Page 87 of Crescendo

I was a little evil, because I enjoyed the fiery-faced, hunched-shoulder walk Ella did down the hall next to me as she joined us towards the lounge. Dodge decided to take his best shot at softening the blow.

“Ah, relax,” he said. “You’re not even the first ones in this program to get it on in the practice rooms.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh, please just tell me at least you didn’t have sex in the onewewere using.”

“Don’t know which room it was, ‘cause it wasn’t even me. You and Clara are really alike, Ella. Both easily led astray by bad influences.”

“Clara?” Ella said. “She had a hookup in a practice room?”

“More importantly,” I said, “with who?”

“Florian. I think you’ve met him once in passing at most. The worst man to ever come out of France, which is saying something. Clara got a little tipsy and told me how she’d been practicing violin with him, they had a sloppy make-out, and she deepthroated him until—”

“I don’t need to hear any more of this story,” I said, a hand up.

“Just saying, nothing wrong with a little practice room romp. Now, let’s dig into this food before Hannah actually goes ahead and murders me.”

Hannah rolled her eyes as we came out of the stairs and towards the lounge. “If I’m the only one actually paying attention to the fucking music, I guess that’s fine,” she said, but she didn’t have a lot of bite in her words, as evidenced by the way she gave a curious smile Ella’s way once we were all sat down at an old wood table by a rustic window frame in the lounge, and she said, “You know, Ella, you’re not too bad.”

“She’s much better thannot too bad,” I said politely, “and also, I told you so.”

Hannah laughed. “Yeah, don’t get smug on me.”

Ella shrugged. “She can be a bit difficult, but…”

“But you’re into that kind of thing,” Hannah said, and Ella folded her hands on the table.

“Well, apparently, it does seem like that, doesn’t it?”

I could have gotten used to this—together with Ella, friends teasing us. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to be getting used to this—we were having a fling while I was on this side of the ocean—but I was. I was, after all, often difficult.

“If you can try not to fuck Lydia all the time,” Hannah said, “you should come around, do this again. Next time we can talk shop with our assignment pieces, see what kinds of inspirations we can get. You game?”

Ella let out a long breath, considering, looking up at me, and back to Hannah and Dodge, before she said, “I might be. I’ll… I’ll see.”

Hannah gave her a deadpan look. “Have to figure out if your girlfriend is still willing to fuck you at the session?”

Ella huffed. “I think about more than that, thank you!”

“See,” I said, “I’m just bumming off you all to try to figure out my composer’s block, but Ella clearly doesn’t have any such thing. I’ll see if I can get her to come back again, though. You know—because she plays so well.”

Hannah rolled her eyes, but she stopped, stilling with her hands over her food at something behind me, and with all the subtlety that Americans were known for, I craned my neck and looked back at where Eliza, dressed nicely like she’d been going out for something with a sleek and professional muted-red dress, came walking towards us with an incredulous air about her.

“So, I’ve been wondering where you’re running off to,” Eliza said lightly. Hannah shook her head.

“We were just talking about our assignments—”

Eliza put a hand up. “You can spend time with your friends,” she said, but that razor-sharp edge in her voice said Hannah could not, in fact, spend time with her friends. “I was just thinking it’s nice to see you.”

Hannah dropped back in her chair with a dark look. “And you had a good dinner date?”

Eliza raised her eyebrows. “You want to know?”

Hannah tightened her face. Normally this was the moment I’d drop in with some belligerent comment, but the look on Hannah’s face was genuine hurt. Eliza’s, too. Maybe I respected whatever was happening. Maybe I was just nosy.

“I told you that you’re my best friend,” Hannah said. “Course I want to know.”

Eliza’s nose twitched. “It’s cute when you’re putting on your polite face.”

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