Dr. Allison blew Aaron and every vocal performance major so far out of the water they were in the desert. He sang as well as one of the Three Tenors. He was beyond incredible.
Aaron hadn’t even known his professor could sing—nobody did.
Recognition dawning, Aaron smiled.
Dr. Allison put down the score. “I was courted by several opera houses in college, which I attended when I was sixteen. Practically from birth I was groomed to be vocal star. Everyone had such big plans. There was only one problem.” His eyebrow quirked. “I hate singing opera. I wanted to play violin. I suspect you understand my dilemma.”
Aaron let out a breath. Yes. God, did he understand.
Dr. Allison crossed his ankles. “I defected in graduate school, to a mild scandal. My parents barely spoke to me for twenty years, and honestly, our relationship never recovered—except I didn’t feel like a prisoner anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I did enjoy music, so I learned a number of instruments, focused on violin. Earned my doctorate, started teaching, conducting. It’s never been quite the same spotlight as when I sang opera. I fade into the wallpaper a great deal—and to be honest, I’m not as good at conducting or violin as I am singing. But I love my work, my students, and my heart is happy. It might not look like the perfect life other people envisioned for themselves or for me, but it’s the right life.” He leaned forward, gaze boring into Aaron. “The life you’re meant to lead is worth fighting for. Worth crying for, even worth bleeding for. When you sing the right song, your life opens before you, and all the pain and sorrow become the bricks you build your castles with. You, Aaron Seavers, will build amazing things. I look forward very much to seeing that unfold.”
It took Aaron a moment to collect himself to reply. “Dr. Allison—would you come to our dress rehearsal?”
Dr. Allison smiled. “I’d be honored.”
They went to the White House together—but first they plugged Aaron’s score into Dr. Allison’s spiffy software that spit out copies of every part they needed in the main office printer. The sight of them thrilled Aaron—his first full score, all official and sparkling. Everyone else was impressed when he passed them out in the ballroom.
“There’s going to be errors,” Aaron warned them. “Keep your pencils ready.”
“We’ll do a run-through first,” Damien said as he assumed the podium, “then break into sectionals. Baz and Elijah won’t be here until six. Mrs. Acker and the Mulders are keeping them away until it’s time.”
The run-through was beyond rough. Aaron was glad he’d asked Dr. Allison to attend, because his professor had to coach him quietly in the corner while sectionals went on, reminding him Rome wasn’t built in a day and everyone needed a chance to practice. Once he had himself together, he ran through his piano part a few times and fussed over the master score even though there wasn’t much he could change at this point without getting in Damien’s way.
When they met up for full rehearsal, things went a lot more smoothly. Aaron was still jealous of Damien getting to direct, but as he watched how much work it was wrangling all those people, his envy abated a little. The violins complained about how impossible their runs were—even Giles, who’d helped write them. The oboes nearly had a riot, and the altos complained about scraping the bottom of their range. The only ones happy were the French horns, who loved their featured melody line and said they’d gladly take more from any wimpy instruments or vocals who couldn’t handle the heat.
Aaron sweated buckets just listening to it, but Damien took it all in stride.
“Yes, it’s a challenge—that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s going to be hard to play, not only because of the difficulty. You think it’s rough now, imagine Baz sitting there with his arm in a sling, the guy whose dad aimed a pistol at him sitting in the chair beside him. We’re gonna cry through this before we laugh. But we’re going to get through it. That’s your message. That’s what Aaron and Giles wrote, what you’re playing and singing. Bring it, people. Baz isn’t the only one tough enough to face this.” He lifted his baton. “Again.”
They rehearsed for an hour, took a break for a quick dinner, then hit it one more time. After a small debate, they decided to get into their full concert uniform. As Marius pointed out, this was a more important performance than anything they’d done all year. They should look the part.
Before the performance started, Aaron stood tuxed and fidgeting next to Giles at the back of the ballroom. Aaron straightened Giles’s tie with shaking hands. Giles endured it with a sideways smile. “It’s going to be great. Stop fussing.”
Aaron let go of Giles’s tie and rubbed his palms on his boyfriend’s lapels. “I know. It’s…big. Important.”
Giles bussed his cheek and ran a gentling hand over his backside.
Walter and Kelly arrived. They’d been helping keep Elijah and Baz company, which was apparently no easy feat. “Elijah’s still pretty skittish,” Walter said. “He’s going to stay with Pastor Schulz for the next few weeks, and they’re still debating on whether or not classes are good for him right now. Everyone agrees he should get a lot of visitors, whether he wants them or not. Hopefully tonight goes a little way to showing him he has a village.”
Kelly glanced around the overflowing ballroom. The choir and orchestra took up almost all the space, and that was with them cramming tight. “It’s gonna be loud, I’m guessing.”
“Deafening even before the snares come in,” Giles agreed.
Walter laughed. “Snares?”
“It’s a full-on sound orgy,” Damien declared, coming up behind Aaron. “Just like Baz always wanted.” He clapped a hand on Giles’s and Aaron’s shoulders. “We’re ready to start.”
The roughest part, Aaron discovered as he sat at the piano, wasn’t playing—it was Baz’s mother rolling him in, Elijah huddled behind them with the Mulders, the Drs. Nussenbaum, Dr. Allison and Pastor Schulz. Baz looked like he’d been through a war, and Elijah didn’t appear much better.
Was this really the right thing to do?
Damien took the podium. He had to swallow several times, clutching his baton tight in his hand. Eventually he gave up and let out a heavy sigh. “What’s there to say? Baz, Elijah—this one’s for you.”
He turned to the choir and orchestra, raised his baton—and away they went.
The song opened with strings alone. Aaron had tried fifty different combinations, but in the end pizzicato violins and cellos singing melody had been perfect. At the first build the percussion came in softly. At the second rise Aaron assumed the melody line with the piano.
The choir swelled, rising on the third build, and Mina stepped forward, grabbing the mic for the solo.
Aaron saw Baz and Elijah out of the corner of his eye. Baz sat in his wheelchair, Walter beside him, his mom behind him lightly touching his shoulders. Baz kept still, his expression unreadable behind his glasses.
Elijah sat with Pastor Schulz. He hunched in on himself, looking like a terrified rat ready to strike. But as the song wore on, he eased. Slowly, the music bleeding away his reserve.
Baz didn’t move, only sat rigid in his chair, listening.
The song shifted, tempo kicking up, still very orchestral but only on the bottom as it leaned heavier on the vocals, punctuating them with horn and making the violins fill in the color with their runs. Marius stepped out of the bass line and took up the synth.
Damien aimed his baton at the back, and as they moved into the bridge, the snare line came out from behind the timpani.
It was Aaron’s ballsiest move, an idea ripped right from a remix, but every instinct he had told Aaron Baz would love it. As the snares played their solo, moving in perfect sync and flipping their sticks in showy moves as they swayed their hips from side to side and clicked the sides of their drums, Aaron wailed out a piano solo with Marius echoing on the synth. The double basses filled out th
e bottom pulse before taking their own turn at the melody line, then passed it over to the violas, who tossed it at last to the French horns so they could assume the last instrumental solo with gusto.
The bridge wound down, and Salvo and the Ambassadors stepped out of the choir and formed a circle around their tiny audience.
As Damien launched them into the final rounds of the chorus, the audience began to clap, all but Baz and Elijah.
Elijah remained in his seat, still reserved but listening.
Baz removed his glasses, pushed out of his chair, took his place in the tenor line and started to sing.
No one had the solo for the final—and the choir didn’t just have the melody either. That had been Giles’s idea—everyone sang together, sharing the glory. As they all sang and played, even the audience singing and clapping along, Aaron knew it was right.
“Titanium” was a song about survival—but when they performed it that night, it was a song about surviving together. Even Elijah stood in the end, singing quietly along. They swayed as one, choir and orchestra and audience, the music beating in their souls. Feeding their feelings back to the universe as one giant, harmonic pulse, the song in their hearts so strong it couldn’t do anything less than change the world.
Chapter Thirty-One
It might have been cliché, but Giles thought June probably was the perfect month for a wedding.
The weather was beautiful. The sun shone, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and it was only a baby bit humid. Which was good, because the church had spotty air conditioning, and 90 percent of the wedding party and half the musical accompaniment were wearing tuxes.
Giles held his chin up, smiling as he let Aaron fuss. “You do know before you were around, I did tie my own tie.”
“Hush.” Aaron tugged a few more times, then stood back, studying Giles’s neck critically. “I think it’s finally straight.”
Giles resisted the urge to tug at it, brushing invisible lint off Aaron’s shoulder instead. “You look good. I like the gray. I think the Ambassadors need to switch to this.”
Aaron smiled wryly, smoothing his hands over the lapels of his best-man garb. “I saw the price tag. We can’t afford it.”
Giles caught Aaron’s hand, swinging it lightly as they walked together to an open bench along the wall. They were in the basement, getting ready with the rest of Salvo and the Ambassadors and a small section of the chamber orchestra. “Are they set upstairs?”
“I think so. Your mom is kind of taking charge in the back. She has the stuff all ready to go. Though mostly I think she’s keeping Mrs. Lucas and Mrs. Davidson from passing out.”
“Well, Mom does enjoy being in charge.”
As they neared the start of the ceremony, Giles got more and more swept up in the magic of the day. Though Salvo and the Ambassadors and the chamber orchestra would always have been happy to perform for the wedding, after everything they’d all gone through, this performance had become as sacred as the one they’d done for Baz and Elijah. Everyone fussed with each other, adjusting ties and smoothing out makeup, hugging and kissing and laughing.
Elijah was at the wedding. He was staying with Pastor Schulz for the moment, though they were all due to move into the White House by the time summer term started in a few weeks. Elijah’s dad’s hearing was coming up, and they had a plan to go together. His mother had checked in to a mental hospital in South Dakota after a breakdown in church the week before. Neither Giles nor Aaron had been able to get Elijah to talk about any of it yet, but they hoped to change that once they were all under the same roof.
They all had jobs for the summer too. Aaron and Giles would work with Dr. Nussenbaum and Dr. Allison in a summer program for high school students, and Elijah had a job lined up with campus work study. Brian would be at the White House too, as Elijah’s roommate. They were still working out Elijah’s tuition situation for the fall, but everyone was agreed it was an issue of how it would work out, not if.
Which reminded Giles. After Aaron had gone through a warm-up with the choir, Giles pulled him aside. “What about your dad? In all the craziness I forgot to ask what he said when you called him this morning.”
He loved how breezily Aaron answered. “He’s thinking about it. He wants to resume paying for my tuition, but they got me the scholarship, and I honestly don’t want his money now.”
“Any word from your mom?”
Aaron’s reply wasn’t quite as breezy. “She wants to get together once the wedding is over. I feel like I should probably agree.”
“Only if you want to.” Giles took his hand. “And only if I go along.”
Aaron kissed Giles’s cheek. “Part of the reason I want to see her is to get more intel on Dad. I want him to put it into the fund for Elijah. I think he might do it too. I don’t know if she can sway him, but…well, I don’t know. I just want to talk to her about it, maybe try and get a bug in his ear through her. Walter says Dad needs all the good deeds he can muster to regain favorable standing within the firm, which is looking to put in for the fund too. Did Walter tell you he got his internship back?”
“Yeah, he did.” Giles grinned. “I think his supervisor, that Bob guy, is here. So are half the professors Walter and Kelly have ever had, and a number of ours. Everybody is here. Did you see the church? It’s crazy full.”
Aaron laughed. “The gay wedding of the century.”
Until ours.
God, Giles almost said it out loud. And he’d be damned if Aaron didn’t read it on his face anyway.
Damien rescued Giles by standing on a chair and clapping his hands. “The ceremony is about to start. Orchestra, you need to get upstairs and take over the prelude. Salvo, Ambassadors, go to the places you were given in rehearsal, but get ready to step over grandmas. It’s a full house and hotter than hell. If you get faint, you know the drill. And I know you won’t listen if I tell you not to pass anything, choir, but for God’s sake, be discreet. It’s a fucking wedding.”
Aaron squeezed Giles’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll find you after, okay?”
Giles kissed him back. “Okay.”
The sanctuary really was packed, and Giles had to fight his way to his seat in front of the organ, where Mina and Karen were already waiting. They were in their Salvo outfits because they’d be getting up to sing as soon as the processional started. Giles would stay where he was for the whole ceremony, but he had a perfect seat to see everything.
The prelude was fun. It was a medley of Disney tunes he and Aaron had arranged with substantial help from Dr. Allison. Not that Kelly was going to hear any of this. From what Giles understood, he was in the back freaking the fuck out. But his family would know, and from the looks of their faces and their smiles, they got the message: this was Kelly and Walter’s big show.
And what a fucking show it was going to be.
When Damien came to the front of the church and gave them the sign, they wound down. As Mina and Karen put down their instruments to take their places, Giles kept his gaze trained on Damien, waiting for the signal. The first few bars would be choral only, which was good.
He wanted to be able to watch.
He caught Elijah’s gaze, sitting in the front row with Dr. Mulder. Giles waved. Elijah waved back, looking a little overwhelmed, but okay. Giles was going to make a face at him, try to get him to smile, but then Marius and Baz came out and assumed their places on either side of the aisle. Baz winked at Elijah, who immediately glanced away.
Baz rolled his eyes and nodded at Marius. As they took a breath together, Damien counted them in, and they started the beat.
As half the Ambassadors beat-boxed, the rest ran falsetto arpeggios that made up the opening bars of “Take Me Home” as Salvo filled in the chords behind. The song had thrown Giles at first because—really, Phil Collins? But Walter and Kelly had said it was perfect, and as they’d waded into i
t in rehearsal, Giles had to agree. It was perfect for everyone.
Damien gave Giles the cue, and he brought the orchestra in, layering strings softly over and under the vocals.
Aaron stepped out and, with Walter behind him, started to sing.
Aaron met the gazes of half the audience as he sauntered down the aisle, while also clocking the choir members as they peeled around the edges of the room, making sure everyone was still in sync. He hadn’t balked at the solo, saying he’d do anything for Walter, though he’d also secured cello lessons with Dr. Allison for the summer and had confessed to Giles he wanted to practice well enough to get into the symphony. He also had big, big plans to start a vocal-orchestral group in the fall and fully intended to write a song with Dr. Allison for the homecoming concert.
Walter danced a little as he moved down the aisle, but he had a mother on each arm, and though Mrs. Davidson and Mrs. Lucas tried, they couldn’t quite find the beat. When they got to the front pews, Walter stopped, kissed them both and gave them hugs, then let Aaron lead him off to his side to wait.
Aaron stood beside him and sang as Salvo and Ambassador members led in the rest of the wedding party, two at a time. Giles could only imagine what it felt like to be in the audience, all the sound around them, reverberating in their chests. He wished for a moment he could be a part of it, then reminded himself he was. He could feel the shiver the strings gave the notes, never prominent but always there, taking the song higher, helping it fill the room.
The wedding party was a lot of fun. Walter’s sister and Kelly’s came up together, and they danced and smiled, but the best were Walter’s friends Cara and Greg, who did a kind of crazy tango that only sort of stayed on the beat, making everybody laugh. Aaron went back down to lead up Kelly’s friend Rose, Kelly’s first attendant, but as the choir worked through the song’s bridge toward the last verse, all eyes turned to the back of the church. Giles smiled, because he knew what was coming.
Fever Pitch Page 34
