The Test of Time

Two

          What Eddy needed was some time to think. He stepped into the shower to try to sort himself out. As the water cascaded down his body, Eddy felt his heart sinking. He was supposed to know himself, why couldn't he put his finger on this feeling? He aggressively racked his brain as he washed himself. Even when he stepped out of the shower thirty minutes later, he still had no idea what he was feeling.

          Eddy climbed into his bed, pulling the duvet up under his chin like he had done when he was a child. He allowed his thoughts to slip away from him as he lay still. 

          He looked longingly at Hana. She was his dream girl, the prettiest he could imagine. Her long, straight black hair was gracefully falling down her back. Her makeup was perfectly done, and her outfit was stunning. She wore a red top, decorated with roses, and black jeans. He wished she'd come over to talk to him, but there was no way. Hana was too busy to talk to him. She already had her life figured out, as far as he could tell. She was an amazing violinist, much better than he was. She was also studying the viola, cello, and bass. She could be the whole orchestra, if she wanted to. He looked up and saw the unfathomable. Hana was walking toward him! She sat down across from him at the table.

          "Hey, Eddy!" She greeted him with a smile. 

          Eddy felt the his cheeks flare up. He knew he had to get words out so he wouldn't look any more like a complete lunatic. "Hi, Hana. How are you doing?" He asked, with such a calm voice that it surprised even himself. 

          "I'm good! I've just started preparing my excerpts to audition for the Sinfonia and Chamber orchestras this year. How are you?" 

          Eddy felt his eyes widen in surprise. He had never heard of anyone auditioning for two orchestras. "I'm good, I'm about to start reading through the excerpts too. Why are you auditioning for two orchestras, though? Is that allowed?"

          Hana laughed. "I'm trying out for Chamber on my violin, and Sinfonia on my viola!" She explained. 

          All too soon, their conversation had been cut short by the bell, and they had to hurry off to their different classes.

          As it turned out, the conductors didn't want Hana playing in two different Youth Orchestras. She ended up making both orchestras, though, which was an amazing achievement. Third chair violist in Sinfonia was good, but she had made Principal second violin in Chamber.

          Eddy had worked so hard on the excerpts. He practiced his solo piece until all hours of the night. He practiced all of his scales with drones. Like, who actually does that? When he received his results, he was sat concertmaster in Sinfonia, which any other time he would have been happy about. All he could think about however, was the fact that he was not in the same orchestra as Hana, and had only missed it by one chair. He felt like he had been robbed of it. 

          'What a cliché memory,' He thought to himself. Eddy had experienced that weird feeling with Hana, but it had been much weaker then. It hadn't driven him crazy. It hadn't made it hard to focus when he was around Hana. It hadn't...hurt him. 

          He tried meditating, clearing his thoughts, pretending to be asleep, and anything that he thought might help him actually fall asleep. Nothing worked. In desperation, he pulled out his phone. He opened Instagram, and was bombarded with a flood of notifications. He was happy that the fans were distracting him from his thoughts with all of their tags in fan art and memes. He flipped the screen over to his Direct Messages, about to clear all of them, so the annoying red blip at the top right of his screen would go away. As he was about to press delete, his stomach did a backflip. The little green dot was beside Brett's name. Why was Brett active at this time of night? 

          He wanted to message Brett, to ask him about this weird feeling. To maybe even have Brett FaceTime him. To have Brett tell him that everything was going to be okay, and that this feeling would go away soon. To have Brett look into his eyes and say, "I love you, Eddy."

          What? No, no, no. Why did he think of that? He was angry for allowing his mind to even dare to venture down that path. He clicked away from the DM's and just scrolled through explore. A text post caught his eye. It read, 

'Love comes in three stages. The first will come to you at a young age. You will look back on it and say it wasn't love, but truthfully, it was. It was love for what you knew love to be. The second one comes quickly. You will get hurt in this one. Feelings will run deep, and emotions will run strong. After this love, you will feel heartbroken. Don't stop, your third is coming. The third love comes blindly. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. You will fall harder than you ever have before, and this will be true love.'

          Eddy laughed to himself. His 'first love' according to the text post would have been Hana. He thought for a moment. His second love was probably the bassoonist, Jen, he dated for three years. Three years and two months to the day, he remembered painfully. That breakup had hurt a lot, as the post said it would. Brett had been his rock during that time. Eddy had fallen into a very dark place, going as far as to even hurt himself. He had gotten better though, thanks to Brett's comfort. Eddy wished he could feel Brett's comfort every second of every day.

          Eddy allowed himself to think again. He thought about his relationship with Jen...