Music in the Key of Love

Chapter 26: Trying

"God, I really don't want to go back there," Graham grumbled as they got on the subway.

"Well, you don't have to if you don't want to, but I do, I need my purse, phone, and coat and all that," Cressida answered imperturbably.

Graham grew more and more morose as they got closer to the Thurmans' apartment.

Finally, when they were walking up Fifth Avenue, Cressida noticed that she was walking alone. She turned around to find him leaning against a lamppost.

He looked white as a sheet.

"Graham? You okay?"

He shook his head. "Feeling kinda woozy."

Cressida put an arm around his waist. "Come on, it's like getting back on a horse that threw you. You have to conquer this, the sooner the better, so the fear doesn't get too big."

Graham nodded and let her lead him up the street and into the building.

He let them into the apartment, and Cressida steered him toward the music room. Ideally, she could get him to play through the piece, but she didn't think that was going to happen today, not with the way he was acting.

He stood, staring at the piano, feeling ill about what had happened.

The other door opened and Professor Thurman entered. She was obviously furious. "Graham? Did you really punch Phillip Kennedy? In the face?" She took a few steps toward him. "Let me see your hand."
Graham sighed and held out his hand. It was still a little swollen. "I can move all the fingers, though, see? And no wrist pain." He moved his hand in a slow circle to demonstrate.

"And did you really stop in the middle of the third movement? What's that about?" She looked at Cressida. "Good heavens, is that a black eye? What exactly went on while I was gone?"

"Why don't you ask Katherine? Seems like she's dying to tell you everything."

"You will kindly leave Katherine out of this," the professor said, her voice clipped. "It sounds like all she wanted to do was help you, but you just ran out of here like a child."

Katherine chose that moment to enter the room. "Graham, thank god! How are you, how's your hand?"

"Please, don't pretend to care," Graham snapped.

"Graham!" Cressida gasped.

"Cress, you can go," he said without looking away from Katherine.

Cressida turned without another word and walked out of the room. She grabbed her things from his room and left as fast as she could. She was furious.

She was so furious she walked two subway stops beyond where she had to, just to cool down.

She was just letting herself into her apartment when she got a text from Graham:

"Where did you go?"

"You told me to go, so I left."

"First of all, I didn't tell you to go, I said you could. Second, I meant leave the room, not the apartment! Please come back."

"No. I just got home, I'm not going out again. You were damned rude to them, not to mention me, and I don't want to see you right now."

She turned her phone off and opened her laptop. She had homework to do, and she was damned well going to do it. It was actually very satisfying homework, in which she had to edit a story written by someone in her teacher's freshman English class with a red pen. She tore into it with a vengeance, getting about half way through before realizing that this probably wasn't something she should do while angry. She deleted all her changes and put her laptop aside, huffing a deep breath in and out through her nose.