Page 33 of Naz & Roz

And it usually ended the same way with Roz wanting to kiss the man until she could no longer breathe while his hands held her tight, and he was all she could think about or feel. That’s how it always ended.

“It’s … softer,” Kyle said. “The music, I mean. Sexier, even, if I wanted to use that word. Your notes go low and slow. Soft for a moment, and then it lingers in that stanza. You speed it up, but barely. It feels like a heartbeat, doesn’t it? A heart that’s exploding.”

Roz laughed. “You’re looking too deep into it, Kyle. It’s just a few tweaks.”

He wasn’t looking too deep into it, actually, but she didn’t want to tell him that. If she did, then he would ask what brought on the changes. That would lead into Naz, and once again, Kyle would figure out her distraction and pull the fucking plug on her being in New York until the audition.

Nonetheless, Kyle wasn’t wrong. The music had changed. Slight tweaks, but any musician knew that slight tweaks to anything meant something creatively was different for the person writing the music.

Naz was the reason why her music was changing. She felt differently around him. He made her mind light up like nothing else, and her heart did feel like it was about to explode every time he fucking touched her.

How could her music not change when she knew this kind of thing existed?

“Tweaks that absolutely made it better,” Kyle said, “but why is the better question. And why, if you’re making it better with these tweaks are you not feeling it like you usually do, Roz? Are you sure New York is where you want and need to be right now to prepare for this audition?”

“Never been surer,” she lied.

Well, was it a lie?

If she left, then she was going to constantly think about what could have been between her and Naz. She’d be distracted with all the things she left behind. All the things left unsaid.

That felt just as bad as this.

Roz figured she might as well be distracted and happy, than distracted and unhappy.

Kyle sighed loudly on the screen when he realized he wasn’t getting a straight answer from Roz, and she wasn’t talking more than she had to. “You don’t have much longer to get this right, Roz. What if I came down to New York, do you think that would—”

“I would rather take this time alone, Kyle.”

“Fine. Same time tomorrow, then?”

She wanted to say no.

Instead, she muttered, “Same time tomorrow, yep.”

Where else was she going to be?

Apparently, right fucking here.

Roz was still sitting at her piano an hour later when a throat cleared, and drew her attention to the doorway. Her father leaned in, and gave her a smile.

“You seem … distracted,” he noted.

Great.

Back to this again.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just thinking.”

“Mmm, I heard you up here playing. It was good. Did you change a bit of it? Sounds different, dushka.”

She grinned at her father’s use of the Russian word for a term of endearment. He was so far from Russian that it wasn’t even funny. One of the most Italian men she had ever met in her life, but her mother was Russian through and through. Katya’s pet name for Roz lived on—none of the Italian ones seemed to stick.

“It felt like it needed a change,” Roz said. “I could tell it did, but I’m not into it, at the same time.”

“Because of the changes?”

“No. I’m just not in the mood.”