Page 107 of Sounds Like Love

Mom brushed fallen curls out of Sasha’s face, and pulled him into one of her best hugs. It was like she melted him, from Sebastian Fell to Sasha, and he returned the hug just as tightly.

The night she had that episode a few weeks ago came to mind—she’d been inconsolable. Mom must have woken up from a nightmare about that accident, and she just couldn’t get her footing until Dad had calmed her down. How often, in all these years, had she dreamed of her friend?

I would be inconsolable if Gigi passed that suddenly. It’d be hard to talk about her at all.

Mom muttered something privately to Sasha, and his face pinched as if he was trying not to cry.

“Thank you,” he whispered. And he took a deep breath, wiping the back of his hand over his eyes. Steeling himself. Letting the emotions ground him. “So that song—it was yours and my mom’s?”

“We noodled with it while on the road. There’s little to do between tour stops, you know. We could never get it right. Something was always missing. I hadn’t thought about it in years. The last time I played … was right before I had an argument with her. We rarely talked after that, but whenever I did call she absolutelygushedabout you each time. She didn’t want to talk about anything else.”

He said, “I wish she was here.”

Mom’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I know. But you’re built from all her good parts, I’m sure of it.”

He kept his eyes turned down. “Thank you.”

“You don’t believe me,” she said, tsking. His shoulders turned stiff. The tips of his ears went a little red from being called out. “Your mom had the same tell. I bet you also hum notes as you play them.”

“I don’t—”

“He does,” I confirmed. He shot me a look of betrayal. “We wrote a song together. It’s not like I didn’t notice.”

Mom smiled. “So you finished it? The song?”

We had, but I wished, more and more, that we hadn’t. I shifted a little awkwardly. “Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

The wind howled, seeping through the holes in the building wherever it could, making the foundation rattle. Thunder cracked again, so loud it made someone by the bar yelp in surprise.

Mom said, “Then I think I have a request for the next song. And you two should play it.”

Sasha and I exchanged a look. I let him take the lead, waiting for him to decide if he wanted to play with me. Did he want to? Or let whatever it was between us die? Playing piano together was a lot like a trust exercise. You had to have faith in the other person to keep time with you. I wished I could shove all my feelings into his head like I used to. I wished I could crush our thoughts together and let him know how sorry I was, how much I wanted to play music with him, how I wanted so much more than that, how much I—I—

He tipped his head gently toward the piano as if to ask,Shall we?

Hope fluttered in my chest.Yes, let’s.

Chapter39(Just as Long as You) Stand by Me

THE HURRICANE SOUNDEDquieter. Through the skylight backstage, the clouds twisted overhead in a halo of darkness. We had passed into the eye of the storm. The back side of the hurricane was always the worst, but at the moment everything sounded serene. High, high above, the moon poured silver linings into the old music hall.

I sat down on one side of the bench, and Sasha took the other. Our thighs bumped together, a friction and a connection. It felt like so long ago when we first came together at this piano. Back then, we didn’t know each other even though we were embedded in each other’s heads, and now we weren’t. We hadn’t trusted each other then. We should now. I trusted him. I think—I think I trusted him so much it had frightened me.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Beside me, I felt Sasha do the same.

Trust me, I wanted him to know.

His leg pressed harder against mine, reassuring, as if he knew what I’d thought, and responded,I do.

“One, two,” I counted off quietly, my voice trailing into silence,three, four—

After weeks with the song in our heads, it came to our fingers as easy as breathing. We knew the notes, sure and bright and loud, surer than we knew ourselves. He played the chords, and I the well-worn melody, our fingers in conversation with each other without a word.

It was like we could hear each other again as we put our feelings into the song.

It was just our voices, an old piano, and the eye of a storm. Thunder rumbled in the distance, rushing across the building, bringing with it wind and leaves and that bright, sweet scent of late-summer rain.

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