“Gummy bears aren’t food.”
“What are they then?”
“An avoidance measure,” Lisa replied evenly. With a sigh, she looped her arm through Bo’s tightly crossed ones. “Just like this,” she added, nodding to Bo’s unmoving feet. “You have to do this, Bo. You’ve tortured yourself enough over this man. See his concert — the concert he wants you to see — and start working through whatever it is you need to work through.”
“I’m scared,” Bo admitted, her voice small, and Lisa looked at her in surprise.
“Why? Of what?”
“Of this being the end,” Bo replied. “Which is silly, isn’t it? Because Max and I . . . we already ended, months and months ago. I just . . .” she sighed. “It just always felt like there would be more. The way we left things . . . it wasn’t great. Terrible, in fact.”
“Oh, Bo.”
“What if Max sent me these tickets as a final goodbye? What if he sent me these tickets just to let me know he’s okay and moving on?” Bo looked at her sister desperately. “What if that’s all this is? What if, after tonight, I have to say goodbye to him in my heart again?”
“I don’t know.” Lisa’s face was unaccountably soft, her eyes thoughtful. “I don’t know what to tell you here, because you’re right, that might be all this is. Max might have sent you the tickets as a final goodbye, and he might have sent you the tickets to show you how well he’s doing. He might even have sent them as a goodwill gesture, Bo. I don’t know. But neither do you, and you aren’t going to know unless you start putting one foot in front of the other and walk into that hall. Face the demon, okay? If it’s a final goodbye, you’ll soon know, and the sooner you know, the sooner you can start exorcising it. But you have to go in there and find out.”
Bo exhaled hard. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the opera house steps and wait for Lisa to collect her when the concert was done. At that moment, she wanted to crawl into her coat and sleep for years and years.
Lisa was right though. She needed to face the demon and start exorcising it from her soul. Shaking her head, Bo gave a deep sigh before moving towards the doors.
“You better buy me a big bag of gummy bears from the concession stand,” she grumbled to Lisa.
“I will,” Lisa agreed, “and then every time you complain tonight, I’ll shove one into your whining gob. Sounds great to me.”
* * *
Lisa was right. The front-row seat tickets Max sent had a better view than the two seats Lisa had purchased, right in the middleof the concert hall. Bo settled into her seat, trying to peer over a tall man in front of her.
“This place is really busy,” she complained, but Lisa only shrugged.
“Well, Maximilian Fitzroy is a big deal. You know he first recorded the Emperor Concerto when he was seventeen? He’s a prodigy, and he’s only played Australia once before.”
Max. A big deal. Bo had known that without really knowing it. Strange, she remembered sitting in Geoffrey’s study, listening to Max play. Looking around her now, she realized that six thousand people had paid hundreds of dollars each to listen to what she had already witnessed so blithely. Six thousand people were here to hear what she had heard so many times before, in a much more intimate setting. Six thousand people were here to see Max, to hear Max.
Six thousand people were here forherMax.
She sighed, shifting in her seat. The stage before them was large, with musicians seated to the left, right and back of a large piano. A large piano Bo had definitely seen before. A large piano Bo had played once herself. A large piano she’d had sex on at least twice. Lisa saw Bo’s look of concentration and leaned towards her.
“All pianists have their preference of piano. Liszt played a Bechstein. Tchaikovsky used a Steinway. Max Fitzroy prefers to play a—”
“A Yamaha,” Bo finished for her, “and it cost him eighty-five thousand pounds too.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. That’s the same piano he kept at Geoffrey’s. He ships that thing around the world to wherever he happens to be playing. Something about muscle memory.” Bo repressed a blush at the thought of how well Max had playedher; how hismuscle memory of her body brought her all kinds of pleasure. She gave Lisa a sideways look. “He let me play it once too.”
“You’ve played that piano?” Lisa looked amazed.
“Yes. I’ve also had sex on it.”
Lisa’s look of amazement quickly turned to one of disgust. “Give me a fucking gummy bear. You can’t say things like that in the Sydney Opera House, for Christ’s sake. Dame Joan Sutherland once sang here.”
Bo hid a grin, looking back to the stage. “The other musicians are all ready, but Max isn’t there yet.”
“He’ll come out with the conductor,” Lisa remarked through a mouth full of gelatine. “He’ll shake hands with the concertmaster, who’s the lead violinist, bow to the conductor and then bow to us. Then he’ll sit at the piano and wait for the conductor to begin.”
“He’ll come out with the conductor?”
