Page 4 of Unlocking Melodies

We waited until he left before dissolving into hysterical laughter.

“What did he think we spilled?” Jimmy wheezed.

“I don't want to know,” I managed, pulling him up. “But you were saying something?”

He kissed me instead of answering. I decided that was answer enough.

Summer arrived like a bucket of cold water. The Cole internship wasn't optional. Jimmy saw me off with a playlist he'd made: “Songs to Remember Me By (When You're Busy Being a Corporate Sellout).”

I listened to it during mind-numbing meetings, sneaking texts under the conference table.

Me

Kill me now. Someone just used “synergize” unironically

Jimmy

did you do the drink thing?

Me

Can't. Have to present quarterly projections after this

Jimmy

Boring. i just wrote a song about how much i miss your stupid face

Me

Send it to me?

Jimmy

Never. it's embarrassingly sappy. your ego's big enough

The voice notes he sent became my lifeline—little pieces of him scattered throughout my days. But as June turned to July, my father's “casual” comments became more frequent.

“The Board was impressed with your presentation,” he said one evening. “Reuben's daughter will be interning with us next summer. Lovely girl. Very suitable background.”

The word “suitable” felt like a knife. I thought about Jimmy, about music at midnight and coffee shop performances and love confessed on practice room floors. About how none of it fit into the life my family had planned.

“I'm seeing someone,” I said quietly.

My father didn't look up from his papers. “The scholarship boy? Yes, I know. It's time to end that little rebellion, don't you think?”

I should have argued. Should have defended what Jimmy and I had. Instead, I sat there in silence, feeling the weight of generations of expectations crushing the air from my lungs.

That night, I listened to Jimmy's latest voice note on repeat: a new piece, something hopeful and sweet that made my chest ache. I fell asleep with his music in my ears, trying not to think about how things that burn brightest often burn fastest.

Senior year started like a dream. Having Jimmy back felt like finally being able to breathe properly after three months of holding my breath. We fell back into our routines—midnight music, coffee shop performances, study sessions that turned into makeout sessions—but everything felt deeper somehow. More real.

“I've been looking at graduate programs,” I told him one night in September, watching him compose at the piano. He was working on something new, something that felt like us—technical precision mixed with raw emotion, structure and chaos finding harmony.

“Yeah?” His fingers didn't stop moving across the keys. “Let me guess—Harvard Business School? Wharton?”

“Berklee College of Music, actually. The campus is right in Boston's tech hub.”

His hands stilled. “Ethan...”

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