Page 34 of Naz & Roz

Her father stiffened a bit. “Not in the mood to play the piano. That’s what you mean.”

Roz nodded. “I guess, yeah.”

“Is that maybe because you’ve been doing practically everything else with a certain someone instead of working on this piece for the audition? Maybe a certain someone is taking up a little too much space in your mind, and your music is taking a hit, Roz.”

Jesus.

“Maybe that’s fine, too,” Roz countered.

“Is it?” her father asked, his tone never changing from that same calm tone. He always used that on her when he thought she was doing something wrong, but didn’t want to come right out and say so. Roz wasn’t stupid. She knew how her father worked. “Is it fine when your dream from the time you were just two years old was to play piano on the biggest stage you could find for anyone and everyone to hear you, Roz? Is it fine if that no longer matters because a boy caught your attention for a moment?”

Ouch.

“I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” she snapped.

Zeke arched a brow. Her father was not a loud man. He’d never even yelled at his children as they grew up. But disrespect? No, he never stood for that.

“Try again,” he said, “and with a touch less attitude this time, Rosalynn Katya Puzza.”

Damn.

Full name, too.

“It’s not that it doesn’t matter,” she said quietly, “I just …”

Zeke softened in his posture when his daughter couldn’t come up with the right words to say. He pressed gently with a soft, “What is it?”

“I just want to figure this out.”

“And what is this?”

“Naz,” she said simply.

What he was to her.

Why he made her feel so crazy.

How he could affect her this much.

She needed to understand.

“Do you think maybe because he’s the first boy—”

“You keep calling him a boy, but … he’s definitely not,” Roz said, smiling a little.

Zeke grunted under his breath. “No, he’s certainly a young man. But did you know I was the one who helped his father cut his cord when he was born in their bed because they couldn’t make it to the hospital in time? I was the one who held him while his father helped his mother as they waited for the ambulance, Rosalynn. He may be a young man to you, but he will always be the boy I watched grow up, and I won’t apologize for it, either.”

“So, he only becomes a man when he gets a little too close to me, and you get stuck in your feelings about it, right?”

Her father didn’t even try to hide it. “I’m working on it. I also see my very driven and talented daughter being entirely messed up over him … putting her ambitions and goals to the sidelines because he’s forefront and center. And that makes me pause, too.”

“Can’t I just figure it out?” she asked. “It’s not because he’s the first guy I noticed. It’s because he’s him, Daddy.”

Zeke tilted his head to the side a bit. “And you’re you, Roz.”

“What?”

“Never forget that you are you. And you are as equally as amazing as he is, but for entirely different reasons. Don’t lose what makes you amazing because you’re so caught up in what makes him amazing to you.”

Roz wanted to respond, but her phone rang with a familiar tune. One she put for Naz’s phone number. Her father didn’t miss it when he gave her a look, and then turned to leave the room.

“Don’t keep him waiting,” her father murmured. “How else can you practice later if you don’t get him out of your system today, hmm?”

Well, then …