Page 83 of Crescendo

“I’m not a rock musician. I’m not even a musician in the first place.”

“Shh, shh.” I put a finger to her lips. “You have three more false-modesty tokens to use for the session. Consider carefully where you want to spend them.”

Ella flushed. Dodge chuckled. “Should have figured inviting the both of you around would’ve meant the whole session’s just you flirting.”

I shot him a look. “Like I’m going to stand there andnotflirt with Ella? For God’s sake, man, look at her. Not too closely, though. I’ll get jealous.”

Hannah rolled her eyes, taking her bass back down and dropping onto a seat. “Just try not to make out the whole fucking time.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t give a damn anymore, because Ella smiled sweetly at her and said, “I’ll try my best not to, but… look at her.”

“Not too closely, though,” I added.

“Bloody hell,” Hannah laughed. “All right, so what do you wanna do? I know you’re sound enough on the piano, but is that all you do?”

I cut off Ella before she could respond. “She sings, too,” I said, and Ella shot me a look like I’d just run over her puppy.

“Jesus Christ, Lydia, don’t lie like that.”

Dodge grinned at me. “If I duet with her, you gonna get jealous?”

“I am,” I said lightly. “Please do it. I’m hoping it’ll give me some feelings to pour into my music.”

Ella ducked her head, blushing furiously. “You lot—all of you—I don’t know how to sing.”

Hannah snorted. “Yeah, neither does fucking Dodge, and it isn’t stopping him from yowling like a steaming tomcat. Even if you’re just noise, it’s at least going to cover up that awful racket.”

“Ella’s going to play the piano,” I said, making sure to meet her eyes, before I said, with every silent bit of meaning I could press into my voice, “I’ll play cello.”

“Ah.” Worked like a charm—Ella went red, pinching her lips together, not quite looking at my face.

“And I’m going to move things around a little,” I said, “so she and I can pointedly look at each other while we play, so I don’t get too jealous about her singing with the dodgiest bloke I know.”

“Lydia,” Ella protested weakly, but that slight flush of excitement in her eyes said she didn’t entirely hate the idea. I was drinking in every second of it—ostensibly, I was just tryingto distract her mind enough to keep her from overthinking and let her sing and play in front of everyone, but practically?

Practically, it felt damn good to claim her in front of our friends. Casually joining into things with her likethis is my girl.

If these feelings didn’t taper out by the end of the program, I was in trouble. We were already almost halfway through the program, and it just kept getting stronger. That was a problem, right?

Didn’t feel like it now.

We shifted around a little, adjusting the piano and moving a chair for the cello, while chattering about our new assignment—unsurprisingly, Hannah wasn’t really in it to win it, mostly just rooting for Eliza to take the grand prize, although from the way she talked about Eliza, she wasn’t feeling perfect about it, either about Eliza’s odds or about how things were between them. She got quiet, mumbled non-answers on the subject, and even Dodge knew not to push.

“I really don’t know how to sing, you know,” Ella said once we were positioned, her hands on the piano. I clicked my tongue.

“That’s one false-modesty token. You’ve only got two left.”

Hannah laughed. “No one’s recording this shit,” she said. “It’s just us all fucking around looking for inspiration. Be messy and loud and ugly.”

“What am I even supposed to be singing?” Ella said, and Hannah turned and rummaged through a binder she had next to her, tugging out a sheaf of paper.

“I got a couple of songs, just—you know, just some lyrics and chord progressions.”

Ella raised her eyebrows. “You’re a songwriter?”

“Psh.” Hannah kept her eyes on where she shuffled the papers unnecessarily. “That’s a big fucking word.”

I smiled at her. “It means someone who writes lyrics and makes songs out of them.”

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