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A long moment passes, and then there’s a quiet ba-dum-tss, followed by a quietly hissed, “Stop it.”
“You stop it,” Waylon throws back, not bothering to hide his laughter. “We’re just having fun, Mason, right?” he says tauntingly.
I twist my head to glare at him. He’s climbing out from behind the drum set, sticks tucked between his hand. Rolling his eyes, he plops over next to Izzy on the couch against the wall. “You need to lighten up, dude.”
“Don’t you have somewhere better to be?”
“Mason!” Izzy admonishes at the same time Waylon throws an arm around her.
“R’lax,” he drawls. “He’s just salty because he keeps fucking up the second chord progression.”
I frown. “I’m not—What?”
He waves his sticks and begins to explain what a chord progression is, and I’m pretty sure there’s steam coming out of my ears.
“I’m going to throw this piano at your head,” I say flatly.
Izzy’s stifling a giggle next to him, and nudges him. “Stop it. You know what he meant.”
Waylon’s words break off with a dramatic sigh. “Okay, okay.” He taps Izzy’s shoulder, and says, “Up,” and they both push to a stand.
“Can I?” he says, gesturing at the bench.
I scoot off it, and sweep my arms grandly, flashing him a sharp smile. “As if I have a choice.”
He bows in mock-thanks, taking the bench and placing his hands with perfect posture, like he’s the one who’s been playing and studying and practicing his ass off for years, rather having just picked it up on a whim only a few years ago. And treated it as such ever since. As a whim.
“I know this might sound crazy to you, but mistakes do happen.” And then he plays through the Schubert piece, ensuring to trip up exactly where I did…and how I did…
Because he learns by ear.
Only when he fucks it up, he doesn’t stop and throw a hissy fit. He just seamlessly moves past it, as if the slip-up never happened.
I stare at him long and hard.
He senses me and cuts me a sideways look as he continues to play. “Well look at that. I didn’t combust into dust. The ceiling didn’t collapse on me. The world’s still spinning. All is as it should be.”
A muffled giggle sounds from behind me, and my face heats.
I grit my teeth, glaring at the asshole smirking away as his fingers fly across the keys. “You done?”
Rolling his eyes, he keeps playing, as if he can’t not. His fingers easily manipulate the keys, moving seamlessly from one pitch to the next, adding his own flare to the piece, before wrapping it up with all the gusto in the world.
When the final note rings out, he flashes me a grin, and releases the keys. With a flourishing wave of his hand and tip of his head, he bows. I don’t fucking clap.
God, I really hate him sometimes.
Still, that itch inside me—the one that so desperately envies his talent, aching to be able to play like he does—has me asking, “How?”
He shrugs. He knows what I mean. It’s far from the first time he’s been asked this. By me. By Izzy and her parents. By Madam Elise who practically cried when he turned down private lessons and talks of competing—said he couldn’t afford it, nor did he want to play piano in any serious way to begin with.
“I think I’m going to learn guitar,” he’d insisted instead, low-key pissing me off. Because of course he had to show me up on that too. Not that it took much effort, seeing as I rarely take the time to practice.
And when he seemingly got bored of that in a matter of weeks, he moved on to violin, then cello—instruments Izzy’s mom managed to borrow from the high school where she’s been teaching music theory the last couple years.
Burning through every instrument he could get his hands on—barring woodwinds and brass, which he had no interest in even trying; he prefers to use his hands not his lungs—he decided to give drums a whirl.
And what do you know, it’s the one instrument he actually somewhat struggles with and actually has to take his time learning. Mostly through YouTube videos and tutorials.
