Page 114 of Crescendo

I knew it. Deep down, she knew it too.

She was trying. She hadn’t slept. I’d found her in the music room, on the phone with Natália, and, an hour later, we were still here. It was getting late in LA. Were they both going to work through the night? Were they ever going to sleep?

Maybe there was a way to work that out, but there wasn’t a way to work out the frustration at not being in the same space, the way she kept complaining about needing Natália to be in the room with her. The call couldn’t pick up the intricacies of every bit of music Lydia played. It couldn’t capture the vibe of being in the same place, composing together.

They couldn’t rewrite an entire score like this. Especially not on the deadline they had.

She was so beautiful, and this was her whole life. London had been a momentary distraction, an attempt to find her way home. And she’d done it. She didn’t need Crescendo. She’d done it all by herself, and, now, she had to put her career first. She couldn’t choose another couple of weeks at Crescendo over her job, her life, her pounding, driving heart that needed her to compose.

You didn’t get to the level Lydia was at without making difficult decisions. And you didn’t get to love her without making them either.

I choked back tears, pretending to still be focusing on my piece on the laptop in my lap, and I pulled up a search page.Flights. London to LA. Today.

I sighed. She’d never make them. Too early. And we were already too late.

Tomorrow, though. I could get her on one of those.

It would cost a small fortune but I hadn’t been doing much with my money—working all hours of the day and living very little. I could do this one thing for her. Business class from London to LA. Tomorrow.

I slipped out of the room, leaving the door open so I could hear her, and found her passport on the bedroom sideboard where it had been sitting this whole time, just waiting for this moment. Taunting me like it knew this moment was always coming. Fitting, really, for the haunting, breaking march she and Natália were sounding out in the other room. If they didn’t win an Oscar for this score, I didn’t know what would, and it wasn’t even finished yet—had barely even started.

I entered her details and bought the ticket, tears flowing freely where she couldn’t see me. I couldn’t stand to look at thebed we’d lain in together. I’d known we only had so long; how did we end up with even less than that?

I wiped my face clean and went back to the music room, walking to the piano where her phone was propped up. “Sorry, Natália, Lydia will call you back in a minute.”

“Hey, Ella!” she called, so happy, so cheerful. Why wouldn’t she be? She was getting everything. “Don’t you love the music?”

“It’s really great,” I said quickly, seeing the puzzled look Lydia was giving me. “See you in a sec.”

I hung up and turned to Lydia, who held a hand out towards me. I shook my head, moving half a step back. Watching her freeze, her hand in the air, reaching for me, was heartbreaking, but I wouldn’t get through this the way I wanted to if she held me.

“Ella?” she asked, unsure and too emotional. She knew what was coming, of course.

I tried to smile, the look ruined by hot tears running down my cheeks. “You have to go home,” I said, my voice hitching and breaking.

“What?” But she didn’t really mean it. I could see the understanding on her face. We both knew what had to happen.

“You came here for this.” I gestured to the piano. “This score beat you down and sent you here, but you figured it out, you defeated your block. And now, you have to go home so you can finish the score.”

“There’s only a few weeks left—I can do it from here.”

I watched her with a heartbroken smile. “I guess if anyone could, it would be you, but let’s be real, Lydia, you don’t have all the instruments or equipment you need here. You don’t have Natália in the same room. The time, the distance, all of it… You need to be back there.”

“But we…”

“I know.” I nodded, barely able to see her through my tears. “I know.”

“Ella,” she said, breaking too, tears thick in her voice, and I couldn’t refrain from touching her any more. I moved to the piano stool, sobbing when she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her face into my stomach.

My dad had said something to her about grief being like rooms inside your heart where all the sadness lived. How many rooms did I have to build before I couldn’t go on anymore?

But letting her go was letting her live—a huge, vibrant, fantastic life. Just like the rooms she’d live in in my heart. Even sadness couldn’t beat her magnificence.

“I booked you a ticket for tomorrow morning, out of Heathrow,” I told her.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“I wanted to.” I tried to laugh and failed. “Business class and everything.”

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