Andante con Brio

CVIII

They had played as a quartet before, hadn't they? At a wedding, at a party, and on stage too. So why was he still this nervous? So very, very nervous? It was stupid as well, because all the music was piss easy and he could play it in his sleep. With Dragon in D topping the list. He couldn't help it though. Was it just because this was the first concert he was actually, really getting paid for? 
Two hundred and fifty dollars, he was going to make. Two hundred and fifty dollars that he would be able to spend on anything. 
Well. Strings and bubble tea, he guessed. But still. It was real money, that he was earning as a real musician. He really had better make this wedding gorgeous. 
"You with us, Eddy?"
Todd was behind the wheel of his little Toyota, which seemed to have instruments crammed into every nook and cranny. Like some comical clown car or something. They would probably all come falling out the second they opened the door. 
"Yep. I was just thinking your car isn't big enough for a few instruments."
"Bite me, Eddy. You could always get your own car?"
Todd smiled at him, faux-sweetly through the rear view mirror and Eddy grinned. 
"Nah. I'll just keep cramming too much shit into yours, thank you."

Todd parked the car and they walked down a gravel path to an official looking building, nestled in a fancy field with fiddly ornate trees all around. But once they came through the open doors it turned out it was actually really nice inside, decked out in autumny colours with a long yellow carpet in between rows of wooden seats.  They walked up with their instruments in hand and looked around for someone who looked like they knew what they were doing. 
"Ah, the musicians?"
A mousy looking woman with a pant suit and grey hair in a bun had walked up behind them and was gesturing towards the end of the yellow rug. 
"You can just set up there and try out the space. Then please be sitting there fifteen minutes before the ceremony begins. There's a changing room up that flight of stairs to the left."
Todd smiled at her and shook her hand. 
"Of course. Thank you, we'll get right to it."

An hour later, and Eddy was even more nervous than before, as he walked back down the stairs and over that yellow rug once again. He could suddenly, weirdly, picture what it would be like if he himself were getting married at the end of it, and Brett would be waiting for him there. Which would never happen. Of course. How could it? And even if it did, because several serious miracles had happened, he wouldn't be carrying his violin, would he? He shook his head to dispel the strange image, sat down on the first wooden chair in the semicircle and tuned the quartet quickly. 
God, why was he first again? It would be so much easier right now to just be second, to let Brett play all the more difficult notes and hide behind him on the second chair. Being first had seemed like such a good idea, last week when they rehearsed this, but now he was just looking at his sheet music slightly morosely. It was only five minutes now, before the bride was due to show up, and the room was filling quickly with the couple's family and friends.
Show time.
He looked around the quartet with what he really hoped was a look of confidence and raised his violin to start the first piece.