Staccato (Magnum Opus #2) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,56

single one. He’d only met the guy the twice, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in being friends either time.

Not that Adam wasn’t used to it. Van was obviously not a classical music nerd the way Nik was, but he had a sort of pretentious energy about him, and Adam never meshed well with those people. He didn’t mind much, though, not when he was here with Nik who very obviously wanted to have Adam in his space.

He sighed, moving on to the second shelf that was lined with CDs and DVDs. He almost laughed at the way Nik sort of straddled the world between modern and vintage, it so fitting and so strange at the same time. He fingered one of the CDs, then pulled the case out of the stack and held his finger there to keep the spot in case Nik had them in a certain order.

Turning the front around, he squinted at the image. Il Mio Amore, Nicolas Michaud and Cedric Blum. There was a silhouette of two men on the front leaning against the side of a piano, kissing. Something about the image, about the way the font curled around on itself as though the words were kissing the way the men were—it stirred something in him.

“Did you find my porn stash?”

Adam jumped, his finger losing its spot in the CD stack, and he almost dropped the one he was holding. “Oh my god, you could be like a fucking ninja or something.”

Nik laughed, balancing a bowl of popcorn on his arm as he used his other hand to locate the bed. “I would make a terrible ninja.” He set the bowl down, then turned to Adam. “What did you find?”

“CDs, like the grandpa you are,” Adam joked. He walked over to Nik and looked down at the case again. “Il Mio Amore,” he said, trying for the accent.

Nik laughed and corrected him, the words curling off his tongue like he was a native speaker. “I saw them live.” Nik reached out and touched the smooth case with the tip of his fingers. “It was amazing. I think I had a midlife music crisis after that when I realized I would never be that good.”

“You are good. I’ve heard you,” Adam defended.

Nik laughed again and took the CD out of his hands, turning to his nightstand where he had a small player. “Trust me, it’s…another world.” He busied himself with putting the CD in, and a few minutes later, soft notes rang out of the speakers.

Adam opened his mouth to say that he’d heard Nik play just as good—if not better—but then the tempo increased. Suddenly, notes were pouring out, surrounding them with sounds Adam had never heard before.

“Oh,” he finally managed to say, and Nik snorted another soft laugh.

“Yeah. Nicolas was this prodigy—like a proper prodigy. He was discovered when he was a kid, and his father was…” Nik wrinkled his nose in thought. “Something with the government, I don’t remember. Anyway, he worked in Italy for a while, then took a job at Washington University for some inexplicable reason, then totally disappeared for like three years.”

“And he came back with this?” Adam wondered, taking a step closer to where the music was still playing.

Nik shrugged one shoulder. “He found Cedric. Some nobody kid in the engineering program. They played a winter concerto at the University, then they both moved to Rome, and that’s where they live now, I think. They put out an album every so often, and they work with Alessio de Rege most of the time.”

Adam felt the back of his neck flush. “Is it awful that I don’t know like half the words you just said?”

Nik sighed quietly, then shuffled over until his hand brushed along Adam’s elbow. “No, it’s not awful. I don’t expect you to know these things. It’s…” He waved his hand in the air. “It’s niche. You could probably name two dozen punk bands, and I wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other—but I know they’re just as important to you as these composers are to me.”

Adam bowed his head and took the CD back into his hands, staring at the image. “So, these two are like, together?”

“Married, or…at least as good as married,” Nik told him. “I wanted to be them—be like them.”

Adam felt his heart twist in his chest, because he might be a sort of diamond in the rough—or maybe he was just a lump of coal with the idea of