No. Not if it means we can’t be like this anymore.“I guess,” she said. “I’ll be glad to be back in my own apartment, but I wouldn’t mind if there was more than a week before classes started.”
He nodded. “So next year I should schedule a longer break between the end of the program and the start of the semester?”
She shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t you like to put off the start of classes for a bit?”
He hummed in agreement. “What class are you most looking forward to?”
She squirmed in her seat. She didn’t want to talk about classes. She didn’t want to have this formal conversation with her professor. She wanted more time with the man from the rooftop.
“Perhaps the Dickens seminar? Or the course on Gothic lit?” he pressed. Her eyes went wide as the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smirk. “For a music major, you take an awful lot of literature classes,” he teased.
“For a conductor, you’re awfully familiar with my transcript, maestro,” she teased back, trying to suppress the reckless flurry of butterflies in her stomach. “I declared a double major just before the end of last term,” she said carefully, glancing between where she pulled on her fingers in her lap and his steady gaze. “I know Dr. Warren doesn’t like when –”
“Screw Bill,” he scoffed and she bit her lip to keep from smiling. “It’s your life, your education – not his. You certainly have the credits for it.”
Min stared at her fingers, mulling over what he’d said, beaming at the approval. She wanted to hear so much more in those words than academic encouragement.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked, before looking back up at him.
He arched an eyebrow. “Anything.”
“How did you know you wanted to do this for the rest of your life?”
He blew out a breath, his lips puffing out with the expelled air. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. For a while I thought I would be a cellist, but as soon as I held a baton…” He smiled at the memory. “I don’t know that there was ever any other option for me. Why do you ask?”
“I just wonder…” He waited patiently until she was ready to go on.Don’t say too much. Don’t be ungrateful.“I wonder if it’s worth it. How do you know when one more compromise means you’ll lose yourself?”
His piercing grey blue eyes clouded with concern and confusion. Her face flushed.Too far. Dammit.
“It is a very challenging path,” he said slowly, like he was picking his way across a minefield.
“I’m not afraid of the challenge.” Dr. Jacobs nodded, a hint of pride in the way his lips turned up, just enough to make Min’s stomach turn in knots. He didn’t know that so often lately she felt herself going through the motions. Except for when she sang with him. She dropped her eyes and shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to become someone I’m not – someone I don’t want to be.”
“And who do you want to be?”
She shouldn’t have started this conversation. But ever since she’d run into him before the performance, when he seemed tormented by the compromises he was being asked to make, she couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways she’d given herself away already in her quest to see this dream through. What if the dream was becoming a nightmare? When should she cut her losses? She wasn’t sure anymore.
“Someone with control over my own life,” she said, a blush rising in her cheeks. “Maybe a teacher? Like my mother.” Was she trying to convince him or herself? She wasn’t sure. “I would get my master’s in English Education and teach. It’s a stable career.”
“And that’s what you really want?” he asked. “To be an English teacher?”
She narrowed her eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with –”
“I didn’t say there was. I just asked if that is what you truly want.”
She swallowed hard. She didn’t know anymore. She had thought it was what we wanted, and then everything she thought she knew about herself was flipped on its head. She was a rule follower. A planner. And she’d had a perfectly good plan, one that kept her safe and in control. Why then did that plan all of a sudden feel so much… less?
“I hope you’re not thinking of giving up music altogether, Min. You are incredibly talented. I mean that.” He was so earnest, his eyes so kind and eager for her to believe him.
She wanted to believe him.
But talent wasn’t the issue.
“And while you’re weighing your options, keep Burnett in mind. I know the graduate program is new, but I intend to make it the best program in the country. You could be part of helping shape that.”
“Now you sound like Jeff,” she said with a smile.
“Good man. I knew I liked him,” Dr. Jacobs laughed.
