“Mum!” Nally gasped, then dashed past her and around the corner to his bedroom.
“Ten minutes!” his mum shouted as she headed back out into the hall. “I want you all down by the cars in ten minutes or we’ll be late!”
Various shouts and curses echoed up and down the hallway. Hawthorne House had been a grand, eighteenth and nineteenth century manor house that had once housed something like fifty massive bedrooms. In the twentieth century, those rooms had been converted into dormitory rooms for the school that had been formed when the family could no longer afford to live in pre-modern splendor. And in the last twenty years, after theschool had gone defunct, the rooms had been cobbled together to form completely independent flats. The entire family and a few cousins lived in those flats now, but ironically, that gave the entire wing of the house a dormitory feeling all over again.
Nally rushed to dress and stomp his way into shoes that were so new he was certain he’d have blisters by the end of the night. Knowing that, he popped back into the bathroom to stuff more plasters into his pocket before hastily brushing his unruly hair. Once that was done, he zipped back into his bedroom to grab his jacket and a tie, then ran through his flat’s main room, picking up his phone and wallet along the way, then joined the frantic stampede of his older brothers and his sister, Rebecca, as they made their way downstairs.
“Don’t you look nice tonight, mister star of the show?” Rebecca teased him as they thundered down the stairs to the ground floor, meeting even more family along the way.
“I’m hardly the star of the show,” Nally laughed. “That would be Sawyer Kingston and Matt Bloom.”
“Psht,” Rhys, Nally’s eldest brother, scoffed as he followed them down the stairs, hand-in-hand with his partner, Early, who was dressed in one of the gorgeous, vintage gowns from Hawthorne House’s clothes room. “The actors would be nothing if not for the beauty of the soundtrack playing behind them.”
Nally laughed as they all turned the corner and headed out to the family car park. “Hardly,” he said. “People only notice the soundtrack if it’s bad.”
“That’s not true at all,” Early said. “WouldSchindler’s Listbe the same without its soundtrack? OrIndiana Jones? OrStar Wars?”
“Those are all John Williams,” Nally said as they stepped out into the chilly March afternoon. “I’m nowhere near as accomplished as John Williams.”
“Not yet,” Rhys said, thumping his back as they paused by the cars.
Nally laughed, but a shiver of excitement and promise whipped through him at those simple words. It had never dawned on him to seek out a career as a film composer. He loved composing, but he’d mostly focused on orchestral and chamber music. He thought maybe he’d submit his works to contests, attempt to catch the eye of a music director for one of the world’s leading orchestras, and teach composition classes at the Hawthorne Community Arts Center until his big break came along. He hadn’t expected that break to come so soon.
Truth be told, he loved the idea of writing more commercial music. He loved music of all kinds, but the world was changing and the way people consumed music with it. Yes, he had a few independently recorded pieces up on various streaming platforms, but they didn’t bring in much in the way of income. He didn’t really need to make a lot. The family lived for free at Hawthorne House. But it would have been nice to contribute to the family’s finances. And to reach a larger audience, of course. Who didn’t want to hear their music randomly playing on some stranger’s radio someday?
“Are we all ready?” Janice asked as she and Robert marched out of the house. Nally’s dad was still tying his tie as he walked. No one in the family looked completely put together, but that was the Hawthornes to a tee.
“Nally, where’s your date?” Robbie, one of Nally’s other brothers, asked as he and his husband, Toby joined them.
“Good question,” Nally said with a frown.
He pulled out his phone as Janice went about organizing who would drive in which car and where they would park in the city. His intention was to call Sam to see where he was, but he didn’t even get that far. There was a text from Sam waiting for him that had been sent half an hour ago.
Sorry, can’t make it tonight
That was it. No further explanation or deeper apology. He hadn’t even called to explain. It said something that Nally wasn’t all that disappointed. If anything, he was just miffed at being inconvenienced.
“Nally, you’re with us,” Janice ordered him.
“Right,” he said, tucking his phone back in his pocket and following his mum to the old MG that she refused to get rid of, no matter how vintage it was. She loved itbecauseit was vintage. “Sam canceled on me, by the way,” he said as he climbed into the back seat. “So don’t worry about him.”
“I’ve never worried about him, darling,” Janice said as she and Robert got into the front of the car as Rebecca slipped into the back with him.
“I can call one of the Polys,” Rebecca suggested as Janice started the car and recklessly pulled out of her space to head up the caravan of Hawthornes headed into London. “I think Jeremy is free tonight.”
Nally smirked. Rebecca’s little threesome had grown into a sprawling, complicated polycule in the last few months. They’d nicknamed themselves “The Polys”. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he said. “I’ll just call Jude.”
“I don’t see why you didn’t invite Jude in the first place,” Nally’s dad said, glancing over his shoulder at him.
“Jude is my best friend,” Nally said, even as he pulled out his phone and tapped the first number on his speed-dial. “You don’t invite your mates to attend movie premieres with you.”
“Why not?” Janice asked indignantly. “That’s exactly who you should invite.”
Nally didn’t have time to answer. Jude picked up the call right away with, “Mate, aren’t you supposed to be at a posh film premiere?”
“We’re on our way right now,” Nally answered, falling into conversation with his bestie as if they were still going from that morning, when they’d sent each other WhatsApp messages for an hour while going about the rest of their weekday business. “Sam just canceled on me.”
“Wanker,” Jude said, not sounding at all surprised. “He didn’t pull a Timothy on you, did he?”
