Page 48 of Crescendo

“What?” Sian said after a loaded pause. “Last night?”

“Yep.”

“How is that even possible?”

Alisha took her ten pound note back and swapped it for a fiver.

I shot Sian a look. “When did you think we’d done it?”

“The other night, when we all had dinner. Why do you think I waited until the next day to text you?”

“Huh.”

“Huh, she says.” Sian shook her head. “I was so certain, too. You two could barely keep your eyes off each other.”

“Yes. Well.” I cleared my throat. “There you go.”

“Why’d you wait so long?”

I laughed, the sound a little wild. “I don’t think a week is particularly long…”

She bobbed her head, allowing that. “I’m just saying, if I was sharing a flat with someone that ridiculously hot and talented, I’d have jumped her bones way sooner.”

“We know that,” Alisha deadpanned, and we all laughed.

It was nice. Easy. Laughing with them and actually feeling part of it. The looming reality was still pressing at the sides of my skull and aching the muscles down my back, but this reminded me of uni, of how much I'd been a part of things back then.

When our laughter quietened, Alisha looked at me seriously. “Is it because you only have two months?”

I bit my cheek and shrugged. “A bit. Whatever was between us, you can’t make a big deal out of it because it was just casual. Quick. Simple. Easy. A one-off. Just fun, okay? You can’t start acting like we’re a couple. Because we’re not. We’re just friends.”

The two of them exchanged a look and there was a loaded silent moment between us before Sian asked, in a low voice, “Is it because of… Callum?”

I sucked in a breath. It felt loud and dangerous, even in the noisy restaurant. My heart was pounding in my bones.

I sniffed, holding myself stiffly. “Well, it does rather complicate everything, doesn’t it? Especially given that she’s only here for two months and we live on opposite sides of the world.”

“Have you told her?” Alisha asked quietly, her hand half extended across the table towards me.

I silently begged for her not to touch me. “No.”

“You don’t want to?”

“Not especially.” Was that even true? “Like I told you at breakfast, that’s a huge part of my life. Crescendo is two months. There’s no space for both of them at the same time. No time for them both. I just need to put that all away and… get over myself, be good at the music.”

Alisha put her warm, soft hand down on mine and Sian joined on top of that.

Tears burned in my eyes. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Alisha said. “And it’s okay that it’s not.”

I looked at her as my vision swam. “I wish…”

What? What did I wish?

So many things. I wishedso many thingshad gone differently, that they were different. How much easier this whole thing would have been if Callum were still here.

How different it might have been if I’d listened to everyone around me and… I don’t know,processedit earlier. But how the hell were you supposed to process something like that in a way that ever made it manageable?

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