Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,214

shot.”

“Wow,” Greg said, trying to digest any of that. “I’m… Okay. I guess let’s try it.” He typed to get the show going on the computer and cast to the television.

“Oh, and put on the Closed Captioning,” Taylor said. “That helped a lot because then I caught more of what they were saying than I did the first three times.”

Greg wasn’t going to ask. He was frantically preparing himself for an intellectual scuba dive without the gear.

“Here we go.”

“What’s this?” Nelson asked when he got there about eleven.

“Hamilton,” Taylor answered, shushing him with the word.

He took his coat off and came over to sit in the chair. “Cool. What’d I miss?”

When the movie was over, Taylor didn’t even know where to start with either of them. “So, what’d you think?” she finally asked, giving the room a chance to tell her where to start.

“It’s kind of crazy,” Nelson said. “We were just talking in music theory the other day, and the professor was talking about the descending bass line and how when we hear it, we know instinctively that bad things are coming. He mentioned Hamilton. I didn’t really think much of it at the time because I hadn’t seen it, but… wow, you can really get that if you know what you’re listening for.”

“So is that another one of those motif things you were talking about?” Greg asked.

“I never thought about it, but yeah, I’m sure it is.” Suddenly, she wanted to watch the whole thing again and look up what a descending bass line even was.

“I get what you were saying though,” Greg said, “about Burr and how he was always holding back, trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing, never really willing to commit to something and stand there. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy, just… scared. Scared to take a… shot. Huh. That’s crazy.”

“I thought it was cool how Alexander came from literally nothing,” Taylor said. “You miss that, I think, when you first watch it. But what were his chances on that island where he was born? His dad left, his mom died. He was all alone when he was 12 or 14. Really we shouldn’t even know his name. But he made something of himself by reading and studying and then translating that into writing. They call it being prolific, but I think it was his way of trying to make sense of it all. And, it’s hard to write without taking a stand. The second you put those words down, it’s hard to ever erase that.”

“It’s like he was trying to capture and create his own legacy,” Greg said, “like he was literally writing his own history down so it wouldn’t be lost.”

“That takes guts,” Nelson said, “because how do you know where this is going? How do I know where this is going? How would I even know if it was worth writing about in the first place?”

“I think it’s hard,” Taylor said. “I know sometimes I have all these thoughts and they’re just spinning and spinning and spinning around in there. I think trying to capture some of them on paper in writing is a way to get them to maybe slow down or make some sense.”

“I loved it when he replied to Burr,” Greg said with a laugh. “Pages and pages and pages. Can you even imagine trying to out-write him?”

“Ha. Good luck with that. He was a man of a lot of words,” Taylor said. “But it’s also interesting how the words change in meaning. Like Angelica with the satisfied thing. At first, it’s a compliment, but by the end, it’s a slam and a half.”

“Ugh. She was so opportunistic,” Greg said. “Passing over him because he wasn’t rich or well-connected.”

“I don’t know, I think she was just being practical,” Taylor said. “She was the oldest, and the oldest has to look out for the others and the family. At least they’re supposed to.”

“Yeah, but she dismissed him without even giving him a chance,” Greg said. “That’s cold.”

“I think by the time she really thought about it and realized how she felt about him, Eliza was already in love with him,” Taylor said, and the understanding brushed across her heart. “And she wasn’t going to hurt Eliza. She would’ve done anything to keep Eliza from getting hurt, even giving up on ever being happy herself.”

“It’s noble,” Nelson said, “I’ll give you that, but you have to kind of wonder if she ever really gave