Teddy and I had found a room with a piano in it when we'd gone in search of some sodas earlier, and I'd faked fatigue to get out of dinner with the boys so I could try to sneak back down and play it. I asked him how he'd even seen the vending machines from so far away, and he'd answered, "I can always recognize what I want, no matter how hard it is to see."

It wasn't until I sat down at the piano that I realized how much I missed touching the keys. I had never gone an entire week without playing since I first started taking lessons when I was five.

I did some scales and exercises to loosen up, then played some favorite pieces as warm up. Then I went into some of the simpler movements, just favorites, not complete sets, mostly second movements, the slower ones, which my professors discouraged, but, hey, they weren't here to hear me, and I had only myself to please. Then, as a finale, I decided to try my audition piece, just to see if it was still sharp and fresh.

It was still robust, and I got completely lost in it. As the closing chords faded away, I was shocked to my core by a voice echoing through the room, so shocked I nearly fell off the stool.

"You must think our music is such crap."

I stood up, knocking the stool over, and whirled to the doorway and the sound of the voice. Teddy was there, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, an open soda bottle next to him. I didn't know how long he'd been there.

Surprise made me blunt. "What are you doing here?"

He held up his phone. "Left it on top of the drinks machine and came down to retrieve it. Heard the music and here you were." He stood, walked to where I was, picked up the stool, and gestured for me to sit. Not knowing what else to do, I sat.

He picked up my hands in his own and held them. "No wonder," he said quietly.

"No wonder what?" I queried.

"No wonder you have such beautiful hands," he responded. He squatted down to be eye level with me and balanced on the balls of his feet, still holding my hands, kissed each one, and looked at me, and I realized with another shock that he was close to tears. "I've thought it many times, and now I know why." He released them and stood up.

"Will you play something else for me?" He moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, his large hands warm on my skin. The last two words somehow turned the request into something so intimate that it became impossible to respond in any other way but with my fingers on the keys.

I considered, then began to play Beethoven's Sonata Pathètique. He left his hands where they were, and I felt his responses to the music as I played. During the ponderous first movement, they gripped my shoulders and collarbones so strongly that I felt he could snap them if he wanted to; the music carried us together through the highs and lows. When the gentle second movement began, his grip relaxed. The third movement was quick and busy, and I could feel his fingers keeping time along with the beat, his whole body vibrating with the huge chords at the end.

As the last notes died away, he leaned down, kissed the top of my head, and murmured, "Jesus, that's almost better than sex, don't you think?" before stepping away and shaking his head vigorously to clear it.

He went back to his spot against the wall and motioned for me to keep playing. Wordlessly, I put my hands back into position and played, picking pieces at random, moving at will between periods, from classical to romantic to modern, wandering from Satie to Debussy to Haydn to Scriabn to Rachmaninoff. I must have played for close to an hour.

Finally, I turned to him and said, "My fingers are starting to cramp, and I'm getting hungry. Feed me, please?"

He stood up from his place against the wall and motioned for me to come to him. He put his arm around me as I reached him and kissed me again on my forehead. "Sitting there in that shirt, fingers flitting over the keys like you do, you know what you reminded me of?"

I looked down at my magenta and violet shirt and looked back at him, shaking my head.

"A hummingbird. Those colors, that sparkling blue and purple, your fingers flying so quickly, exactly like a little hummingbird."

While I'd been playing, it had grown dark. I'd left my phone upstairs, but of course, Teddy had his. He'd turned it off during his private concert, and missed too many messages to count from all of the boys, first complaining that he was missing the video games, then that he was missing dinner, then just wondering where in the hell we were?

He stopped us before we got on the elevator. "Hold on a tick, hummingbird, let me answer one of these texts before the lads send the police looking for us."

"Us? Do they know we're together?"

He nodded. "I think they've figured it out."

"Wouldn't it be easier to just go upstairs and tell them where we are?" I asked.

"Maybe, but at least this way they'll have a few minutes to get over being pissed off." He smiled at me. "If we went in cold, they'd be furious." He tapped his forehead. "I know how their minds work; trust me."

We stepped into the elevator, and Teddy suddenly turned to me, a question in his eyes. "Hey, something has suddenly occurred to me, young lady. Why on earth did you never mention in the hundreds of hours we've spent together that you play the piano like that?"

"Oh. Well, I don't know." I cast my eyes around the indecipherable kanji wallpaper as if I might find the answers written there. I looked back at him. "It didn't seem relevant to the job?"

"It didn't seem relevant to the job?" His voice was full of disbelief. "Are you kidding me? There are probably twenty people in the entire world who can do what you just did down there, and you didn't think it was important enough to mention?"

I patted his arm. "You Englishmen do like to exaggerate. There are more than twenty people at my school who can do what I just did. For real."

The elevator doors opened on our floor. He turned to me and held my arm, stopping me. "So is this a secret? Am I not allowed to tell the others? Is this one of those things that your weird little brain considers 'private'?"

I stopped to consider. "N-no, I guess not. I mean, Matty already knows."

His eyes widened and he turned back to look at me. "What? You told Matthew?"

"No, I didn't tell him. He googled me. Way back on the first or second day we met! I don't remember why, but he did. He found video of me playing the piano on YouTube and he found out about—"

"There's video of you playing the piano on YouTube?"

"Keep your voice down, they're going to hear you," I implored. We were outside their rooms by now.

He was walking around in little circles, running his hands through his hair, which normally looked crazy enough, but was by now standing nearly straight up; he looked like a lunatic. He finally stopped and looked at me, smiling. "Okay, okay," he said, nodding.

"I get it. You're beautiful; you're smart; you're talented. You fall out of the sky and land in our laps to help us out of a huge jam because we've been living right and we're just damned lucky. So that's great. Lovely." He put his arms around my waist and pulled me into a hug. "Just tell me, hummingbird, is there anything you can't do?"

I thought about my fear of change, of not being able to stand up to people, of being afraid of practically everything. Did those things count? And there was that B word again. In what universe was a short, dumpy girl beautiful? "That's a stupid question. There are so many things I can't do; I couldn't possibly list them while we're standing here in the hallway.

"And you can tell the boys about the piano. I totally don't care."

He nodded.

"Great," I said. "Now, can we eat? I'm starving."

We entered his room. The interconnecting door to Gethin's room was open and a voice immediately called, "Theo, Tink! Is that you?"

Teddy raised his eyebrows at me. "Yeah, it's us, we're coming."

We entered Gethin's room to find him and Ronan on the floor with controllers, playing BZG, while Matty sat on the sofa looking at his phone. All three turned to look at us, questioning, curious, and in Matty's case, accusatory.

"Where the hell you been, guys? It's been hours. It's nearly 8:00. We thought you'd run off together, or been kidnapped by those crazy girls out front," Ronan declared. Matty just continued to look back and forth between Teddy and me.

"It's not a big deal, guys. We never even left the hotel, honest," I said, taking the lead for once. "But I'm starving. So let us order some food and eat, okay? Then we can just hang out or whatever, and if you still have to know where we were, which is really not anything to talk about, well, then, we can."

Teddy gave the others a "there you go" look, and picked up the phone to order room service. "Pizza okay?" he asked me.

"Sounds fabulous," I responded.

Twenty minutes later, with food in me, I felt almost human again, and when Gethin and Ronan's epic BZG round was finally over, they paused the game and turned around to where Teddy and I were sitting on the bed demolishing the pizza. Gethin asked, "So, now you've eaten, where were you then, for over two hours in this hotel with no word to anyone?"

"I was attending a concert, actually," said Teddy, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "You guys aren't going to believe this—well, Matty, I guess you are, because you already know, but you two, Geth and Ro, will have to hear it to believe it. Our interpreter is one of the most incredible classical pianists alive on the planet today, I'd venture to say."

"What?" Ronan asked, looking from person to person, as if for confirmation.

"Say that again?" said Gethin.

"You heard her play?" This last from Matty on the sofa.

"You heard me. I was going to retrieve my phone from where I'd left it on top of a drinks machine downstairs and I heard the most incredible piano music coming from one of the rooms, so I went to see. Who do I see sitting at the piano but our intrepid little translator, pounding out Beethoven"— he broke off and turned to me—"I'm sorry, darling, you did play some Beethoven, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did, quite a bit, actually," I responded with a smile.

"So I stayed and listened for a while. It was amazing, guys. These tiny little hands are incredible." He picked up one of my hands.

"Really?" Gethin asked me. "You're a piano virtuoso?" I nodded. "Why on earth didn't you tell us? Surely you didn't think that would qualify as 'private' or 'embarrassing'?"

I shook my head. "No, not really." I stopped to consider. "I guess I just didn't see how it had anything to do with anything. I mean this job is about you guys, how I can make your lives easier. It's got nothing to do with me at all. I mean, when would it even come up?"

Gethin made a little exhalation of disbelief. "Uh, how about on the day we met, when I asked you, and I'm paraphrasing here, 'Why don't you tell us something about yourself, then?' Do you recall me asking you something along those lines, poppet?"

"Yeah, I remember that," Ronan said. "I begged you to tell us something interesting about yourself! You don't think being some kind of genius piano player would be interesting to four musicians?"

Gethin turned to Matthew. "And you knew about this? And didn't tell us?"

Matty shrugged. "She seemed embarrassed I knew, and I got the feeling she'd prefer if I didn't talk about it, that's all. It's not like she told me not to tell or anything, I just didn't bring it up."

"Well, I asked her if I could tell you lot," said Teddy, picking up another slice of pizza, "and she said it was all right, and I think that, since tomorrow is a free day, we should all enjoy a short"—I protested, but he continued—"just a short program, come on hummingbird—down in the little lounge on the ground floor, so you can all see how amazing she is." He turned to me. "Please? You'll blow their minds. They deserve to hear how gorgeously you play."

I looked at the other three. They were all looking at me expectantly. Matty even said, "Piano is meant to be performed for others. You certainly haven't spent all these years learning how to play so you can entertain yourself, have you? This doesn't qualify as 'private', does it?"

Of course he was right. I intended to try to live by performing in front of other people, so why should I object to performing in front of these people I loved?

"I'm sorry I'm being such a baby," I said with a sideways smile at Teddy. "Of course I'll play for you if you want me to. I just didn't realize you guys were so into classical music."

"It's not that we're necessarily 'into' classical music, though as musicians we're interested in most kinds of music; it's just we're 'into' you, Tink," Ronan said, sincerity etched into his honest, handsome features. "If it's important to you, it's important to us."

Gethin turned to him in amazement. "Well said, mate," he said, clapping Ronan on the back. "Sometimes out of the mouths of babes..." he said, and smiled to himself.

He gave me a look and reached for his guitar, which he always kept handy, and started strumming "Among The Stars", one of their new songs, but he put the capo in the wrong place, so it was in the wrong key. The conversation ebbed and flowed around him, ranging from topic to topic, but I found it hard to follow because Geth's playing was distracting me. He was also humming along, but the different key put it just out of his range, which was driving me batcrap crazy as well.

Finally even Matty noticed and said, "Geth, what's wrong with your voice, you usually have no problem hitting that note, man. And what's with the bridge, you're fucking it up royally."

The other two stopped talking to listen to Matty, and to Gethin, who said nothing, but merely looked at me interrogatively, as if asking what I had to say.

"Geth, your capo's in the wrong place, you're playing it in the wrong key," I finally said. "That song's supposed to be in B flat major, right? You're in B." I looked around at the boys.

"I knew it!" Gethin nearly shouted. "You have perfect pitch, don't you, Tink?"

I nodded, smiling. I couldn't remember when this particular skill had given anyone so much pleasure.

"How did you know?" I asked him.

"I watched you during rehearsals," he responded. "You adjusted some of our equipment sometimes when you thought no one was looking, and I heard you once, telling Ronan that he was a bit flat on a couple of the harmonies."

"Yeah, she did!" Ronan exclaimed. "I didn't think anything of it, but you're right!" He turned to me. "How'd you do that?"

"It's something I was born with," I said. "And it just kind of developed through all the piano playing." I shrugged. "It's no big deal."

"No big deal?" said Teddy in amazement. "Isn't it, like, one in ten thousand people who has it? It's incredibly rare." He turned to Gethin. "Play a chord, mate."

Gethin played a chord, and looked at me.

"A major," I responded.

He played another.

"B flat minor."

This went on for a few minutes, the chords getting more complex, the boys getting more and more impressed.

"Guys, it's just a parlor trick, honestly," I said. "Sometimes it's a pain in the ass, because if an instrument's out of tune I can't enjoy the music, all I can hear is how flat or sharp something is."

Ronan was looking at me with a newfound respect. "Imagine never having to use TuneMaster again," he said with awe. "Tink, you're incredible."

I sat and basked in the light of their admiration and enjoyed their attention. To them I was some sort of rare jewel, a refined, cultured gem, and it was eye opening to me to see myself through their eyes as some sort of beautiful girl who could do anything. I had only seen myself as Aileen the Mouse for so long.

Sometime around 9:30 I excused myself. "Playing the piano reminded me that I have a bunch of forms I have to mail to school about next semester and the scholarship I'm trying for," I explained. "I think I have plenty of time, but I haven't even thought about those forms for a week, so I'd rather get them done in case I forget about them for another few weeks and I miss some deadlines or something," I explained.

Teddy kissed me last. "Sleep well, Birdie," he whispered into my ear, causing a shiver to go down my spine. He looked into my eyes for the briefest of seconds before I shut the door.