Love at First Note Read Online Free PDF Page A

send a text if it meant a million dollars.
    Bruno. Of course. Suddenly Grayson at group rehearsal made sense. Bruno had been his childhood cello teacher. Funny I hadn’t made the connection when I’d joined the group the month before. But, then, I hadn’t thought about Grayson—not really—in years. The way his presence now filled the room, it was hard to imagine how he hadn’t at least crossed my mind once or twice.
    “He says three weeks, but I don’t know,” Caroline added. “The way Bruno talks about Florida, it won’t surprise me if he doesn’t come back at all.”
    I took my seat next to Caroline—the fourth member of our group—and put my music on the stand in front of me. I could feel Grayson’s gaze and sense the questions he likely wanted to ask, b ut there wasn’t time to catch up. I had already arrived late, and Hannah and Caroline were ready to get started.
    Two hours later—two hours of dismally bad music later—we finally called it a night.
    “It shouldn’t be allowed,” Grayson muttered as he put away his cello. “Music that bad . . .”
    Caroline laughed. “Can we really even call it music?”
    “No complaining from me,” Hannah said. “The bride is paying four hundred extra bucks for us to play her sister’s stuff.”
    “Still.” Grayson snapped his cello case closed. “I feel like I just sold my musical integrity at a flea market.”
    I pulled my phone out of my purse to see if I’d missed anything during rehearsal. There was a text from Lilly.
Elliott’s moved in. Sorry you weren’t here. :( He’s really nice. Bought us all pizza to thank us for helping.
    Well, that was awesome. While I had endured an awkward rehearsal playing bad music with my ex-boyfriend, Lilly had been hobnobbing with our famous musician neighbor.
    Fantastic
, I thought to myself
.
    Grayson lingered by the door while I finished packing up. Once my violin was stowed away, he surprised me with a big hug, equal parts awkward and familiar.
    “I should have done that when you first walked in,” he said. “It really is good to see you.”
    I only managed an awkward smile. Grayson hadn’t just been my teenage boyfriend. He’d basically been my entire high school experience—what little there’d been of it anyway. I’d graduated a couple years early, with special tutors and online schooling making it possible for me to focus more fully on my musical training. Everyone else had treated me like an oddity, calling me crazy for skipping basketball games or parties and dances in favor of rehearsing, but Grayson had never made me feel like my dedication had been anything but normal. Plus, he was a musician too. Maybe his trajectory wasn’t quite the same as mine, but he still understood.
    Our breakup had been inevitable. When he’d headed off to NC State to study engineering, the age difference between us suddenly seemed larger than ever before. It didn’t matter that I was heading to college myself—I was still only sixteen. Our last morning together, we stood in his driveway next to the little Honda Civic he’d bought with money he’d earned teaching guitar lessons to neighborhood kids. The car was weighed down with boxes crammed full of his life, ready to cross county lines and land in Raleigh. I was leaving for Ohio the following weekend.
    I wished out loud we could make the distance work, and he shushe d me with gentle reassurances. But we both knew we were at the beginning of our end.
    A few months later, I was glad we’d lost touch. The challenge of matriculating into a college campus weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday provided more than enough of an emotional challenge. Keeping up with a boyfriend would have been a killer. Still, Grayson was my first love. No matter the logic behind our breakup or the amicability of our parting ways, he was still a boy I’d kissed and loved and trusted with my heart. And the surge of emotion his touch stirred up now? The one that kept me standing still and