Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

o.o.o

On a warm July night in his twenty-sixth year, Schroeder steps into the lobby of the concert hall after a successful Evening of Great American Composers and sees that someone is waiting for him.

He doesn't recognize her at first; he only knows she's been waiting for him from the way her posture changes when he appears. She's a young woman, about his age; there's something striking about the contrast of her dark hair and her fair skin and her bright blue eyes, but her face is a bit too round, her jaw a bit too strong, her mouth a bit too stubborn, for her to be considered classically beautiful. There's something undeniably familiar about her but he can't come up with a name, and he's fumbling around for a clue—is it the new girl from the box office? that dark-haired girl he sometimes sees walking her dog around his neighborhood?—when she speaks.

"That was beautiful," she says. "I've never heard you play Gershwin before."

That voice—he looks harder at her, then he looks at her blue dress, and then his eyes widen. "Lucy?"

She rolls her eyes. "Took you long enough."

This would be the right time to greet her, but he doesn't know what to do—it's been so long—until she opens her arms. "Get over here and say hello properly."

And he does, smiling; Lucy always has had a way of getting people to do what she wants.

"Why are you in Omaha? Why are you here?" He steps back and takes in the sight of her again. He wouldn't have recognized her if he'd passed her on the street; she's grown her hair long and started to look quite grown-up since he last saw her.

"I live here," she shrugs. "As of June. Linus told me you were here too so I've been meaning to look you up, and then this morning I open the newspaper, and BAM! Full page ad: An Evening of Great American Composers, Omaha Philharmonic, featuring wonder boy Schroeder Metcalfe."

"They didn't call me a wonder boy in the ad," he says, but he's secretly pleased.

"It was implied," she shrugs. "Listen, I'm starving. You want to go grab something to eat? Catch up a little?"

He'd forgotten the way that talking to Lucy can be like facing a shotgun blast: she just throws every thought in her head at you at blinding speeds until you buckle. "Sure," he says. "Performing always makes me hungry."

He knows a diner that stays open late just a block from the concert hall, so he leads her out into the night. "I'm proud of you," she says as they stroll side by side down the street. "Official pianist extraordinaire of the Omaha Philharmonic. You're actually living out your childhood dream."

"You're not?" he asks.

She gives a theatrical sigh. "Turns out you can't just apply to be queen." And he ducks his head and laughs.

"Well, I'm proud of you," he says. "You sat through an entire concert and you didn't interrupt it once to ask anyone if you were pretty."

Immediately he wonders if that was rude, and if it was an odd thing to bring up—that was a long time ago—but she throws her head back and laughs, a good hearty infectious laugh that says she doesn't care who hears her. "How do you know?" she asks. "Maybe I did." But then she shakes her head. "No, you're right. It was too nice to interrupt."

"You enjoyed it?" he asks, and he can't help the skepticism that creeps into his tone. "You enjoy a night at the symphony?"

Immediately she stops in her tracks, and in the lamplight she fixes him with an oh-come-on sort of look. "After all the time I spent listening to you play and lecture, you think I didn't learn to appreciate classical music?"

He gapes. "Really?"

"Really," she affirms as they continue walking and duck through the diner door. "And I should thank you for that, by the way. One of the partners at my firm is a sucker for all that stuff. Huge fan of this orchestra you're in too. At my interview, we talked Mussorgsky for the first five minutes. Later he told me that between that and my résumé, we could have skipped the rest of the interview and I still would have gotten hired."

Schroeder hesitates. "What did you guys say about Mussorgsky? Because I've always felt like—"

"Come on," she says, forcibly pulling him to a table. "Food now, music crit later."

Lucy orders without even looking at the menu—"Bacon and eggs, over hard, stack of pancakes"—and Schroeder smothers a smile. He's remembering the last date he went on, when Janet in the viola section set him up with one of her single friends, where the girl ordered a half salad, dressing on the side, and only ate part of it. Of course, that's how the girl maintained her willowy figure and he's not going to judge her for her eating habits, but he has to say, it's refreshing to see someone who just goes for what she wants.

He orders his usual BLT and fries, and then he turns to Lucy. "Living in Omaha, huh?"

She nods. "I can drive home in a day—I mean, my parents' house—and this firm had the best benefits package."

"So you're a lawyer? Do you jail criminals or defend them?"

"Neither," she grins. "Corporate law. I decided I prefer it to criminal. How'd you end up in Omaha?"

"They offered me the job," he shrugs. "Getting something so soon out of school—no way I wasn't going to take it. And it's a respectable little ensemble." He sits back in the booth, staring at his childhood friend's enthusiastic face. "I can't believe you're here. It's been what, six years?"

"Eight years," she says. "Since Frieda's graduation party."

"Has it really been that long since we were all together?"

"For you it has. Some of us—" and here she gives him a pointed look— "actually make a point of staying in touch with our friends. Not my fault you didn't ever come home."

"It wasn't home," he points out. "I mean, it was, but after my parents moved . . . I could barely afford to fly from New York to South Carolina for holidays and visits. No way I could afford to fly to Minnesota too, just to hang out with friends."

"You're the one who had to go to New York. Like it was so important to go to Julliard." Her eyes are smiling and it's clearly a joke, but after a moment a different emotion crosses her face—something more vulnerable. "We missed you, though," she says, softer.

"I know. But it was—things were different, you know, after middle school."

She nods in understanding, and he remembers the same quiet understanding crossing her face when he told her he was going to a private fine arts academy starting in ninth grade, rather than going to the public high school with the rest of the gang. If he'd told her that when they were younger, she would have been furious with him for abandoning her. But she'd finally grown bored of her passionate crush on him some time in middle school, so she took the news rather stoically. (He'd been quite glad, really, about her getting over the crush, even if it did mean she came over less often to hear him play . . . but really, it was only on very rare occasions that something would occur to him mid-song and he'd lift his head to talk to Lucy, only to realize she wasn't there.)

After that, Charlie Brown and Linus did their best to make sure Schroeder still felt like part of the group, but it was an uphill battle. The academy was in another town so Schroeder spent a solid hour every day getting there and back. And he was practicing more than ever, and attending and performing in countless recitals and concerts, and anyway he was making friends at his new school. It was perhaps inevitable that a rift would grow between him and his childhood friends—one that always made him feel just a bit like an outsider when they all got together. To be honest, he'd been surprised that Frieda had invited him to her graduation party.

That he would have drifted away from them feels inevitable, like it was just a part of life, especially given his chosen vocation in the arts, which requires single-minded dedication and a willingness to relocate for an exciting new opportunity. Really, few people stay friends forever, right? And yet, when he thinks of Charlie and the gang . . . "I missed you guys too," he finds himself admitting.

She gives him a tight smile as the waitress appears with their food, and then picks up a fork and prepares to dig into her pancakes. "Well, this got depressing fast," she says. "Tell me about Julliard."

He does, and then he asks her about law school, and then they talk about the old gang: about Charlie Brown's job as baseball coach at their old high school, about Linus's graduate studies in theology, about Violet and Shermy's new baby. The conversation flows easily; it always did between them, once she got over him—not much conversation to be had when one person only wants to talk about love and the other person wants to talk about anything but. And it's been eight years since they talked like this, but they quickly fall into their old patterns.

And yet, something is different. Well, obviously, everything is different, he chastises himself. But specifically, the way she talks is different: the edge has been taken off. And without thinking, he says as much.

"You mean I don’t sound as bossy," she laughs.

"Well . . ."

"It's all right, you can say it. I was a bossy kid. I'm not embarrassed. I was a kid. You're allowed certain liberties when you're a kid."

"So you just . . . got over it?"

She shakes her head, grinning. "Wanna know a secret? I'm still bossy, I just channel it into my work. And when you're an adult, and you can channel being bossy into constructive outlets, instead of 'bossy' they call you 'driven' and 'ambitious.' And I, pal, am driven and ambitious. I'm going to be the youngest partner ever at my firm. That's my ambition."

"It's definitely ambitious."

She shrugs, clearly unconcerned. "I've got eight years, and I can do it in five."

He stares at her a long moment. "I wish I could be as confident as you," he admits, but she snorts at him.

"You decided to become a professional musician," she points out. "That is an act of supreme self-confidence." And then she smiles at him. "Lucky for you, you've got the talent to back it up."

And he knows perfectly well that he's good—he's got the awards and the reviews to prove it—but somehow it means more to hear it from a friend's mouth. "But music is just about the only thing I'm confident about," he confesses.

She scoffs. "Cute, talented guy like you? You've got the whole world at your feet, kid. I don't think you have anything to worry about." And Schroeder blushes.

They finish their meals and the waitress brings them their checks, and as they stand in line to pay, Lucy smiles at him. "We've got to do this again, okay? Give me your number so I can bug you all the time."

And he's perfectly willing to do so, but not just now—that feels like a goodbye and he's not ready for that yet. This is the nicest evening he's had with a friend in a while; truth be told, he doesn't have many friends in Omaha, although he's been here a year. So he responds not with his number but with an impulsive, "Can we do something before we say good night?"

Curiosity alight in her eyes, she follows him back to the concert hall, where he lets himself in with the key that the manager gave him so he can practice on the hall's Petrof grand. The janitors are still in the lobby—he knows from experience this means they haven't gotten to the hall yet, which is good, the lights will still be on—and they nod at him as he passes; they're used to his odd hours.

The hall is dimly lit, the house lights only half up, so he flips on the work lights in the wings and they flood the stage with enough light for him to play by. "Sit," he tells her, gesturing at the other end of the piano bench. She smiles and complies, and when she is settled, he begins playing the song that he'll always think of as hers, although he's never told her that: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

Her face lights up when she recognizes the song—the advantage of knowing it so well is that he never has to glance at the keys and he can watch her reaction instead—and then her eyes fall closed and she listens with a smile playing across her lips. For a moment, the sight of her hits him in an odd way, giving him a funny sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach. She's striking, as he noticed earlier, and now, seeing her give herself entirely over to the music, she's . . . beautiful.

But he doesn't have time to dwell on that for long because after only a few bars, her eyes fly open and she stands from the bench. He watches her curiously, his fingers never slowing, as she moves around the piano and grabs a chair from nearby. In one fluid movement she sets the chair at the far end of the piano and seats herself in it, then looks at him expectantly over the top of the instrument. And the smile that illuminates his face is broad and genuine and maybe just the tiniest bit bittersweet, because for a moment they're eight years old again, two friends who fight constantly but somehow stick together no matter what, two friends who haven't yet grown apart as they grow up. And he finds himself silently thankful for the act of God or fate or luck that brought Lucy van Pelt back into his life.

o.o.o

Chapter Text

o.o.o

He's the one who calls her first.

He hadn't intended to. When they said goodbye that night in front of the concert hall, they'd exchanged numbers but he'd warned her he'd be too busy for the next few weeks to do anything. A good friend from Julliard, an increasingly famous cello prodigy who's now living in Chicago, called up to say she's about to record a solo album, and they've just had their pianist drop out, and would Schroeder like the spot? The answer is yes, a hundred times yes, but he's got to learn several pieces quite quickly, on top of everything he's playing with the Philharmonic. So he has not got the time to socialize . . .

. . . or so he thinks until it is Friday at 6 and he has hit a wall. He's tired and stressed and frustrated with the Britten he's trying to learn and he's reached the point that if he keeps practicing, he might actually get worse, not better. He needs a distraction, he decides, something far away from a piano. And then he looks at the piece of paper hanging on his fridge, and before he can talk himself out of it (he does hate trying to initiate social interactions, because he can be so bad at it), he dials the number.

Lucy is thrilled at the prospect of doing something tonight. "Better than staying in and washing my socks," she says cheerfully.

He wonders if that was really her plan for the night, but decides he'd best not ask, just in case it really was. Awkward conversation for both of them, in that case.

She picks him up half an hour later in a brand new Volvo 240, which he tries not to gape at. There are many things that are very charming about being a young musician trying to make a name for himself, but the pay is not one of them, and he can only imagine what it's like being able to afford a nice new car whenever he likes. They go to the movie theater, where there is nothing playing that sounds even remotely palatable, but Lucy drags him to The Longest Yard.

And it's awful. Well, he supposes that everyone else there likes it, but as far as he's concerned, there are few things he's less interested in than watching Burt Reynolds and some prisoners play football. But that's what makes it so perfect: the stupidity of the movie distracts him from everything that's weighing on his mind, and by the time it ends he's quite relaxed. Not to mention it was fun to listen to Lucy's delighted laugh at all the terrible jokes.

After the movie she drags him to an ice cream parlor—"What's the point of being an adult if you don't use your money and your freedom to buy yourself ice cream whenever you want?" she demands—where they talk about Burt Reynolds and how Lucy feels about men with mustaches ("Not a fan," she says decisively) and her latest case and his upcoming concerts. It is precisely the sort of evening he needs to refresh and recharge, and when he wakes up Saturday morning and sits at his piano, he smiles because he's never played the Britten better.

o.o.o

It's her that reaches out to him next; she calls to say that has two tickets to the theater she got through work, and is he interested in going down to the Astro to see Titus Andronicus Thursday night?

He doesn't know how to answer, and she picks up on his hesitation immediately. "You don't like Shakespeare?" she demands. "But it's . . . culture. This is . . . your thing. I thought you'd be all over this."

"Liking music doesn't meant you'll automatically like theater," he points out. "I like theater that involves music, but I don't think this play does." He racks his brain for a moment. "And isn't Titus Andronicus kind of dark? I feel like that's the one thing I've heard about it."

"Look, Schroeder, if you don't want to go, just tell me."

But he does want to go, that's the thing. For the past day, the only people he's talked to have been his piano students, and he's longing for the company of someone who is his age and not sullen about being forced to practice. So he takes a breath and decides he can bear Shakespeare for one evening. "No, it could be fun. I'll go."

It's not fun, because as it turns out, he was right the first time: Titus Andronicus is kind of dark. The evening starts well enough: Lucy picks him up wearing a lovely green dress with long sleeves and a short hem, and when she sees him she laughs delightedly because he's worn a green bow tie with his suit: they accidentally match. And the night is warm and the Astro is beautiful and the crowd is humming with anticipation, and he's just thinking to himself that maybe he should have a better attitude about live theater when Lucy looks up from the program she's been perusing with a stricken look on her face.

"Do you know what this play is about?" she demands. He shakes his head no.

"Revenge," she says, shaking the program at him. "People killing each other. A lot. In really violent ways."

He blinks at her, but before he can speak the lights dim and there's nothing to do but sit back and watch the show. And Lucy was right: the play is largely about people killing each other in really violent ways. Even though he knows Lucy doesn't mind action movies, with lots of fighting and deaths, the play seems to be a little strong for her tastes; she keeps cringing, and at one point she actually hides her face against his shoulder (which he doesn't judge her for, because he's spent large portions of the evening watching with his eyes nearly closed).

When the curtain falls and the cast take their bows and the lights come up, Schroeder and Lucy sit there in silence a long moment, before finally she looks over at him. "I am so sorry," she says fervently.

"Why did that even just happen?" he says, stunned.

"Did I just confirm everything you ever thought about the theater?" she asks meekly.

"Did that really just happen?" he demands. "With the pie?"

She leans her forehead against his shoulder as though hiding her face in shame. "I am so sorry," she says again. "Next time, we do whatever you want. I won't complain, not even if it's stupid."

He looks down at the top of her head, at her black hair shining in the house lights, and he finds himself laughing, and then even more surprisingly he finds himself squeezing her hand. "Deal."

Schroeder takes her up on that offer two days later. He has tickets to Marilyn Horne, the great opera singer, who's on tour around the US, and he calls Lucy to tell her to make good on her offer. It turns out Lucy feels about opera the way the way he feels about theater, but after he reminds her about their deal a few times, she sighs and agrees.

He's a little worried about taking Lucy—not because she might be unhappy attending, but because he might have just wasted a ticket on someone who doesn't even care about it—but it turns out all right. Ms. Horne is a stunning vocalist, and her set list prudently includes a few popular songs along with the opera numbers, and Lucy is completely won over by the end.

"I admit it," she says as they stand outside the theater. "That was better than I expected."

"It was breath-taking," Schroeder says, his mind and his ears still full of the music. "It was glorious."

"So just out of curiosity," she says, sounding perfectly serious, "did you like this or Titus Andronicus better?"

He narrows his eyes at her and she laughs out loud. "I don't want to go home to my boring empty apartment yet," she says. "Let's walk for a while."

It baffles him how she can say things like that so candidly. It's not that her thoughts are unusual—sometimes they're exactly what he's thinking—but she's unafraid to just say them. In his whole life, there have only been two sorts of situations in which he's been that unafraid to express his feelings: when he's discussing music, and when he used to bicker with Lucy as a kid.

"How do you not like opera?" he asks as they stroll down the street. "You like classical music, and you seem to like theater well enough. Opera is sort of both of those together."

"Exactly," she says. "It tries to do both, and a lot of times it ends up not doing either one well. I'd rather listen to a symphony that knows it's a symphony. Plus every single plot is the same: big tragic romantic love affair."

Schroeder laughs aloud. "Okay, maybe some of them are about tragic love affairs."

"I'm surprised you like opera," Lucy observes in a teasing tone. "Since Beethoven didn't write them, and since there was a point in your life when you wouldn't do anything unless Beethoven had done it first."

He blushes a little at the comment—it's true, he was a weird kid in a lot of ways—but it's not enough to cow him: they are steadily in the middle of one of the few subjects he's completely comfortable with conversing about. "Actually," he says, and he can hear himself going into lecture mode but he can't stop it, "he did. Beethoven wrote exactly one opera, called Fidelio."

"Tragic love story?" Lucy guesses.

Schroeder hesitates, considering, and then replies, "No, actually. It turns out happy. A woman dresses up as a man so she can infiltrate the prison where her husband's being kept by the corrupt governor. She ends up saving his life."

"She sounds like a woman I'd like to know," Lucy grins.

"Actually she reminds me of you, in some ways," Schroeder admits. "Of all the girls I know, I think you're the one who I could most see doing something that big to help someone she loves." And then he thinks of the time Lucy tried to get him a spot performing at the PTA meeting, to give him his first real recital, and he blushes again. Good grief, is that twice in the last minute that he's blushed in front of Lucy?

But she doesn't notice. "Okay," she says, "if Fidelio is ever performed in town, we'll go."

He feels an unexpected warmth in his chest at being included in that 'we.' "Deal."

"But in return, you have to come to the theater again some time. We'll see something pleasant, I promise. We'll see a comedy."

And he hesitates, but truth be told, the last week has been so fun that he'd put up with more than Shakespeare to keep that going. "Deal."

o.o.o

Three weeks and four outings with Lucy later, Schroeder flies to Chicago for the recording of Julia's album. Under normal circumstances he would have driven, in order to save money, but the record company is paying for the plane ticket and he's not going to complain about that; there's an excellent chance his old beater car wouldn't have made it to Chicago and back. When Lucy discovers he intends on paying for a shuttle out to the airport—he's done the math and it's cheaper than paying for parking—she insists on giving him a ride instead.

"What's the point of having friends with cars if you're just going to pay for the shuttle?" she demands, and Schroeder can't help smiling.

She drives him out to the airport on Saturday morning, and as she comes around back to help him pull his luggage out of the car, he has a sudden flashback to when he was a child, and he finds himself smiling.

"What?" Lucy demands.

"Nothing," he says. She looks unconvinced, so he chuckles and explains. "I was thinking how familiar this is. When I was a kid I'd go to the airport with my mom when she'd drop my dad off for business trips. So this feels—" What is it? What is he trying to say? Comparing himself and Lucy to his parents is so strange; why did he even bring it up? "—domestic, I guess." Yeah, that wasn't awkward at all, he tells himself sarcastically.

Lucy takes it in stride, though. "Well, have a nice trip, dear," she says, adopting a high and sickly sweet tone very unlike her usual way of speaking.

So he responds in kind. "Thank you, darling."

And she rolls her eyes and laughs and gets back in the car.

Chicago is thrilling. It's his first time in the city since a trip when he was only 10, and he'd forgotten how much he likes the town. And being in the recording studio is absolutely amazing. He's always wanted to get involved in this, ever since he was a child and would spend hours in his room listening to Artur Schnabel playing Beethoven sonatas on the record player.

Most of his time is spent recording, but what spare time he has he spends walking around the city, seeing the sights and soaking in the ambiance and enjoying the big city. He likes Omaha, but it's no Chicago. And he buys Lucy a shot glass with the Chicago skyline etched onto it, remembering a conversation they had last week about collecting shot glasses; it makes him laugh to think of what her reaction will be.

Julia has come out walking with him tonight, and she raises an eyebrow as she sees the glass. "You like commemorative shot glasses?"

"No, it's for a friend. As a thank you for driving me to the airport."

"Classy gift."

"It's a joke," Schroeder explains. "She'll get it."

And suddenly Julia is all ears; having married quite young, she has long been known for meddling in other people's love lives. "She? She's a girl, this friend?"

"Don't start with me," Schroeder chuckles. "It's not like that. We've known each other since . . . I don't remember a time before I knew her. We're just old friends, very platonic." Well, in saying that he's ignoring a six-year period in which she loved him madly, telling him daily about how they were going to get married. But that's so far in the past now, half a lifetime ago, and Lucy is obviously well over it. She never brings it up and never seems uncomfortable about or even aware of their past, to the point that he sometimes half-wonders if he made it all up.

Julia eyes him skeptically a moment, then smiles. "Okay, then I'm setting you up with my friend Cindy for tomorrow night. She's a newspaper reporter. Very smart. Red-head. I think you'll like her."

But the date is a dud. Schroeder can't put his finger on why; Cindy is a lot of things he usually likes in women, but there's absolutely no spark there, absolutely no interest on his side, and he's relieved when the evening is over. Maybe, he thinks as he returns to his hotel room, it's that he knows he's going back to Omaha tomorrow; why get invested in a woman who lives so far away? That explanation satisfies him, and he puts Cindy out of his mind and finds himself instead with a sudden euphoria bubbling in his chest. But why shouldn't he feel happy? The recording went well, he got to see an old friend, and tomorrow he's going home to Omaha and everything he loves there.

And that same euphoria resurfaces when he leaves the baggage claim at the airport in Omaha and sees Lucy in the short-term parking lot, leaning against her Volvo and reading from a folder. The feeling is what makes him walk up to Lucy's car and, without thinking, without realizing this is what he's going to do, wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

It's the first time they've hugged since that first night, and normally he's not a touchy person but he thinks he could maybe make an exception for this. Because Lucy gives great hugs.

"Welcome back to Omaha," she chuckles, her voice muffled because her face is pressed up against his shoulder.

He smiles. "It's good to be home."

o.o.o

Chapter Text

o.o.o

The first time Lucy comes inside Schroeder's house, it's not at all planned. It's a Saturday night, a couple weeks after he's returned from Chicago, and he and Lucy are having dinner at a steak place downtown. He's thinking of suggesting that they go walk along the riverfront—autumn is coming fast and there won't be many fine evenings like this left—when he happens to mention that Julia mailed him a record with the final cuts of the five numbers he played on for her solo album. Lucy, in response, claps her fork down on the table and announces that they've got to go listen to it.

And that's how they end up in front of Schroeder's shabby little brick rental house, located on a quiet, modest street not far from the concert hall. They each took their own cars to the restaurant, so Lucy parks her Volvo out on the street and Schroeder parks his old Buick under the carport and furiously racks his brain trying to remember if he's left a mess in the house. He's not, by nature, a messy person, but he is a bachelor in his twenties and he doesn't have any piano students on Saturday, so there's a chance the living room is a mess. But here's Lucy smiling at his side, so it's too late to do anything but lead her to the front porch and unlock the door.

She's seen the front of his house before, when she's picked him up for various outings, but she's never seen the inside before—or, to be more precise, he's never let her see the inside before. He's not exactly ashamed of it, but he's also definitely not proud, especially given that Lucy's apartment—which he's been to several times—is spacious and sleek, while his little house is . . . not. His combined income from the orchestra and his piano students and a few other musical endeavors he does is comfortable but not extravagant, and that's reflected in his house and his clothes and his car: they are all comfortable but not extravagant. (Well, maybe not the car. The car is a beater by any standards.) And a good chunk of his income goes toward paying off one of the few nice things he does own: a high-end Yamaha studio upright, bought new when he moved to Omaha last year for more than he could really afford but he tells himself he needed it for his piano students. So this old house is the best he could get with his modest rent budget. He probably could have gotten more bang for his buck if he'd rented an apartment instead, but it's been his experience that apartment dwellers don't always take it kindly when you and your students are constantly pounding away on the piano at all hours of the day and night. In a house, at least he's got a small yard to act as a buffer between him and his neighbors.

At least, he thinks as he leads her inside, at least the front room is the nicest in the house. It's the only room his piano students and their parents see, so it's the only room he's actually decorated and it's the one with the nicest couch. Lucy flops down on said couch without waiting to be invited, and Schroeder fights back a grin as he places the record on the record player in the corner and drops the needle.

As the sounds of the piano fill the air, Schroeder drops into the armchair and says, "This first one is by—"

"Bartók," Lucy guesses, and then grins at his surprised look. "You said you were playing something by Bartók, and this sounds like something he'd do."

He chuckles. "Yeah, I guess this sounds like something he'd do."

Lucy lays back on the couch, her feet propped up on the arm—part of him wants to remind her not to get the upholstery dirty, but most of him shrugs and says "It's Lucy; she'll do whatever she wants to do no matter what I say"—and looks up at the orange peel ceiling as the cello starts to wind through a difficult passage. "I've never loved Bartók, if I'm honest," she says.

Dr. Weaver's voice echoes through his head, reminding him of the man's importance to 20th century music and the development of ethnomusicology . . . but he's not in History of Music, surrounded by students and teachers he wants to impress. It's just him and Lucy. So he shrugs and admits, "If I'm honest, neither have I."

She turns to look at him and gives him a sunny smile, and he grins back. "Music Appreciation," she explains. "I needed an art credit in college. I aced the 19th century unit, thanks to you, but the 20th century kind of gave me hives."

"You might regret coming over, then; there's a pretty long Britten coming up."

She sighs dramatically but there's a smile on her face. And as they settle into their seats and listen to the First Rhapsody unwind, he thinks how nice it is to be able to talk about what he loves with a friend. He reflects on how strangely gratifying it is to know that all his efforts to convince Lucy to appreciate his music did eventually work, even if it took longer than expected. And he wonders if it would have changed their relationship, back when they were children, if she'd done more than just tolerate his love of classical music. He wonders if he would have been more receptive of her adoration for him if she'd been more receptive of his adoration for Beethoven. And then he shrugs the thought away. That was a long time ago.

The Bartók comes to an end. "Nice playing, Metcalfe," Lucy says.

And you know, he doesn't mean to blow his own horn, but it rather did sound nice. "Thanks, van Pelt."

o.o.o

That evening is, in a way, the start of a new chapter in their friendship: one where they hang out, casually, rather than just going on outings together. It all really kicks off a week after she came over to listen to the solo record. It's a Thursday night and he hasn't seen a single person over the age of 13 all day, and he hasn't seen Lucy since last week, and he's bored and a little stir crazy. So he calls her up to ask if she wants to go get ice cream, and for the first time since rekindled their friendship, she says no.

"I wish I could," she says apologetically. "But I've got some things I need to finish up for work and they absolutely have to be done by the time I go in tomorrow morning."

"Oh," says Schroeder. "Oh, that's fine." He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice, but he thinks he rather failed.

In fact he's sure he did, because when Lucy suggests "You could go get ice cream on your own," she sounds even more apologetic than she did before.

"No, it's fine," he says. "I should probably practice anyway."

They end the call and he sits down to his piano. He's a bit grumpy at first but soon he's lost in the music, and before he knows it fifteen minutes have passed and he's being jarred from his concentration by the sound of knocking at the door. Surprised, he goes to answer it, and is even more surprised to see Lucy on the other side, casually dressed and armed with a thick manila folder.

She comes inside without waiting to be asked and seats herself on the couch. "My apartment's a little boring," she explains. "So I figured I'd work here."

He blinks at her.

"Besides," she grins, "you sounded so sad about not getting to see me tonight."

He blinks again.

"Sit," she says, gesturing at the piano. "Play."

He sits, hesitantly, and she grins at him and then sets her folder on the coffee table and starts rifling through it. He watches her, his mouth slowly quirking into a smile, and then he turns back to his nocturne. Soon her paperwork is spread across his coffee table, the sounds of Debussy are floating through the air, and Schroeder is thinking that this might be even better than ice cream.

This soon becomes commonplace for them: Lucy calls—or she doesn't, often—and then shows up on his doorstep with research or case files or whatever else it is that's in her folders; he's not actually sure. It's got a lot to do with timing; with the onset of the autumn comes the beginning of the Omaha Philharmonic's concert season in earnest, and now a lot of Schroeder's weekend evenings are taken up with performances. And since Lucy often has work she has to take home on weeknights, this seems the logical solution.

Well, logical if they want to see each other. But if he's honest with himself, sometimes he's not sure why she wants to see him. She always seems so busy and important with her work, and he knows she's got friends at her firm, and anyway her apartment is so much nicer than his house—why would she want to come here? Finally, one day, without thinking he says as much.

She looks surprised. "Why? Because you're my best friend in the city. You know that, right?"

Actually, no, he didn't know that, and he can't help the pleased expression that crosses his face. She chuckles and ruffles his hair affectionately as she passes his piano bench on the way to the kitchen. "I'm drinking your milk," she announces. "Do you want any?"

He smiles.

In addition to commandeering his couch that autumn, she also attends his concerts often. He can get her comp tickets, if he gets enough warning, so she comes to hear him play along with the symphony sometimes (as long as it's something she likes; she has a knee-jerk hatred of anything by Mahler, Strauss or Brahms, and true to her word, she only just tolerates most 20th century composers). She sits alone, and then afterwards they go to the diner down the street.

All things considered, this is the happiest he's been since he moved to Omaha.

o.o.o

Despite how close they've become recently, he doesn't invite her to his students' piano recital in mid-October. He considers it, because it'd be nice to have some moral support, but who'd want to go listen to a bunch of children they've never met play the piano? Some of his students are quite good, but some of them are still playing "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" (slowly and too loud) as their recital pieces, and that can't be fun for anyone but their parents. But he mentions it to her in the weeks leading up to it—he can't help it, recitals stress him out. They are the moment of truth for his students and therefore his teaching, after all, and he always worries that the parents of his students will be unhappy with their children's progress and decide to pull them out of their lessons.

But the recital goes off without a hitch, and when Schroeder leaves the music store where it was held, to his surprise Lucy's waiting by his car, reading something in a manila envelope, and she smiles when she sees him.

"This paperwork is making me want to start taking hostages," she says by way of greeting. "So I came to congratulate you on your fabulously successful recital."

"How do you know it was fabulously successful?" he asks.

She shrugs. "All these parents want is to see their precious children at the piano," she says. "So if you managed to get them each up to play, then I'm sure it was fabulously successful."

That is strangely encouraging. He grins, but before he can answer, Lucy looks around, "I need to spit out this gum. Be right back."

And she's jogging to the nearest trash can when he hears his name being called, and he recognizes the voice and cringes.

"Mr. Metcalfe! Schroeder!"

There's nothing to do but turn; he can't pretend not to have heard. It's Ms. Vitenson, as he feared, dragging little Byron behind her. "Oh, Mr. Metcalfe! I'm so glad I caught you." She strides right up to him, accidentally blocking Lucy, who she apparently hasn't seen, off from the conversation. "I wanted to congratulate you on your wonderfully successful recital."

Behind her Lucy gives a look of mock outrage and mouths "She stole my line!" at Schroeder, who has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

"All of the students were incredible," she says. "And what you've done with my little Byron—I could never thank you enough. And he adores you, doesn't he?"

She looks down at her son, who looks like he'd rather swallow a live frog than be part of this conversation. Poor kid, Schroeder muses; it must be difficult to be smart enough to realize that your thrice-divorced mother is constantly throwing herself at your piano teacher.

"We both adore you," she says, looking back up at Schroeder and gently smoothing down her hair; she's always wearing it in these updos that make her look about fifty years old, although in truth she's only five years older than he is. "In fact, I was thinking that perhaps we should get together some time and . . . talk about Byron's musical progress."

This is a sticky situation; if the woman wasn't a client, he'd give her a polite but firm no. But if he makes her unhappy, he might lose a student.

Lucy, however, seems to have no trouble deciding what to do. "Schroeder!" she calls, as though she has just caught sight of him from a long distance. "There you are!" And she walks up and takes his hand in hers. "I've been looking for you all over." And she goes up on her toes and kisses him on the cheek.

He's so surprised that he only just manages to say, "Well, here I am."

"We've got to hurry or we'll miss our dinner reservations," she says, her voice sickly sweet. She turns to Ms. Vitenson. "I'm so sorry to drag him away, but we've got to drive all the way across town."

Ms. Vitenson's mouth has tightened, but she nods graciously. "Of course. We'll see you next Monday, won't we, Byron? Say goodbye, darling."

"Bye," Byron says sullenly.

And then, since they already started this lie and they have to stick with it, Lucy and Schroeder climb into her car and she starts the engine. They wave goodbye to Ms. Vitenson and her son, and Lucy gets the car backed up and has started down the street before she bursts out laughing.

"Oh gosh," she says, "that was smooth." Suddenly she sobers. "I'm sorry, Schroeder. I should have checked with you before . . . did you want get together with that woman?"

"What? No, definitely not," says Schroeder firmly.

And Lucy is laughing again. "That's what I was getting from your expression, but I wanted to make sure I didn't just spoil your little love connection there."

"There is no love connection," he assures her. "That woman is relentless. But maybe she'll leave me alone now. I owe you big time."

"Then I'm glad I was around to help," she says magnanimously. She's been driving aimlessly, and now she pulls over. "So do you need to finish up back there? Or should we go get dinner?"

"No, I'm done back there. Let's get dinner."

They go to a Chinese place Lucy loves with greasy floors but good egg rolls, and it's the best end to the evening that he could have imagined. Lucy has apparently decided to keep up the pretense of them being romantically involved, because she hangs off his arm and calls him sweetheart and reaches across the table to wipe sweet and sour sauce from his lip, and he's surprised at how much he likes having her touch him. He's usually a pretty hands-off kind of guy, but this feels . . . comfortable. It feels right.

She keeps him laughing the whole time, and eats all the mushrooms from his plate without even bothering to ask because she knows he dislikes them. And each time she does, it occurs to him that she knows him better than anyone else in his life besides his parents. When he insists on paying for her to say thanks for her lie to Ms. Vitenson and she won't let him and they get in a laughing little spat about it, it occurs to him that he's more comfortable with her than anyone else in his life. When he helps her put her coat on and brushes her shining black hair off her shoulders, it occurs to him that she's grown up to be absolutely lovely, and he prefers her round face and stubborn jaw over the obvious, commonplace beauty of girls on magazine covers. When she drops him off at his car and bids him farewell with a laughing "I had a lovely time at dinner, darling," it occurs to him that he wouldn't have minded if they'd really had a date planned this evening, and if she were genuinely calling him "darling." In fact that sounds like a really nice idea.

And as he watches her tail lights disappear into the darkness, it occurs to him that he might be a little bit in love with Lucy van Pelt.

o.o.o

He doesn't see her for a while after that; her firm sends her to Tulsa for a few days, and then she's awfully busy for the two weeks after that. So Schroeder has a lot of time to figure out what to do about his realization on the night of the recital. A large part of him wants to do nothing. He's not completely sure how he feels about her; it might just be a vague inclination that disappears after a while. Or she might not return his feelings; she might laugh them off. Either way, he doesn't want to scare off his only friend in the state.

But another part of him, quite insistent, wants to ask her on a proper date and see what happens. And that part of him gets louder as the days go by; with each moment that he doesn't get to see her, he misses her, and he finds himself starting to imagine when it would be like to watch a film with her cuddled up to his side, her hand in his. To imagine getting to touch that glorious hair all the time. To imagine kissing her laughing mouth. And day by day the feeling grows until he thinks that he's got to say something. He's got to do something.

Nineteen days after that first realization, Lucy asks for two comp tickets to his upcoming concert. Surprised, Schroeder gets them to hold the tickets for her at the box office, and spends the whole concert wondering who she's brought with her. And all too soon, he finds out.

"Schroeder!" she says, bounding up to him in the lobby after the concert. He barely hears what she says next, so distracted is he in noticing that she's pulling a handsome man along with her, their hands entwined. The man's in a nice suit, and he's got a mustache. Lucy doesn't even like mustaches. "I want you to meet someone. Richard, this is my best friend, Schroeder. Schroeder, this is Richard; he's my . . . we work in the same building."

Work in the same building? You don't smile that way at someone just because you work in the same building.

Apparently Richard feels the same way, because he laughs at her. "Is that how you're going to introduce me to people?"

She laughs back. "We'll talk terminology later," she says, and goes up on her toes to kiss the man on the cheek.

And in that moment, Schroeder is completely sure how he feels about her—too late.

o.o.o

Chapter Text

o.o.o

Schroeder is not trying to avoid Lucy, truly he isn’t. But in the weeks that follow that concert, he doesn’t see her much; she’s always busy with Richard, and he’s not that keen to spend time with the pair of them together, even when Lucy invites him to hang out with them. He can be gracious about this; he can be mature about this. But that doesn’t mean he’s eager to spend his free evenings watching the girl he’s fallen in love with getting cozy with another man.

So he focuses on his music, and he tries to ignore how quiet his evenings are without Lucy rustling through her papers on his couch, and he stops eating out or going out for ice cream, and he just generally finds himself back to living the same austere life he knew before she came to Omaha. And it’s fine. It’s all fine.

Although “fine” doesn’t explain how relieved he finds himself when Thanksgiving break rolls around and he can get out of town.

He does stop avoiding Richard long enough to let the man drive him to the airport for his flight to South Carolina; Lucy’s flight to Minnesota is at nearly the same time as Schroeder’s, and when she discovers this, she insists on carpooling, and when Richard hears about it, he very kindly volunteers to take them both.

“No sense paying for parking when you have friends with cars,” he says jovially on the drive over, and Lucy grins and says “My sentiments exactly,” and Schroeder forces himself to smile at them both because really, Richard’s an extremely nice guy and it’s very rude of Schroeder to be a jerk to him just because the man saw Lucy’s admirable and dateable qualities before Schroeder did.

It’s great to spend Thanksgiving with his parents; South Carolina doesn’t feel like home, given that his parents moved there after he graduated high school, but anywhere his parents are is a happy place to be, and also his mom’s cooking is absolutely amazing. Over the course of the weekend, his parents ask him all about life in Omaha and playing with the orchestra and how his piano students are doing. They ask after Lucy and tell him to send her their love; he’s told them over the phone about his and Lucy’s friendship, and they were very pleased that he’s got a friend from the old neighborhood there with him in Omaha and very pleased at the spark and warmth that came into his voice when he talked about tromping all over the city with his best friend.

(What he did not tell them is that he fell in love with that friend and now she’s dating someone else and suddenly everything’s just a little less bright than it used to be.)

The night before he leaves, he’s helping his mother dry the dishes in the kitchen when she brings up the question that every unmarried adult dreads from their mother:

“So, are you dating anyone?”

Still, she’s his mother, and she asks it in such a kind way that he just smiles at her. “I would have told you, Mom,” he points out.

“Any prospects?” she presses. “Anyone you’re interested in?”

And he really doesn’t mean to say a word on the subject—but it turns out he doesn’t have to. He hesitates, just for a moment, and his mom pounces. “There is someone!” she smiles. “Who is she? What’s the story?”

“There’s no story,” he says firmly. “There’s nothing going on between us.”

“But you want there to be,” she says confidently. And then her expression softens, and she steps just a little bit closer. “Does this have something to do with why you’ve been so down this weekend?”

He blinks in surprise. “Have I been?”

“I mean, not so much that your father noticed.” She grins wryly. “Though you’d probably have to wear a sign around your neck if you wanted him to pick up on it, bless his heart.” And then her smile softens. “But I’m your mother,” she says. “I notice these things.”

Into his mind comes the memory of so many heartfelt conversations at the kitchen sink in his younger days; of course, they tended to be about fears about his upcoming recitals, or frustrations at losing another baseball game, rather than confessions about girls and romance. But he always has found solace in talking to her.

“There is this girl,” he confesses after a moment. “That I . . . wanted to ask out.”

His mother’s face brightens. “Who is she? How’d you meet her?”

“At one of my concerts,” he says, because he is for sure not going to admit that it’s Lucy van Pelt, about whom he used to complain to his mother at least three times a week. “She came up to compliment my playing, and we . . . got to know each other.”

“But there’s a problem?” his mother guesses.

He sighs. “Right when I decided I wanted to ask her out, she she started dating someone else. They seem . . . I mean, it’s only been a month, but they decided to be exclusive pretty quickly.”

“Oh, sweetie.” His mother dries her hands and comes to wrap her arms around her son. “I’m sorry.” She lays her head on his shoulder—he passed her in height when he was 14 years old and she now barely comes up to his chin—and hugs him tightly a moment. “But I do want you to remember one very important thing.”

He looks down at her, one eyebrow raised in question.

She grins. “Dating isn’t married.”

He rolls his eyes. “Very helpful, Mom, thanks.” But he can’t ignore the little voice in his head that says that she’s right.

o.o.o

December passes by much the same; he only hangs out with Lucy twice, both times when Richard’s out of town on business. (One of the times is on December 16, when she insists on taking Schroeder out to dinner to celebrate Beethoven’s birthday, and the fact that she remembered—well, if he didn’t adore her already . . .)

The three of them do hang out together once, after the Omaha Philharmonic’s annual performance of The Messiah, at which Schroeder is forced to play harpsichord despite explaining to his conductor on several occasions that is it not the same thing as piano and he’s not precisely qualified for this. The conductor just smiles each time and tells him that they don’t have the money to hire a guest harpsichordist, so Schroeder stumbles through the performance and tries hard to remember to be conscious of how he’s releasing the keys, and when it’s done Lucy and Richard treat him to dinner to congratulate him for not embarrassing himself. And Schroeder is forced again to admit that at least Lucy’s chosen a really nice guy.

For Christmas Schroeder’s going back to South Carolina, but in early December he gets an unexpected call from Linus, who talks him into coming up to Minnesota for New Year’s; a bunch of the gang is going to be in town, and they’re turning it into a mini-reunion. It’s probably not the wisest option, monetarily, but Schroeder can afford it and besides, Linus has always had a way of convincing people to do things.

So on December 30, he flies to Minnesota and is met at the airport by Charlie Brown, who’s changed so much that Schroeder hardly recognizes him. Oh, he’s still got that round head and sparse, fair-colored hair, but he’s got an aura of calm and confidence that he never had as a kid. He talks easily with Schroeder all the way back to their hometown, catching him up on his life since high school; turns out that going away to school in Chicago, away from everyone who knew him as a kid, did him a world of good, and he came into his own and thrived in college. And Schroeder smiles and thinks, his mother will be so pleased to learn she was right about Charlie all those years.

He’s staying at the Browns’ house, as the van Pelts are full with their own family, and he spends that first evening catching up with Charlie and Sally, and getting an earful about Sally’s boyfriend—some doctor she met in Minneapolis.

The next day, nearly the whole gang gets together to visit their old haunts—or at least to do as much visiting as they can in the harsh Minnesota winter. Both Browns and all three van Pelts are there, along with Peppermint Patty and Franklin, and Violet and Shermie come and bring their baby bundled up in about a thousand layers against the winter chill. (Frieda’s married and living in Florida, and Marcie’s working as a personal assistant to a high-powered banker in Hong Kong, of all places, and wasn’t able to make the lengthy flight back to the States.)

They visit their old elementary school—Shermie’s got a key, because he’s a teacher there—and they visit the park and the pond and the church and the ice cream shop, and they go to the baseball diamond where they spent a thousand summer afternoons, and where a mock baseball game using snowballs turns into a real knock-down drag-out snowball fight (which Charlie and Patty win handily).

That evening there’s a New Year’s Eve party at the van Pelts’, and the mood is bright and spirits are high and the food is good, and Schroeder catches up with all his friends, and Lucy actually manages to drag him out onto the living room floor to dance, and all things considered he’s feeling really glad that he let Linus talk him into coming on this trip.

At midnight they count down to the New Year. A few couples get ready for a New Year’s kiss—Shermie and Violet holding hands, and Sally clinging to her doctor, who came into town for the occasion—and Schroeder can’t help stealing a few glances at Lucy, wondering if she’s missing Richard, and wishing . . .

Midnight strikes, and Shermie kisses Violet, and Sally kisses her doctor, and Peppermint Patty very unabashedly kisses Charlie Brown, who looks absolutely poleaxed, and everyone else hugs each other and sings an enthusiastic rendition of Auld Lang Syne. With the excitement over, the party starts to die down; Shermie and Violet go to relieve their babysitter, and Sally and her doctor leave as well, and everyone else falls to talking in quiet groups.

Schroeder goes to refill his cup of punch in the kitchen and finds himself momentarily alone and staring out the front window at a yard he knows nearly as well as the one at his own childhood home. There’s the tree they used to climb when they were playing at being pirates; there’s the corner where Lucy would set up her psychiatric help booth. And he’s still gazing out the window when Linus comes in and finds him there.

“I wondered if you’d left,” his friend smiles.

“Just got distracted,” he admits. “Lots of memories in this place.” He glances around for a moment. “Although when I was a kid, I thought that tree was a lot taller.”

Linus chuckles. “Me too. Anyway I’m glad you haven’t left yet; I’ve hardly had any chance to talk to you. How’ve you been?”

They discuss Schroeder’s music and Linus’s graduate studies for a while; Linus says he wasn’t at all surprised to find out that Schroeder is making a career out of music, and Schroeder says the same about Linus and theology.

“Remember that Christmas program?” Schroeder laughs. “When we were all making fun of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, and you got up and recited Luke 2, and that convinced Lucy, of all people, to do something nice for him?”

Linus chuckles. “Lucy being nice to Charlie Brown; that really was a Christmas miracle.” And then his smiles softens. “Though she’s certainly grown up a lot since then. But I guess you know that, since you two are such good friends these days.”

Schroeder gives him a little half-smile, sadder than he intended it to be, and Linus examines him with a thoughtful expression for a moment and then observes, “Although I suppose you see her less, now that she’s dating Richard.”

And Schroeder can’t help it: his expression falls, just a little. And Linus notices, it’s clear from his eyes. He looks at Schroeder in that way he’s always had, ever since they were children, like a wise old sage or a kindly old priest—that look that’s always followed by a profound insight or observation. And this time is no exception:

“So how long have you been in love with my sister?”

Schroeder turns to look and him, surprised and embarrassed and ready to deny everything, but Linus’s knowing look makes the objection die on his lips. So instead he sits down in a nearby chair, leans over to rest his forehead on the table, and covers his head with his arms.

“Don’t worry, you have my blessing,” says Linus with a laugh in his voice.

Schroeder’s answer is muffled by the table his face is currently pressed against. “Am I that obvious?”

“Honestly, not hugely obvious,” Linus says, and some of the tension leaves Schroeder’s shoulders. “But I’m good at reading people. Not to mention I was standing right next to her at midnight when you kept throwing longing glances her direction.”

A heartfelt groan is the only answer.

“Hey,” says Linus bracingly, “I know she’s with Richard right now, but they’re only dating—it’s not like they’re married, right?”

“You sound like my mother.”

“Good,” laughs Linus. “I always liked your mother.”

“I don’t like romance,” Schroeder announces. “It distracts and unbalances the mind. I’ll just be like Handel: ‘I have no time for anything but music.’”

“Personally, I prefer Paul’s take on it to the Corinthians,” says Linus. “'Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.'”

“Then why are you still single?” Schroeder grumbles, then winces, wondering if that was rude.

But Linus only laughs again, and after a moment Schroeder hears him take the chair next to him, and then a friendly hand settles on his shoulder. “I do sympathize. Sometimes getting the timing right is the hardest thing. In all sorts of endeavors, not just romance.”

“So what do I do?” Schroeder asks.

“The only thing you can do,” says Linus. “Wait. Either this thing with Richard works out or it doesn’t, but telling her while they’re still dating either scares her off forever or puts her in a very uncomfortable position, and you don't want to do that to someone you care about. So just wait. And if that relationship ends, don’t let the chance pass you by to do something about it. And if it doesn’t, try to love her enough to want her happiness, even if things didn’t turn out the way you wanted.”

“I suppose I can do that,” Schroeder agrees with a sigh.

They fall into a companionable silence, and Schroeder finally sits up and rubs his face, wondering if he has a wood grain pattern pressed into his skin from the table.

“Can I tell you something?” says Linus after a moment.

Schroeder shrugs. “Sure.”

“I always thought you and Lucy would be good together,” he says. “Always assumed you would end up together, actually, when I was a kid, before I learned how many things can happen between childhood and adulthood to change your life’s trajectory.”

“Well, then, you clued in a lot earlier than I did.”

Linus laughs again. “So what I’m saying is, I’m rooting for you. For what that’s worth.”

And Schroeder looks at his old friend and is glad all over again that he came out to Minnesota for the holiday. “It’s worth a lot, Linus. Thanks.”

o.o.o

Linus’s words stay with Schroeder on the flight back to Omaha, and through the shuttle ride back to his house (neither Lucy nor Richard is in town to give him a ride), and as he gets back into the swing of normal life: “Love her enough to want her happiness, even if things don’t turn out the way you wanted.”

And Linus is right: he shouldn’t hold this against Lucy, and he should want Lucy to do what brings her joy, and he should make more of an effort to get to know Richard, if the man’s going to be an important part of Schroeder’s best friend’s life. After all, they’ve been dating each other exclusively for more than two months now, which isn’t precisely a long-term commitment, but it’s definitely starting to move past the casual dating stage.

So with that in mind, a week after he knows Lucy’s returned from Minnesota, he calls her up. “What are you and Richard doing on the 18th?” he asks. “Bill in the trumpet section has a brother-in-law who’s opening a Japanese restaurant downtown.” Lucy, he knows, loves trying new foods. “It’s already booked up for ages but Bill offered to get me in that night. I thought maybe I’d find someone to take and we could make a double date of it.” What he doesn’t point out, although he assumes she remembers, is that the 18th is his birthday.

But Lucy, to his surprise, is not enthusiastic about this idea. “It’s a really nice offer,” she says, her voice sounding strangely subdued over the phone. “And obviously the food sounds amazing. But this isn’t really a good time. Could I take a rain check? Future Japanese restaurant outing?”

Schroeder blinks in surprise. Are she and Richard really both so busy with work that they don’t have time to go out for dinner? And is she really planning on leaving him with no plans on his birthday? But there’s nothing to do except say “Of course, we can go another time.”

She sounds tired when she answers. “You’re the best, Schroeder. Oh! But I have good news: I’ll see you on the 14th.”

“Why?” he asks. “What’s on the 14th?”

“The Introduction to the Orchestra day,” she says. “Where all the school kids come to the concert hall. Guess who’s volunteering?”

“Are you?” he asks, a broad smile stealing over his face. “But isn’t that during the workday?”

“You remember I told you about that partner at my firm who loves classical music?” she asks. “He’s got kids in school, and he’s really into them learning about classical music, so he talked the firm into being a sponsor for the event. And he’s getting a group of employees to go and help, you know, shepherd the kids around.”

“That’s wonderful!” he says sincerely. “It’ll be great to see you.”

“If you have time to see me,” she points out. “I’ll be down wrangling third graders while you’ll be busy looking important and impressive at the piano. Are they going to make you wear a tux?”

“Casual clothes,” he says. “They want us to look more approachable. You know, ‘regular people can like classical music too, not just stuffy snobs in penguin suits!’”

Lucy laughs at that, and it occurs to him how much more cheerful she sounds now than she did at the beginning of the conversation. “Well, I’ll see you then, all right?”

“See you then,” Schroeder smiles.

o.o.o

On Introduction to the Orchestra day, Lucy’s volunteer shift doesn’t start until after lunch, so he doesn’t see her for a good long while. The kids are being bussed in from local elementary schools, and they come in several waves, with the first showing up at 9.

The first group comes in and is seated in the hall. The conductor makes a little speech about the importance of music, and then he talks about how music can tell a story. He tells them to listen closely to the piece they’re about to play: to listen to the twelve notes that mimic a clock, marking the strike of midnight, the violin that represents Death calling the dead from the grave to dance, the oboe that mimics the rooster’s morning cry that puts an end to the revels. (“Kids love all that morbid stuff,” he told the orchestra when they were rehearsing. “They’ll eat this up.”) Then the orchestra plays Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre.

With that done, the first chair of each section of the orchestra stands up, introduces their instrument, talks about why they like playing it, and then plays a brief excerpt of something to show off the instrument. After long consideration, Schroeder decided the best thing to do is wow the kids, so when it’s his turn, he stands up and gestures at the Petrof grand.

“My name’s Schroeder, and this is a piano. Do any of you have one of these at home?”

Many hands shoot into the air.

“Pianos are great because you don’t have to clean up your spit when you’re done.”

Most of the brass and woodwind players laugh at that, although the kids don’t seem to get the joke. Maybe he should cut that for the next group that comes in.

“And they’re great because you can play fast.” And he sits down and plays a portion of the Minute Waltz at such a blistering speed that when he finishes, he hears several kids in the audience give out a breathless “Whoa,” and the harpist turns around and mimes applauding.

When all of this is done, the kids are led out to be given a tour of the backstage area and rehearsal rooms, and the orchestra is left to wait for the next group to come in.

This is repeated every hour, on the hour—although without the spit joke—until the lunch break at noon. And it’s when Schroeder is sitting in the lobby with his sandwich that he finally hears the voice he’s been waiting for all day.

“Hey stranger, fancy some company?”

“Lucy!” he grins, looking up. “Please, join me.”

This she does. “How’s it been going so far?”

“Great,” he says. “At least none of the kids have started crying yet or anything.” He tells her about the program, and how he’s been playing the Minute Waltz to impress the kids.

“Wait, I thought that was called the Min ute Waltz. As in 60 seconds.”

And oh bother, he can already feel himself going in to lecture mode. “It’s often read and mispronounced that way,” he hears himself say, “but it’s actually the Min ute Waltz. Minute as in small.” Geez, why is he so weird about this stuff?

“That’s a letdown,” she says. “So you can’t play it in under a minute?”

“I don’t know if anyone can,” he laughs. “Most people take closer to two.”

At that she grins. “So how fast can you play it?”

He hesitates.

“Oh, come on, I know you’ve timed yourself,” she says. “Go ahead and brag. I’m giving you permission.”

A pause, then: “A minute forty-four,” he admits with a bashful grin.

“Not bad, Metcalfe! You keep practicing, you might be able to make a career out of this piano thing someday!”

He laughs and rolls his eyes and nudges her with his shoulder, and she laughs and pushes back, and they fall into silence.

“Hey,” she says softly after a minute, “I want to apologize about the other day. It was really nice of you to think of inviting us to that restaurant, and I didn’t meant to shoot you down or sound ungrateful.”

“You didn’t,” he assures her.

“And then I realized later . . . that’s your birthday isn’t it?” When he nods, she grimaces. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to turn you down for birthday plans. And don’t worry, we’re definitely going to do something that night.” Then she gives him a small smile. “It’s just . . . I’d actually broken up with Richard not long before you called.”

And until this moment, Schroeder has never known what people mean when they use the phrase “I felt like my heart stopped.” Because right then, he feels like his heart has stopped.

“Why?” he manages to ask.

She shrugs. “He’s great, don’t get me wrong, and we had fun together. But it was never more than fun, and he was never more than pleasant company. I’d realized . . . I didn’t see a future for us. When I pictured my life, I couldn’t see him in it. I didn’t really care if he was in it. Not even that much in the short-term.”

“Oh,” he says a bit blankly. “Was he . . . upset?”

She shakes her head. “When I started to bring it up, he admitted he’d been thinking the same thing. In lawyer’s terms, we call that an amicable separation.”

And for a moment he genuinely can’t answer. Lucy is single. Lucy is available. He did like Linus said, and he waited, and now Lucy is single and available and sitting right next to him, close enough that their legs are brushing and he can feel the warmth of her and wow he needs to do something.

Or does he? He’s suddenly unsure. Lucy is very calm about this whole thing, but she did break up with her boyfriend only a week ago. They hadn’t been that serious or long-term, but still, should he give her more time before he asks her out?

But his indecision lasts only a moment, because suddenly Lucy is speaking again. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just . . . I’m really not very sad about it, as it turns out, but I knew people would expect me to be and want to talk about it, so it was easier just not to bring it up until I was in the mood for that conversation.” She shrugs. “Sorry. Anyway, now you know.”

“It’s fine,” he assures her.

“So, back into the dating pool!” she says. “Carol from reception is really excited. She’s been wanting to set me up with her nephew for a while, so now she figures this is her chance.”

Schroeder blinks, then blinks again. “Oh, so you’re getting back into dating really quickly.”

“I guess so,” she chuckles. “At least this’ll get Carol to stop telling me how perfect me and her nephew would be together.”

No. No no no, is all Schroeder can think; he is not letting Lucy slip through his fingers again. He is not letting this chance to ask her out pass him by again. He is not letting her go off and fall in love with Carol-from-reception’s nephew before he’s had a chance to take her out at least once and try to convince her to give him a chance.

He has to do something.

But what?

He doesn’t have a lot of time to ponder that question, because suddenly the call goes out for the orchestra members to finish their lunches and get back on stage, and Lucy squeezes his arm. “Play good!” she tells him cheerfully, one of her favorite well-wishes for him. “I’ll come find you after, okay?”

And she’s gone again, disappearing into the crowd of instrumentalists making their way back from lunch, and he’s left alone to wonder: what does he do now?

He could just ask her out, he supposes as he makes his way back into the hall. When she comes to find him after the day’s end, he could say he’d like to take her on a date, and they could go get dinner . . .

But it’s not very dramatic, is it? That’s not to say that every romantic gesture has to be dramatic, but for Lucy van Pelt, formerly the self-proclaimed queen of the neighborhood, he feels like something dramatic is in order.

But what?

The kids start filing in, and Schroeder sees Lucy guiding a group in right in the center of the hall. Soon the conductor is giving his spiel once again. “Music isn’t just sounds strung together,” he says, as Schroeder sits at his piano and flexes his fingers, still deep in thought. “It can tell a story, like the piece we’re about to play for you. It can bring up a feeling, or a memory. It can remind you of something or someone you love.”

And suddenly Schroeder knows what to do.

But does he dare? This is the question he grapples with as the orchestra strikes up Danse Macabre again. There’s not a piano part in the original, so they’re playing an arrangement where he mostly just plays bits of the xylophone part, so he really doesn’t have to pay much attention here. He has time to stare at the keys and sneak glances out at where he knows Lucy’s sitting and go over and over the pros and cons of his plan in his mind.

(Pro: it might go really well. Con: if it goes poorly, it’ll go poorly in front of all his co-workers and several hundred third graders.)

But as he plays, he looks across the piano and remembers that night that Lucy came back into his life, when she sat at the other end of this very piano and watched him play, and a sense of peace and confidence steals over him: this is the right thing to do. And he’s going to do it.

So when Danse Macabre is finished, and when all the strings and winds have done their little spiel about their instruments, he wipes his suddenly sweaty hands on his pants and stands to face the audience.

“My name is Schroeder,” he recites, “and this is a piano. How many of you have pianos at your house?”

If this were a normal concert, the stage lights would be up and the house lights would be down, and he wouldn’t be able to see anyone out there in the seats. He thinks he’d prefer that. Because with the house lights up as they are right now, he can see perfectly well that Lucy is sitting in the center section, about halfway back, and that she’s watching him with a smile on her face. And this would be so much easier if he couldn’t see her.

“I like to play the piano, because like the conductor said, the music you make on the piano can remind you of feelings and memories and things you love.” His hands are starting to tremble, and he quickly hides them behind his back. “This song I’m going to play for you got its nickname because someone once said it reminded him of moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne.” He swallows hard. “But I love this song because it reminds me of the girl I’m in love with.”

Quickly he sits down before he can see Lucy’s reaction; in front of him, the harp player gives him a quizzical look. He ignores her and, willing his hands to be steady, reaches out and plays the opening notes of the Moonlight Sonata.

The familiar sounds soothe him instantly; his hands stop shaking and he is able, for a few measures, to ignore the fact that he just laid his heart bare in front of every single person in this room; he thinks instead of a hundred afternoons when he was a child, attempting to get through the song while Lucy distracted him with talking about their future marriage.

Who’d have ever thought there’d come a day when she’d be proved right—when he would want to be with her the way she’d wanted for so long to be with him?

All of a sudden he recalls that they are supposed to keep their demonstrations brief, and he manages to improvise an ending that brings the melody to a satisfactory close. The last chord rings out for a few moments, and then he puts his hands in his lap and stares down at the keys as the conductor moves on to the next person who’s supposed to play. He can tell that a few people in the orchestra are staring at him—people who know he’s not dating anyone, most likely—but he can’t bring himself to make eye contact with any of them.

And he certainly can’t bring himself to look into the audience.

So he sits there, awkwardly staring at the keyboard, until the timpanist finishes his demonstration and the children all applaud politely. He stares while they start filing out of the room. And he stares until someone comes and sits hesitantly at the end of his piano bench, just a few inches from where he sits.

“Schroeder,” says Lucy, and he’s never heard her sound quite so surprised.

He glances over at her and sees that she’s wide-eyed and staring, and he blushes and looks away again. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the harpist getting up from her stool and ushering the percussionists away, clearly trying to give them a bit of privacy.

“Schroeder,” she says again, almost breathlessly, after a moment, “I . . . I always kind of thought that you thought of that as my song.”

Okay, time to be brave. He takes a deep breath and turns to face her, forcing himself to sit up straight and meet her eyes. “I do,” he confesses.

Lucy’s eyes widen. And then the loveliest smile starts to steal over her face. “Schroeder Metcalfe,” she says, “are you in love with me?”

His throat is suddenly dry and he has to swallow before he can speak. “Yeah, I am.”

She stares. And then: “HA!”

In his surprise, and in order to focus on her better, he scoots back so that they have a bit of space between them. “Ha?” he repeats. “Is that really the most appropriate response here?”

“Ha, I was right!” she says triumphantly. “How many times did you tell me that you’d never be interested in me? Never want to get involved with me? And now here you are, confessing your feelings in front of the orchestra and God and everyone.”

And despite the roiling anxiety in his stomach, he finds himself laughing. After all, whatever happens, it at least seems like she isn’t mad about the confession. “In my defense, I was eight,” he points out. “I still thought girls had cooties.”

“Well, I have to say,” she grins, “your taste and your sense have matured very nicely.”

He stares at her a moment, and then the waiting is just too much. “Thanks,” he says, “but do you have any, you know, response to what I said?” He can feel heat rising to his face as he asks. Very smooth, he thinks wryly to himself, and is glad that the orchestra members remaining on the stage are all too busy chatting or noodling or tuning to pay any attention to what’s happening back at the piano.

“Several,” she tells him. “Such as, Wow, I didn’t even realize. You certainly do play things close to the chest, don’t you?”

Is she determined to drive him insane? He genuinely can’t tell if she feels positively about the confession or is just being very easygoing and cool about turning him down. “Well, I didn’t realize it until right before you started dating Richard.”

She winces sympathetically. “Bad timing.”

His laugh then is half amusement and half disbelief. “Definitely. But, um, did you have any other response to what I said?”

She gives him an innocent look that he learned long ago not to trust from her. “What are you after, specifically?” But there’s laughter in her eyes, and he feels hope rising in his chest, because Lucy’s a lot of things but she’s not cruel and he has to believe she would be reacting very differently if she was about to break his heart.

“A date?” he gathers his courage enough to say. “Maybe we could go to dinner? And you could see how you feel about all this?”

“How I feel about you being in love with me?”

He nods.

And now she smiles delightedly at him from her end of the piano bench, and he spares a thought about how thoroughly at home she looks there. “Dinner sounds great,” she says. “I hear that some trumpet player’s brother-in-law just opened a Japanese restaurant. We could give it a try. Maybe for your birthday.”

Tension that he didn’t even realize was spiraling up his spine suddenly dissipates. Lucy is willing to give this a try. She’s willing to give him a try. And he can’t help grinning, broad and bashful all at once, and for a moment he can’t quite meet her eyes, like some part of him is afraid of frightening her off with the intense happiness he knows she’d see there.

When he glances back up at her, she’s tilted her head a little and is giving him a thoughtful look. And then she smiles. “But, fair warning,” she says. “I already know exactly how I ‘feel about all this.’”

His brow furrows in an unspoken question, which she answers by scooting across the piano bench, leaning forward and kissing him.

It’s over too quick for him to even process what just happened, and he just stares in surprise as she leans back, looking thoroughly self-satisfied. “I feel good about it, is what I’m saying,” she explains with an impish grin.

Schroeder feels good about it too. So he reaches out to pull her to him and kiss her back.

Sitting side by side on a piano bench, surrounded by the Omaha Philharmonic and knowing that you might at any moment be walked in on by a bunch of school kids on a field trip, isn’t the best place in the world to finally kiss your (sort of) childhood sweetheart. But it doesn’t matter: neither the awkward angle nor the knowledge that his fellow musicians are going to tease him about this later can ruin such a thoroughly wonderful kiss: wonderful because he’s been wanting it so much for two months and it almost didn’t happen; wonderful because this moment is twenty years in the making, or maybe, as he suddenly feels, his whole life has been leading up to this moment . . . and wonderful because Lucy is a pretty great kisser.

“So,” she says with a grin when they break apart and she’s left with her arms draped around his neck, “did I say ‘I told you so’ yet?”

“I mean, you laughed in triumph because you’d been right all along,” he says. “Does that count?”

“Not quite,” she says, and leans forward to whisper in his ear. “I told you so.”

Before he can respond, there’s a very pointed throat-clearing from somewhere in front of him, and he looks up to see that the conductor has returned to the podium to address the orchestra and is giving Schroeder a very expressive look.

Immediately his face flames bright red, but Lucy, as blithely unconcerned as ever, just laughs, gives Schroeder a wink, and quickly makes her way off the stage.

The conductor eyes Schroeder a long moment, and then he smiles. “She seems nice,” he says to Schroeder, and now the whole orchestra is looking back in confusion at the piano, wondering who this ‘she’ is.

Schroeder manages a smile through his embarrassment.

And then the conductor gives him a sardonic look. “But I’d stick with the Minute Waltz, if I were you. Much more impressive.”

And Schroeder wonders if he can hide under the piano until his blushing subsides.

o.o.o

Schroeder and Lucy don’t wait until his birthday for their first date. The second that the Introduction to the Orchestra day ends, she runs up to his piano bench with a wide smile. “Hey there,” she grins. “How about you let a cute girl buy you dinner?”

He grins too, but disagrees, “How about you let a cute boy buy you dinner? Since I’m the one who asked you out?”

She tilts her head. “You think you’re cute, do you?”

He can feel himself blushing again, but the teasing smile on her face emboldens him to say, “Well, there must be a reason you were in love with me all those years.”

“Must be,” she agrees. “If you pay tonight, though, I get to pay next time.”

And that’s a compromise he can live with.

They end up at their usual diner; Schroeder would have preferred to take her somewhere special for their first date, but Lucy’s having none of it. “This place is special,” she says as she takes his hand to tug him out the concert hall doors. “All the time we’ve spent there together? It’s our place. Not to mention, that’s where we ate that first night, when I realized you were going to let me be your friend.”

Schroeder’s a little distracted with wishing that it wasn’t so cold out, so that there wasn’t a layer of gloves between their clasped hands, but he’s not so distracted that he doesn’t notice that statement. “You thought there was a chance I wouldn’t want to be friends with you?”

She shrugs. “I mean, when I decided to go to your concert, I knew you wouldn’t pretend not to recognize me or anything,” she says. “But I didn’t know whether you’d be interested in ever seeing me again after I’d said hi that night.”

“Seriously?” he asks. “After all we’d been through together?”

“When we were kids,” she points out. They’re standing still now, waiting for a light to change so they can cross the street, so he sees perfectly well that when she glances up at him, there’s an uncertainty in her eyes that doesn’t jive at all with the Lucy van Pelt that he knows. “But that was ages ago. I hadn’t seen you in eight years, and for four years before that we’d practically been strangers. Not to mention that even when we were friends, our interactions were mostly you trying to get me to leave you alone.”

He grimaces. “Lucy, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be,” she smiles. “I know I was a pest back then. And really, you tolerated me pretty well when I wasn’t interrupting your playing to plan our wedding. But you can see how I’d be unsure of the response I’d get when I showed up at your concert last summer.” And then her usual confidence returns. “But then you were really happy to see me so it turned out fine.”

“I was happy to see you,” he confirms as the light changes and they make their way across the street. “I’d been . . . honestly I’d been really lonely, and it was so great to have you around. But Lucy—” and here he squeezes her hand for emphasis— “even when we were kids, I was always glad when you were around. I mean, not when you were interrupting my practicing, and I didn’t like you talking about us getting married because I was so convinced I should stay single like Beethoven, but I liked it when you’d come listen to me play. I liked ball games and playing in the neighborhood with you. I’ve . . . I’ve always liked spending time with you. I missed you when you stopped coming over all the time.”

She smiles. “I missed you too,” she confesses.

“Then I’m glad we’re getting another chance,” he says. They’re nearly to the diner now, and he pulls her to a stop for a moment on the sidewalk. “I . . . I’ve been worried these last two months that maybe you getting over me in middle school was permanent.”

At that she chuckles. “I’d hoped it was permanent,” she confesses. “I was tired of having these feelings I was sure would never be returned. And I really was over you. But for a long time, there was always just the tiniest piece of you, somewhere in the back of my mind. Even when I was dating other guys, I’d hear your name or someone would play Beethoven and I’d just get sort of . . . wistful.”

“Even when you were with Richard?” he asks, and he can’t help the feeling of satisfaction he gets at the idea.

But she disabuses him of that notion. “No, by the time I moved to Omaha, I’d gotten you out of my system. I have to admit, I didn’t really consider the idea of dating you until today. Not seriously, anyway.”

He blinks in surprise. “Really? You went from not even considering it to kissing me in ten minutes?”

And she grins at him. “I’d spent a long time not letting myself think about you that way. But as soon as I gave myself permission, it was really easy to fall back into my old habits.” She shrugs. “What can I say? You’re a likeable guy.”

But for a moment Schroeder hesitates. She’d kissed him so quickly that he’d been supposing she’d been at least a little bit interested in him before that moment. Now that he knows he was wrong . . .

“What?” she asks.

He decides to go ahead and voice his insecurity. “That’s a short time to make that decision. What if you change your mind just as quickly?”

But Lucy just smiles at him. “Kid, I loved you for years,” she says. “And even after I stopped, I always sort of regretted you. And now you’re my closest friend and I love spending time with you and I’m very attracted to you and I really like kissing you. I don’t think you need to worry about me changing my mind any time soon.”

And he looks at her a long moment, and then he smiles. “Okay,” he agrees.

And she beams at him. “Glad we have that sorted,” she says. “Now, can we eat? I’m starving.”

He feels a rush of affection for the extraordinary young woman currently grasping his hands, for brash, bold, clever, funny, fearless Lucy van Pelt. “One thing first,” he says, and pulls her into another kiss, because they’ve got twenty years of lost time to make up for.

When they pull apart, she looks a little bit dazed and breathless, and he can only assume that he’s even more so. “Or we could just stay out here and kiss until we freeze to death,” she suggests, and looks like she’d be genuinely happy with that option.

He grins at her. “Tempting, but I think that deep down you want pancakes.”

She considers this a moment, then nods. “I do want pancakes,” she agrees.

And, hand in hand, they walk inside the diner.

o.o.o

fin