I don’tmeanto start with the side Elliot’s on, but it is closest to me.
As I get nearer and nearer to where he’s sitting, my hand starts shaking again, and I have to concentrate hard to make sure I get the water in the glasses, not on the table. The first speaker is still droning on about how important this franchise will be for the industry as a whole…yadda yadda yadda...
I take a sharp breath in as I arrive at Elliot’s seat, and hold it as I lean over slightly to begin pouring. But just as I do, he turns his head sharply and looks up at me, straight into my face.
I freeze in place, staring into his eyes like a deer in the headlights.
A moment later, Elliot pushes his chair back and jumps up, grabbing his folder of music sheets, as the water I’m pouring overflows from the glass and onto the tabletop.
“Oh, my God,” I gasp, as the whole room turns to stare at me, muttering and murmuring, and there are one or two snorts of laughter. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” I say, before I can think. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
But Elliot is chuckling, watching the mini-waterfall sliding over the edge of his allotted desk. “That’s quite alright,” he says, and then to the room at large, “It’s certainly woken me up.”
There are polite laughs at his joke, but my face is on fire as I rush to get some linen napkins to wipe up the spill.
“Sorry,” I whisper again.
Elliot, still standing, pats my wrist as I gather up the sopping napkins. “Really,” he says softly, so that only I can hear him. “It’s alright. It was a mistake.”
I can’t look at him. If I look at him, I’m going to blurt out something incredibly inappropriate, or maybe break down blubbering, or maybe just spontaneously combust—my face is so hot right now that Imightactually ignite.
Elliot turns to the room, holding up his folder. “Since I now have the score in my hand, perhaps I should give you a taste of what I’ve been working on? Play you into your discussions?”
There’s a scattering of applause, and—thank God—while I finish cleaning up the mess I made, all eyes are on Elliot as he makes his way to the piano. He begins to play as I dry down his desk. I scurry away to the side of the room with the soaked napkins and stand as close to the wall as I can, hoping to become part of it via osmosis.
The heat in my face finally dies away as I concentrate on the music, because it’s beautiful and lush, and has a triumphant crescendo that lifts my heart—just a little.
But just as he seems to be coming to an end, I hear some familiar notes begin to enter the piece. I can’t help looking up, looking over, and when I do…
He begins to playmysong.
For Oliver. The one he wrote for me.
The whole room is spellbound throughout, and my emotions writhe around inside me until I can barely breathe. The music is the only thing I can hold onto as the whirlwind builds up inside me, and when I realize he’s come to a new part, one I haven’t heard before, I slump against the wall, my legs liquifying again, my eyes blurring.
Across my skin, in the places he scratched some of those very notes, I feel the sensation again, a ghost of the burning, prickling pain making me shiver where I stand.
Finally, the piece comes to an end, piercing me right through, and the whole room rises as one to their feet. The applause is so loud it hurts my ears, and I can’t stay here a second longer.
I rush out of the room and bang straight into Chloe outside, who is breathless and apologetic.
“It’s fine,” I tell her mechanically. “It’s fine, I covered for you, but I have to go—”
“I’ll get straight in there,” she assures me, and dashes past for the door.
I make my way blindly back to my office, where I sit down at the desk, and press my knuckles into my eyelids, harder and harder until I see starbursts.
* * *
I get through the rest of the day, somehow. It’s a blur of people and demands, and I just try to keep my smile in place as I work through it all. Thankfully Brandon can see there’s something very wrong with me, so he tones down all those annoying little habits. But once the meeting is done—I bolt for my office again as soon as I see the participants heading back into the lobby—he comes to see me.
“How did it go?” he asks gently, poking his head around the door. “The meeting?”
“Disastrous.”
“I’m sure it—” But before he can finish, he’s pushed aside as Magda storms into the room.
“Ollie,” she says firmly, and Brandon evaporates.
