Page 103 of Love You Like That (Excess All Areas 4)

Zoe picked up the mallets after Philip had finished signing. “Let’s go again.”

Lorenzo glanced at the clock. “You’ve already been here three hours. Take a break, Get some lunch.”

“I’m not going for lunch until you give me a solid eight.”

“Until I decide it’s an eight, or you do?”

“Until we agree it’s an eight.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Zoe grabbed the mallets from the floor and rearranged them in the Stevens grip she preferred, even though she was equally proficient in the Burton. The birch shaft gave her a crisp and articulate attack. The pitch clear, the sound would be in full colour.

“Come on,” she muttered. “You are so much better than this, Zo.”

She ran the cord wrapped mallets up the keys and back down again. Then again as she took another breath. Her palms were red from use, her fingers cramped. Breathing into the discomfort, she tried to quiet the negative voice in her brain for just a moment.

Closing her eyes, she felt the air against her cheeks, the vibration in the floor through her bare feet. The feedback she felt while playing through them helped her understand her volume.

She locked all the unhelpful self-talk away and considered the composer and instrument, focusing on not letting either down. Allowing herself to become a vessel to channel the relationship between both.

When she opened her eyes, she confidently positioned her mallets, and then began. It felt more natural, to take up space. She focused on the keys as Boncaldo’s words came back to her.

Bring me arrogant Zoe.

So, she did. She played with every ounce of interpretation and skill and movement. She swam with the current, immersed in the flow. Memories of playing this piece in her first-year review, of her parents sitting on the third row, clapping wildly, brought the sting of tears to her eyes, but she continued to play.

As the mallet hit the last note, so did the first tear.

She wiped it away viciously.

Philip waved his hands in the air. Applause in sign.

Boncaldo copied him.

Zoe swallowed deeply and looked down at the mallets abandoned on the marimba. When she looked up, Boncaldo stood on the other side of her instrument.

Herinstrument.

“There she is,” he said. And she understood the words as clearly as if she’d heard them.

Spent from the performance, she nodded once, briefly.

“One hour, we start learning a new piece.”

By the time Zoe made it to the centre four hours later, the contractor was waiting outside.

“Sorry,” she said, reaching for the keys she’d picked up from the landlord ten minutes earlier. “You must be Ivan.”

“I am. You must be Zoe. Pleased to meet you.”

She unlocked the door. “Alex explained what we need, right?”

“Yeah, and I spoke with the landlord too. So, I think I can pull something together that will work for your budget. I live just up the street, and this is just the kind of place we need. I want it to work too.”

Zoe left Ivan to it, and wandered back through the centre, making notes on her phone about the structure of the eight-week music programs she planned. Structuring by capabilities rather than age. When she thought about the presents she’d been gathering for Alex’s birthday, she grinned. It would all work out perfectly.

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