Do you love me most?

Here's a chunk of text that I pulled from Chapter 43 ("Dandelion Wishes"). It's an example of prose that I enjoyed writing, but it didn't push the story forward any more creatively than the conversation that takes place at the end of the chapter.

She looked back to the stage, trying to picture him there with his sister, moving in the same easy way that he did when he played his bass guitar in his apartment. Would he stand close to Hitomi and share her microphone for a chorus? Would he stay in the back, bouncing his foot to the beat the way he used to do in Mayonaka, while his fingers plucked at the strings? Would he notice her in the crowd if he was up there, or would he get lost in the sound and the energy and excitement, as the musicians who were playing onstage now seemed to do?

As much as she liked to think that she could handle him having something else in his life that he loved more than her, there was a part of her – an admittedly selfish and frightened part – that was glad he wasn't up on that stage tonight. She wanted to keep him close, close to her and to the life they had in Inaba together. If he gave himself up to his music, how much of him would be left for her?

...But then she thought about how she had wanted to keep Yukiko close to her, too, and how unfair that had been. Yousuke, like Yukiko, had his own life to live. She liked to think that she was the most important part of that life, but even if she wasn't, wasn't the most important part of her love for him that she wanted him to be happy?

She turned back to look at Yousuke, and this time he caught her gaze and grinned to her, beckoning her over with a wave of his hand even as he kept talking. She giggled to herself and pushed her way through the amassing crowd – past Dojima chatting with Taniguchi-sama about the right kind of flowers for a young performer; past Souji, Kuma and Yukiko trying to get some skewers of takoyaki from the Kiyomoris' stand; and past Kanji and Tatsumi-sama at their table, trading dolls and money and clothes and more money nearly hand over fist – and squeezed over to the edge of the sound table.

It creates a nice image of Yousuke onstage - and the insecurities that Chie has about him leading that kind of life - but I felt that the issue was unnecessary to bring up at this time, and it slowed down the flow. I also didn't want to open up a whole new bunch of insecurities for Chie, especially when the next chapter (Chapter 44 - "Rude Awakening") gives her a different set of problems.