Reid opens YouTube and scoots over on the bench, enough so there’s plenty of space for me to sit next to him, as if we do this all the time. It’s weird, seeing this totally different version of him. A Reid who writes original show tunes in front of me and sort of glows at the prospect of tap instead of smirking over Mozart.

“I wish I had the skill to do this,” Reid says, gesturing to the screen.

It reminds me that musicals are Reid’s domain. Music always came first, but a lot of the band kids also did the musical, back when the titles of those productions had Jr. at the end and they were less of a time commitment. Reid’s halfhearted audition led to him starring in The Music Man Jr. in eighth grade—a role that was both his debut and final act.

He pulls up a sequence of videos so fast and we spend the next twenty minutes watching a mix of the classic numbers from Anything Goes and 42nd Street, then move to Reid’s more recent favorites—Newsies, Aladdin, and The Book of Mormon.

“See? It’s music too,” Reid says.

I shrug, but I get why Reid is into writing a tap number. Watching the dancers create music with their bodies is like seeing the words in a script executed flawlessly onstage.

Reid closes his laptop. “The dancers and the music are inextricably linked, right? So when I play… you have to imagine that adding to it.”

I nod because despite myself, I am intrigued.

Reid launches into the song—a high-energy, whimsical ensemble number that has the cast daydreaming about experiencing a true winter, something Infernodelle has, of course, never seen before. I tap my toes to the music subconsciously, adding in where the taps would fit into the melody. Reid is as lost in the music as I am. His knee bumps mine when he presses the foot pedal and I stand, moving back to my rolling chair, suddenly very aware of how close we are, how intimate this feels, sitting on a piano bench with Reid.

He stops playing and looks at me expectantly. Like what I have to say matters to him.

“I like it,” I say, and before I’ve even given it permission to, my mind is racing with notes, ideas. “What if the last bridge changed keys?”

I expect him to scoff and explain the virtues of keeping the song in F major, but instead Reid takes my note and tries it out, live, before my eyes. He tinkers with the chord progressions before shifting the bridge up a step.

“How’s this?” he asks, and it sounds exactly like I imagined it would.

“That’s it,” I say. It surprises me how much I mean it.

Footsteps tap their way down the basement steps and Dad enters the studio, a scene transition I’m not ready for.