Roz heard the final notes of the ballad echo into the room, but she didn’t really feel the music. Not like she usually would, anyway. Her mind was otherwise distracted. On something else entirely that didn’t include the shiny top of a piano, and ivory keys under her fingertips. She went through the motions of playing the song because she had to—practice, practice, practice was the mantra—but not because she was really feeling it.
“That’s … better,” she heard Kyle say quietly.
Roz glanced up from the keys of the piano to find the man watching her from the screen of the laptop. She’d been going through this same song—the one she intended to use for the Australia audition—for two hours. He wouldn’t let her play anything else. Not even to warm up her fingers. This was what she needed to play, he said.
Until she felt it in her bones.
Until she could breathe the fucking notes.
Until she thought about nothing else but this.
That was kind of hard to do when Rosalynn’s mind was entirely filled with something else now. She was far too busy lately thinking about Naz, and the next time she was going to get to see him or talk to him instead of playing the piano and preparing for this fucking audition.
And the bigger problem?
It wasn’t a problem for her at all.
She knew she was distracted. She knew her mind wasn’t in the right place. She knew her focus was gone.
She just didn’t see the problem.
Why was it such a bad thing that Roz was learning there were other things in the world to enjoy other than a fucking piano, and making music? Couldn’t she just enjoy this for a while?
“The song is good,” Kyle said again.
Roz sighed. “Thank you.”
As her mother would tell her, always thank someone when they give you a compliment. Even if it’s the very last thing you want to do. Kill them with kindness was her mother’s mantra.
“It’s not the song, though,” her mentor added after a beat of silence, “it’s the person playing it. You, obviously.”
Roz’s jaw clenched, but if Kyle saw it he didn’t say. She didn’t want her irritation to be clear to him, anyway. She didn’t want him figuring out there was something distracting her. His first and last mission at that point would be to remove Roz from the situation. To demand she return back to school, and the rigid structure of dorm life.
And no matter how many times she refused, he would still make it happen. That’s what a good mentor was supposed to do, anyway. Keep her on track, and make sure she was doing what she needed to do to get where she wanted to go with her career. He made the tough decisions, and whether she liked it or not, she would follow his demands.
The last thing Roz wanted right now—or ever—was to be taken away from Naz. Why would she want that when she was just getting to know him really?
Even if it felt like her heart had known him her whole life.
Even if she had known him her whole life …
They were just getting started.
“The person playing it has not yet learned to love it,” Kyle said quietly. “Or, that’s what it looks like to me, Rosalynn. You’re not putting yourself in the music. Why the detachment? You spent months composing this piece. It is your work come to life. These notes should be embedded in your bones, and for whatever reason, you look like a damn robot going through the motions right now. Why?”
Roz shrugged.
It was the best she could offer.
Not good enough for Kyle, though. Roz didn’t need him to say it for her to know. And if he didn’t tell her today, he would soon enough. That was a promise.
When she didn’t speak, Kyle just continued on like nothing was wrong to begin with, saying, “I noticed you changed the third stanza, and a bit of the chorus since the last time we went through it in its entirety.”
Which was last week …
The day before Naz took Roz out to breakfast for the first time. Every day after, he’d shown up at her parents’ house with that bike, his fucking grin, and a promise to do something fun. He never failed in finding something fun for them to do, either.
And it usually ended the same way with Roz wanting to kiss the man until she could no longer breathe while his hands held her tight, and he was all she could think about or feel. That’s how it always ended.
“It’s … softer,” Kyle said. “The music, I mean. Sexier, even, if I wanted to use that word. Your notes go low and slow. Soft for a moment, and then it lingers in that stanza. You speed it up, but barely. It feels like a heartbeat, doesn’t it? A heart that’s exploding.”
Roz laughed. “You’re looking too deep into it, Kyle. It’s just a few tweaks.”
He wasn’t looking too deep into it, actually, but she didn’t want to tell him that. If she did, then he would ask what brought on the changes. That would lead into Naz, and once again, Kyle would figure out her distraction and pull the fucking plug on her being in New York until the audition.
Nonetheless, Kyle wasn’t wrong. The music had changed. Slight tweaks, but any musician knew that slight tweaks to anything meant something creatively was different for the person writing the music.
Naz was the reason why her music was changing. She felt differently around him. He made her mind light up like nothing else, and her heart did feel like it was about to explode every time he fucking touched her.
How could her music not change when she knew this kind of thing existed?
“Tweaks that absolutely made it better,” Kyle said, “but why is the better question. And why, if you’re making it better with these tweaks are you not feeling it like you usually do, Roz? Are you sure New York is where you want and need to be right now to prepare for this audition?”
“Never been surer,” she lied.
Well, was it a lie?
If she left, then she was going to constantly think about what could have been between her and Naz. She’d be distracted with all the things she left behind. All the things left unsaid.
That felt just as bad as this.
Roz figured she might as well be distracted and happy, than distracted and unhappy.
Kyle sighed loudly on the screen when he realized he wasn’t getting a straight answer from Roz, and she wasn’t talking more than she had to. “You don’t have much longer to get this right, Roz. What if I came down to New York, do you think that would—”
“I would rather take this time alone, Kyle.”
“Fine. Same time tomorrow, then?”
She wanted to say no. Instead, she muttered, “Same time tomorrow, yep.”
Where else was she going to be? Apparently, right fucking here.
Roz was still sitting at her piano an hour later when a throat cleared, and drew her attention to the doorway. Her father leaned in, and gave her a smile.
“You seem … distracted,” he noted.
Great.
Back to this again.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just thinking.”
“Mmm, I heard you up here playing. It was good. Did you change a bit of it? Sounds different, dushka.”
She grinned at her father’s use of the Russian word for a term of endearment. He was so far from Russian that it wasn’t even funny. One of the most Italian men she had ever met in her life, but her mother was Russian through and through. Katya’s pet name for Roz lived on—none of the Italian ones seemed to stick.
“It felt like it needed a change,” Roz said. “I could tell it did, but I’m not into it, at the same time.”
“Because of the changes?”
“No. I’m just not in the mood.”
Her father stiffened a bit. “Not in the mood to play the piano. That’s what you mean.”
Roz nodded. “I guess, yeah.”
“Is that maybe because you’ve been doing practically everything else with a certain someone instead of working on this piece for the audition? Maybe a certain someone is taking up a little too much space in your mind, and your music is taking a hit, Roz.”
Jesus.
“Maybe that’s fine, too,” Roz countered.
“Is it?” her father asked, his tone never changing from that same calm tone. He always used that on her when he thought she was doing something wrong, but didn’t want to come right out and say so. Roz wasn’t stupid. She knew how her father worked. “Is it fine when your dream from the time you were just two years old was to play piano on the biggest stage you could find for anyone and everyone to hear you, Roz? Is it fine if that no longer matters because a boy caught your attention for a moment?”
Ouch. “I didn’t say it didn’t matter,” she snapped.
Zeke arched a brow. Her father was not a loud man. He’d never even yelled at his children as they grew up. But disrespect? No, he never stood for that.
“Try again,” he said, “and with a touch less attitude this time, Rosalynn Katya Puzza.”
Damn.
Full name, too.
“It’s not that it doesn’t matter,” she said quietly, “I just …”
Zeke softened in his posture when his daughter couldn’t come up with the right words to say. He pressed gently with a soft, “What is it?”
“I just want to figure this out.”
“And what is this?”
“Naz,” she said simply.
What he was to her. Why he made her feel so crazy.
How he could affect her this much. She needed to understand.
“Do you think maybe because he’s the first boy—”
“You keep calling him a boy, but … he’s definitely not,” Roz said, smiling a little.
Zeke grunted under his breath. “No, he’s certainly a young man. But did you know I was the one who helped his father cut his cord when he was born in their bed because they couldn’t make it to the hospital in time? I was the one who held him while his father helped his mother as they waited for the ambulance, Rosalynn. He may be a young man to you, but he will always be the boy I watched grow up, and I won’t apologize for it, either.”
“So, he only becomes a man when he gets a little too close to me, and you get stuck in your feelings about it, right?”
Her father didn’t even try to hide it. “I’m working on it. I also see my very driven and talented daughter being entirely messed up over him … putting her ambitions and goals to the sidelines because he’s forefront and center. And that makes me pause, too.”
“Can’t I just figure it out?” she asked. “It’s not because he’s the first guy I noticed. It’s because he’s him, Daddy.”
Zeke tilted his head to the side a bit. “And you’re you, Roz.”
“What?”
“Never forget that you are you. And you are as equally as amazing as he is, but for entirely different reasons. Don’t lose what makes you amazing because you’re so caught up in what makes him amazing to you.”
Roz wanted to respond, but her phone rang with a familiar tune. One she put for Naz’s phone number. Her father didn’t miss it when he gave her a look, and then turned to leave the room.
“Don’t keep him waiting,” her father murmured. “How else can you practice later if you don’t get him out of your system today, hmm?”