“Have you tried watching the greats perform?” I ask, as gently as I can, although this is like asking an anxious person if they’ve tried meditation. “Maybe it would help toseethe difference.”
The derisive look on his face only intensifies. “Have I tried watching the—do you think I’m a total idiot? I spent half of last nightwatching the greats.Don’t worry; I’m well aware of all the ways I don’t measure up.”
But then he twists away, just for a moment, glaring long and hard at his sheet music, and I see something else. Something I’m pretty sure Jamie doesn’t want me to see.
And the tiniest part of my heart—the part that isn’t frustrated and frankly offended by how much he continues to despise me—breaks.
“You’re still good,” I say, some kind of olive branch. “Really good.”
A burst of air escapes his throat, almost a bitter laugh. “Thanks for the pep talk, Marigold.”
“It’s Goldie, actually.”
He ignores me in favor of gathering his sheet music and sliding off the piano bench. For a second, I think he’s about to stalk right out the door. But instead, he opens his mouth and says: “Isn’t it your turn to play?”
Right. Somehow I’d forgotten, while listening to him play—during this entire…whatever this conversation was supposed to be—that the arrangement goes both ways.
I take his spot on the bench and open my own music. The black notes glare back at me, almost as furiously as Jamie had been a moment before.
But playing erases all that. I forget where I am,whoI am. I forget to be mad at Jamie—or to feel anything except the music as it sweeps through my body and mind.
Maybe this is my problem,I think, as I hit the final notes of the piece and that glorious feeling fades away. I get too lost. I can’t evenremember what mistakes I made, half the time. It means I have no way to evaluate my own performance until someone tells me after, or unless I’ve recorded it. Hard to improve when you can’t tell what you did wrong in the first place.
Jamie is watching me with that same flat expression. I wish I had the capacity to reach inside his brain with searching fingers and diagnose exactly what he’s thinking right now. Is he impressed and trying to hide it? Jealous? Or merely irritated?
“Well?” I say, once the silence has gone on long enough to irritateme,in turn. “What did you think?”
He hesitates, that familiar crease drawing tension between his brows.
Then, at last, he says: “Same as always.”
And he packs up his sheet music and goes, leaving me sitting there wondering what the hell I did to make him hate me so much.
“So, how’s practice going with you and Mr. Snootypants, anyway?” Cessy says that Friday night, crashing back onto my dorm bed and propping her feet up on my pillows.
“Ew,can you not?”
She cackles, like it was just to get a rise out of me, but still moves her feet.
I roll my eyes back at her, but it’s hard to sustain anger at Cessy for long. Even when Itryto fight, it feels like taking advantage of someone so genuine and good that I end up feeling like a worse person just for making her feel bad.
“It’s fine,” I say, although I’m already slumping lower in the desk chair I’ve appropriated instead of a piano bench. More ergonomic. “I wish he’d try a little harder, you know? It’s a bit painful seeing him struggle to connect.”
“Why does he still bother with music if he hates it so much, anyway? Like, I know therapy is expensive, but I can tell him that for free.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Inertia, maybe. Or maybe he’s put so much time and work into it that he feels like he can’t justify quitting now.” I’ve seen that happen before: students who fall out of love with their art drip by drop until they’re drowning in cold air. But instead of escaping, they stay, slowly smothering themselves, because quitting would be worse.
“So do you think he’ll drop out? I mean, Shrishti did.” Cessy’s voice catches a bit on Shrishti’s name, although she rallies fast, jutting her chin forward and setting her lips in a flat line. She and Shrishti have been on and off ever since their first date freshman year; I could set my clock by whether they’re broken up or together again. Cessy presses on: “Maybe she’ll give Jamie a taste of the good life and spare you from having to be in his presence the rest of the year.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s like you just said, though.The rest of the year.We’re seniors. He isn’t going to drop out with one semester left to go. Especially not if he’s going to Stockholm this winter. Like I said, sunk cost fallacy.”
“Sunk costs,” Cessy repeats. “Yeah. I guess I’ve been there. And I knowyouhave. Remember when we were sophomores and you bought some toolbox called the Screw Daddy to organize your screws or whatever because you thought the name was funny? And then you had to go and buy all these screws to put in your Screw Daddy, even though you had nothing you needed to screw?”
“Shut up.”
“Orspeaking of screwing, back when you were sleeping with Alex the costume technology major and you knew you weren’t gonna, like, marry the guy, but you kept fucking him because you’d already put in all the effort for that phallus. Get it? Sunk costphallus-y?”
“I just cringed so hard I think I herniated something.”
