My head dips forward, and I press my brow against the heels of my hands as I let out a heavy sigh.
Then I hear a noise, bare feet on hardwood. I lift my head and find Marigold in the entrance to the hallway, already backing away like she thinks she’s disturbed me. She looks embarrassed when our eyes meet across the half-lit room.
“Sorry.” The apology tumbles out of her mouth, seemingly automatically, presumably before her brain has time to protest that she doesn’t actually have anything to be sorry for, because she’s allowed to be out of bed and wandering the halls at two in the morning if she wants; this is her house, after all.
I pull the headphones down. “It’s fine. Guess I’m not the only one who couldn’t sleep.”
I pat the piano bench, and she tips forward on her feet,hesitating for a brief second. But then she steps forward, coming to settle in at my side. Her form is warm and solid next to mine, the scent of strawberry something—shampoo?—somehow familiar.
She plays a little melody on the piano with one hand, something idle that I recognize from the Schumann sonata she’s been preparing for Stockholm, even muffled and tinny through the headphones around my neck.
“I just want this all to be over,” she confesses. “I used to think I thrived off competition. But not right now. I wish we didn’t have to fight so hard to get recognition.”
I can’t relate to that. My love for music might feel distant these days, but that driving, obsessive force that propels me toward Stockholm and victory overrides it. Winning is the only outcome that matters—proving that I deserve to be here. Owning that stage, the audience, the music itself.
“You already have recognition,” I say.
“Not enough.” The curl of her mouth is wry. Her right hand repeats the Schumann, the same three measures over again.
“What would be enough?”
I’m not sure either of us has an answer for that. She stops playing the sonata, staring down at the keys, but her expression is glazed over, like she doesn’t really see them.
“I don’t know. A record deal? My own Wikipedia page? But it feels like I’m chasing some vanishing horizon, trying to be the best, but I’m not getting rewarded on my own merits, I’m just…”
Her hand clenches into a fist against the piano’s edge, her lips pressed together so tight, they’ve blanched white.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Not rewarded on your own merits?”
She lets out a slow, unsteady breath.
“I suppose I’d better just tell you,” she says eventually. “You’ll find out one way or another.”
Even before she says anything else, my stomach’s wound tight. Whatever is about to come out of her mouth, I already know it can’t be good. “Tell me what?”
She scratches the edge of the piano with her fingertips, like she wants to dig into the wood, scrape the paint under her nails. “I got invited to be a guest performer for the Phil. I’ll be playing Scriabin’s Piano Concerto in F-sharp Minor.”
The knot in my stomach is gone, sliced through by the sudden blade of ice that cuts through my head, my chest, my gut.
Of course.
I should have known.
I should haveknown.Because everything comes easy for Marigold. Because every day of her life, from a chubby baby blinking huge brown eyes at her parents to a child playing her first notes to her admission to Juilliard and then to Parker, Marigold had been marked for greatness.
Or at least for success,I think bitterly, and immediately hate myself for that bitterness. I had thought I was over this by now, after our conversation right after I moved in. The past week living here should have stamped the last of that out, because at this point, I should be well aware that Marigold doesn’t have it as easy as I’d always assumed.
But the envy is still reflexive and white-hot, twisting up from my gut like a live wire.
“Ah. Right. Well, congratulations, then,” I make myself say—because I’m done being that asshole. Because Marigold’s been nothing but nice to me ever since we started practicing for our capstone duet; she’s let me stay at her place and play her beautiful piano. It doesn’t need to be transactional, but maybe it is, a bit.
I owe her.
“I’m really sorry,” she says, her head hanging low, face obscured by a veil of flax-gold hair.
And that’s it. That’s it. Enough.
I shove my envy aside and tilt my body in against hers, bumping our shoulders together. “Hey. Don’t be like that. I’m happy for you. Really.”
