“Roz, could you come down here for a minute, please?”
Roz heard her mother’s request, but she didn’t really want to move. Maybe … God, maybe… if she stared at this damn piano long enough, her muse would come back. Her desire to make beautiful music would rush back, and consume her again.
So far, nothing.
“Roz!”
“Yeah,” she called back, “I’m coming.”
Roz checked her phone to find a couple of missed texts from Naz. Short texts that didn’t tell her very much, honestly. He’d been so busy for a couple of weeks that she only got to see him for maybe an hour, and then he was gone again. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
She supposed …
“Last ditch effort,” she heard a familiar voice say. “We’ll see if this can push her that last mile, right?”
Roz’s brow knotted together as she headed toward that voice downstairs. There was no fucking way her mentor—
Sure enough, there Kyle stood in her parents’ kitchen. Seemed he’d discarded his usual three-piece suits for khaki shorts, and a white T-shirt. She didn’t think she had ever seen her mentor dress down before, but here he was doing exactly that.
Roz blinked. “Kyle.”
The man smiled easily. “Roz.”
In that moment, Roz wasn’t sure whether to feel extremely pissed off that her parents had invited her mentor to their home without telling her, or grateful that they had done so. She was kind of pissed more than she was happy.
Hadn’t she made herself clear?
“I’m not ready for the Australia audition,” Roz said quietly. “And you being here isn’t going to change that fact.”
Kyle nodded, and passed her mother and father a look as he leaned against the island counter. “That’s what I was told, yep. And you’ve said it more than enough times for me to hear it, Roz.”
“Then, why are you—”
“Audition is in two weeks, and you’re still on the docket.”
Roz stiffened.
Kyle smiled like he didn’t need her—or hell, maybe he didn’t want her—to say anything in that moment. “You know you have to be the one who calls to request your spot be removed and filled with someone else. I couldn’t do that for you. It had to be you. And here we are, two weeks out from the audition, and despite the fact you’ve said repeatedly that you’re not going to go, you’re still on the docket.”
Fuck him for knowing that.
For having connections to get that information.
“So, I’ll call tonight,” Roz snapped. “What difference does it make?”
“Because you’re not going to call, are you? You left your name on the docket because even though you don’t feel ready, Roz, a part of you still wants to try. So, I’m here to make sure you at least give it your best shot.”
Oh, that was rich.
Really.
“And what,” Roz asked, “I get on that stage, and make a fool of myself because I’m not ready for it. I fail and then I don’t get invited back when the next audition comes up? I lose my chance. I would rather not go at all.”
Kyle tipped his head sideways a bit, and studied her. “You kept something from me, didn’t you?”
Roz’s gaze darted to her parents, and then back to her mentor. “No, I—”
“Mmm, yes. A young man, your parents said. Nazio, I believe his name is.” Kyle cleared his throat, and waved a hand. “Could you two give us a few minutes, so I can speak with Rosalynn in private. I don’t think this needs to be a public conversation.”
Her parents didn’t even need to be asked again. Despite the fact that Kyle had a good decade and a little more on her in years, when it came to her music, her parents always deferred to him to make the right choice. Roz didn’t blame them at all. Since she had started to be mentored under Kyle, nothing about music was the same to her. It wasn’t just about making a beautiful thing, but living within the beautiful thing she created. He made her a better pianist.
The best, maybe.
So why didn’t she feel like it?
“The muse comes and goes, Roz,” Kyle murmured when they were alone, “and sometimes, our muse changes when we don’t expect it to. We look for the old muse expecting it to still be there, but it’s changed. It’s something new. Someone new. It can take us a while to figure it out because we creatives … well, we’re a whole other breed of monsters, Roz. We don’t like change, and when something in our comfortable medium changes, suddenly the whole world is coming to an end.”
Her head snapped up, and she found her mentor was looking at her in that soft way of his. Like she was a little girl just learning how to walk, and he was going to help her every step of the way.
Kyle nodded. “And sometimes, our world coming to an end around us feels like being unable to play, or think. It could be wanting to do anything else but what we love the most. It can be a lot of things, and nothing at all at the same time. I wish you would have told me about the young man. I might have been able to explain this to you sooner, and we could have avoided these last couple of months, hmm?”
“Are you saying—”
“If your muse changed,” Kyle said, “perhaps you just thought you lost it?”
“I’m not ready.”
“You’re ready. You’re just scared.”
She was.
She was terrified.
It was only partly about the fact she felt like she couldn’t play. It was only a little bit about Naz, and how distracted she was lately. It was a lot about the fact she felt like a goddamn fake. It didn’t matter how many beautiful melodies she created, or how many successes she’d already celebrated in her short, but amazing, career … she was always going to feel like she wasn’t good enough.
She was some seventeen-year-old girl from Nowhere, New York. She didn’t have a whole pedigree of musical talent behind her name like some of the people she was expected to go up against, and despite training her whole life, it still didn’t feel like enough.
She didn’t belong.
“That,” Kyle said, pointing at her face like he could read her mind. “That right there, Roz. I see it. We call that imposter syndrome. Creatives all over the world feel like this. People at the height of their success feel like this. And it’s okay because it comes and goes, and it doesn’t last forever. But you’re not an imposter. You’re just a girl sitting in front of a piano with a talent to share, and a stage being offered to allow you the chance to do that.”
“I can’t even focus long enough—”
“Then find what does make you focus,” Kyle countered before she could even finish. “You find what does that, and you run with it, but you don’t give in or give up. Are you going to take that chance, or let it go?”
God.
“I don’t feel ready,” she repeated again.
“That’s an excuse, not a reason,” Kyle countered. He drew out four slips of paper from his khakis pocket, and set them to the counter beside him. “Four plane tickets. Mine is online, and I don’t need you to hold onto mine. I didn’t need to buy them—your parents have more than enough money to do that, but I still did. Do you want to know why?”
Roz shrugged.
What difference did it make?
“Because they love you enough to make you comfortable,” he told her. “If you tell them no, they’re going to listen. They’re going to let you stay home, and wonder what if for the rest of your life. I wasn’t put in your life to make you comfortable, or to give a single fuck about your reservations. I was put in front of you to make you work, and succeed.”
Jesus.
“I was put here to challenge you because no one else is going to, Roz,” Kyle said. “And if the audition is what breaks you, then I guess you weren’t meant to do this, were you? But I don’t think it will. They want to see you nail that audition. And so do I. So, do it.”
Roz’s brow furrowed.
She and her parents made three.
“Who’s the fourth one for, then?”
Kyle laughed. “Wouldn’t he like to see you play, too? This … Nazio. I hear he’s brilliant. Color me surprised that you went out and found someone like that. Is he brilliant enough to appreciate your brilliance, too? Or doesn’t he know about the audition, Roz?”
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t have to.
Kyle nodded. “Where is your muse, Roz? It’s always your muse that drives you. Follow the muse.”
In her heart.
Her muse was in her heart.
And in his.