Page 116 of Crescendo

“I don’t know about that. Eliza’s really good and she deserves to win.”

Lydia wiped her tears away and looked at me seriously, ducking slightly so our eyes were at the same level. “Listen to me, darling. You’re going to win that competition and show everyone who you are, because you deserve for the world to know you, to be seen for who you are. You are smart and caring and beautiful and talented and you deserve to know that. You deserve to win and see what everyone else sees in you. You’re a musician, Ella, and you always will be.”

I adjusted her lapels, patting them down with my hands as I stared into those brilliant blue eyes—one of the last times I would touch her. “The world deserves to see you too, and it’s time now. I’ve kept you to myself for long enough, Lydia Howard Fox.”

For the first time, her name didn’t sound like a title, like the famous name everyone knew without knowing the real, whole human it belonged to. Instead, it felt like something special, sacred, an oath. Something that belonged to just the two of us.

Tears streamed down her face again. “I wish I could have kept this for all time,” she whispered before rushing to press a kiss to my lips. Lingering, painful, beautiful, desperate, and final.

How many people got to kiss someone knowing it was their last kiss?

I clung to her, trying to remember every little bit of her. The feel of her lips on mine, her hands holding me so securely, her warm voice and her accent when she said my name or called me darling.

Two more weeks to figure this thing out wouldn’t have been enough. One night of trying to work on something between London and LA hadn’t worked for her and Natália, and if you couldn’t make a score work at that distance, what chance did we have of making a life work? Still, I wished I’d had the chance to try. Wished we’d had those weeks together, the time to trysomething.

The car beeped from outside and we both gasped in pain.

We stared at each other, nothing left to say.

She opened the door, catching Eliza heading to her place, but there was nothing left to say there, either. Just three broken people doing their best.

Eliza nodded sadly at Lydia before shooting me a concerned, understanding look, and she disappeared inside, giving us that last moment alone.

Lydia took her things to the car before returning to the door and giving me one very final kiss. She held my hand as she turned away, patting the door frame and muttering, “So long, London.”

I held tight to her fingers as long as I could, but then, she was gone. Down the stairs and in the car and being driven away. “Text me when you land.”

As if she’d hear me.

I shut the doors and locked myself up in our empty apartment, found my way to her room where she managed to break me again. I collapsed onto her bed, body-wracking sobs filling the room as I clutched to the cardigan she’d left behind and the note she’d left:Wear this so it’s like I’m still there playing with you, and go soar, darling.

My whole body ached, inside and out, and I cried every tear I’d fought against over the last four years, until it felt like I’d die from crying, from the pain of it all.

But, at some point, driven by something bigger, something very Lydia, I pulled myself up. Still feeling small and damaged, I made my way to the music room in her cardigan—the room that felt most like her—and I listened to my piece in the DAW.

Sweet piccolos and flutes, sweeping strings, that moment when it turned darker, scarier, painful. The driving timpani beats, something tragic but alive hidden under a chorus of haunting instruments. And I finally realised what it was.

It was Callum, of course, he was in everything I did, but it was a piece for me. It was loss and hurt and breaking down, and it was letting all of that in. It was the fear of feeling and the loss of refusing to do so. It was letting people in and knowing it was going to hurt, and it was every single second of that pain.

And I knew the sampled clarinets didn’t work.

We only had until 11:59 PM to turn it in. This wasn’t the time for big changes, but I’d known it needed clarinets, and I knew it needed a real one.

I hadn’t managed to play it with Lydia. I’d let her down. But maybe I could do it now. I couldn’t hurt more than I already was.

I pulled the clarinet out, something inside me begging to run away, to hide, to stay safe. The version of me that lost Callum. But I was still here. I’d survived. I’d become this version that allowed herself to fall for Lydia knowing it was going to hurt. That version of me wasn’t alone, and she was stronger than she knew.

I put it together with shaking hands, my eyes looking down at her cardigan time and time again, and, finally, for the first time in years, I reached for a reed. Pulled it gently from its case. Pale wood. Polished, branded end fading into smooth, natural playing end.

My heart pounded so quickly it hurt, but so did everything else. I swallowed against my dry mouth, mustering up some saliva, and I put the reed between my lips.

The taste of the wood, the feel… all of it so familiar and so distant.

I could barely breathe when I got it attached to the clarinet and held the instrument to my mouth. Even aching and exhausted, my muscles remembered this, they knew how to hold my body and the clarinet. Bottom lip against the reed, teeth and top lip on smooth, black mouthpiece.

The first note was weak, barely there. Scared, panicked, alone. But it was there.

My whole body shook. Another note. Two together. A short sequence I’d played with Lydia on the piano back when we’d only known each other a few days. And then I was playing.

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