Symphony in Blue

by M. J. Duncan

  Gwen’s eyebrows lifted incredulously. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” Dana laughed and held up two fingers as she addressed the hostess. “Two, please. Preferably on the patio, if there’s room out there.” She turned to Gwen as the hostess gathered a couple menus and motioned for them to follow her. “Ironic, right?”

  “That’s one word for it, I guess,” Gwen murmured, much to Dana’s amusement. The patio was just as crowded as the main restaurant, with high stucco walls that blocked out the noise from the busy streets around the restaurant, plenty of trees, and intimate seating areas.

  “How’s this?” The hostess asked as she stopped beside a small square table tucked into a quiet nook.

  “Wonderful.” Dana smiled and pulled out a chair.

  “Thank you,” Gwen murmured as she took the seat opposite Dana.

  Once the hostess had handed them their menus and excused herself, Dana leaned forward and picked up their conversation where they lad left off. “So, yeah. My dad started a prosthetics company like forty years ago, and it’s turned into a real family affair. Dani handles the marketing, Denny helps my dad on the floor with the actual production, and Derek’s in design. He’s the one who came up with the design for the leg I’m wearing now. Anyway, my mom runs the hospital outreach and charity work, and I’m…” She shrugged. “I guess you could say that I’m in R-and-D—I test new designs before they get added to the catalogue.”

  “Forgive me for asking what I’m sure is a stupid question, but how, exactly, does one test a prosthetic?”

  “It’s not a stupid question at all.” Dana grinned and ran her hands through her hair as she leaned back in her chair. “It depends on the type of leg, really, though comfort, security, and ease of use are universal benchmarks. But if it’s a blade, I’ll go hit the boardwalk for a run—usually with my brother on a bike beside me with his tools and my usual blade in case something happens and I need to switch them out—or if it’s a designer every-day-type-leg like this one, I just wear it for a few days and see how it holds up. Then there are the waterproof ones—which are fun to test out because we’ll all go surfing for the day—and biking ones I’ll take out for a spin…”

  “There are really that many different types?”

  “Of course. I mean, I can wear a regular old leg to do everything, but having specialized equipment definitely helps.”

  Gwen shook her heat. “I had no idea…”

  “Most people don’t, until they’re forced to look into this kind of stuff. Which is why, for as much as losing my leg sucked at the time, at least my family already knew all of this already. It saved us a hell of a lot of time having to learn it all.” Dana picked up her menu and gave it a perfunctory scan before she set it down and folded her hands on top of it. “But yeah. When I’m not at the pool kicking people’s asses, I’m usually doing that. How about you? Do you do anything outside of the symphony?”

  “I do some recording work for movie, television, and video game scores and whatnot, and I teach a master’s seminar at USC every semester.” Gwen said, shrugging lightly as she picked up her menu and started to search for something to order.

  “Do you need any suggestions?” Dana offered helpfully. “I mean everything here is amazing, but if you’re hungry-hungry, I’d recommend any of their bowls, but the one with the lentils is my favorite.”

  Gwen hummed and nodded as she read the description for the bowl Dana recommended. “That sounds good. I think I’ll give it a try.” She laid her menu on the table and tried to remember what she had been saying. “But, yes. Between my commitments at LA Phil, my studio work, and teaching, I don’t have a lot of spare time for much else. Though I do enjoy writing when I can find the time,” she shared, surprising herself with her candor because the only other person who knew about it was Luke, and that was because he had surprised her one day with dinner and the pages had been spread all over her coffee table. Even Mallory had no idea about the sheets of music she had tucked into the top drawer of her desk.

  Dana arched an interested brow. “Writing? Like what kind of stuff? Poetry? Short stories?”

  Gwen chuckled and shook her head. “I’m afraid my skills are rather strictly confined to music.”

  “You’re selling yourself short, I’m sure, but okay.” Dana tilted her head to the side inquisitively. “So, you write songs?”

  Gwen bobbed her head from side-to-side, but before she could reply, their server appeared to take their orders. One he had left, promising to have their lunch to them as quickly as possible, she said, “Concertos. Sonatas. Short movements that are part of larger bodies of work.”

  “Wow.”

  “I assure you, they are definitely not ‘wow’. They’re quite ordinary, to be honest.”

  “Having heard you play, I sincerely doubt that.”

  Gwen blushed, struck speechless by the earnestness in Dana’s tone.

  “Will you play one of them for me sometime?” Dana asked. “I mean, I don't know that much about classical music, but I would love to hear it. Them. Whatever.”

  Before Gwen could think better of it, or remember that she had never performed any of her original pieces for anyone, she heard herself answering, “Sure.”

  “Awesome.” Dana beamed. “I can’t wait.”

  TWENTY

  “Are you sure I really need all this stuff for one little cat?” Gwen asked as she wrestled with the gigantic tub of kitty litter, five pound bag of food, and three bags of random supplies she had bought at the pet store. It was cumbersome to say the least, but considering Dana was carrying the five-foot-tall cat condo she’d insisted Gwen buy that had multiple levels for lounging as well as a couple cave-like hiding places, she felt like she had gotten the better end of the deal. The massive condo had barely fit in Dana’s car even after they laid the back seat down, extending from the back window all the way to the windshield, but be it through either dumb luck or the “mad Tetris skills” Dana claimed to possess, they had made it work.

  “Kitty litter and food and toys and shit is kinda important, yeah.”

  “And that monstrosity you’re carrying?”

  “Is freaking awesome.”

  Gwen chuckled at Dana’s exuberance and shook her head. “Dear lord. What have I gotten myself into?”

  Dana laughed. “Depends on if the cat’s an asshole or not.”

  “She won’t be an asshole.” Gwen set everything in her hands down so she could fish her keys out of her purse to open the front door.

  “Of course not.” Dana shifted the monstrosity she was holding on her shoulder like it weighed nothing. “Have you picked a name yet, or are you just going to call her Cat?”

  “I…” Gwen blinked and shook her head, too distracted by the bulge of Dana’s bicep and the peekaboo slip of tanned skin above her hip that was visible thanks to the way her shirt rode up to form a coherent sentence. Her heart fluttered at the memory of those muscles twitching and jumping beneath her touch, and her keys almost slipped from her hand as her fingers twitched with the urge to touch her again. She turned toward the front door, grateful for the way it allowed her to hide the blush she could feel spreading over her cheeks, and silently chastised herself for being so affected by Dana’s body as she slid her key into the lock. We are just friends, she told herself sternly, taking a deep breath as she twisted it open. “I’m sorry, what was your question?” She asked as she shoved the door open and stepped out of the way so Dana could carry the six-foot-tall, insanely expensive, cat condo into the house.

  Dana grinned as she eased past Gwen, clearly being careful to make sure that she didn’t whack her with the condo. “Do you have a name in mind for your cat?”

  “Not really, no.” Gwen sighed. “So if you have any ideas, please feel free to share.”

  “Something music related?”

  “I’d thought about that,” Gwen admitted as she followed Dana inside and used her heel to hook the door shut behind her. “Just take that into the livi
ng room on the right, there?”

  “You got it.”

  “But yeah, like I was saying, I’ve tried to think of music type names, but I don’t know.” She lowered the food and kitty litter to the rug in front of the sofa and tossed the bags onto one of its cushions. “It just seems so trite, you know?”

  Dana hummed noncommittally and shrugged. “I think it'd be fine since music is clearly what you love, but if you’re not digging the idea don’t do it.” She set the cat condo down in the corner of the room, but where the yet-to-be-named kitten would be able to look out on the porch from the nearby window. “How's this?”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  Dana pursed her lips thoughtfully and shoved her hands into the back pockets of her shorts as she wandered toward the couch. Not a fan of mess or clutter, the lone exception to Gwen’s tidiness was the coffee table, which was pretty much always covered with stacks of half-finished crossword puzzles, books, and magazines, and today it also held her keyboard as well as too many loose pages of sheet music to count that contained the pieces of the movement she had been fiddling with before rehearsal because she hadn’t been expecting to be hosting company. Gwen wanted to dive for the pages that were covered in her notes—“staccato?”, “f?”, “pp?”—and more than a few holes where her eraser had worn clean through the paper, but she was reticent to draw Dana’s attention to them, instead hoping that she overlooked them as unimportant.

  But, of course, she didn’t.

  “You play the piano, too?” Dana looked incredulously at Gwen. “Is there nothing you can’t do?” And then, of course, she noticed the music, and Gwen clenched her hands at her sides as she watched Dana pick up the topmost sheet, the one that Gwen had finally deemed acceptable just before she’d had to leave for rehearsal. “Is this some of your music that you’re working on?” She tilted her head as she studied the notes, and arched an impressed brow as she looked up at Gwen. “This is intense.” She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t know how this goes on the cello, but…”

  Gwen stopped herself from asking if Dana could even read the music as she suddenly remembered that she’d said that she played the guitar that night in the elevator at the hotel. “Yeah. That’s, um, actually…that’s…a page of a full score.” She cleared her throat as Dana’s expression became confused, and then, figuring that, at this point, she had nothing to lose by just laying it all out there, explained, “It’s part of the final movement of a symphony I’ve been playing around with since I was at Juilliard.”

  “Holy shit.” Dana’s eyes widened as she looked back at the page in her hand. “Really?”

  Gwen bit her lip and nodded.

  “Damn,” Dana whistled. “What’s it called?”

  “Blue. Or, well, the full title is Symphony in Blue.” It didn’t matter that Dana wasn’t versed enough in music to truly understand what she was looking at, Gwen’s heart still felt like it was lodged firmly in her throat as she watched Dana’s eyes return to the page in her hand. Blue was her baby. The music had changed over the years as she became more adept at manipulating sounds to better evoke the emotions she sought to convey, entire pages edited and polished and revised again and again as she grew as a woman and a musician. Dana might have thought she was only holding a sheet of paper in her hands, but it was actually her very heart, and when she was finally unable to handle feeling so exposed any longer, she stepped forward and gently tugged the paper from Dana’s hand. “I’m sorry, it’s just…I’ve never shown this to anyone and…”

  Dana smiled and nodded. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not ready. But, maybe someday…?”

  “Maybe someday,” Gwen whispered, though it was more out of politeness than a genuine desire to share.

  And, somehow Dana understood what she could not explain—that Blue was a piece of herself she would probably never be willing to share—because her eyes softened as she sighed and murmured, “I’m sorry I overstepped.”

  “You didn’t,” Gwen rushed to reassure her. “I’m just…this is just…” She shrugged helplessly.

  “It’s fine, I get it, Gwen.” Dana shook her head as she laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Really.”

  “Thank you,” Gwen breathed.

  “For completely invading your privacy?” Dana asked with a wry grin.

  “For understanding,” Gwen corrected with a laugh, appreciating her attempt to lighten the suddenly serious mood.

  “Of course.” Dana ran a hand through her hair and glanced toward the foyer. “I know I just came up to help carry stuff, do you want me to…” Her voice trailed off and she hiked a thumb toward the front door.

  “No. Not at all. But, I mean, if you—”

  “I don’t.” Dana interrupted. She huffed a laugh and flashed a sheepish smile. “And, on that incredibly awkward note, because I’ve just been more than obvious about the fact that there’s nowhere else I’d really like to be right now, I’d love to stay for a bit.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.” Dana took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I love your house, by the way.”

  “Thank you.” Gwen’s eyes reflexively swept over the room with Dana, taking in its warm taupe walls, dark hardwood floors, and the white built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, and she grinned when her gaze landed on the stack of board games on the bottom shelf of the left bookcase. “Do you like board games?”

  Dana smirked and nodded. “I love beating people at board games.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Ah, sure, but that’s what’s going to happen if we play.”

  “If you say so,” Gwen sassed. “What’s your poison? Trivia? Word? Strategy?”

  Dana shrugged and, having spotted Gwen’s stash of games, made her way over to the bookshelf. “Let’s see what you’ve got that I know how to play.” She knelt down in front of the shelves and tilted her head as she read the titles on the sides of the boxes, and then looked back at Gwen with a shit-eating grin as she pulled one with cracked sides and worn corners from the stack. “Are you feeling smart today, Ms. Harrison?”

  Gwen arched a brow in playful challenge and nodded. “Smart enough to beat a swim coach at Scrabble.”

  “Oh, them’s fightin’ words, Harrison.” Dana stood and pointed the game box at Gwen like it was a sword. “It’s on, now.”

  “Bring it,” Gwen retorted with a laugh. She tilted her head toward the French doors that led to the back patio. “On the patio?”

  Dana nodded, and followed Gwen out to the weathered brick paver patio that was tucked between the back of the house and the hill it was built into. It was a decent enough sized area, large enough for a four-person dining table as well as an additional seating area that had a two-person loveseat and a couple chairs arranged around a small ceramic fire pit that she hadn’t lit in close to two years because of the region’s never-ending drought. Past the fire pit was a low retaining wall, the hill above it filled with an array of drought tolerant plants such as lavender, Russian sage, catmint, and Artemisia, and a sextet of evergreens stretched across the top of the slope at the edge of the property. The entire patio was a world unto itself, secluded and quiet, a perfect retreat from the hustle-and-bustle not two miles down the road, and Gwen spent many an afternoon out here reading or practicing.

  “Okay, your house is gorgeous and all and I really do love the whole English country thing it has going on, but this patio is fucking amazing,” Dana enthused as she looked around them.

  “Besides the convenience of the location, it was the patio that really sold me on this place when I bought it,” Gwen shared as she pulled a chair at the table out for Dana. “Would you like anything to drink? I don’t have any soda, but I’ve got water and lemonade.”

  “I'm good for now.” Dana smiled and lifted the top off the Scrabble box. “But thanks.”

  “Just let me know if you change your mind.”

  Dana nodded as she pulled the large square game
board from the box. “You’ve got the fancy version with the little individual tile squares, huh?”

  “I tried to tell you before—I’m good at this one.”

  “Huh. Maybe you’ll manage to give me a little bit of a challenge as I mop the floor with you.”

  “You talk a good game, Dana Ryan, let’s see if you have the skill to back it up.” Gwen pulled the small notebook she kept in the box to keep score and set it beside her spot. The velvet bag full of letters was next, and she started mixing up the letter tiles inside it as she sat down. She gave the bag a couple extra shakes as Dana set a rack in front of each of them, then opened the sack and offered it to her. “Closest to A goes first.”

  “What kind of hospitality is that? Being such a stickler for the rules,” Dana teased as she reached into the bag. She palmed her chosen tile and waved her closed hand at the bag. “If you were nice, you’d say, ‘Since you’re my guest and you were kind enough to carry that monstrosity of a cat condo into the house for me, you can go first.’”

  “I never claimed to be nice,” Gwen pointed out as she pulled a tile from the bag. She spun it to see the letter engraved on the other side and laughed. “And you’re the one who insisted I buy that thing. I’ve got a B.”

  “Of course you do.” Dana rolled her eyes and opened hand to show her tile. “W.”

  “Oooh, so close.”

  “Whatever.” Dana flipped her W back into the bag and folded her arms over her chest. “Pick your damn letters, Harrison.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Gwen dropped her B into the bag and held the top closed as she gave it a few solid shakes before setting it onto the table between them. She quickly pulled her beginning seven tiles and started arranging them on her tray as Dana selected hers, and could not keep from smiling as she realized she would be able to play all seven letters on her first turn.

  “I don’t think I like the looks of that smile.”

  “No, I don’t imagine you will,” Gwen agreed. “Are you done?”

  Dana waved a hand at the board and sighed dramatically. “Hit me with it.”