Free After Hello by Lisa Mangum Page B

wanted something ethereal and original, I thought of your music first.”
    “You did?” Daniel’s face lit up at Sam’s compliment. His smile took years off his age. Not that he was old to begin with, but now he looked to be about fourteen or fifteen instead of the mid-twenties I suspected he really was.
    “I thought, if your sonata was done, we could make a copy of the score and frame it and give that to Piper.”
    Daniel’s eyebrows came together. “Oh, I don’t know about that. My music is personal. And my baby is shy—you know how art is.” He bumped his elbow with mine as though we shared a secret.
    I liked Daniel instantly.
    “You write music?” I asked.
    Daniel wiggled his long fingers. “Every day. You can’t play for as long as I have without the music in your soul demanding to be released.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone. He touched a few buttons, and suddenly the screen was filled with staff lines and notes crowding together. “I’m still working on this one, but I think it’ll be my best one yet.”
    I took Daniel’s phone and scrolled through page after page of music. Partway through the last page, the notes stopped, but clearly Daniel had more he planned to write.
    “I wish I could do that,” I sighed.
    “Write music?” Daniel retrieved his phone and slipped it back into his pocket.
    I nodded.
    “You play at all?”
    I shrugged. “I used to play the piano—a little. Took lessons when I was a kid and everything.”
    “Why did you stop?” Daniel angled his body toward me, but I could see over his shoulder that Sam had sat up a little straighter as well.
    “I stopped because—” My words caught in my throat. Because my mom had been my teacher and when she left, she took the music with her. “Because I just did, I guess,” I finished, feeling lame. Heat encircled my neck. I ran my fingers over the camera in my lap, wishing I could delete a bad memory as easily I could delete a bad image.
    “And because you found something else you were good at?” Daniel suggested kindly.
    “What?” I looked up. “Oh, this? Yeah. I started taking pictures a while ago. It’s fun, and I am good at it.”
    “I bet. Here. Take a picture of us.” Daniel leaned in close to me. The scent of his cologne on his skin—something woodsy—mingled with the faint tang of fabric softener from his clothes was nice. “Cheese!” he said in preparation.
    Laughing quietly, I lifted my camera and angled it as best I could, hoping to catch both of us in the frame. The flash blinded me for a moment, and I rubbed my eyes, trying to ease the afterglow I still saw.
    “How’d we do?” Daniel asked. He left the camera attached to my wrist but turned it over to see the back screen. “Aw, that’s pretty good.”
    I leaned over the screen to see for myself. The picture was pretty good, considering that I had essentially shot it blind. We were both in the frame, but our foreheads seemed huge from the forced perspective angle. Daniel’s smile was wide and bright, and his dark skin looked like chocolate next to my tan. The top of Sam’s head rose up behind us like a slightly blurry ghost.
    I laughed. “Yeah, but I can do better. Here.” I adjusted some of the settings on my camera, then reached for Daniel’s hand and held it tight. I zoomed in and took another picture. When the image flashed on the back screen, I studied it, then turned the camera toward Daniel. “See? This is much better.”
    It was a shot of our hands clasping, but since his hand was much larger than mine and his fingers were longer than mine, my hand was almost completely lost in his. And since I had taken the picture in black and white, the contrast in our skin color was even more pronounced. But there was a gentleness in Daniel’s fingers as they were wrapped around mine that came through even in the picture.
    He whistled low. “You’re right. That is better. Hey, Sam, take a look at this.” He leaned back so Sam could