by Melody Anne
Shrills from the audience grow even louder. Camera flashes bounce around in the darkness.
“We’ve spent the majority of our careers lugging gear to club after club, holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet, tearing relationships apart with our hectic schedules,” Matt cuts in, swapping out his electric guitar for an acoustic one. “The past few years have been a whirlwind for us. We’ve achieved some big milestones—landing a major record deal, hearing our music on the radio for the first time, debuting on the Billboard country charts with our single ‘August.’ We’ve also experienced personal heartbreak—death, cheating, divorce, drugs. All this terrible life shit that no one prepares you for.”
A couple of guys wearing T-shirts with staff written across the chest bring out stools, guitar stands, bongos, and shakers.
“When we went into the studio to record Resolution, we knew we wanted to reflect all that, to reach deep inside and explore all those warring emotions,” Matt continues. “So, naturally, we had to work with the best in the business. Lucky for us, one of our closest friends, who was going through some of the same crap as we were at the time, happens to be one helluva songwriter. And, lucky for y’all, he’s here tonight and has agreed to play a set with us.”
Wes elbows me and shouts in my ear, “You ready for this, Jelly Bean?”
Squinting at him, I yell back, “Ready for what?”
Wes grins and jerks his chin toward the stage.
I follow his gaze to see who everyone is going crazy for. I try to process it, but I can’t. My brain has vacated my body. It’s like converting recipe measurements doped up on cough medicine, it’s that impossible. There’s no way Nick is walking across the stage carrying my father’s old Taylor acoustic guitar, no way Nick is claiming the empty stool between Matt and Karl and adjusting the microphone, no way Nick is throwing the worn leather strap over his head and tuning the pegs.
Only it is him, seeming completely in his element, right there on that stage.
“Let me introduce you to our buddy Nick Preston, one of the best damn songwriters in country music,” Matt says, slapping Nick on the back. “Please give him a warm, Randy Hollis–style welcome.”
The crowd breaks into catcalls and thunderous applause. Nick waves, then rubs his hands up and down his thighs. His eyes are like flames, so bright they could light me on fire.
“We’re going to slow things down a bit and play a song for you off the new record called ‘Unwinding.’ It’s about a guy and a girl who have severed the thread that once tied them together and are now trying desperately to pedal backward and reconnect it,” Karl says as he strums the guitar. “Hope y’all enjoy it.”
A hush settles over the room as the progression of guitar chords and bongos create a sad, beautiful melody. Matt begins to sing, Karl and Nick adding the harmony, though it’s only Nick’s smooth tenor I hear. An arrow to my heart. It breaks through the shock and the awe.
I blink several times, but Nick is still onstage singing and strumming my father’s old guitar like he never stopped. Like the ugly chapters in our past are a bad dream.
Wes places a hand on my shoulder, concern etched on his face. “You okay?”
I shake my head, unable to speak.
Understanding dawns. “Shit. I’m sorry, Jelly Bean. I thought Nick explained everything that night at Otto’s Corner.”
Is that why Nick gave me the advanced copy of Resolution? Was that his way of telling me about . . . whatever this is?
I choke out something about needing to clear my head. Wes calls my name and reaches for me, but I turn and push through the crowd, hoping the bodies bumping into me will knock me out of this twisted reality I seem to be caught in. Only no matter how fast or far away I move from the stage, Nick’s voice follows me.
I’m almost to the entrance when manicured fingers close around my wrist, pull me up against a wall. Margaret stares at me with a fierce glint in her gray eyes.
She crosses her arms and says, “Nick has me to thank, you know.”
“For what?” My throat feels dry.
She points at the stage. “For him holding that guitar. For him falling in love with music again. When everyone else deserted him, it was me who stayed, who encouraged him to quit medicine to pursue songwriting. Me. Not you. Yet it still wasn’t enough.” Her face shifts as she spits out the last part, the hard exterior slipping before it’s put back in place.
It takes several seconds for her words to register; my mind is clouded, trapped in a dense fog. “What do you mean Nick quit medicine?” I ask, certain she must be lying.
My gaze flicks toward the stage. From my vantage point, Nick is hidden behind the mass of people, but I can still hear his voice, smooth and deep and, God, so sexy it steals my breath. I picture him with his head bent down, pouring raw emotion into every chord, every lyric. And I know with bone-deep surety that Margaret is telling the truth. When Nick said he abandoned his surgical residency, I thought he meant he switched to another area within medicine, not that he gave it up entirely.
All this time, I’ve been gripping tightly to this expectation of who Nick has become, but I’ve been so very, very wrong.
I don’t know who Nick is anymore. I don’t know if he still prefers his coffee black and near burnt or if his favorite movie is still Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I don’t know if he still does the New York Times crossword puzzle every Saturday morning or if he can still recite the periodic table of elements in under twenty seconds. I don’t know his day-to-day routine or if he has a routine at all.
Margaret laughs a small, resentful laugh. “Of course you have no idea about that,” she says. “You have no idea about anything.”
Guilt and frustration rise in me as I am once again reminded of all the things I’ve missed these past five years, all the history I need to learn. It’s all too much. Pushing off the wall, I head for the door, desperate for air.
“You have no idea what it’s like competing with a ghost.” Margaret’s tone is acidic.
I stop and face her.
“Even after Nick went up there, he still wouldn’t let go.”
My brow furrows. When he went up where?
“To Chicago,” she says, as if reading my thoughts.
Everything freezes, then the crowd and the music thaw back to life. All I can concentrate on is sucking air into my lungs. Nick came to Chicago? When? Why didn’t he tell me?
I remember what Nick said in my father’s kitchen. I came after you. At the time, I thought he was referring to right then. Now I realize he did tell me, but why didn’t he find me?
I look at the stage as the opening chords of “A Tragic Trajectory”—the final track off Resolution—surround me. The sea of people have parted a bit so I can see the top of Nick’s head, bent down, as I suspected. It hits me that while I may not know everything about him anymore, I still know him. He’s lived inside me since our world was one block wide and I thought clouds were meringue cookies floating in the sky. Our roots are so entwined they can’t be separated.
“Eventually Nick did let go and move on. With me,” Margaret says, recapturing my attention. Her eyes are alight with anger and hurt and sadness, emotions I recognize all too well—I’ve seen them in my own eyes enough times. “You just couldn’t stand to see that happen, could you? You had to sweep back in here and destroy everything I’ve rightfully earned.”
The bitterness in her voice settles like a brick in my stomach as I recall Nick confessing that he shouldn’t have entered a relationship with Margaret out of a sense of loyalty. I can’t blame her for her anger, and while not intentional, maybe I am a reason for her pain. I feel as if I owe Margaret an apology, but more than that, my gratitude. For her honesty, for being Nick’s anchor when I wasn’t strong enough, for helping him get here, to this point.
“I’m sorry,” I say, hoping she senses that it comes from a sincere, real place.
She shakes her head, as though rejecting it, and says, “You’ll r
un away again—it’s all you’re capable of. Except this time I won’t be there to pick up the pieces.” Shouldering past me, Margaret storms away.
Her words are aimed to strike at my heart, her fury about the situation acting as fuel, but I refuse to grant them that kind of power because she’s wrong. I’m not running anymore.
The music fades out, and Jason speaks into the microphone. “We’re going to play one more song in this acoustic set, then get back to what y’all came here for.” He taps a short beat on the bongos.
“You won’t find this track on Resolution because it’s not our story,” Tim adds, his fingers poised over the frets of the bass guitar. “That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be told. So we’re going to hand this one off to our boy Nick to lead.”
Nick glances at Tim, an unspoken conversation passing between them, then rakes a hand through his hair and exhales a deep breath. “This song is called ‘Ripped Stitches.’ It was written during a particularly dark period in my life . . .” Nick clears his throat, his gaze scanning the audience. My skin prickles, and I swear he’s searching for me. “It’s about leaving people behind who don’t want to be left . . .”
Closing his eyes, Nick counts down from three and begins to play. The band joins in. A slow, somber melody reverberates around the House of Blues. Nick sings with such rawness and intensity I feel his voice running through every inch of my body.
I can’t do anything but stand there, listening as the lyrics, so full of sadness and betrayal, chain me to their honesty. The way they talk about abandoning the people we love the most. How every choice has a cost, and no matter how high the stakes, the consequences are great just the same.
A fist squeezes my chest as I remember clutching a suitcase and whispering good-bye to Nick while he slept, the moment before our paths moved in opposite directions.
The moment before I left him behind.
I fold the memory inside of me, tuck it away. Maybe someday it won’t hurt so much to remember. Maybe someday time won’t carry so much weight.
I understand finally what Margaret meant when she talked about competing with ghosts. Just as Nick’s ghost has haunted me these past five years, perhaps mine has lingered with him as well. Perhaps that’s the true motivation behind why Nick ended things with Margaret—we’re both still clinging to each other. At least I want that to be the case. I know now that running isn’t the same as moving on or letting go, and I have to believe that Nick hasn’t done the same either. Otherwise, where does that leave me?
I move back toward the stage and work my way to the front as the song ends. The crowd roars with cheers and applause. Nick gives a slight bow, then lifts the strap over his head and rests my father’s old guitar in the stand beside his stool. He exits off the stage, and I intercept him when he steps into the crowd. His face is composed, unreadable as a label-less can.
“Why didn’t you tell me you gave it all up?” I ask. “Why the half-truths?”
Nick remains silent, his deep blue eyes studying mine, his mouth a thin line. “Would it have mattered?”
I consider his question. It occurs to me that until recently I wasn’t in a place to hear him, even if he had told me. “No, and it still doesn’t because that’s not what this is about.”
A muscle twitches in his jaw. “Oh? What is it about, Lillie? I don’t even think you know.”
My throat constricts, but I press on. “It’s about how it always comes back to you and me . . . how we never really left each other behind.”
Shaking his head, Nick turns and walks to a pair of double doors at the side of the stage.
The hope starts to drain out of me.
Hope is dangerous that way. Once it sparks, it grabs hold and devours everything it touches until it’s the only thing keeping you breathing. To put it out would mean death, swift and absolute, but without it what’s the point of living at all?
I cling to the small sliver of hope still flickering within me and follow Nick into a corridor lined with framed concert posters. “Now who’s running away?”
Nick stops in front of the bathrooms and faces me. “What do you want, Lillie?”
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“What?”
“In Chicago,” I say.
“Because I went there expecting the girl I remembered. Who I discovered was someone else.” He glances at my bare left ring finger. “It’s been so easy for you—new job, new life.” His voice is controlled, but I hear traces of anger simmering underneath.
“You think it was easy? It took everything I had to piece myself back together. There was no one there to catch me if I fell. I was alone, left to figure out how to navigate a whole new world of firsts on my own,” I say, remembering when I moved into my tiny apartment with only my name on the contract, scoured job sites for positions I was in no way qualified for, ventured out into a city that was now my home but in no way felt like it.
He stares at me, his gaze impenetrable. “Yet you were able to move on so quickly.”
I shake my head. “Drew and I . . . We’re no longer engaged . . . because the thing is . . .” I take a deep breath. The truth is messy and scary and sometimes it hurts, but I must tell it, trust that the risk is worth it. “I love you, Nick.”
There it is: the bravest thing I’ve ever said.
His eyes, his expression, it all hardens. “You don’t even know who you are. How could you know what you feel?”
“You’re wrong. I may still be figuring myself out, but not this,” I say. “Loving you is the biggest, most honest thing I know. It’s consumed my whole life.”
Nick’s quiet a moment. When he finally speaks, his voice is a cold nothingness. “Listen, Lillie, if I’ve learned anything in the last five years it’s that I have to be in charge of my own happiness. I have to make choices that are good for me. I know exactly who I am now, unlike you, and I won’t fall back into old habits. I won’t repeat my same mistakes.”
At his words, my stomach drops, but then I realize it’s actually my heart, which is so much heavier and more fragile. I watch as it shatters at my feet, strewn across the floor. Everything inside me is anguish.
Nick turns and stalks back down the hallway toward the main room, without hesitating, without glancing over his shoulder.
As if I mean nothing to him—as if I’ve never meant anything to him.
TWENTY-FIVE
THERE’S A SPOT in my father’s backyard near the fence line, where if I lie on my back, feet facing the house, it’s as though the trees touch the sky. They stretch and stretch and stretch like taffy until it’s impossible to decipher where the branches end and the clouds begin. There, I can knock on the floor of heaven. There, time stands still.
Sometimes, back in Chicago, when it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep, I would squeeze my eyes shut and imagine I was in that spot again, floating toward the sky, the leaves haloed in light. Curling my fingers into the sheets, I’d pretend the soft cotton was damp grass and the noisy traffic passing on the street outside our apartment was the next-door neighbor boy with the blue eyes and crooked grin strumming a Taylor acoustic guitar in his own backyard. I’d breathe in deep and convince my senses that the lingering greasy odor of Thai delivery was the scent of my father’s famous chicken and dumplings drifting out the kitchen window.
Because if I returned to that place in my head, then nothing had changed.
I visit that spot now, minutes after driving my father home from the hospital. Kicking off my ballet flats, I lie down, wiggling my toes in the sun-bleached grass, and stare up at the sky, waiting for that floating feeling to overtake me, for time to pause. My body feels heavy, my limbs filled with crushing disappointment. Everything is different, lost. The trees have been trimmed, no longer climbing high, some of the branches stripped bare and reduced to stubs. I can see the side of Nick’s old house through the gaps in the leaves and hear the impostors that are the Rosenbloom family discussing their choices for the upcoming Oscar nominations on t
he covered veranda.
That’s the bitter thing about loss; there’s no going back to what once was, and nothing stays the same after.
All I can do is move forward, but how am I supposed to do that when everything inside me wishes it could rewind, erase my mistakes, forge a new path where I never left and my father is healthy and Nick is still mine?
I close my eyes. The events of last night dance across my eyelids in a constant loop. I won’t repeat my same mistakes. Nick may have forgiven me, but he won’t forget. Only now do I fully comprehend the meaning behind the lyrics of “Ripped Stitches,” when he sang about choices and consequences. Me leaving, our history, all the pain, it will forever stand between us. How could I have been so foolish to assume otherwise?
I wonder how many songs Nick has written with the blood of our failure; if the process has healed him. I wonder if channeling all his hurt and anger and betrayal into every verse and bridge and chorus, purging our history, allowed him to let go of us as thoroughly as he did. If only I could do the same.
If only I wanted to.
LATER IN THE day, I rummage under the bed for my old memento box, dust motes flying in the air. I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Did my father toss it into the garbage? Panic wells inside me, but then I spot it shoved in a corner by the headboard, the word “Life” written in cursive on the side. Grabbing the scissors off the desk, I slice through the duct tape, fold back the flaps, and turn the box over, scattering the contents across the floor.
It’s funny, most people would consider this stuff sentimental junk, but these items were my most prized possessions, and in a way, they still are. Each one carries a mark—the splotches on a stack of photographs from being displayed directly in the sun’s path; the frayed edges of my newspaper columns because I was too lazy to cut them out properly; the chips in the guitar picks from an overzealous musician; the curled corners and creases in the cover of a small spiral notebook from years of shoving it into apron pockets, the pages filled with recipes, some unfinished.
