Hold Me Close

amor vincit omnia

There's a grand piano in our hotel.

It sits unplayed as the days creep closer to our first match, stuck in the room used for our meetings. The shiny, black wood peeks out from underneath its quilted cover, and, if I were Jaimie, I'd have played it for hours on end already.

But, I'm not. Of course I was also forced to learn it, alongside the clarinet. Jaimie played the violin for a while, despite her protests. It's just that my sister was the chosen pianist for our annual performance with our cousins, and my skill in the instrument remained practised and taught, not felt and heard.

The notes stir in my fingers as I take a seat on the cushioned stool, nudging the heavy four legs backwards slightly to slide my feet onto the golden pedals. Initially, my instinct itches at me to tinkle out the scales and arpeggios of my childhood; rises and falls that I repeated over and over. Upon further thought, I recall the first few bars of the last piece I ever learnt. It was memorised hurriedly though incredibly well it seems, considering that I only had to perform it at one final recital before being allowed to never sit through a piano lesson again. I must have been about thirteen. I don't remember my mother being there.

With a timid uncertainty, I play the first line of Scarlatti's Sonata in D. The harmonies are odd and the trills take a moment to return to my muscles, but I get through what must have been the first page with relative ease.

It doesn't convey how I am feeling at all. I am not reminiscent. I have never been so focused on the future, if anything. On tomorrow, when we play Portugal; on what is blossoming between Alexia and me, fed by endless late-night conversations; on how different Barcelona is going to be next season.

Sighing, I draw my hands back from the black and white, resting them in my lap as I stare at the keys, trying to think of something else to play.

I think back to lockdown in London – trapped in an apartment with Scarlett, and not hating a second of it. She bought me a keyboard, claiming my lack of romanticism was going to be compensated by me serenading her regularly. Most of the time, I let her sit beside me on the stool, pressing at the higher keys and deciding that her tune was far better than anything I tried to show her. When she did listen – usually after irritating me enough to drive me to push her off the stool – she would hum along to the songs she knew. She wasn't as fond as the classical stuff I'd been taught. She liked watching me figure out chords, and, though she would never comment on it, she liked how I sang along quietly. Again, that is something Jaimie is better at. I have always harmonised.

I jump as my phone begins to ring, almost falling backwards onto the carpeted floor of the meeting room. Knowing who it is, I accept the call, preparing to let the Spanish wash over my head as I glide my fingers across the black keys, wondering if I remember any of the songs I once knew.

"Where are you?" asks Alexia curiously, her monologue interrupted and forgotten as she takes in the room, unfamiliar with it. We have FaceTimed enough for her to know what the interior of my hotel room looks like.

I shrug. "Some random place. There's a piano." I press down on middle C to prove my point, resting my phone on the music desk.

"You play the piano?"

She's intrigued further, pink hair falling around her face as she turns in her bed. She pushes it back behind her ears, though I know she will tie it up sooner or later. Alexia finds the colour distracting against the stark white of her pillows, and it reminds her of everything she doesn't want to think about. Her rebellion is something she is proud of but it is also stressful. Jorge Vilda knocks on her door every hour up to midnight.