LOGINShare
Chapter Eight: What It Was Always About
publish date:
2026-06-10 13:14:16
Latest chapter
Six Months Of You Chapter Thirty: What We Keep
Chapter Thirty: What We Keep I went home for Christmas and Leo beat me at the racing game eleven times in a row. He was genuinely very good at it. I said so and he accepted the compliment with the particular graciousness of a twelve year old who had been waiting for the acknowledgment. I let him win the strategy game twice, then he won it himself on the third attempt and I didn't have to let him do anything. My mother made dinner on Christmas Eve and we sat at the table for a long time after the food was gone, just the three of us, not talking about anything in particular, the radio on in the kitchen. I looked at my mother's face in the candlelight and I thought about how she had looked in the hospital waiting room that morning in October, still in yesterday's scrubs, running on nothing but will. She looked different now. Not younger. Just less held. Less stored. "You're thinking very hard," Leo told me across the table. "I think hard. It's a habit." "About what." "About how g
Six Months Of You Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Last Thursday
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Last Thursday Room 214 was double booked in the second week of December. I found out on Wednesday when the room schedule showed a string quartet rehearsal from four to seven, which was our window. I texted Landon. He found out at the same time. We stood in the corridor outside the room on Thursday afternoon and looked at the closed door and the sound of four people rehearsing Haydn coming through it. "Where else," he said. "Professor Valdez's studio. Third floor. She said students could use it over the holiday break." I looked at him. "She also said it has a better piano." He looked at the closed door. "The piano in here isn't bad." "The piano in here is thirty years old and the middle C sticks slightly." "I've adapted to the middle C." "You shouldn't have to adapt to a sticking key," I said. "Come on." Professor Valdez's studio was at the end of the third floor corridor, larger than I had realized from the outside. There was a good piano, a full upri
Six Months Of You Chapter Twenty-Eight: Before Spring
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Before Spring The spring enrollment packet arrived the second week of December. Course selection. Practice room allocation. Ensemble placement auditions in January. A list of faculty I would be working with, including a name I recognized from a recording my grandfather had played for me when I was nine, a cellist whose approach to Bach he had described as the most honest thing he had ever heard. I sat at my desk and read the packet three times. Then I called my mother. "It's real," I told her. "It was always real," she said. "You made it real." "Mom." "I'm allowed to say that." I thought about what Priya had said. You're allowed to have it. My mother's version was different but it meant the same thing. "I'm going to be twenty minutes away," I said. "I can still come home Sundays." "I know. But Lena." A pause. "You don't have to come home Sundays. You're allowed to have Sundays that are yours." I thought about Leo. About the cooking and the video game
Six Months Of You Chapter Twenty-Seven: December
Chapter Twenty-Seven: December December arrived with cold that meant it. The kind of cold that found the gaps in your jacket, that made the walk from the dormitory to the music building something you moved through quickly and with purpose. I had been at Westbrook for three years and I still wasn't used to this particular cold. My grandfather's cello did not like it either. I had to tune before every single session. I was tuning when Landon arrived on Thursday. He had started knocking consistently now. Not as a formality. As an announcement. I had come to recognize the exact pattern of it, two knocks, a pause, a third, and the way it sounded different from anyone else who used the practice rooms on the third floor. "It's cold," he said, coming inside. "That's December." "Your cello sounds unhappy." "It is unhappy." I made a small adjustment. "It prefers September." He sat in the chair by the window. He had the Ravel folder again, plus something else, a second folder I hadn't s
Six Months Of You Chapter Twenty-Six: Formal Findings
Chapter Twenty-Six: Formal Findings The formal findings were published on a Friday. Richard Cross was charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering facilitation. Marcus Hale had accepted a cooperation agreement and was cooperating fully with the investigation. Cross Capital had been ordered to cease operations pending the outcome. Civil suits had been filed by fourteen of the clients whose accounts had been misused across six years. I read the summary in the library and then I put my phone away and sat very still for a moment. I thought about the morning in Grace Okafor's lobby. The clock moving toward nine. Landon closing his eyes for three seconds when Grace came out and told us the report had been received. I thought about his father's voice on the phone. Controlled. Certain. A man delivering a decision. It doesn't matter. Because it's already done. He had been right that it was done. Just not the way he had meant it. My phone rang. It was Elena.
Six Months Of You Chapter Twenty-Five: Sheet Music
Chapter Twenty-Five: Sheet Music He had brought Ravel. Specifically the Pavane pour une infante defunte, arranged for piano and strings, which was not a simple piece and was also, I understood the moment I saw it, a deliberate choice. The Pavane was about grief and memory and the particular weight of something beautiful that had ended. It was not a happy piece. It was an honest one. I looked at the sheet music. I looked at him. "Why this," I said. "I heard it when I was twelve," he said. "My mother played it the week my father first threatened to stop her piano lessons. She played it every night for a week." He looked at the pages. "I've been thinking about it lately." I thought about what Margaret had said. About Sunday mornings. About the piano lessons that ended in ninth grade. About the things his father had taken, one by one, over years. "Have you played it since," I asked. "I tried once. Sophomore year. There was a piano in the common room and I thought no one was around
Six Months Of You Chapter Thirteen: Both Depending
#LENA He is at Common Grounds when I arrive. He has two coffees and he looks like someone who has been thinking hard all day and has arrived at something he is not sure how to say. I sit down. I take the coffee. I wait. "My father called his attorney this morning," he says. "Not about the inves
Six Months Of You Chapter Seven: What Richard Cross Does Next
#LENA The letter arrives Friday morning. Not an email. A physical letter, sealed, delivered to the Westbrook scholarship office with a reference number and a formal header from a firm I do not recognize. The scholarship coordinator calls me in at eight AM and she has the look of someone delivering
Six Months Of You Chapter Five: What Priya Knows
# LENATwo days after the hospital Priya shows up at my door with tea and a look that means the waiting period is over."Talk," she says."Leo is recovering. He is home. He is already complaining about the food which means he is fine.""I know about Leo. Talk about the other thing."I let her in. S
Six Months Of You Chapter Four: Wednesday
# LENAI am at St. Catherine's by six thirty.My mother is already there in yesterday's scrubs, a cold coffee in her hand, the particular stillness of someone running on no sleep and sheer will. I sit beside her. I swap the cold cup for the one I brought. We look at each other and say nothing becau
You may also like
Bestfriends Shouldn't Know How You Taste
Demiah131.7M viewsTeacher's Pet
Anna Kendra35.7K viewsEnslaving Alice
Anrose Amillie30.1K viewsSilently Falling
LoneRanger333.8K viewsFAKE DATING THE HOTTEST BOXER
Fame663 viewsThe King's Hart
M-writez469 viewsThe Gilded Shackle: Rise of the Diamond Heiress
Ivy Blackwood315 viewsThe Rugby Captain Favorite Enemy
Tummy 19 views
