Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 621(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
They were okay. Good at best.
“Well?” she said.
“What?”
Bonnie took in a deep breath. “You like classical music, don’t you? By now…after everything, you can admit that to me.” I heard the plea in her voice. A plea for me to just give her this.
Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” poured from the orchestra, the colors rushing through my head like the paint Easton had sloshed onto his canvas. I tried to push them from my head. But sitting here with Bonnie, I found they weren’t going anywhere. She made them fly freer somehow.
“Cromwell—”
“Yes,” I said, exasperated. I sat up straighter. “I like it.” A long breath rushed out of me as I admitted it. “I like it.” The second admission was more to myself than to her.
I looked up at the crowd watching the orchestra, at the musicians on the stage, and felt completely at home. It had been a long time since I’d felt this. And as I stared up at the conductor, I saw myself in his place. Remembered how it felt to be in a tux, hearing the orchestra play your work back to you.
It was like nothing else.
“I haven’t been able to get your music from my head,” Bonnie said, pulling me from the orchestra and my thoughts. I met her eyes and felt my heart sink at the fact she was talking about this. “The few bars you left on the table last week at Jefferson Coffee.” My stomach tightened.
“Cromwell,” she whispered. I was surprised I even heard her voice over the music. But I did. Of course I did.
It was violet blue.
My hands balled into fists. I should have just got up and walked away. Christ knows I’d done it enough before. But I didn’t. I sat there and met her eyes. Bonnie swallowed. “I know you don’t want me mentioning this.” She shook her head. “But it was…” She paused, struggling for words, just as the string section took the lead. I didn’t give a shit about the violins, the cellos, and the double basses right now; I wanted to know what was going to come from her mouth. “I liked it, Cromwell.” She smiled. “More than liked it.” She shook her head. “How did you… Did you just think of that right then on the spot?”
I swallowed and put my hand in my pocket for my cigarette. I pulled it out and lit up. I saw a flash of disappointment from Bonnie, but I was on my feet before she could say anything else to me.
I went to the tree and leaned against the trunk. I only half watched the orchestra. Bonnie held the rest of my attention. Her focus was back on the musicians, but her slim body was slumped. She was dejected. And it had been my reluctance to talk that had made her this way. She chewed on her licorice, but I could see she was no longer lost to the music.
I’d robbed her of that joy.
I thought of how she’d looked when I arrived. She’d been enthralled by the orchestra. I wondered if I’d ever been like that. Just so caught up in it all. Not caring about anything else. Not letting anything else even enter my head while the music played. And I knew I had. Once upon a time. Before it all went wrong and this classical shit became the one thing I wanted to despise.
But as I stood there, letting the nicotine I needed so badly fill my lungs, I knew deep down I never could. For three years I’d been fighting a losing battle.
“It’s what you were born to do, Cromwell. It’s who you were born to be. You have more talent in your little finger than anyone I’ve ever known. Including myself.”
My throat clogged as I heard my dad’s voice in my head. When I looked down at my cigarette, my hand was shaking. I took one last drag, forcing myself to keep my shit together. But the usual stirring of red-hot anger and gutting devastation, so deep I couldn’t breathe, swirled in my stomach, like it did whenever I thought of him. Whenever I heard this music. Whenever I was around Bonnie.
I didn’t know what made her so different.
I threw my cigarette down. I felt like hitting something as the pianist took the solo. But my feet were soldered to the ground. The sounds of the ivories made me listen. Made me watch. But all I saw was me on that stage. Me, performing the one piece I’d never be able to finish. That one piece that had haunted me for too long.
The one I could never see in my head. The colors muted and lost to the dark. The one that made me walk away from my biggest love.
“Cromwell?” Bonnie’s voice cut over the roaring white noise that had filled my head, the piano that was bombarding my brain like the bombs that had rained down on my dad for most of his army life. I shut my eyes, palming my sockets again. A hand wrapped around my wrist. “Cromwell?” Bonnie pulled my arms down. Her big brown eyes were fixed on mine. “Are you okay?”