“Patience”, Renee always told me when I plunked my head down on the keys of our obsolete piano in submission. “You can only get better from here, remember that.”

The stupid old songbook mocked me silently, a remnant of my many past piano lessons as a young girl. Before he could react, I snatched it out of his hands and hid it behind my back.

“Please, Edward,” I said, pushing my lip out and making my best puppy-dog face, “I hate the books. I want to learn from you, and you only. Please, please, please?”

He smiled crookedly at my pout and tugged a strand of my hair again, sending shivers down my spine as his hand just barely grazed my face. “All right,” he agreed.

Despite my better judgment, I clapped my hands together, a childish grin lighting up my face.

“But I can’t teach you all in one night,” he warned. “So I guess you’re just going to have to come back,” his smile widened as he cocked his head to one side, bronze hair falling over one eye, “Every night.”

I absent-mindedly lifted a hand to brush his hair from his face, and retracted it quickly, willing myself to moderate my childish behavior. “I’m sure I can manage,” I shrugged.

“Good,” he said, pushing the hair from his face and returning his attention to the keys. “So I guess we’ll start with the basic scales…”

“Ha!” I snorted. “Scales. Right. What am I, a kindergartener?”

He smirked, an amused glint in his topaz eyes. “Are you?”

I glared at him. “I already know those. I want to play songs. Maybe something easy first, like Valse de L’adieu. Or the rest of Moonlight Sonata. Or Clair de Lune, or…”

I was abruptly cut off by Edward’s soft laughter. He took my hands from the keys into his own, and patted them gently before placing them in my lap. The simple contact made me feel as though my heart had just inflated ten times its size and started beating again, in all its bloodless glory.

“One step at a time now, shall we?” he chuckled. He took my hands again and returned them to the keys, his hands never leaving mine as he directed each finger to a simple, repetitive tune. I smiled to myself and shook him off, playing the tune as best as I could without his guidance.