the driver’s seat. “Love, I know everyone’s here to perform, go on to orchestras and symphonies and tour the world, but I want to be a film composer. Like Carter Burwell—emotional and simple.”
Her hands fly as she talks, her passion bringing a brightness to her face.
“Sure. I really wanted the Twilight score to be better, though,” I admit.
“Those are fighting words. But come on! Carol?”
“I actually don’t know that one. I guess I’m not much of a buff—my mom used to listen to them a lot, so I know a lot of the older ones.”
“Well, you’ll know mine. Guarantee it.”
“I support that,” I say with a smile. “But you have to give oboes the best parts. And hire me to play them, because otherwise I’ll be broke forever.”
We pull into the parking lot of the café. Once we get inside, I take in the sharp, rich smell of coffee. It’s all from an espresso machine, which isn’t my scene, but it’ll have to do.
“Do you have any recordings of your stuff?” I ask.
“I’m working on a piece for piano and flute at the moment. It’s utter crap.”
I grab our drinks and lead us out the door.
“You should play one for your weekly performance. Baverstock would go nuts over that, wouldn’t he?”
“I may’ve hyped my skills a bit too much—pretend I never told you. I want to play in the London Symphony Orchestra! And other totally cliché things!”
I shake my head, and smile all the way back to the cottage.
“So what’s our plan?” I ask as Dani parks in a garage in the middle of the city.
We step out of the car, and I see Pierce and Ajay smile at each other.
“Plan?” Pierce asks. “We’ll walk around, maybe get lunch, definitely find a place to drink.”
“Oh.” I like having a plan. I feel anxious energy flood my body, and I feel flustered. It’s not that I care what we do, but I hate not knowing, and not having a goal. We could go back to the cottage in an hour or fifteen for all I know.
I don’t play things by ear.
“Could we do some touristy stuff?” Sophie asks. “We can drink shit beer anywhere. Cardiff Castle is only in Cardiff.”
Ajay laughs. “Fine. Tourism, then we drink.”
As we step out from the garage, it’s clear this is a different place than London. Gone are the flags of England, the red cross on a white rectangle, and up are the official flags of Wales:
A fucking dragon.
This place reeks of coolness. People our age litter the streets, half speaking English, a quarter speaking straight-up gibberish (okay, Welsh), and the last quarter speaking languages from all over the world.
“There’s no shortage of pubs here,” Dani says. “Pubs and fourteenth-century churches. There’s something odd about that.”
“In my hometown, there are seventeen churches and nine bars.” I shrug. “Only a couple thousand people live in this town.”
“Huh,” Sophie says. “I guess this is a universal thing.”
We walk down the street together, a few paces behind the rest. What she said that first night about Pierce’s ex burns deep in my core, warning me of the heartbreak that might come if I keep doing … whatever it is I’m doing with him.
He’s directly in front of me, and I take a second to survey a different view. How can someone’s jeans fit that well? Were they sewn on him?
And yes, technically, this mental conversation makes me a perv, but that is something I can deal with.
Dani’s leading our group, but it’s clear she has no idea what she’s doing. We end up on a pedestrian path in the town square. We meander through stores, until we come across a pasty shop. It’s a lovely concept—any ingredients you’d ever want, stuffed into crisp puff pastry.
I see Pierce’s hesitation from here.
I’m hungry, but I’m not. The thought of eating anything like this (all fat, all butter) makes me feel gross. Well, it sounds great, actually. But Pierce’s insistence on reading the nutrition information on everything he eats is really starting to rub off on me. The sugar content of the chocolate-covered biscuits we all shared last night, for example.
I realize I’ve started glancing at that info myself this week, and it’s kind of hard to get it out of my head. The sodium content in those Kraft Mac & Cheese boxes Aunt Leah got us, the calories in a single bag of crisps.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I did the math last night—okay, I borrowed Dani’s phone because