Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

Will looked sideways at me, his face still carrying the mirth of the last few
moments. Okay, his expression said. We’re going to enjoy this.
The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a great hush
descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive, expectant. Then he brought
down his baton and suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a
physical thing; it didn’t just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me,
made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will
hadn’t described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the
most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there, I found
myself thinking of things I hadn’t thought of for years, old emotions washing
over me, new thoughts and ideas being pulled from me as if my perception itself
were being stretched out of shape. It was almost too much, but I didn’t want it to
stop. I wanted to sit there forever. I stole a look at Will. He was rapt, suddenly
unselfconscious. I turned away, unexpectedly afraid to look at him. I was afraid
of what he might be feeling, the depth of his loss, the extent of his fears. Will
Traynor’s life had been so far beyond the experiences of mine. Who was I to tell
him how he should want to live it?
Will’s friend left a note asking us to go backstage and see him afterwards, but
Will didn’t want to. I urged him once, but I could see from the set of his jaw that
he would not be budged. I couldn’t blame him. I remembered how his former
workmates had looked at him that day – that mixture of pity, revulsion and,
somewhere, deep relief that they themselves had somehow escaped this
particular stroke of fate. I suspected there were only so many of those sorts of
meetings he could stomach.
We waited until the auditorium was empty, then I wheeled him out, down to
the car park in the lift, and loaded Will up without incident. I didn’t say much;
my head was still ringing with the music, and I didn’t want it to fade. I kept
thinking back to it, the way that Will’s friend had been so lost in what he was
playing. I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport
you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the
air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went. For some