Chapter Five
Jonathan
The waitress leaves with our menus and food order, and Gabby watches her walk away. I clear my throat and reach for my water, not sure where to go with this. I wanted to see her again, talk to her again, but now that I’m here with her, awkwardness has crept between us. Things were so easy the other night. But now? We’re both silent.
After clearing my throat again, she looks at me, and I offer a small smile. “So how are classes going?”
She stares at me for a beat, something like disappointment flashing across her face. “Good. Eight o’clock theory classes every morning is rough, though. Sight Singing and Ear Training is harder than I expected, but the rest of my schedule is good. I really like my violin teacher, and the orchestra conductor is great.”
“What’s hard about Sight Singing and Ear Training?” She mentioned that class last week, but I didn’t ask more about it. I didn’t know that was a thing. Or what the class could possibly be, based on the title.
She gives me a look like I must be crazy. “Have you ever been given a piece of music and have to sing it correctly on sight? Without having anyone play the melody for you or anything like that? You just have to read it and sing it and be good. In front of the whole class.”
I freeze with my glass of water halfway to my mouth. “That sounds horrifying. And potentially humiliating.”
“Right?” She punctuates her statement by pointing her finger at me. “We’re all in the same boat in there, so the first couple of times you have to sing it’s awful, but after that it’s not so bad. But the professor—oh my God.”
She shakes her head in dismay as she contemplates her professor, which of course only makes me want her to keep talking. Her expressions are priceless, and I can’t get enough of her slight accent, the way she draws out the vowels of certain words and flattens others. The waitress brings our food in that pause, and Gabby picks up her burger without hesitation. I have to wait a few minutes before I can prompt her to continue.
“So what about your professor?”
She rolls her eyes again and holds her fingers in front of her mouth as she finishes chewing, her dark eyes bright with suppressed laughter. “Oh my God. Dr. Lolo. He has perfect pitch, which makes him the absolute worst to teach that class.”
“Really?” I reach for a fry, my eyebrows crinkled together. “I’d think that would be a good thing.”
She shakes her head, wiping her mouth with her napkin and settling it back in her lap. “No. It’s awful. He doesn’t get how difficult it is to sight sing when you’ve never had to do something like that before. He stands up there and says, ‘It’s so easy. Sol-ti-re-fa. Fa-la-do. So easy!’” She pitches her voice higher when she imitates her professor, and I chuckle at her impression. Then she covers her face with her hands. “And the chord and melody dictation. It’s the worst.”
She lets out a groan that sends my blood rushing south. Images of other things I could do to get her to make that sound flicker through my mind. I shift in my seat, my jeans feeling tighter than they did a second ago. Dammit. I just wanted to talk to her again. I’d convinced myself that that was all I wanted. To hang out. Be friends. I can’t talk to anyone about music the way we did at the coffee shop. But she’s still a baby. I need to keep my thoughts about her G-rated.
I clear my throat, hoping I still sound casual and friendly. “What’s chord and melody dictation?”
She takes another big bite of her burger and lets out another stifled moan. Sweet Jesus, those sounds are going to be the death of me. “Chord dictation is where he plays a series of chords on the piano and we have to write down what they are. Melody dictation is the same idea, but it’s a melody instead of a chord progression. By the end of class, the notes all blend together and just sound like musical soup.”
A smirk comes to my face at her description, and she narrows her eyes at me.
“It’s not funny. It’s horrible. And I suck at that class.”
“Seriously? Because I heard you playing earlier, and it didn’t sound out of tune or anything to me.”
Her eyes drop and a crooked smile comes to her face. “You’re sweet,” is all she says, and she won’t look at me. She wouldn’t take the same compliment before either. Hmm.
I open my mouth to say something about that, but her eyes snap to mine and she cuts in before I can get a word out. “So what were you doing in the music building? I’ve never seen you there before.”
She has a knowing look on her face, like she’s waiting for me to confirm something for her. I shrug. “Working on a song. My roommate was getting annoyed with me for playing the same thing over and over, so I decided to get out of the house and try somewhere new. See if that helped shake anything loose.” That much is true, at least, if not the whole story. But I’m not going to admit that I wouldn’t have been there if I wasn’t trying to run into her again.
Yeah, I could’ve called her or texted her. I still have her number, even though I tried to make myself delete it. Trying to be the better man and leave her alone. But I can’t. I started using the practice rooms and figured I’d let fate decide if I saw her again.
Nodding, she bites the inside of her cheek and pokes a french fry in a pool of ketchup. “And did it?”
“Maybe. Something’s not quite right with it, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what it is exactly. I wish I had someone to bounce it off of. See if a fresh perspective can help me find out what’s missing.”
Her gaze sharpens, and she’s searching my face, like she’s looking for some hint that I’m not being honest. Why that statement would provoke that response, I can’t guess. So I return her look, keeping my own expression open as I finish eating.
She drops her eyes back to her own plate and picks up the rest of her burger. The sharpness is gone when she meets my eyes again. “So we’ve talked all about my classes. How about you? Lots of hard stuff your senior year? Or did you save the easy gen eds for last?”
I chuckle, watching her finish her food. “It’s a mix. I’m taking a PE class this semester, which is pretty easy, and a nice break. But I have a few upper level English classes, like Literary Criticism and Victorian Literature.”
She nods. “That’s right. You had that Dickens novel at the coffee shop.”
The conversation stays on my class load while she finishes her burger, and she nods and giggles at my jokes. I could get used to making her laugh.
The waitress asks if we want dessert, and we both say no. When she brings the check, I wave off Gabby’s attempt to split the bill, which makes her watch me with that sharpened gaze again, like she’s trying to figure me out.
That’ll be hard to do, because I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here either. I was just supposed to talk to her again. Taking her out to dinner was a spur of the moment decision. She was about to leave, and I had to do something to get her to talk to me. And I’ve had my fill of eating in the cafeteria the first two years I was at Marycliff. If she’d insisted, I would’ve joined her anyway, but I was glad she agreed to come out with me.
She’s quiet on the way to the car, like she’s thinking, and when we get in the car, she’s biting her lip and fiddling with the strap on her backpack. Part of me wants to ask what she’s thinking about, especially since her silence is such a contrast to her usual animated conversation. But I let it go, focusing instead on navigating through downtown to get back to campus.
About halfway back, we’re stopped at a light when she looks at me. “If you want, I’ll listen to your song that you’re working on.”
“What?”
She lets out a sigh. “Never mind. If you don’t want to play it for me, that’s fine. You just said you wished you could get someone else’s opinion. So I thought … But—“
“No! I mean yes.” Christ, I sound like a moron, but I don’t want her to keep backing off, so I jump in. I let out a breath, pulling away from the light when it turns green. “I’m sorry. I’d love to get your opinion. I was just confused at first because my mind was somewhere else.” Like on how pink her lips look when she bites them like that.
She gives me a smile. “Great. Okay. Well, just let me know when and where, and I’ll be there.”
“Perfect.” I return her smile.
I pull into the parking lot in front of her dorm and put my car in park. “I’ll text you later to figure out when you can come listen to my song.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I see a flicker of uncertainty before her expression clears, and she gives me a small smile. “Sounds good. I’ll talk to you later.”
And with that, she gets out of the car, giving me a little wave after closing the door. I wave back, watching her sling her backpack over one shoulder and head for the door, staring after her until she gets inside.
My car feels quieter, emptier on the drive back to my house. Like she took all the life and energy out of my world when I dropped her off. Dammit. I need to be careful how much time I spend with her, or this could get out of hand.