: I knocked on the door like a complete idiot.

He jumped about a foot in the air, spinning around on the bench. “Jesus Christ!”

“Sorry!” I held up my hands in surrender. “I didn't mean to startle you. I just... I heard you playing.”

He ran a hand through his already messy hair, making it stick up even more. “Yeah, well, usually people don't lurk outside practice rooms at midnight.”

“Usually people aren't playing in practice rooms at midnight either,” I pointed out, and something in his expression shifted—not quite a smile, but close.

“Fair point.” He studied me for a moment, then gestured to the room. “You coming in, or are you just going to stand there looking expensive?”

I glanced down at my outfit—okay, yes, the cashmere sweater might have been a bit much for a late-night study session—and stepped inside. “I'm Ethan.”

“Jimmy,” he replied, sliding over on the bench. “You play?”

“Classically trained since I was five.” I tried not to sound like I was bragging. From the way he rolled his eyes, I failed.

“Of course you were.” He hit a few random keys. “Let me guess—your parents made you take lessons because it would look good on your college applications?”

“Actually, I wanted to learn.” I sat down next to him, careful to leave enough space between us. “Though the college application thing didn't hurt.”

He snorted. “Rich kid problems.”

I should have been offended. Instead, I found myself fighting back a smile. “Play something else?”

He hesitated, fingers hovering over the keys. “It's not... I mean, I never had formal training. I just play what I feel.”

“That's what I liked about it.”

His eyes met mine, startled and searching. Then he nodded and started to play again. It was different this time—softer, more tentative. Like he was trying to figure something out through the music.

That was the beginning. We fell into a routine after that: midnight meetings in Practice Room C, him teaching me to play by ear, me showing him theory. He brought coffee from the twenty-four-hour diner where he worked weekends; I brought fancy pastries from the French bakery downtown that my mother swore by.

“You're such a snob,” he'd say, but he always ate them.

October bled into November, and somewhere between teaching him about chord progressions and him showing me how to improvise, I realized I was in trouble. It wasn't just the way he played—though that was part of it. It was the way he'd catch my eye and grin when he hit a particularly complex run perfectly. The way he'd lean against my shoulder when he was tired, claiming he needed to see the sheet music better. The way he made me forget about board meetings and family expectations and the perfectly planned future that had been laid out for me since birth.

It happened on a Wednesday night in November. We were working on a piece together—his melody, my arrangement. Our hands kept brushing on the keys, and each time it felt like static electricity running up my arm.

“You're distracted,” he accused, nudging my shoulder.

“You're distracting,” I shot back without thinking.

The silence that followed was deafening. He turned to look at me, and I couldn't read his expression in the dim light of the practice room. “Am I?”

I kissed him. Or maybe he kissed me. To this day, I'm still not sure who moved first. All I know is that one moment we were staring at each other, and the next his hands were in my hair and mine were gripping his shirt and everything else just... disappeared.

It was messy and awkward and perfect. When we finally pulled apart, he let out a shaky laugh. “Well, that's one way to handle sexual tension.”

---