Page 22 of Strings Attached
Missy rises, her brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but I stumble a step.
“Sit down before you fall. Can I get you anything?”
I drop into a chair with a groan, nearly toppling it. “Play for me?”
She blinks and looks like she’s about to protest, words hovering on her lips. Then her gaze softens and instead of arguing she moves toward her cello, finds her seat, and plays.
The first notes hum into the space, filling the emptiness and flooding my senses. I close my eyes and absorb it. The music, but also the way my magic calms beneath it, replenishes, finds a rhythm in time to hers.
I shouldn’t want to understand this connection. Shouldn’t let myself believe in whatever this is, or long for more.
But as the song swells around me, soothing the edges of my frayed thoughts and easing my physical exhaustion, it’s hard not to. Each note she plays pulls at something deep inside me, a thread I didn’t even know was there, unraveling with every breath.
“That’s beautiful,” I whisper when the final note fades. “What was it?”
“Fauré.Elegie.”
“I understand now why people pay hundreds of dollars to come see one of your shows.”
“Been looking up my ticket prices, have you?” The smile in her voice causes me to open my eyes. Apparently tonight I’m wide open, letting everything slip without a filter. What the hellam I doing? I’m not supposed to be this… vulnerable. With anyone. Especially with her. But the way she looks at me, the way her music wraps around everything inside me, it’s hard to keep that distance.
“Maybe I’ve considered coming to a show.” The admission costs nothing now, here in the storm-dark quiet. I realize it’s true. I’d like to see her dressed in some sparkling outfit that costs my weekly salary. See her gleaming beneath stage lights, pouring her talent out for people who rise and clap like thunder for her. I imagine the way she might stand there, confident and alive in the spotlight, and it feels like a lifetime away from this intimate moment between us.
“You play like it’s magic,” I whisper the words, barely audible, because I shouldn’t say them.
I shouldn’t—there’s no way to describe what I’m feeling, what I’m seeing. But it’s the truth. What she’s doing now, here, in an ivory blouse under moonlight playing something that sounds like heaven itself opened up, could hardly seem more magical than any performance in front of an audience. Maybe she’s an angel. Maybe I’m foolish enough to start believing in something after meeting her. Or maybe tonight’s work has just sapped me more than I thought.
She turns her bow around in her hand then bats her eyes furiously but a tear slips free, anyway.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.” She whispers too, like we’re exchanging secrets. “But I haven’t finished the album I’m supposed to be doing with Jules. I can’t even look at the compositions. I just…” She falters, her fingers trembling. “Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how to play for myself.”
I sit higher in my chair. “Thatdidn’t sound like someone who’s forgotten how to play.”
She rests her chin against Giuseppe’s shoulder. “That was just me playing for me,” she says softly. “Not the shows, thelights, the applause. All that noise. Jules loves all of that—feeds off it, really. But maybe I don’t.” She runs her fingers along the cello’s neck. “Maybe I’ve spent too long chasing what others want to hear, and I’ve forgotten what it feels like to just play because Ineedto.”
“And now? Here?”
I need her to say it. For some reason, I long to hear her admit that Magnolia Cove is different, that it’s changing something in her, that she wants to be here. That, maybe, someone as talented and beautiful and worldly as her might want somewhere—someone—who isn’t part of the noise and the frenzy.
Thunder rumbles as she looks up. “I don’t know what it is about this place,” she whispers, “but… I’ve never felt like I can breathe the way I do here. Like there’s space for me…. Just me. Not the performer. Not Margaret Sinclair. Just plain old Missy.”
Her words hang in the air, and for a moment, everything feels impossibly still. Even the storm outside seems to take a breath to hold space for it. Like the weight of her confession has shifted something—like the magic herewantsher, just as much as I do, if not more.
I swallow and don’t break eye contact with her. “I’m honored to witness that.”
She takes in a breath that feels like a promise. The storm kicks back up, leaves and sticks clattering against the windows. The world outside is chaotic, but in this room, it feels like time has slowed, like we’re suspended in a space that belongs only to us.
I stand testing my strength. “I should get you and the cranky Italian home before your sister discovers you both missing and starts to worry.”
“One grumpy soul looking out for another?” she teases, her following laugh sparkling in the darkness.
I smile. I don’t even fight it. “It’s a talent, I suppose.”
She gently puts Giuseppe away, her fingers trailing the wood reverently before tucking him into his case. “How do you know so much about classical music? Big orchestra buff?”
“I guess you could say that.” Wind roars, causing the door to groan and Missy rushes to click the case’s latches. I shift on my feet, restless and eager to get her somewhere safe. “As a teenager I played classical guitar. A lot. It was… an escape for me, I guess.” I hesitate for a moment, then admit, “I still do, but only by myself.”
