Love at First Note (2 page)

I survived Sunbeams with only
a little drool on my leather flats. Ha! Black. No ruination there—a small victory considering how distracted I’d been all through class. The kids could have
tattooed my arms with markers and I wouldn’t have noticed.
For real,
Elliott Hart?

After church, I bypassed dinner at my parents
’ and opted instead
for a quiet afternoon lounging around my apartment, studying my potential neighbor’s YouTube channel. Talk about time well spent.

Lilly got home late from her shift at the hospital and flopped onto the couch, her too-long legs extending all the way to where I sat curled up with my laptop.

I nudged her feet onto the floor. “Can you put those things somewhere else?”

“Listen, little short person. You have no idea what it’s like to deal with limbs this long.” Lilly wiggled her toes, digging them into my leg.

I nudged her away again. “Five foot six does not make me a short person. But those legs
do
make you freakishly tall.”

“Maybe, but they also make me look fabulous in a swimsuit.”

That was no joke. Lilly’s parents were European, her father
from Spain and her mother from France,
but her dad’s genes had definitely won out. She was stunning with her olive skin and shiny black hair. Throw in her supermodel legs? Total knockout. “Fine. You win.” I dropped my laptop onto our coffee table/storage trunk and shifted to make more room for her on the couch.

I hadn’t seen Lilly in what felt like days. Symphony weeks were
like that—so much coming and going and rehearsing that our sched
ules never really meshed.
Her hours were crazy working labor and
delivery at the hospital anyway. When mine were crazy too, we’d go
days without having a conversation.

“Tell your parents I appreciate them giving me your sister’s ticket,” Lilly said from her side of the couch. “I’m happy to pay for my seat like the rest of the common folk, but I’ll always pick free when free’s available.”

“Yeah, Mom said she was glad you could use it. Better than it going to waste.”

“Why didn’t Ava want it? You had a solo. I thought for sure she’d want to be there.”

I frowned. My sixteen-year-old
sister, Ava, nine years my junior, was a musician as well. But she was also determined to follow her own path, and it wasn’t leading her anywhere near her big sister’s performances. “I’d hoped she’d want to, but she had something else going on. I don’t know what.”

Lilly scoffed and tossed her balled-up socks across the room. They bounced toward the kitchen and stopped just shy of the old brick wall I loved so much. The wall didn’t do anything—it was only a half wall, separating the kitchen from the living room, and was completely cosmetic, an upcycled element saved from the house’s original kitchen—b
ut it was funky and fun and added character, even if it did hurt like total craziness when I stubbed my toe against it. “She’s sixteen,” Lilly said. “What could she possibly have going on that’s more important than your concert?”

“No, you’ve got it backwards. She’s sixteen, which means
everything
is more important than my concerts. Besides, stuff with Ava—it’s complicated.”

“No, it’s not complicated. You gave up a lot to move down here. You stuck out your neck for her, and she’s not even giving you the time of day.”

“I didn’t move down here for Ava. And I would never want her thinking I did.” I leaned back into the retro-style Ikea couch I’d moved down from Cleveland—an upgrade from the hand-me-down Lilly had been using before I moved in. “It’s fine. Ava’s just . . . young.”

“Maybe you didn’t move just for her, but you’re here, and you’re trying to help her, and she ought to be taking advantage. Instead she’s completely ignoring you. That’s not just young
; it’s rude.” Lilly had cemented her right to be defensive for my sake back in elementary school when she’d punched Drew Hamilton in the nose for calling me a crazy Mormon; she’d never failed to be my advocate. But we could talk about Ava all night, and it wouldn’t change Ava’s practiced indifference.

My mother insisted it wasn’t personal; it was just her age, her teenage hormones, the stress of high school, blah, blah, blah. But it
felt
personal. Before leaving Ohio, I’d asked one of my former professors at the Cleveland Institute of Music to review a video of Ava. I’d raved about her skill—total truth-telling there; she really
was
talented—and promised he wouldn’t be disappointed if he gave her a shot. He’d agreed—“Only because I have such respect for you, Emma.”—and I didn’t want to disappoint him.

So much for that. He’d
expected the video weeks ago, and Ava couldn’t be bothered.

I reached for my laptop and opened it. “Want to talk about something more fun?”

“Doesn’t look like you’re giving me much of a choice.” Lilly scooted closer, looking over my shoulder as I started a video.

“
So I learned at church today that this guy might be moving in next door.” I tilted the screen so she had a better view. “You remember Elliott Hart? The pianist who won
Talent Hunt
back when we were in high school?”

She scrunched her eyebrows. “Um, yes? I think?” She pointed at the screen. “Is that him?”

I nodded. “He’s pretty big still. Lots of fans on YouTube, and he’s sold something like a billion albums.”

“A billion, huh? That many?”

“Shut up. I don’t know exactly how many. But a lot.”
Out of all of Elliott’s various videos I’d watched that afternoon, I’d chosen to show Lilly the one that had quickly become my favorite. Watching him play reminded me of when
I
played. You could tell he felt his music the same way I felt mine.

“Did he film this video
here?” Lilly asked. “Those look like our mountains.”

I nodded. “Yeah. The comments say it was filmed on the reservation in Cherokee. Apparently he went all out to make sure everything was authentic and approved by the tribe.”

“That’s decent of him.” Lilly leaned in and looked closer. “I
do
remember him. He’s cute. And those eyes are amazing. He’s maybe a little too pretty for me though.”

“
Why? Because he doesn’t have a beard? Just because you like men to look like lumberjacks doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.”

“Haha. So is this all in the name of neighbor research, or are you really into this guy now? His stuff doesn’t sound like the grandma music you usually listen to.”

Grandma music?
I chose to ignore her insult mostly because she wasn’t completely off base. I had always been pretty old school when it came to my musical tastes. It wasn’t that I didn’t like contemporary music. I did. But when it came to the classics, I was a purist, and Elliott clearly wasn’t. Sure, he played bits and pieces of classical stuff but never without mashing it all up with some boy band’s newest top-forty hit.
People loved it; and even I couldn’t deny that what he did, he did extremely well. But why ruin the brilliance of Vivaldi by throwing in eighteen measures of Bruno Mars? It wasn’t even that I didn’t like Bruno. I just didn’t want him messing with Vivaldi.

“I like his original stuff,” I conceded. “Like this one. When he’s just playing his own music straight up, it’s pretty impressive. And it’s not that the mash-ups are bad; it’s just . . . I don’t know. People train really hard to be worthy of the classics, to be good enough to play them precisely as they deserve to be played. Covering songs
people already like, then calling them classical because you throw in four measures of Beethoven, feels like a gimmick.”

“Show me one of his mash-ups.”

I clicked over and changed the video to some conglomeration of Mozart and a pop song I didn’t know. “So this is Mozart right
here,” I pointed out as we listened to the piece. “But here, it morphs
into . . . I don’t know what.”

“Seriously? You don’t know that song? It’s “Dance with Me.” It’s huge right now.”

A few measures more and I recognized the melody. “Oh. I guess I do recognize it. But why do that, you know? I just wanna
listen to Mozart.”

“Yeah, but not everybody wants to listen to Mozart. Maybe
it’s not hard-core classical, but I’d say getting young people to
listen to anything without words is an accomplishment—gimmick or not.” Lilly reached over my arm and clicked on Elliott’s profile picture, this one a little more rugged. “Okay, I see the appeal in this one. He’s definitely nice to look at.”

I looked at the picture and tried to imagine what it would
be like to see Elliott Hart in person. He had a serious face with a strong jaw, dark hair, and deep-set blue eyes. In most of his online
photos, he wasn’t smiling. But there was one on a red carpet
somewhere that was a little more candid, like someone had caught
him in the middle of a great joke. That was the one that made
me nauseated, nerves jumping around my stomach like I was a bounce house at a kid party.

“Yo
, Emma? You okay?” Lilly waved her hand in front of my face. “You look like you’re about to puke.”

I shook my head. “I feel like I’m about to puke. I was just
thinking about what I’m going to say. I’m supposed to go see him
as soon as he moves in . . . to welcome him into the ward.”

A flash of understanding flitted across Lilly’s face, but she shook it off. “Welcome seems
pretty straightforward.”

“Maybe for you. But you know how terrible I am at this.”

She did know—probably better than anybody. After all, she’d been there beside me when I’d thrown up before every high school debate tournament, unable to handle my nerves any other way. She’d seen me flounder and flush and stumble through awkward sentences whenever I’d been put on the spot. Unless I was holding my violin, which somehow kept all the synapses in my brain firing just as they should, I was wholly unreliable as a communicator.

Lilly rolled her eyes. “Don’t psych yourself out. You’ll be fine. Besides, it’s probably not even him.”

“So what if it isn’t? It only has to be someone who’s mildly attractive for me to act like an idiot.” I blew out a frustrated breath. My responsibility to welcome the new guy suddenly felt a little like a death march. Or at least a really bad stomach virus. “Why did I agree to do this?”

“Because
you’re single and human and he’s a guy. This is not rocket science.”

“Actually, I think I’m fine being single.”

“Because then you don’t have to talk to people? Whatever. You’ll be amazing no matter who it is. Have you looked to see if you can find any other Mormon Elliott Harts?”

I grumbled at her casual dismissal of my very serious concerns and pulled up one of the minimized tabs on my laptop.
“I found
three on Facebook that list BYU as their school, but two look already
married and old. The other lives in Denmark, so I’m thinking that probably isn’t him.”

“And your Mormon dating sites?”

“Nothing.”

Lilly grinned. “It’s gotta be him, Em.”

“Or maybe it’s just someone who knows
better than to catalog his life on public social media platforms. Why would
the
Elliott Hart be renting a tiny duplex in West
Asheville?”

“
You’re
renting a tiny duplex in West Asheville.”

“Whatever. It’s not the same thing.”

“Maybe not exactly, but don’t pretend like you weren’t the darling of the classical music scene. You were everyone’s favorite soloist—at the pinnacle of your career. And yet, here you are.”

I tried not to wince at her use of the past tense. She wasn’t trying to be critical, just stating
a fact, but it burned anyway. “The difference is that the general public actually knows who Elliott is. No one cares about classical musicians except other classical musi
cians. Plus, this guy has made serious money. I’m sure he could afford to live somewhere nicer.”

“Lots of people could afford to live somewhere else, but they choose West Asheville because it’s hip and fun. Or maybe he’s just looking to hide out and keep a low profile. If that’s the case, where better to do it than Maple Crescent?”

I didn’t want to tell Lilly her suggestion actually made some sort of sense. Mostly because I didn’t want to admit how much I really,
really
wanted the Elliott Hart moving in next door to be the
Elliott Hart who was finishing the final chords of his Native American–themed original composition on my laptop screen, with just over a million views and 47,000 thumbs up.

“I guess we’ll find out this week.” I closed my laptop and sank back onto the couch.

Headlights flashed through the front window, and we both turned. Lilly walked over to peek through the blinds, then turned to me, wide-eyed.
“Or maybe we’ll find out right now.”

I scrambled onto my feet and stood beside her, looking through
the small gap in the blinds she held open with her fingers. A dark sedan had parked in front of the house. “You’re crazy. It’s just some random car.”