The Key Between Us

The apartment was quiet in the way that belongs only to evenings—after the last traffic had thinned, before the first true hush of night. The only light came from a lamp beside the piano, turning the ivory keys softly golden.

Liu sat first.

Marija stood just behind her, listening as Liu let her hands settle on the keyboard. She had already played a few things that night—small warm-ups, fragments of Satie, a Debussy prelude that trailed off before it meant to. But now she paused, as though something more careful were being chosen.

“Chopin,” Liu said quietly. “The E minor.”

Marija nodded.

The first chord came out dark and full, like a breath drawn slowly into the chest. Liu had only recently begun learning this Prelude; she still felt unsure of where it wanted to go, how slowly it should move. Perhaps that was why she felt she had to play it now, while Marija was listening. At this tempo, the descending chords in the left hand seemed to ache, each one leaning toward something that never quite arrived.

Marija sat down next to Liu on the piano bench.

Not quickly. Slowly so that Liu could feel Marija’s presence next to her. Their knees brushed. 
The warmth of Marija’s leg pressed lightly against Liu’s own.

Liu kept playing.

The melody folded inward, restrained and quietly sorrowful. She was careful with it, though her attention kept drifting—not away from the music, but toward Marija: the faint scent of soap in her hair, the way her breath changed when the harmony deepened.

When Liu reached the final chord, she let it linger until the room felt full of it.

Marija did not speak. She shifted a little closer, then placed her hands on the keys.

“Mendelssohn,” she murmured. “The Consolation.”
Her voice rounded the words softly, as if they were sung rather than spoken.

The opening notes were gentle, almost shy. Where Chopin had turned inward, Mendelssohn opened outward, like a small kindness offered without being asked. Liu leaned back just enough that their arms brushed.

Something in the way Marija played—unhurried, attentive—made Liu want to answer her, not with words but with sound.

When Marija finished, Liu did something neither of them had planned.

She began to play again.

Not Chopin. Not Mendelssohn.

She played Mendelssohn’s melody—but in Chopin’s key.

The first notes came out wrong. Not discordant, exactly, but unsettled, as if the piece had been gently tilted off its center. Liu frowned, about to stop.

Marija touched her wrist.

“Wait.”

So Liu kept going.

The melody wandered through unfamiliar shadows, as though it were remembering a grief it had never quite known. It was strange, a little broken—and somehow truer than either version alone.

Marija joined her, her right hand finding the original harmony while Liu stayed in the altered key. Their fingers crossed, adjusted, brushed. They were no longer quite sure whose part was whose.

The music slowed.

Not because they meant it to—but because they were listening.

When it finally came apart, there was no clear ending. Just silence.

The room felt changed by it.

Marija turned toward Liu, her eyes dark in the lamplight.

“That was… wrong,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Liu replied.

“And beautiful.”

Their hands were still resting on the keys. Slowly, without deciding to, Liu slid her fingers off the ivory and into the space between Marija’s.

They did not kiss.

Not yet.

They sat there, breathing, hands touching, as though both were waiting for the feeling to settle into something they could understand.

Outside, the city had gone almost still.

Inside, the music—whatever it had been—had already begun to change them.