Page 13 of Love & Notes

By six o’clock the building has mostly emptied, the corridors are quiet, and I come here. To this room. This piano. This magnificent sprawling view of New York City.

It’s my time to play what I actually want.

Not the pieces that the curriculum forces down our throats—the carefully selected repertoire designed to demonstrate technical range, flawless technique, and whatever other things Belrose measures and rewards.

Here, in the dark with the Steinway, I don’t play for their marks. I play for myself.

I play Brahms when the mood requires it, or something I’m composing—the piece I have been working on for two years, but can’t seem to finish.

All of it. On my terms.

Just me. No audience and no expectations.

It’s a place where I don’t need to perform as ‘Julian Thorne.’ And a place where I can actually breathe.

The rest of it, I endure. The suffocating atmosphere of a building full of people who are very good at something, and they know it. But jeez, the stuffiness of it. The way they carry themselves through these corridors—it's the type of self-importance of people who have been told they are exceptional most of their lives and think that they are God’s gift.

They should question it.

Not because they aren’t good. Most of the postgraduate music students here are. I’ll give them that. They are technically good in the way that it takes years of sacrifice and obsession. But good is not exceptional, and not one of them seems to understand the difference.

But here in Practice Room C at whatever hour it is, with the city lights fracturing through the floor-to-ceiling glass and my fingers on the ivory keys of the Steinway piano when nobody is watching, I am not the bad boy of Belrose.

I am just a guy who loves music.

The real kind.

The kind that has nothing to do with technique.

I am still seething over this entire situation with Ellise. I can’t quite believe how fast everything went to shit. I mean, come on. Was a harmless reaction really worth all of this? It’s a fucking joke.

I’ve been sitting at the piano bench for fifteen minutes. Outside, the sky is a deep indigo, bleeding into the jagged edges of the Manhattan skyline as I stare out at the city below. The silence is beginning to grate against my nerves.

Bloody hell. Where is she?

She is already pissing me off, and we haven’t even started the practice yet.

I fully expected her to be early, pacing the hallway with her color-coded sheet music and that perfect rigid posture, checking the time every thirty seconds, ready to erupt if I was so much as a minute late. I made sure I was early because of it.

And I am never early for anything.

But I can’t be dealing with another frantic outburst from her today, so I figured it was best to be punctual.

Punctual. Fuck sake, Julian.

My fuse is already non-existent, and if she starts tonight, I might say something stupid enough to get the both of us expelled. I am trying—genuinely trying—to be on my best behaviour, but she is already testing my patience, and she hasn’t even shown up yet.

The hallway remains empty. I’ve gotten up three times to peer through the small glass pane in the door, but she isn’t there. She’s definitely going to be late. The realisation sends a slow, dark smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. Miss Perfect, late. She’s clearly a hell of a lot more rattled by the idea of me than I imagined.

I let my fingers drift across the cold edge of the ivory keys. I press a single, low C-sharp, letting the note vibrate through the empty room.

At precisely six o’clock, the heavy door doesn’t just open, it nearly flies off the hinges, and my peace is instantly shattered.

Here we go.

Ellise doesn’t just walk in, she practically collapses into the room. Her hair is tousled, a few loose strands clinging to her temples, and her skin is flushed a deep pink.

What the hell has she been doing? She is a frantic mess.