He could grab a chair, of course. That might be more... appropriate? But he takes the hint and sits next to her, their sides touching. Heat travels up Lexi’s leg. She feels herself flush.
Concentrate, she tells herself.
‘May I?’ Sam asks, his hand hovering over hers.
‘Of course.’
He takes her thumb, and presses middle C with it. She feels it now, the pressure that’s needed. And also, her thumb is on fire. Whoisthis guy? What are these superpowers?
Middle C echoes out. Lexi feels triumphant. She feels, too, like she wants to lean her full weight against Sam and close her eyes while he plays the piano. But that’s not technically why she’s here.
With her other fingers, she presses down on the next keys. ‘I’m going to guess these are D, E, F, G?’
‘You’re a fast learner.’
‘Thank you.’ She turns to him. He smiles, and she mirrors it. ‘And the black keys?’
‘Those are half tones. C sharp comes between C and D.’
‘Makes sense,’ she says, even though she’s not sure it does. She’s not sure her brain is capable of taking in much information right now. She runs her fingers along each black key. ‘This is so basic, isn’t it? You must think I’m a total idiot.’
‘You’re a beginner,’ he says again. ‘It’s okay to not know things.’
‘Still, though. I bet most people don’t get to adult life not knowing how to read music.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Thank you for taking the time to rescue me from my ignorance,’ she says.
‘You’re welcome,’ Sam says, not unkindly.
‘So what comes after G? Is it H?’
He laughs. He clearly can only take so much. ‘No. Back to A.’
‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to start with A?’ This all seems unnecessarily complicated.
‘I know it seems that way now. But...’
He plays from middle C to E, and his thumb goes under the bridge made by his fingers and all the way through to B and to what Lexi assumes is the next C, his hands moving back towards her. She watches his fingers doing this so naturally and once again has to restrain her overactive brain from thinking about what else those fingers might be able to do.
‘Do you know what that is? The thing I just played?’
‘A... scale?’ Lexi isn’t sure where that came from. She’s glad, though, that she voiced this sensible thought, rather than anything else going on in her brain.
Clearly, neither does Sam. ‘You do know something.’
‘Hey.’ She punches his arm playfully.
‘Ouch,’ he says, rubbing it, though there’s no way it hurts. ‘So C major is the most straightforward scale, because it doesn’t have any sharps or flats. No black keys. That’s why we start there. Whereas other scales...’
Both Sam’s hands fly on the piano. Lexi watches his fingers land on white keys and black keys, in a logical, progressive order, making the same kind of pattern that sounds somehow different each time.
‘Huh,’ she says.
‘Those are all scales, too. They’re just more complicated.’ He turns his head to face her. ‘You look scared, but there’s no need to be. You don’t need to worry about most of those for a long time yet.’
‘Okay.’
