Page 70 of Crescendo

If we’d just been friends, would I have been ready to tell her? I didn’t know.

But, if we were just friends, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to, wouldn’t have needed to. She’d have been like Bansi or Clara. She wouldn’t have been able to play that song with me, and everything would have been different.

She joined me on the floor again, two of the biggest mugs in the place filled with scalding tea. Something about the way she looked at me, talked to me, made me feel like she understood more than she possibly could have. Music could do a lot but it couldn’t tell her everything I was working through.

If she’d just been a friend, we wouldn’t have been here. The music wouldn’t have told her anything.

I didn’t know how to navigate all the things she was with the fact that we were being casual.

“I’m really sorry for the last few days,” I said as she gingerly sipped her tea, still a little hot for her liking.

Her eyes flicked up to mine, something unfathomable crossing her face for just a second. “It’s okay. I missed you.”

If she’d just been a friend, she wouldn’t be saying that. Not like that, not with that tone, not with that look.

“I missed you too.” My heart pounded. “I just had some… stuff to work through.”

“Yeah, Cadogan Hall gives you a lot of inspiration, doesn’t it?” she asked lightly. She knew we were close to something I still wasn’t sure we could talk about. She was walking us back so I didn’t have to.

“I didn’t get sick the last time I was there.” It was the scarcest of acknowledgements. A reference to a time I didn’t talk about, hadn’t explained. But it was something. I was giving her something—a part of me I carried, quiet and alone. “Must have been something in the water.”

“Uh-huh. Remember? It was the drinks beforehand. We talked about this.”

“Oh, right.” I laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think I even drank water at the show.”

There was something terrifying in talking about it, but there was something freeing, too. As if, the more I joked about that night, the less power it had to break me—to break us.

I shouldn’t have even thought that. We weren’t anus. But I couldn’t help feeling like we were. I’d played myself inside out for her, with her, and she’d understood it, understood me. I’d broken on the floor and she’d stayed with me. She was still staying with me. And that didn’t feel casual or inconsequential at all.

The doorbell buzzed, and I flushed, remembering that it had earlier, too, and I’d screamed like a feral animal at it. That was embarrassing.

“I’ve got it,” Lydia said, hopping up.

I heard her talking to the delivery person, and, as they retreated from the door, heard her laughing.

I frowned as she called, “Ella, you have a gentleman caller.”

“What?”

She reentered the room with a paper bag in one hand and a presentation box in the other.

“A gentleman caller,” she repeated, gesturing to the box. “I guess we know who rang the bell earlier.”

“What?” I repeated, staring at it.

“Who sends a gnome in a presentation box to someone’s house? Where do you even get those?”

“Oh, my god,” I groaned. “I think I might know.”

She laughed. “You know where to buy gift-wrapped gnomes? Aren’t you a woman of many secrets?”

I shook my head, looking at the tiny figure with a white beard and a deep red hat. “Not that. I think I know who sent it.”

Her face lit up and her eyebrows shot up her head. “Who?” she asked, setting the box in front of me.

“I don’t think I even told them the apartment number,” I muttered. “Did they text Sian or Alisha to get it? To send me agnome?”

Lydia was clearly bursting to know as she sat in front of me again, pulling food out of the bag.

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