Play It While I Stand Behind You

After six, the practice studio never went fully quiet. Pianos don't. The last light left the windows, the floor lamps turned the room amber, and Nevaeh walked in the way she did now: no knock, black dress, hair still down from campus, already tired in that early-September way.

Two years of lessons had sanded the stiffness off her. She could sit at the bench without asking permission to exist. The piece was another matter. Same two measures. Same left hand that ran when she got nervous. Todd told her what he always told her: the hard parts wouldn't wreck her on a stage. The easy ones would, the second she stopped thinking.

So he offered a different kind of practice. She would play. He would try to pull her out of it. If she could stay inside the line through that, the score she'd been circling for months was hers.

It started as a game. A face. A step too close behind her shoulder. Then it wasn't a game, and she didn't take the confession back: she liked him. She wouldn't have let him do it if she didn't.