“You were always welcome to join us,” Noah said.
“To talk about Philip Glass?” Liv wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“Do you still write?” Maggie asked.
“No,” she said at the same time Noah said, “Yes.”
Callie shot him a look, hoping the severity of her gaze conveyed that it was time for him to stop talking.
“No,” she repeated. “Noah’s the only composer in the group now.”
“It’s a shame,” Mrs. Van Aller said as she assembled another smore. “I remember this one time—oh, it must have been the summer before you started teaching, Noah—I came home from the market and you two were out in the backyard debating chord resolutions. The way you two talked…” She smiled and shook her head, remembering.
Callie remembered that day, too. They’d sat in Adirondack chairs in his mother’s yard and discussed the finer points of music theory. Noah swore one day they’d both be famous composers who broke all the rules and new ones would be named after them. It was one of the first times she’d felt like they’d really connected, like he’d noticed her as more than the neighbor girl who was friends with his sister. It was the conversation that had prompted her to start calling him with her music questions when she was in college, the day that had made her think maybe he wouldn’t mind those calls. Maybe he’d even welcome them.
“Well, that’s when I knew there was something special here,” Mrs. Van Aller continued.
“You did?” Noah asked, his brow furrowed.
“Mmhmm. The same way I knew that these two were going to end up together when Liv called to tell me about their first rehearsal,” she said, gesturing towards Liv and Daemon.
Liv scoffed. “You did not.”
“Of course, I did!” Mrs. Van Aller replied with mock indignation.
As the fire began to wind down and the conversation moved on, a deep ache settled into Callie’s back and shoulders. She’d overdone it, stayed too long in the water with the others because she hadn’t wanted to call it quits before Noah had. In the weightlessness of the ocean, she could forget all the ways her body betrayed her. But now the tightness in her muscles promised she would pay for that decision. She dropped back to reclining on her elbows, but that only intensified the ache in her shoulders. Before long, she lay flat on her back staring at the stars. The others began to gather their things, ready to call it a night, but she didn’t want to move and feel the pain tear through her.
“Are you two coming in?” her mother asked, standing over them as she folded her own blanket into smaller and smaller squares.
“I want to watch the stars for a bit,” Callie said.
Noah glanced at her, then back up at her mother. “I think we’ll stay out a little while longer.”
“Don’t stay up too late,” her mother cautioned. “You need your sleep, Calandria. And you don’t want to catch a chill.” Never mind that it was still in the mid-70s even after the sun had set.
“Noah will make sure Callie’s alright,” Mrs. Van Aller said. She turned to Callie and Noah with a knowing smile as she pulled Callie’s mother away. “You two enjoy your evening.”
The last of their group disappeared into the hotel and Noah flopped down on his back beside her, his hands folded over his chest. After a moment, he turned to look at her, his attention as hot on her skin as the heat from the fire on her other side. “Seems like I’m not the only composer amongst us after all,” he said. She looked at him, confused. “You were humming again.”
“Was I? I didn’t realize.”
“You do it a lot. Always different melodies.” He turned back to look at the stars again. “Always beautiful.”
She didn’t know what to say. The songs that came to her, that apparently she hummed without realizing it, were always there, playing in her head. If she closed her eyes, she could see the piano keys, could almost feel the slight resistance beneath her fingertips as she played. She wondered how long before the songs would be taken from her, too.
“You should write them down,” he said.
“I can’t play anymore.”
“You could write them without playing. You always had a good ear.”
In theory he was right. She could notate the melodies in her head without having to touch a piano, but what was the point? Even if she got them down on paper, no one would ever play them.Shewould never play them.
“My mother has certainly bought into the idea of us being together,” Noah said.
Callie couldn’t decide if this was a better or worse topic, but she appreciated that he knew to change the subject. “Apparently she knew we were meant to be together before we did,” she laughed. “Now if only my mother could get on board.”
“Do you think she’ll come around?”
