The Love Variations

1

Marigold

They say it’s not a competition, but it always is.

There are two pianos—­sleek, black. Steinways.

There is sheet music on the pianos—­the same sheet music on each.

Celia Chen presiding.

And Jamie Larson, f***ing Jamie Larson, staring me down from the second piano with that fever-­glint in his eyes that says he’s going to crush me under the heels of his dirty off-­white Reeboks and make me beg.

So yeah. It’s a competition.

“Beethoven Sonata number twenty-­one in C Major, better known as the Waldstein opus. You will both be playing the Allegro con brio. Heads or tails, Miss Gensler?”

She picks me to choose, of course. It might seem like favoritism, but it isn’t. It’s a hollow gesture. The kind that makes her look indulgent, and makes me feel powerless. Heads or tails, Marigold; it won’t matter which you choose. You’re humiliating yourself regardless.

Stop it, I tell myself. I’m not giving in to those kinds of thoughts. They don’t help anyone. Overthinking is only going to make things worse.

I’m good at this. I’m the best at this—­or one of the best, anyway.

I’m about to prove it.

“Heads,” because why not, and Celia flips. It’s tails.

That means Jamie goes first. Which only gives me twelve extra minutes to figure out how I’m going to beat him.

Jamie doesn’t have any tics. He doesn’t stretch his arms out over the keyboard before he starts, or crick his neck to one side. He simply places his hands upon the keys and plays.

The Allegro begins with repeated chords, played just long enough to draw tension through the listener before the treble clef interjects its response. It’s already enough to make me wish I’d chosen tails—­this beginning part, amelodic and harried, never fails to make me anxious. The notes tangle together, or at least it feels like that when I play.

When Jamie plays, it’s different. His hands are unbelievably light, fingers barely grazing his instrument, each note crisp and distinct even as they seem to stumble together. He has the hands I’ve spent sixteen years and god knows how much of my parents’ money trying to develop.

But no amount of finger-­strengthening and stretching exercises makes a difference.

Everyone in this damned room watches Jamie, rapt, as he plays. I won’t lie—­I’m right there with them. I keep wishing for him to make a mistake, as if I can manifest his downfall if I want it badly enough.

Manifesting does nothing. Jamie finishes: perfectly, like always.

Everyone claps like they just watched Yuja Wang perform a Rachmaninoff concerto. Someone even hoots.

I rub my palms against my skirt and wish for the thousandth time that I could hit notes the way Jamie hits notes. He makes it seem so effortless. Must be those long, bony, fiddly fingers of his—­they’re like insect legs skittering across the keyboard. My hands are thick, clumsy, and slow. In elementary school I would sit in class and do finger exercises against my desk instead of paying attention. I could hear my first teacher’s voice in my head, telling me that if I did enough exercises, maybe I would be able to make up for my bad genes.

Girlfriend only knew the half of it.

The applause finally dies down, and Celia gestures for me to begin. Everyone’s watching, no doubt well aware that they just witnessed perfection; anything that might come after that is just a point of comparison to highlight how good Jamie Larson is at his art.

But also, it’s Jamie Larson, and f*** Jamie Larson.

So I play.

I tell myself I’m going to focus on the technique for once, but by six measures in, it’s already too late. I’m caught up in the music, carried from note to note by an arcane high that billows me up and won’t let me down. While my fingers are on the keys, just for that moment, I don’t care about perfection. It’s the music that pulls me along in its wake, and my body, my stupid hands, all just tools in service of chasing down that feeling.

I see the end of the piece coming toward me and I want to run away. If I could drag this out further, I would. I want to swim around in these emotions and sink into the piece, as if me and Beethoven could somehow share one mind across hundreds of years. Like he’s whispering in my ear about love and anger, and I can feel it too, I swear I can.

The end comes. I finish. My hands are shaking as I lift them from the keys, and I quickly ball my fingers up into fists and shove them down into my lap, blowing out a long breath, then opening my eyes.

Across the two pianos, Jamie Larson watches me with furious eyes.

The applause registers a moment later: just as loud as what Jamie got. Maybe even louder. In the front row, Cessy screeches and jumps up and down like she’s at a Blackpink concert, and I laugh before I can stop myself, folding into an elaborate bow without standing up.

Even Celia is smiling.

“Moment of truth,” she says. “Who is the crowd favorite?”

She holds out a hand toward Jamie, and the audience claps. Then toward me. The clapping is even louder.

Take that, insect hands.

That’s the thing about us. Jamie is perfect. He never misses a note. His dynamics are impeccable, rising and falling without hesitation.

But my music makes people feel something.

And that’s worth more.

I think.

Cessy grabs me the second I step offstage, yanking me into a rough embrace. “You killed it,” she half-­shouts against my ear, ignoring the way I flinch—­it might be loud in here, but not that loud. “Little f***er didn’t know what hit him!”

“Little f***er didn’t miss a note,” a familiar voice says, and Cessy and I both wheel around to find Jamie Larson himself staring us down with those sea-­cold eyes of his.

“Sorry,” I start to say, but Cessy is two steps ahead as always.

“It’s not all about the notes. Goldie plays like she actually means something by it. That counts for more.”

“It doesn’t,” Jamie says.

He’s not wrong.

But he’s the last person who gets to say it.

I’ve known him since our first day at Parker three years ago, when we were both anxious little freshmen. Or, well, I was an anxious little freshman. Jamie Larson walked out of the womb a cocky asshole, and he only got worse once the accolades started rolling in. Sure, maybe I liked him before our big falling-­out toward the end of freshman year . . . but that was freshman year. Now he’s a senior and an asshole.

Still. It’s not helpful that he was also born stupid-­hot, all burnished bronze hair and razor-­cut jawline.

“Guess the student population of the Parker piano performance department disagrees,” I say with the kind of whimsical devil-­may-­care tone of voice that is the polar opposite of the way I actually feel, and I wink at him.

The frisson of disgust that washes over his face is worth it. I win.

“We’ll see what the judges think at Stockholm, won’t we?” Jamie murmurs, and just like that, he slides the knife in.

Shit.

“You’re playing at Stockholm?” I manage to say without sounding too horrified. I think.

The Stockholm International Piano Competition is one of the most important, most famous competitions out there. I attended the qualifying round over the summer—­out of over 180 pianists, I was one of seventy-­five chosen to perform at the main competition in January. Jamie hadn’t attended. He wasn’t in the running. What’s more, I had pored over the qualifying results a thousand times—­ so even if I’d somehow blacked out Jamie’s presence in Sweden all summer, if he’d gotten through, I would know about it.

So why the hell is this man standing in front of me saying he’s going to Stockholm this winter?

The grin that cuts across Jamie’s face now is lethal. “Oh, yes. I won third at the Chopin Young Pianists Competition when I was in high school. It’s a qualifying competition, so I got in automatically. Or did you forget?”

Yes. Yes, I did forget.

“I’m not a lexicon of Jamie Larson trivia,” I snap, but from the amused look he gives me, it’s clear he knows he got me.

Jamie shrugs his satchel of sheet music a little higher up his shoulder, his gaze skimming from me to Cessy and back again. I’m not imagining that extra glint of animosity in his eye when he looks at me in particular. He hates me.

The feeling is very much mutual.

“Looking forward to a nice, clean competition,” he says. “Technique versus musicality . . . We’ll see which wins out, won’t we? See you in class.”

And then the motherf***er salutes us—­he freaking salutes us—­and walks off like he thinks he’s already wearing a crown.