Nightlife ✓

12 | flautist

QUENTIN MADE PLAYING THE FLUTE look hot.

I would say he made it look inexplicably hot, but that was not true. As I watched him warm up for the marching band rehearsal, I found I could very clearly explain why I found it so attractive.

Callum and I had speed-walked to the the Music Department's Choral Hall. Even though Callum was bragging all the way about the drumline needing very little warm-up time or maintenance, he was still cutting it close to the hour. Plus, I had enough band friends in high school to know that there was unpacking and even tuning required of percussionists.

We parted ways when the Choral Hall came into view. He marched quickly through the main door, as he normally would, while I circled around to the back entrance. The door was still unlocked; all the doors on campus automatically locked from the outside at seven, except those select buildings in which there were night classes.

I slipped through the door and found myself backstage. The marching band had set up onstage, four rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle around the conductor, who was currently flipping through her sheet music. Quen was in the front row, and I stopped in my tracks behind the weighty black fabric of a wing.

He was running through his scales. His fingers flew in a blur over the silver body of his flute, which glinted in the lowlight. Every other musician was doing the same routine of warming up, and they filled the theatre of the Choral Hall with a massive, reverberating cacophony of asynchronous melodies. But somehow I could pick the sound of his flute out.

His notes were clear and rapid. It made me think of dipping my hand into the stream at the top of a mountain peak. Cool, crisp and beautiful. His music had a similar effect, too, for I found myself immediately calmed just following the rise and fall of Quen's playing.

Following Callum's instructions, I walked to the stage door at the corner of the wall and into the stairwell. It led up to the mezzanine seats, which had a solid wooden balustrade that I could easily hide behind. Plus, no-one ever looked up past their line of vision. I'd read that somewhere, I was sure.

From up above, I could admire Quen all I liked. He sat straight in his seat, though that made his head stick up above all the rest of his bandmates. The navy t-shirt he wore emphasised his toned shoulders and arms. After he did his scales, he started playing through the melodies of his sheet music.

I felt like Quen would have totally been a band geek in high school. No-one in my high school had considered band geeks hot. There were the jaded, tattooed bad boys that skipped class to smoke and do drugs. Everyone found them hot.

But now—three years out of high school—I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. If I'd met an apathetic, unmotivated rebel at twenty-one years old, who skived their responsibilities to self-medicate, I would be disgusted. That sort of attitude wasn't attractive to me anymore.

You know what was? A man who had passions. A capable, hard-working man. Someone who respected his commitments. Quen was an amazing musician, and I could see the dedication radiate off him from the solid set of his jaw and the slight furrow of his eyebrows as his eyes skimmed the music.

When the conductor asked first flute to play the melody at bar eighty-one, Quen immediately launched into a solemn and haunting tune. And he did it alone. That showed he was confident, and the way he played — my God, those smooth ribbons of sound — made it irrefutably clear he was damn near an expert.

I was in paradise watching him. The music was stunning. Quen was confident and hard-working, which were two definite levels higher than just being the bare minimum, as Viv had said. And the boy knew how to use his fingers. No complaints there.