The Maestro | RusAme |

Twenty-Nine

Another couple days of uneventful texting and neighborly greetings, Friday finally came after the two inched through the week at a painfully slow rate. The next season with the community orchestra was starting again and so Ivan was busy in the evenings, assisting with scheduling and picking pieces for each concert cycle. He was ecstatic about the music they were picking, Amelia appreciating his passionate opinions on what they were going to consider playing. He always would say, "Well I know no one cares about classical music anyways, but there's so much exciting stuff out there that would be interesting to anyone who was willing to listen." Everytime Amelia would ask him about what he was listening to currently, he might say this or just tell her the piece and the genre of classical. He seemed to listen to a lot of modern and romantic, from what she could observe. She never listened to it herself before talking to him again, but she loved to hear and see him talk about what he liked about it, since he was so bad at opening up. She gave it a try for him, since she wanted to do everything possible to get to know him again and to grow closer to him. He was the antithesis of an open book, a completely vacuum-sealed mouth and heart, so it was a miracle for her to finally get him to talk to her.

Most of the modern music he listened to was surprising to Amelia. She listened to one, that was apparently pretty well known, that she had never even knew existed, and in the first second she was frantically turning down the volume on her phone. After she listened to it, she was thoroughly convinced that every single twentieth-century composer was on more drugs than any of the members of the Beatles during the seventies.

She expressed her opinion on the topic to Ivan immediately after listening to the Firebird and Ysaye's Ballade for violin. And Ivan laughed so hard she could hear him from her apartment, at about one in the morning after a late rehearsal.

After Amelia came home from the school on that Friday, she hung her bag on the mounted rack by the door and hurried to tidy up, although her clean-freak roommate had already beat her to a lot of the cleaning. Ivan walked in silently as she picked up the items on the table and put them back where they belonged. She pulled out a chair for him to take a seat, earning thanks while she walked into the kitchen and asked if he wanted anything.

"I'll just have water, please." He asked timidly, almost painfully too polite for his own good.

She set a cup down in front of him, sitting down in the chair opposite of him. "So what do you want to do?" She asked him eagerly, resting her head in her hands.

"I was thinking we could watch a movie." He suggested, copying what Amelia was doing in a slightly mocking way. He wouldn't ever actually look at her for more than a moment or two, because he'd look down to his right and play coy. It wasn't that he did it consciously, it was just in his nature. It was how he was with strangers, but also translated to how he flirted.

Amelia found it it odd that a guy would act like that, but she figured it was because he was raised alongside two girls. She thought it was maybe a bit childish, but it was cute, and made him more of a prize.

They ended up sitting on the couch, a foot away from each other as they watched this random movie they found while scrolling through the vast array of films they could choose from. They ended up picking a psychological thriller, one that looked fairly cheesy. However, upon further inspection, it was a decent film. As they watched, Amelia grew increasingly tense, terrified by the movie after being twenty minutes in. She brought her knees to her chest, Ivan noticing her unease. He knew that he sucked at comforting people, so he had no clue what to do or say.

For the duration of the film, Amelia would cover her eyes, and at one point, when someone was being brutally murdered, she shouted, "Oh my God, no no no no," as she tightly grabbed his arm. Her shoulders were brought forward, her eyes wide.