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I look at the piano.
Is that why I love it so much? Because I have to work harder for it?
If that’s the case, then that means I love it more than Waylon and Izzy combined. After all, out of the three of us, I’m the least skilled.
Bitterness rises at the reminder.
“I just listen,” Waylon says, drawing me out of my thoughts, and there’s a gentleness to his tone that isn’t usually there.
Our gazes meet, and he smiles thinly, pointedly. “And I feel it. I don’t know how it works.” He presses a hand to his chest, over his heart. “I just…feel it, and it all falls into place.”
I knit my brow.
Clearing his throat, he looks away, his cheeks darkening. “So, uh, yeah, maybe…maybe just stop trying so hard to get it perfect, and go with what feels right instead. It’s music, not brain surgery. No one’s gonna bleed out if you fuck up here and there.”
He sighs, pushing away from the instrument and standing up. Meeting my gaze, he says knowingly, “At the rate you’re going, you’ll never see the end of this song. And while, personally, I don’t think you’re missing anything that great—this song is boring as fuck—” I roll my eyes. “It’s the principle of it.”
“He’s not wrong,” Izzy says gently, her voice coming from right next to me.
I glance to my side. I didn’t hear her walk over.
She smiles, and drags her gaze to the piano, blowing out a breath as she approaches it. Taking a seat on the bench, she slides over to make room for me, gesturing for me to sit, and arches a brow. “‘Find what you love and let it kill you.’”
Waylon thumps a beat from where he’s back behind his drums, and says, “Intense. Love it.”
“Who said that one?” I murmur, a smile teasing my lips, already knowing the answer thanks to Jeremy.
Poetry is more his thing after all—something he got into last year, when he started homeschooling again. But lately Izzy’s been taking an interest too, borrowing works from his room that I’ll randomly find scattered around the house, knowing they’re there because of her, not him.
He’s very protective and possessive of things, unlike Izzy, who will leave sheet music floating in her wake from room to room. Not that he’s any more organized than her. He just prefers it contained to his space, whereas Izzy’s a whirlwind, leaving no corner untouched. As if the whole world is hers to leave her mark on.
“Bukowski,” she answers easily, no hesitation.
“Isobel!” Waylon gasps. We turn to look at him.
He makes a scandalized face, pressing a hand to his chest. “I don’t need to know what you’re into.”
A snort bursts out of me, and Izzy snaps her gaze toward me, frowning. “What? I don’t get it.”
Waylon snickers, and I find myself clutching my stomach, shaking my head. “Ignore him,” I barely manage to force out.
I cast a look toward the corner, and Waylon and I share a look. I imagine my face is as red as is his, before we both lose the battle and bust over laughing. Our earlier tension forgotten. Or rather, my tension.
He’s a dick, yeah, but my jealousy and insecurity isn’t fair to him either. He probably senses it, and rather than cower from it, he just weaponizes it instead. Can’t say I blame him. If I had even just a sliver of the innate talent he does, like hell I’d want to hide that. He hides it enough as it is, when it’s not just the three of us.
Maybe that’s why it pisses me off so much…
Izzy shoves me, yanking me back to the present, and grumbles, “I hate you both.”
And then she starts playing, easily slipping into the song I was just struggling with. She plays it perfectly, having mastered this one months ago, and now tries to add a little bit of her own spin, not unlike Waylon did. She rocks and nods, gaze turned upward in that way she does when she’s carving the music into her memory. Feeling it, and gripping hold of it.
That brain of hers…
When it comes to music, I don’t know how it hasn’t exploded.
Where Waylon’s a savant who acts like he couldn’t care less about music, Izzy’s like a little dragon, clutching and collecting every precious note and melody she can get her hands on, like it’s treasure to keep. She stores it all. So many songs she can just play, without sheet music, having memorized…
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to do that.
