Nocturne(26)

It was as I had told Robert; You must be willing to sacrifice everything for the music. This wasn’t a hobby. This wasn’t a nice job in an insurance company. This was an artistic calling that required the utmost passion, commitment and sacrifice.

My mind refocused on the music. The smooth movement of the bow, the change of strings, the melody, which picked up and wrapped my mind in the nearest thing to ecstasy I’d ever experienced. My vibrato was just slightly off, and I corrected. This was the worst I’d played in a long time. The sound seemed to me choppy and forced. I frowned in frustration.

Only once before had I allowed emotional and relationship considerations to affect my music. My sophomore year at the conservatory, I’d become involved with a young lady, a violinist. Mariana Passos. Brazilian. Her English was poor, but the music … that was something else entirely. She’d come to the United States on a student visa strictly to attend the New England Conservatory. Lithe, graceful, beautiful. In far too many ways, Savannah reminded me of her. But such things rarely work out. We had a tempestuous breakup, messy beyond measure. I was heartbroken and nearly failed two of my classes that semester.

I’d promised myself I’d never let go again. Not like that. Not in a way that could endanger my career, my life.

As I played, my arms and body unconsciously moved through the measures, and my mind continued down this course to the only clear conclusion. I’d been wrong about Savannah’s grade, and I would correct that. But I’d been right about something else. Savannah wasn’t just a gifted musician. She wasn’t just a beautiful girl. She wasn’t just a brilliant mind. For me, she represented much more than those things. She represented a distraction. If I forced myself to be honest, I was … fascinated with her. Attracted beyond measure.

I wanted her.

Savannah Marshall was dangerous.





Savannah


I was intentionally almost late to Music Theory on Wednesday, waiting until the last second, in hopes of avoiding an awkward discussion with either Nathan or Gregory. Mr. Fitzgerald. I couldn’t look at Nathan right now—the silence between us was cumbersome and I couldn’t stare it down just yet. And Gregory just …

I was tired from tossing and turning two nights in a row. I was cranky. And the last thing I wanted was a run-in with either one of them. I needed time to think. I needed time to process. I needed to be left alone.

Unfortunately, Tuesday I’d been full up. My academic classes are Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Tuesday and Thursday are reserved for one-on-one flute lessons, followed by hours of practice and rehearsals. On top of that, several of my professors, including Mr. Gregory Fitzgerald, had assigned a metric ton of crap on our first day back from Spring Break.

I checked my watch. One minute for class to start. Then I looked both ways up and down the hall to make sure Nathan wasn’t lurking anywhere in order to avoid an awkward confrontation in front of our class. With any luck he was already in the classroom. I darted across the hall, through the door, and slammed right into Gregory, who was reaching for the door.

He grunted, and I gasped, nearly dropping my bag. I backed away a foot, then said, “Sorry,” and darted around him, my eyes going to the floor.

Not-Gay Nathan was in the usual spot where we normally sat. I made my way to the opposite side of the room and slid into an unused seat.

Gregory slammed the door shut unnecessarily hard, then marched to the front of the room, immediately launching into the depths of a lecture on the mathematical relationship between different keys. Which was interesting if you were building a bridge, I guess, but only served to irritate me now. It’s not that I didn’t care about or love the fundamentals of music. It’s that I was tired of his implication that this was all there was to it.

Usually I was fully engaged in this class. Combative even. But today my attention drifted. My eyes on Gregory Fitzgerald. My professor. I didn’t like his attitude. I didn’t like his haughty superiority, his snobbishness, or his insistence that music was nothing more than an engineering construct. I mean, sure, he was incredible with his cello. I could still close my eyes and hear him playing. I’d been to the symphony twice this semester. I’d told myself I was just soaking in more music. But I was disturbed, then and now, by just how much attention I’d paid during Gregory’s impassioned, tension-filled solos.

What kind of man produced such incredibly emotional music, then denied that emotion had anything to do with it?

It didn’t hurt that he was incredibly attractive.

When he walked in front of the classroom, his motions were economical, but filled with an inner tension that arrested the eyes of everyone in the room. Watching him, I thought that whatever his protestations, inside there was tremendous passion and emotion. Locked away, hidden, only released through the contact of bow and string.

I blinked when I realized, first, that I’d been staring at him, and second, that the entire class had gone silent.

“Miss Marshall?”

“Gregory?”

I said the word. Then I froze. Oh, crap. He’d called on me. For something. And I had no idea what. And then I’d called him by his first name. What the hell was wrong with me? Casting a glance to the side, I noticed the wide-eyes of my classmates judging my error.

“I’m sorry. Mr. Fitzgerald. I got lost in pondering all the wonders of mathematical relationships.” I was trying for sarcastic, but my words came out in a rush, one word stumbling over the next.