In Harmony (41 page)

Chapter 34

Backstage, with five minutes to go. I was perched on the edge of the same chaise-longue I’d been put on after I fainted, listening to the quartet who were on before us while I waited for Connor to change.

He’d gone out early that morning to pick up his outfit and had been very mysterious about it, hiding it in a suit carrier and insisting on only changing into it at the very last second. I’d gone for my normal, reliable black dress, the same thing I’d worn for every recital since I’d started at Fenbrook. Except this time I’d added the Killer Heels, and hold ups. It wasn’t a big change—I doubted anyone else would even notice. But it was important to
me.

I stood there nervously fingering my cello, slowly turning it around and around in my hands. Then I almost dropped it and a hot flash of panic surged through me as I grabbed it to stop it crashing to the floor.
Okay. No more playing with it.

Then Connor emerged from the toilets.

I’d had a vague idea in my head that he might have traded his usual jeans and t-shirt for a shirt and pants, but he was in a
suit!
A charcoal gray suit, just one shade off black, with a crisp white shirt left open at the collar to reveal tantalizing glimpses of his chest. I gaped. I mean, my mouth actually dropped open. Some men don’t clean up well—put them in a suit and they look imprisoned and uncomfortable. Connor looked like an Irish billionaire.

“Where on earth did you get
that?”
I asked, fingering the fabric.

“I stole it.”

My eyes went wide.

“No, not
really—
Jesus, woman! I left the tags in. I’ll take it back this afternoon.”

I relaxed—a little. “But you still had to buy it! How did you afford it?”

He looked nonchalant.

“Connor, did you spend
every penny we had
on that suit? Do we, in fact, have
no money
until you take it back?”

“Put it this way,” he said. “Don’t spill anything on the suit.”

And I couldn’t help but laugh, because it was so
him.
This is what life would be like with him, I knew—living on a wing and a prayer, one paycheck from disaster. And as long as we were together, that suited me just fine.

A nervous sophomore, who’d been landed with the job of floor-managing the event, put his head around the curtain. “Karen Montfort and Connor Locke?” he asked.

I liked the way that sounded. We nodded.

“You’re on.”

Just as we walked through the curtain, I grabbed Connor’s hand and we walked out like that, hand in hand. Maybe I wanted to make a statement; maybe I was just terrified. But either way, it felt good.

The hall was packed. Seniors who’d be performing later in the day, sitting there nervously fingering their instruments. Juniors who wanted to get a feel for the horror they’d be facing next year. Freshman and sophomores watching boredly, there only because they got the day off class to attend.

And parents. Row after row of proud moms and dads, watching and taking photos and applauding politely for everyone else and in a frenzy of hands for their darlings. And somewhere amongst them, my father, sitting silent and watchful, waiting to see whether his dreams for me would soar to the heavens, stand proudly or be crushed into the mud. Orchestra, graduate or fail.

Or more likely, he wasn’t there at all. He’d never returned my message.

As we approached, a couple of freshmen removed two of the chairs the quartet had used, leaving just the two we’d use in the spotlight. Everything was slick and professional…but then Fenbrook had been doing these recitals for fifty years.

The judging panel sat behind a desk at one end of the stage, out of the glare of the spotlight so that they didn’t distract the audience. It made them look like waiting monsters, ready to devour us.

Professor Harman was there, as he always was. They rotated the other music department representatives, and this year they were Doctor Geisler, who I knew well and Doctor Parks, a woman with frizzy blonde hair who taught some of the contemporary music classes and who couldn’t have been over 35—young, for Fenbrook’s staff.

Next to her was the person I’d been thinking about for four years, though I’d only glimpsed him three times. The scout from the New York Phil. Tall and almost gaunt looking, he had a tendency not to blink. He’d unnerved me even when I’d watched each year from the audience, but standing six feet from him on stage was absolutely terrifying. This was the man I’d needed to impress ever since I was a kid. To him, I was just one student among hundreds, barely a blip on his radar, but to me he was the final gatekeeper on a journey I’d begun when I was six years old. My destiny ended with him, either in an ascent to the clouds or in a plunge off a cliff.

There was one more person sitting behind the desk, someone I’d almost forgotten about. A fragile-looking woman with pale skin and straight brown hair, twirling a pencil around and around her fingers. She seemed a lot more interested in Connor than in me, and I realized she must be this year’s scout from the record label.

I cleared my throat, immediately horrified at how loud the sound was in the silent hall. I’d pleaded with Connor to do this part, but he’d convinced me that I needed to keep building on the success of my presentation, or I’d slip straight back into being scared.

Just play the part. Use the napkin.

Wait: there is no napkin.

I don’t need a napkin.

“Karen Montfort and Connor Locke,” I said, and I liked it even more, saying it myself. “We’ll be playing an original composition for cello and electric guitar.”

Harman glanced at Geisler and I saw the twitch of his eyebrows. He didn’t actually say “
This should be interesting,”
but I could tell he was thinking it and a hot stab of anger flashed down my spine. How dare he?!

We sat down. Every squeak of the chair, every bump of a foot echoed around the huge room. The smell of fresh floor polish hit my nostrils and I felt sick, panic closing in around me. I was going to run off stage and throw up, I was going to run and hide, I was going to—

And then Connor brushed my hand with his, and when I glanced up at him he was giving me a steady, tender gaze that said
you can do this.

I glanced at the audience and immediately wished I hadn’t. I didn’t normally get nervous when performing, only speaking, but this was anything but a normal performance. There were so many faces, so many strangers…and then, on the front row, I saw them. Natasha and Darrell. Clarissa and Neil. Jasmine. Dan. Paul, Erika and Greg from the quartet.

I didn’t know if my father was out there somewhere. But my real family was.

I started to play.

I’d composed the first section when I barely knew Connor, in those awkward first rehearsals when I thought I hated him. The guitar didn’t even come in until one third of the way through and, for a while, as the cello’s velvet tones filled the room, it was just like performing solo. I could have been back in my safe little world, before any of it started.

And then Connor’s guitar joined me, and my whole perception of the way the cello sounded shifted. When its smoothness combined with the guitar’s rough, brutal tones, it became something new…something better. Suddenly, it didn’t sound right
without
the guitar. Every time the guitar broke off, the cello wasn’t solo. It was
alone
.

We moved into the second section, the one Connor had written when we’d first started, sad but with a thread of hope running through it. I hadn’t had any idea, back then, of what he’d been thinking about when he composed it. Now I had a pretty good idea—his own life, his lack of a future, the dyslexia…the only thing I didn’t understand was what the thread of hope represented.

Back then, we hadn’t made any attempt to change how our instruments sounded. We were combining what we knew, trying to join two things that didn’t quite fit. The cello was just a little too timid, too flighty, edgy and nervous as it climbed through the notes, chased by the guitar. The guitar was too confident, too loud, drowning out protest, chasing that slender thread of happiness but always breaking off at the last moment—

Just as we played the final note, it hit me. A sharp, arcing current that started in my brain and slammed straight into my heart.

The thread of hope was
me.

I turned to look at him, open-mouthed, and he seemed to know what I was thinking. He gave me a slow nod.

Someone in the audience started clapping, even though it was only the end of the first pair of sections, and then stopped when they realized they were the only one. I looked round in time to catch Jasmine red-faced, being poked in the ribs by Clarissa and Natasha.

I risked a look at the judges. Harman was dour-faced, while Geisler looked uncertain. Parks was leaning forward as if interested. I didn’t have time to check the scouts because we were launching into the next section.

This was the one I’d written as I got to know Connor, the one that described
him,
or at least the Connor I knew at the time: angry and stubborn, intimidating…and deeply hot. As he played the harmonies with me, it hit me how much he’d changed. Not just the obvious stuff—rehearsing instead of goofing off, writing essays instead of getting drunk. But opening up to me, sharing how scared he was inside, how he doubted his own skill. The Connor I’d unwittingly described in the music, all swagger and attitude, had only ever existed as a shell—but it was the shell that everyone had seen the whole time he’d been at Fenbrook. Every girl he’d slept with, every guy he’d got drunk with…they’d never known the real Connor. Only I did.

We flowed smoothly into the fourth section, the one Connor had written—the one I’d eventually realized was about me. Just as I had, he’d based it on the person he thought he knew. Only he’d got a lot closer than I had, capturing not just my nerves and my shyness but what lay underneath…he’d portrayed it with a slow rhythm that built and built—the mousy librarian with powerful, hidden passions—and I flushed at the idea that he’d thought of me like that, even back then.

We stopped again, a brief pause before the final pair. When I glanced at the judges, Harman had sat back in his chair and Geisler was tapping his pencil on his teeth. I had no idea whether that was good or bad.

This was it, then. A handful of minutes that would decide our future. I looked down at the front row to see Natasha give me a reassuring nod.

I took a deep breath and touched my bow to my strings. There was absolute silence.

It was the section I’d composed after we’d first had sex, the one that was
about
sex, and I knew that I should be embarrassed to be sharing it with everyone…to be sharing
us.
The old Karen would have been, but sitting there on stage with Connor just a few feet from me, our music blending together…all I felt was proud.
Do they know?
I wondered,
do they know I can feel his hands on me, every time I play this part? Do they know this is him licking my breasts? That this, right here, is where he thrust into me for the very first time?
We’d played it so many times that we didn’t need to look at the music. We could gaze into each other’s eyes as my hand moved, as his fingers worked the strings.
Never let this end,
I prayed.
Even if we don’t graduate, I want to always be able to play like this with him.

We moved straight into the final section, the one he’d written. His version of sex, written up on the roof after our second time. Urgent and hard and building and building, those blue-gray eyes sparkling as he stared at me, coaxing me, dragging me with him, higher and higher until our rhythms locked together perfectly, the cello and the guitar becoming one, until there was no melody and no harmony, until we were two equals, playing together.

Forever.

The final flurry of notes came in a rush, the last few bars leaving me breathless. In the seconds of silence that followed, I could hear my own heartbeat very loudly, and then I couldn’t hear anything at all. I’d gone deaf.

I looked across at the judges and Harman was smiling. And then he stood up. Why was he standing up?

I looked around at the audience, and they were all rising to their feet, too. What the—

And then my brain got around to processing the sound, and I realized I hadn’t gone deaf. They were applauding.

A hand clasped mine, our fingers entwining, and Connor drew me to my feet. The applause was like a physical force, pressing in around us as my panic attacks used to. Only this felt nothing but good, like a warm wave you could bathe in. We bowed, and the applause got louder. And then, halfway back on the left-hand side, someone stepped out of their aisle seat so that I could see him better, his hands pounding together so hard they must have hurt.

My father.

Harman spoke briefly to the other judges and they all nodded. Then he said something to us and Connor pulled me close.

“What?” I said stupidly.