Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“That’s not something you suddenly wonder ‘now.’ It’s something you’ve been wondering for a while. Now you only have an audience for it. Or someone who forces you to actually acknowledge it.”
Vic winced—but for some reason, he was smiling. For some reason this…this felt good. As if cutting through the layers of easy lies he told himself might bleed, but what he bled out was infection that needed to be drained. “You really don’t let me get away with anything, do you?”
“Why would you want to get away with things?” Amani challenged. “Why would you want to be so insincere?”
“I don’t know,” Vic murmured, and shook his head, still smiling. “I really don’t.”
Silence stretched between them, as they simply looked at each other. It was Amani who looked away first, reaching up to gather his hair back, silky strands slipping mutinously through his fingers until he finally managed to knot them and clasp them in place with a carved wooden clip he produced from his pocket. With a businesslike, brisk air, he lifted his cello from its case; it was almost larger than he was, yet he handled it capably as he slipped the endpin out, fitted into place, and settled the cello between his legs. The posture he’d lectured Vic on seemed to settle over him naturally, a certain upright straightness and poise that guided the cello just right to lay against his chest. He curled delicate fingers against the neck, and positioned the bow lightly over the strings.
“I want you to just watch, for now,” he said. “Watch my posture. Watch how I interact with the cello. You can’t just saw at it and pluck away, and the way you’re holding yours you’d think it was an acoustic guitar.”
“Ouch. Told you I was out of practice.”
“It shows.” Yet something else showed, too, as Amani shifted his position, a certain tension going through him—ready, expectant, and yet almost…afraid, as well. As if playing the cello frightened him, and Vic couldn’t help but wonder why. And he couldn’t help but admire, too, as Amani breathed in deep, clearly intending to push past it anyway, and said, “This is Brahms, Cello Sonata No. 1. While I lack piano accompaniment, it should still be sufficient.”
Yet still he hesitated, a moment longer—the bow trembling briefly in his fingertips, before it steadied as he closed his eyes, composed himself…and sent the bow sailing across the strings in a quivering glide, and called forth a voice like pure passion itself.
Amani made the Stradivarius sob in throaty, groaning notes, deep and sonorous and echoing to the high-ceilinged rafters of the penthouse, taking the cavernous space and filling it with haunting sound at once mournful and joyous. He hardly seemed to need to touch the cello to make it cry out for him, his skilled, caressing fingers playing over the strings and fingerboard, bow rising and falling in a lyrical lilt, until the cello seemed to have not one, but two voices, one weeping, one whispering, coming together in a harmony that created push and pull between them, this lament at once joyous and sorrowful.
Every note seemed to catch up Vic’s breaths and tease them from his chest until he couldn’t hold on to them, because they belonged to this music—part of it, sweeping through each breathy note, leaving him shuddering and struggling to breathe and yet willing to give up every panting gasp if it would fuel this melody as air fueled flame. He felt it with his entire body, quivering and vibrating down to his bones, working its way into the beat of his heart until he became tempo, became time, became part of it with the thunder of his blood. And throughout it all…
Amani was a portrait of rapture, that careful, detached distance melting away to leave only grace, beauty, and what Vic could only call pure and devoted love.
And Vic couldn’t look away, when in this moment Amani was as beautiful as the music he called forth from strings and fingertips and echoing wood.
When the melody slowly trailed off into a soft and shivering whisper, then nothing, the silence that fell was a reverent hush. Amani sucked in a sharp breath, hitching in his throat like a repressed cry, his eyes glistening damp, and he gripped tighter to the Stradivarius for a moment before loosening his hold, bowing his head. Vic realized he was staring and pulled from his trance, looking away to give Amani a moment to pull himself together, reaching up to rub at the ache in his own chest.
“You’re amazing,” he murmured, his voice rough, his throat tight. “I don’t…I don’t have words.”
“I’m out of practice,” Amani said, almost inaudible, husky. “And your posture is still terrible.”
Vic managed to crack a smile, almost a chuckle, but it eased some of the stifling heaviness left behind in the wake of things. “I…yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” He carefully set his own cello aside, lifting it onto the stand. “I started shadowing my father at the company my freshman year in uni. With that and studying, I didn’t have time for practice. Or for much else. Boarding school wasn’t much better, before that.”