Love at First Note Read online

  I hated being late to chamber rehearsal. It always made the violist cranky, but that night, I was already in such a foul mood, I hardly needed her surliness on top of my own. I pointedly ignored her glare when I finally made it into the practice room. Whatever. I was less than ten minutes late. Besides, she was the only one ready to play. No one else was even sitting down. I mumbled a halfhearted hello, then dropped to my knees to pull out my violin.

  “Emma?”

  I looked up. A tall black man had materialized on the other side of the room. No, not just a man. Grayson Harper had materialized on the other side of the room. The chairs set up for our practicing must have obscured my view at first, but there was no hiding him now. He smiled a broad, familiar smile, and my stomach clenched, acting a little like it wanted to crawl out and see everybody. I forced a swallow and took a deep breath, determined not to lose control.

  “Grayson?” I finally squeaked.

  He nodded as he sat down, pulling his cello into position. “It’s good to see you, Emma. I had no idea you’d be here.”

  “No, I . . .” I shook my head. “Me neither.” The longer I sat there, my hands hovering over my violin case like I’d somehow forgotten what I was doing, the more confused I became. Grayson didn’t even live in Asheville. How was he suddenly in my quartet? Quartet. As in four people. We already had four people.

  Plus, this was not the way things were supposed to happen with Grayson. When I saw him again, I was supposed to be living in one of those beautiful modern-but-old houses with a multimillionaire husband and our genetically perfect children. Not bedraggled after a horrible day, wearing running shoes that smelled distinctly of stale alcohol.

  The silence stretched into awkwardness before I finally managed a complete sentence. “So, what . . . How . . . I mean, you’re here?” Okay. Almost a complete sentence.

  Hannah, the grouchy violist, responded with a typical frown. “Bruno’s in Florida. We needed a replacement, and he suggested Grayson. You two know each other?”

  Uh, yeah, we knew each other. As in junior-prom, senior-prom, and every-weekend-in-between knew each other.

  “We played together growing up.” Grayson’s eyes stayed on me as he spoke. It was a slight understatement, but for Hannah, there was no reason to say more. I mean, I could tell her I’d made out with Grayson in every corner of the youth symphony hall, but that might make for an awkward rehearsal.

  In nine years, his appearance hadn’t really changed. He looked a little older, his shoulders broader, and his hair longer, tight curls falling onto his forehead and over the top of his ears. But everything else was the same. His deep, charcoal eyes matched his dark-brown skin, his wide smile bright against the contrast. “Is . . . um.” I tried to focus. There was a reason Grayson was here, and it had something to do with Bruno. “Why is Bruno in Florida? He just . . . left?” I pulled out my violin and slid my sheet music out of my bag.

  “He had to go stay with his granddaughter. I don’t know all the details. Something about his daughter going to China for work and the regular babysitter backing out last minute. He said he tried to call you,” Hannah said. “You didn’t get his message?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been teaching.” I’d heard a voice mail come in halfway through my last lesson, but I never listened to my voice mails anymore. Most people just hung up and sent me a text anyway. Except Bruno. At sixty-three, he still carried a flip phone and probably couldn’t send a text if it meant a million dollars.

  Bruno. Of course. Suddenly Grayson at group rehearsal made sense. Bruno had been his childhood cello teacher. Funny I hadn’t made the connection when I’d joined the group the month before. But, then, I hadn’t thought about Grayson—not really—in years. The way his presence now filled the room, it was hard to imagine how he hadn’t at least crossed my mind once or twice.

  “He says three weeks, but I don’t know,” Caroline added. “The way Bruno talks about Florida, it won’t surprise me if he doesn’t come back at all.”

  I took my seat next to Caroline—the fourth member of our group—and put my music on the stand in front of me. I could feel Grayson’s gaze and sense the questions he likely wanted to ask, but there wasn’t time to catch up. I had already arrived late, and Hannah and Caroline were ready to get started.

  Two hours later—two hours of dismally bad music later—we finally called it a night.

  “It shouldn’t be allowed,” Grayson muttered as he put away his cello. “Music that bad . . .”

  Caroline laughed. “Can we really even call it music?”

  “No complaining from me,” Hannah said. “The bride is paying four hundred extra bucks for us to play her sister’s stuff.”

  “Still.” Grayson snapped his cello case closed. “I feel like I just sold my musical integrity at a flea market.”

  I pulled my phone out of my purse to see if I’d missed anything during rehearsal. There was a text from Lilly. Elliott’s moved in. Sorry you weren’t here. :( He’s really nice. Bought us all pizza to thank us for helping.

  Well, that was awesome. While I had endured an awkward rehearsal playing bad music with my ex-boyfriend, Lilly had been hobnobbing with our famous musician neighbor.

  Fantastic, I thought to myself.

  Grayson lingered by the door while I finished packing up. Once my violin was stowed away, he surprised me with a big hug, equal parts awkward and familiar.

  “I should have done that when you first walked in,” he said. “It really is good to see you.”

  I only managed an awkward smile. Grayson hadn’t just been my teenage boyfriend. He’d basically been my entire high school experience—what little there’d been of it anyway. I’d graduated a couple years early, with special tutors and online schooling making it possible for me to focus more fully on my musical training. Everyone else had treated me like an oddity, calling me crazy for skipping basketball games or parties and dances in favor of rehearsing, but Grayson had never made me feel like my dedication had been anything but normal. Plus, he was a musician too. Maybe his trajectory wasn’t quite the same as mine, but he still understood.

  Our breakup had been inevitable. When he’d headed off to NC State to study engineering, the age difference between us suddenly seemed larger than ever before. It didn’t matter that I was heading to college myself—I was still only sixteen. Our last morning together, we stood in his driveway next to the little Honda Civic he’d bought with money he’d earned teaching guitar lessons to neighborhood kids. The car was weighed down with boxes crammed full of his life, ready to cross county lines and land in Raleigh. I was leaving for Ohio the following weekend.

  I wished out loud we could make the distance work, and he shushed me with gentle reassurances. But we both knew we were at the beginning of our end.

  A few months later, I was glad we’d lost touch. The challenge of matriculating into a college campus weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday provided more than enough of an emotional challenge. Keeping up with a boyfriend would have been a killer. Still, Grayson was my first love. No matter the logic behind our breakup or the amicability of our parting ways, he was still a boy I’d kissed and loved and trusted with my heart. And the surge of emotion his touch stirred up now? The one that kept me standing still and silent in front of him? I didn’t like it. I just wanted to shake it off and head home.

  Instead, I stood there, my heartbeat erratic and wholly unreliable. It was dumb. I was a grown woman—who’d had plenty of experiences and boyfriends to demonstrate just how insignificant high school boyfriends really were. And by plenty, I meant two. Or maybe just one and a half since kissing the associate conductor in Cleveland probably didn’t qualify as an actual full-scale experience.

  “I, um . . . yeah,” I finally stammered. “It’s good to see you too. Unexpected but good. Are you living in Asheville now?”

  Grayson shook his head. “I live in Hendersonville, but I work here in the city. At Deerbourn—it’s an engineering firm downtown. Do you k
now it?”

  “No. That’s great though. Good for you.” I swung my violin over my shoulder and followed Grayson into the parking lot.

  “I saw the article in the paper about you moving back home,” he said. “Concertmaster of the Asheville Symphony. I guess you’ve made the big-time now.” His words weren’t exactly rude, but there was a sharpness to his tone that felt judgmental.

  My eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He held up his hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound critical. I was just surprised. I mean, I kinda understood when you stopped soloing and settled in Cleveland. All that touring couldn’t have been easy. But I wasn’t expecting this kind of move from you. Asheville’s great, but it’s a pretty big step down from Cleveland.”

  I sighed. There might be truth to Grayson’s words, but there was also a lot he didn’t know. He didn’t know my reasons for leaving or my motivations for moving home. And who was he to dog on Asheville Symphony? It was smaller, yes, but it was still a great orchestra.

  “Plans change.” I didn’t even try to smooth the edge out of my voice as I stalked past him toward my car. He’d struck a nerve, and I was happy for him to know it. “I’m happy to be back.”

  “Emma, is it your mom?”

  I spun around to face him, my eyes wide. The question had caught me totally off guard.

  He tilted his head to the side and tugged on his ear. It was a gesture I recognized, which made me feel all weird and unsettled.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  That he’d managed to land on my biggest reason for moving home in less than five minutes of conversation was annoying. But my mother’s rapidly progressing MS wasn’t allowed to be on my list of reasons for moving to Asheville. At least not the list I talked about. If Mom thought I moved home for her, she’d buy me a ticket back to Cleveland and come over and pack my suitcase herself.

  I shrugged. “She has good days and bad. More bad lately, but you know my mom, always wearing a brave face.”

  He stared at me, hard, his eyes looking deeper than I wanted them to look. “Do you want to go get some coffee somewhere? Wait—” He paused and smiled. “Not coffee. Dinner? Maybe some frozen yogurt?”

  I didn’t want to have dinner with my ex-boyfriend. I wanted to go home and casually but completely on purpose run into my new neighbor. Plus, I was bugged by Grayson’s slight. I could handle my family and friends expressing concern over my career choices, but I hadn’t talked to Grayson in nine years. He didn’t have the right to question anything. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Come on. It’s just dinner. If we’re going to play together for the next three weeks, we might as well catch up. I’d like us to be friends again.” A part of me suspected Grayson really just wanted to hear more of why I’d derailed my life plan and landed back in Asheville, but he did have a point. I didn’t want every chamber rehearsal till Bruno’s return marred by awkwardness. “Okay. I guess dinner’s fine.”

  He laughed. “Don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . been a long day.”

  “Come on. Let’s go to Rico’s Taco Truck. I haven’t been there in ages.”

  “It’s not Rico’s anymore. It’s Rosa’s, I think, but word is it’s still just as good.”

  “Then Rosa’s Taco Truck. Come on. What do you say?”

  I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, I guess. It’s on my way home, so yeah. Let’s go get tacos.”

  We sat on a bench just down the sidewalk from the taco truck that for two years had served as our favorite post–symphony rehearsal hangout. We held on to steaming to-go boxes filled with Rosa’s finest: corn tortillas held together with a thick layer of melted cheese, overflowing with onions and cilantro, grilled chicken, and spicy chorizo. I squeezed lime juice on my first taco and took a bite.

  “This”—I nodded my head—“is a taco. Taco Bell does not make tacos.”

  Grayson hummed his agreement in between bites. “Agreed,” he finally said. “I don’t know who Rosa is, but I think I like her better than Rico.”

  A few more bites into our tacos and Grayson put his container down on the bench beside him. “I didn’t mean to sound judgmental, Emma.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “About leaving Cleveland. I’m sorry if I seemed rude.”

  “It’s not a big deal. You’re not the first person to question, but I’m happy here. I’m glad to be back.”

  “Are you playing anywhere else?”

  “Not yet. I plan to, but I’m still trying to figure out how my schedule is going to work. I’m teaching five days a week, and with—” I almost said “with my mom” but stopped short. I spent every Tuesday and Friday morning with Mom, grocery shopping, going to doctor’s appointments, and doing housework, but I didn’t like to talk about it. It was impossible to mention it without people trying to turn my time with her into some grand magnanimous gesture or near-holy sacrifice. But it wasn’t like that. She was my mom, and she needed me. End of discussion. “With other stuff that’s going on, I’m not sure how much I can commit to. There’s an audition for associate concertmaster in Atlanta in a couple of months,” I said. “I am thinking about that one.”

  “Associate? Really?”

  I shot him a look. “I’ll take what’s available. I want to play. I need to stay in Asheville. Maybe it’s not the perfect opportunity, but it’s enough for me right now. I have other reasons for moving back, so this”—I motioned to the city around me—“has to be enough.”

  “Enough?” He shook his head. “That sounds a little like you’re settling.”

  “Prioritizing is different from settling.”

  “It is your mom, isn’t it?” Grayson asked.

  I closed my container and placed it on the sidewalk between my feet. “Can we not talk about this?”

  “I’m not trying to pry. But I do care about your mom. I’m sorry if her health is failing.”

  “Her health isn’t failing; she’s just had a few setbacks.”

  “I’m sorry. Would you tell her I said hello?”

  Mom had always loved Grayson. She liked that we had music in common and had defended him more than once when our nosy neighbor with her archaic beliefs liked to complain about me dating a black guy. Still, she was happy when we broke up. Grayson wasn’t LDS, which precluded him from the perfect little scrapbooks Mom had encouraged me to fill with pictures of temples and butterflies and knights in shiny returned-missionary armor.

  “I’ll tell her,” I said. “So what about you? I wasn’t sure you would even play after high school. But you’re good. You’ve kept it up.”

  “I didn’t at first,” Grayson said. “But I missed it after a while, so I joined a community orchestra in Raleigh that I stayed with all through college. After I moved back home, I joined the symphony in Hendersonville.”

  “If Bruno’s gone three weeks, he’ll probably miss Asheville’s next concert. You want to play in his spot? I’ll vouch for you with the conductor if you want in.”

  “That’d be great. I’d love to if they’ll let me.”

  Huh. “So Asheville is good enough for you, just not good enough for me?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “My star was never destined to shine as bright as yours, Em. You know that as well as I do.”

  I huffed. “And you know I would never put my career over my family.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “I do know that about you.”

  It was hard not to feel like Grayson was throwing me a woeful “too bad your star has dimmed” pity party. A part of me wanted to lay it out there and explain all the reasons I’d walked away from my growing career. But I resisted, mostly because I didn’t need to justify my choices to Grayson but also because I knew if I started down that road, it would be tough not to throw my own dang pity party. What was done was done. Rehashing the why and how of my departure from Cleveland wouldn’t change anything.

  Grayson ate i
n silence for a moment while I picked at my food. I wasn’t annoyed, really. I didn’t think Grayson was trying to be hurtful, but career discussions always left me feeling unsettled.

  When the conversation shifted to high school memories and old friends, the tension in the back of my throat finally started to ease. Talking about the past felt easy, familiar even. We joked; we reminisced. I even managed to eat another taco.

  And it was fine. I enjoyed Grayson’s company, and we had a nice time. But I couldn’t help but wonder: why was I eating tacos with my past instead of eating pizza with my potential (in a perfectly reasonable, not overzealous way) future?

  Chapter 4

  I pushed into my apartment on weak legs to see Lilly and Trav at the kitchen table playing a game of Scrabble. I left my bag on the couch, kicked off Lilly’s old shoes, and went to the fridge for a bottle of water. I dropped my leftover tacos on the table next to Trav. “You want those? They came from Rosa’s.”

  “You went to Rosa’s and had leftovers? How does that even happen?” Trav asked.

  “I ate two of the four. That’s not too bad.”

  Trav opened the carton and wolfed down a taco in two bites, bits of cilantro clinging to his beard.

  “Seriously?” Lilly said. “Did you even chew it? How are you even hungry after eating all of Elliott’s pizza?”

  Trav’s mouth was already full of his second taco. “It’s Rosa’s.”

  Lilly shook her head and tossed him a napkin. “You are a barbarian.” She finally looked my way. “What’s up with you? How was rehearsal?”

  I took a long swig of water. “Bruno’s playing super grandpa in Florida, so he sent one of his old students to fill in for him until he’s back in town.”

  Lilly shifted forward. “Okaaayy . . . you just said that like it should mean something to me, and I got nothing.”

  “The new cellist?” I paused a moment longer, watching Lilly lean so far forward she almost lost her position on her stool. “It’s Grayson Harper.”