A DANGEROUS CHOICE

Sun came through the sheer curtains in stripes across the piano's mahogany. Maya kept fussing with her sleeves, tugging them down over her wrists and then pushing them back up again, unable to settle. She wasn't usually nervous about music. Music was the one place she never had to perform. But this was her first lesson with the new instructor, and something about that made her stomach uneasy in a way she couldn't quite name. She'd never lacked for attention, not really. Guys at school lined up with movie tickets and coffee dates and compliments they'd clearly practiced in the mirror beforehand. She tried to meet them halfway — she really did — sat through the dinners, laughed at the right places, let them walk her home. But it always felt like reading someone else's lines off a page that wasn't hers. No spark. Nothing that made her chest tighten or her thoughts scatter. After a while she'd stopped expecting one. Maybe she just wasn't built for that particular kind of wanting. Maybe some people simply didn't come with that wiring installed, and she'd made her peace with being one of them. The door opened. "Maya? Hi, I'm Jordan." The voice landed low and easy, the kind that settles a room without trying. Maya looked up and forgot, for a second, how to breathe. Jordan was tall and broad-shouldered, filling out a black button-down like it had been made for exactly this. Hair faded at the sides, longer on top and swept back. Dark trousers, a silver chain at the collar, and a grin with a dimple that showed up a beat before the rest of the smile did. There was a looseness to the way Jordan moved, like she'd never once worried about taking up space. "Hi," Maya managed. Her hands suddenly felt like they belonged to someone else. "Ready to show me what you've got?" Jordan crossed the room and sat on the bench beside her, unhurried, like there was nowhere else she'd rather be. She set a folder of sheet music down, flipped through it once, and glanced sideways at Maya with an expression that was somehow both assessing and kind. Cedarwood, and something like rain. Maya's mind emptied out. *Sheet music. Look at the sheet music. You know how to do this.* "Let's start simple. Show me your posture," Jordan said, and her tone was somehow both an order and an invitation. Maya put her fingers on the keys. They shook a little. Jordan noticed, made a small sound of acknowledgment, and reached over. "Relax your wrists — like this." Her hand was warm, calloused at the fingertips, and it closed briefly around Maya's to guide them into place. Professional. Two seconds, maybe three. Maya felt it in her chest for a lot longer than that. She glanced up and found Jordan already looking at her, curious, a little amused. "You good? We can take it slow." "Yeah. Just rusty," Maya said, which wasn't really an answer. They worked through scales first, then a short piece Maya had half-learned years ago and never finished. Jordan corrected her fingering without making it feel like a correction, humming along under her breath, tapping two fingers against her knee to keep time. Every so often she'd lean in to point something out on the page, close enough that Maya lost the thread of whatever she'd been about to say. "You're better than you're giving yourself credit for," Jordan said at one point, sitting back. "Where'd you learn?" "My grandmother, mostly. She used to make me practice before dinner every night. I hated it then." Maya laughed, a little surprised at herself for how easy it came out. "I think I miss her more than I miss the piano, honestly." "That's usually how it goes," Jordan said, and something in the way she said it made Maya think she meant it, not just as small talk to fill the space between exercises. The rest of the hour blurred. Every chord Jordan played, forearms flexing slightly with the reach. Every time their shoulders brushed while Jordan reached across her for the metronome. Maya kept losing her place in the music and not caring, kept stealing glances at the line of Jordan's jaw when she was focused on the sheet music, kept noticing things she had no reason to be noticing about a stranger she'd known for forty minutes. By the time Jordan called it, the light through the curtains had shifted, gone a little more amber, a little more low. "Same time next week?" Jordan asked, gathering her folder. "Yeah. Definitely." Too fast, maybe. Maya didn't care. --- When the lesson ended, Jordan gave her a nod and a smile on the way out, and Maya walked to her car on legs that didn't feel entirely reliable. She sat behind the wheel for a while before she turned the key, just staring at nothing through the windshield, replaying small useless details — the exact pitch of Jordan's laugh, the way her sleeves were rolled to the forearm, the two seconds her hand had rested over Maya's. She'd spent years assuming she was missing whatever wire made other girls swoon over boys. Cold, maybe. Or just late to something everyone else had already figured out. She'd read about it, obviously — the butterflies, the racing pulse, the inability to think straight — and always privately wondered if people were exaggerating, dressing up ordinary fondness in dramatic language because that's what the movies taught them to do. She understood now. It wasn't exaggeration. "What is *happening* to me," she said, to no one, and laughed a little at how ridiculous she sounded, alone in a parked car outside a music school. She let her head fall back against the seat and closed her eyes. It wasn't that she'd been cold. She'd just been looking the wrong direction the whole time, aimed at a version of wanting that was never going to work for her. Jordan's hand on hers, that easy grin, the sound of her voice saying *you're better than you're giving yourself credit for* — the thought of it made her chest go tight and warm at once, equal parts thrilled and terrified, like she'd stepped off something without checking how far down the ground was. First time in her life she'd wanted someone like that, actually wanted, not performed wanting because it seemed like the thing to do. She sat with it for a long minute, turning it over, trying to decide if the feeling in her stomach was closer to nerves or hope. Probably both. She started the car and pulled out of the lot, already counting the days until next week's lesson.