These Golden Days

Summer 2017 (part 2)

I open my spreadsheet as I wet my lips, then my reed. No matter how many times I assemble my oboe, the peace it brings me never goes away.

I play the notes in front of me as I have for the past few weeks. I know this piece inside and out but mainly because I helped compose it. When I got accepted into the festival, I brought the piece I had been working on. I was apprehensive to show them but I'm running on a risk-taking-buzz right now, and I figured the worst they can tell me is no. It wasn't an entirely new piece to show them, anyway. When I submitted my application, it required a recording of my music. I decided to play the new piece for my submission. It was rough and unpolished, but the head composer in the festival said he heard raw talent and vision in my piece. Most of what we will be performing in the festival is his work. But there are a few notes that sound the way they do because of me. It's enough to get my name added to the "with help by," byline in the program.

Just as I begin to play the notes, my band mate storms in.

"My strap broke. Unfucking believable. We go on in thirty minutes and my fucking strap brakes," she says. It seems more like she's talking to herself but I stand to help her anyway.

"Let me see," I say, taking the instrument from her hands. I grab the thick material of the strap and notice the tear. It's not the end of the world in terms of what can go wrong before a performance. But it's also not a sign of good luck when your instrument's support strap breaks. I jump over my chair and reach into my backpack, pulling out a safety pin. I clip it through a thinner part of the strap and connect it back together. "There. Should hold for this performance but you'll need a new one for tomorrow."

"Did you know," she says, taking the strap from my hands and planting a kiss on my cheek, "that you're the best."

"It's always nice to be reminded," I smirk.

"Mhmm, I'll bet," she winks. Rachel pulls the strap over her neck and gives it a slight tug. "Yeah, seems like it'll hold. Oh, and Ryan is out there trying to rewrite your notes."

I roll my eyes. Our main composer who I spent weeks with on this piece is always worrying that the first version he wrote is the song's best iteration, and maybe it is. But the changes we made make the song tell a story more important than his. Maybe that's selfish of me, but when I told Ryan what my vision was for my original piece, he felt the same way. That's why I'm not worried. "Give him five minutes before show. He'll change it back, promise you."

"Ok, but he's still going to want you out there to ease his mind," Rachel says.

I nod. "I'll be out there in five."

"Kay. See you out there, babe." She cups my face in her hands and kisses me before leaving.

When the door closes behind her, I lick over the lips she just kissed. It still doesn't feel as right as when I kissed Dani and part of me is frustrated by it. Rachel knows the basic details of what happened. She knows there is someone else in my heart still, probably will be for a while. She knows the separation was messy. She also knows that I'm new when it comes to being out and open, and she's okay with it. For now, at least.

Still, sometimes it feels like I'm trying to chase the same feeling I had with Dani even though I know I won't get it with anyone else.

I'm packing up my oboe and music sheets when my phone goes off in my backpack. I'm anticipating something from Ma or Pa about the crappy parking or in which section they should sit in even though I've told them fifty times now that I have a section in the front row reserved for them. But it's not either of them.

We haven't talked since that day in her dorm room. I thought about reaching out multiple times, but the wounds felt too fresh. No matter how much I miss her, or how much I want to tell her I'm sorry, or even that I love her, I can't bring myself to do it. And now, with me doing the Summer Solstice festival, with Rachel here, all the stuff that happened with Danielle feels like a lifetime ago. I have to remind myself that it wasn't. It was only a few months ago. With school out, I figured she would be busy with that job at SPEAR as a physical therapist aid or back home with her family. Either way, I had accepted that she was done with me. So while seeing a new text from her makes me anxious and reminds me of the heavy pressure in my chest I used to wake up with, I can't deny that a part of me is happy.

Good luck tonight.

That's all it reads but it means she's been looking for me.

I smile despite myself.

It feels like a new start, somehow. It could end badly again but I think back to that day in her dorm, to the letter from her brother. Take the risk, and with so much history between us, maybe starting over is a risk worth taking.