Page 59 of Naz & Roz

“Mmm, yes. A young man, your parents said. Nazio, I believe his name is.” Kyle cleared his throat, and waved a hand. “Could you two give us a few minutes, so I can speak with Rosalynn in private. I don’t think this needs to be a public conversation.”

Her parents didn’t even need to be asked again. Despite the fact that Kyle had a good decade and a little more on her in years, when it came to her music, her parents always deferred to him to make the right choice. Roz didn’t blame them at all. Since she had started to be mentored under Kyle, nothing about music was the same to her. It wasn’t just about making a beautiful thing, but living within the beautiful thing she created. He made her a better pianist.

The best, maybe.

So why didn’t she feel like it?

“The muse comes and goes, Roz,” Kyle murmured when they were alone, “and sometimes, our muse changes when we don’t expect it to. We look for the old muse expecting it to still be there, but it’s changed. It’s something new. Someone new. It can take us a while to figure it out because we creatives … well, we’re a whole other breed of monsters, Roz. We don’t like change, and when something in our comfortable medium changes, suddenly the whole world is coming to an end.”

Her head snapped up, and she found her mentor was looking at her in that soft way of his. Like she was a little girl just learning how to walk, and he was going to help her every step of the way.

Kyle nodded. “And sometimes, our world coming to an end around us feels like being unable to play, or think. It could be wanting to do anything else but what we love the most. It can be a lot of things, and nothing at all at the same time. I wish you would have told me about the young man. I might have been able to explain this to you sooner, and we could have avoided these last couple of months, hmm?”

“Are you saying—”

“If your muse changed,” Kyle said, “perhaps you just thought you lost it?”

“I’m not ready.”

“You’re ready. You’re just scared.”

She was.

She was terrified.

It was only partly about the fact she felt like she couldn’t play. It was only a little bit about Naz, and how distracted she was lately. It was a lot about the fact she felt like a goddamn fake. It didn’t matter how many beautiful melodies she created, or how many successes she’d already celebrated in her short, but amazing, career … she was always going to feel like she wasn’t good enough.

She was some seventeen-year-old girl from Nowhere, New York. She didn’t have a whole pedigree of musical talent behind her name like some of the people she was expected to go up against, and despite training her whole life, it still didn’t feel like enough.

She didn’t belong.

“That,” Kyle said, pointing at her face like he could read her mind. “That right there, Roz. I see it. We call that imposter syndrome. Creatives all over the world feel like this. People at the height of their success feel like this. And it’s okay because it comes and goes, and it doesn’t last forever. But you’re not an imposter. You’re just a girl sitting in front of a piano with a talent to share, and a stage being offered to allow you the chance to do that.”

“I can’t even focus long enough—”

“Then find what does make you focus,” Kyle countered before she could even finish. “You find what does that, and you run with it, but you don’t give in or give up. Are you going to take that chance, or let it go?”

God.

“I don’t feel ready,” she repeated again.

“That’s an excuse, not a reason,” Kyle countered. He drew out four slips of paper from his khakis pocket, and set them to the counter beside him. “Four plane tickets. Mine is online, and I don’t need you to hold onto mine. I didn’t need to buy them—your parents have more than enough money to do that, but I still did. Do you want to know why?”

Roz shrugged.

What difference did it make?

“Because they love you enough to make you comfortable,” he told her. “If you tell them no, they’re going to listen. They’re going to let you stay home, and wonder what if for the rest of your life. I wasn’t put in your life to make you comfortable, or to give a single fuck about your reservations. I was put in front of you to make you work, and succeed.”

Jesus.

“I was put here to challenge you because no one else is going to, Roz,” Kyle said. “And if the audition is what breaks you, then I guess you weren’t meant to do this, were you? But I don’t think it will. They want to see you nail that audition. And so do I. So, do it.”

Roz’s brow furrowed.

She and her parents made three.

“Who’s the fourth one for, then?”

Kyle laughed. “Wouldn’t he like to see you play, too? This … Nazio. I hear he’s brilliant. Color me surprised that you went out and found someone like that. Is he brilliant enough to appreciate your brilliance, too? Or doesn’t he know about the audition, Roz?”

She didn’t speak.

She didn’t have to.

Kyle nodded. “Where is your muse, Roz? It’s always your muse that drives you. Follow the muse.”

In her heart.

Her muse was in her heart.

And in his.