Play my heart

Chapter II

 If you ask Darren, though, he'll say it started somewhere in the middle.

Things get worse before they get better, so it takes a few games, a tantrum, an expulsion threat and an elder's intervention before they can consider themselves reconciled. They do get better, anyway, because Adryan remains his best friend (after beating the shit out of Darren and putting the whole school against him, but stuff happens) and Dawn remains Adryan's girlfriend (after going on a date with Darren and then rejecting him, but stuff happens).

Dawn's hair is damp and her cheeks are red when she finds him in the school's concert hall well into the evening, sight reading Liszt because he doesn't love himself. She's been swimming again, he realizes, and has no trouble guessing she's stressed out about something. He asks and she doesn't explain, so he doesn't press any further.

He's sixteen and a half and Dawn sits next to him, her arm and her leg touching his in the too small piano stool. As Darren keeps playing, Dawn presses her small fingers to some stray white notes, a smile forming on her face. Sight reading be damned, Darren improvises the melody and turns his head to stare at his best friend's girlfriend instead. He doesn't realize he's smiling too until his cheeks start to hurt.

After that, it doesn't take long for Dawn to convince him to start competing again.

"You're too good to keep your talent hidden," she reasons. "It'd be selfish of us to want to keep your music to ourselves, don't you think?"

Darren gives in, and if he uses his having to practice as an excuse to avoid Dawn and Adryan being a happy couple, no one can blame him.

He has his first piano competition in eight years a month before he turns seventeen. Dawn drags Adryan along to watch the competition. Darren doesn't pay attention to any of the other contestants, and barely feels nervous when his turn comes. He can't see Dawn and Adryan from the stage, which might just be a blessing, really. When he's done, he doesn't remember a single note he played.

They don't stay to hear the results. He later finds out he came in second, and doesn't bother checking the name of the pianist who beat him. He avoids everyone the next day, shutting himself in the piano room and not saying a word the whole time.

During the next month, he keeps Dawn company as she overworks herself until her nose bleeds, to deal with all the shit Adryan's mother has been throwing her way. He can't protect her this time, not even Adryan can, but that won't stop him from doing everything in his hands.

He's watching TV when he should be practicing for next week's violin competition. There's not much practice he could get, though; not with Adryan sprawled out on Darren's bed, whining about Dawn not having time for him with all the part time jobs she's taken. The idiot ends up falling asleep, so Darren covers him with a blanket and goes to sleep in the guest room of his own house.

The next day he runs into Dawn selling newspapers with a boy from school, and he wisely pretends he doesn't see her.

That same boy bows his head and repeatedly apologizes when he bumps into Adryan a few days later at school. Adryan is in enough of a sour mood to yell at him for a hot minute, while Darren and the other two stand behind him, unimpressed. The boy is trembling by the end of it, muttering a string of apologies. Adryan scoffs at the sight and moves on; Connor, Caesar and Darren follow him without sparing a second glance at the student.

Darren wins the violin competition, to his own surprise.

Things escalate rather quickly after that, and he can only watch as Adryan finds out Dawn's been spending all her time with this boy who's helping her make money. She needs it, and they have no other intentions, but Adryan is beside himself with rage. Him and Dawn have the communication skills of two clams in toxic water; no explaining is enough and they don't even seem to try. They can allow themselves that much, Darren supposes, because it's only the boy who ends up with a bleeding nose, a black eye, a busted lip and at least one broken bone.