by J. R. Rogue
His hair is graying under his ballcap. I can see the silver glitter in the light. There’s some gray in his beard too, and the lines around his eyes are more prominent. But somehow, he looks better than the version of him I first met.
I wonder how I’m holding up to his memory of me.
You look good. Politeness? Maybe.
I’m ten pounds heavier, but my grays are dyed. My smile lines are more prominent as well, but men don’t swoon over visible age on a woman.
They swoon over smooth skin, smooth bellies. They swoon over youth, and mine is slipping away from me. I feel awkward in the light of my room, so I flick the light off and then back Hunter out of the doorway.
I can’t have him in my room, in my space. When I turn to close the door, I see my phone lighting up like a Christmas tree. My mom is probably having a field day with the info I just fed her.
“Wanna sit?” I ask, walking to the little table outside my room. It brings back memories of the last time I sat at a table with him nearby.
“Sure.” He smiles, and I know it’s at my awkwardness. At our past and all of our bullshit.
The noise of everyone around the fire is comforting. Someone else is playing the guitar out there now. The cabins surrounding us light up the night. The trees are thinning their leaves, no dense green to shield us.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, pulling my knees to my chest.
“Well,” he laughs, “this is a songwriter retreat. So I think the better question is, what are you doing here?”
I’m no songwriter. No poet. No screenplay writer. I shouldn’t be here for three of the four weeks I’m booked, but I don’t care. I need this. “I emailed the owner and asked if I could stay for a month.”
“But you’re a novelist,” he says with a smirk.
“I know.” I roll my eyes.
“You don’t write songs,” he challenges, and I don’t like where this is going. I know where this is going. I forgot how it felt to bicker with him.
“I know,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“I tried to get you to write a song with me. You wouldn’t do it.”
“You know why I couldn’t,” I say, looking into the dark.
“Too many people would have gotten hurt?” he guesses. “That didn’t stop you from writing your book.”
I look back at him, unsurprised, mad and blushing. The book. Your book. The book that tore my world apart. The book that held the secrets of my marriage. The hurt of my past.
The one that broke hearts, broke my marriage, broke my friendships. Broke my joy and set me free at the same time.
I stare into Hunter Hart’s eyes when I say, “No. No, it didn’t stop me.”
Some Girls Do
Hunter
I read her book. The one about her marriage, her friendships, her wild past. I fit right into it. Sonnet wrote about our one-night stand, called me forgettable. I’m pretty damn sure the chapter about me was the shortest, which stung, but I never told her I read it. I never told her how it made me feel, the way she described our night together—the drinks and downtown; my apartment and the way we touched each other.
Sonnet Rosewood stole my shirt. She stole my heart. Then, she said I was forgettable. It shouldn’t have bothered me none. Especially after she got engaged one month after I had her in my bed.
It’s the way it goes. Girls come to Nashville to hear guys like me sing. They don’t think they can touch us, but so many of us are nobodies. Lonely bodies looking for something. For a night, maybe more. Depends on the guy. It’s nice, for a moment, to shake off the lonely as we try to make a name for ourselves in a city where, ultimately, we’re no one.
When I met Sonnet that night, I didn’t know she was a writer like me. But we talked for hours. I fed her water to sober her up, her sadness apparent. There was heartbreak in her eyes. I figured someone had hurt her recently, and she was in Nashville to find someone to make her forget it. I wanted it to be me. So, I kept her close, kept her laughing.
There are questions you just don’t ask, while there are assumptions you make.
We kept in touch after she left my place, through texts and Instagram messages. I liked her photos, snapped her. I thought we’d meet up when she vacationed again.
But just one month later, one of my buddies texted me, asking if I knew Sonnet was engaged. The typical photo of a hand with a diamond on it was getting like after like on Facebook. Only, it was her hand.
And the man she was marrying? They had been together for five years.
She cheated with me. That was my first thought. It wasn’t until she reached out to me that she corrected me. She and her husband—boyfriend at the time—had split up, lived separately for six months. And I was one of a few guys she’d distracted herself with.
It was fine. I’d been that guy before, and I’d used women the same way.
I wanted to warn her away from marriage. It’d been a few years since the ink dried on my own divorce, but I was still feeling the reverberation of that shit year.
My daughters were still feeling it, too.
I still remember the text from Sonnet when she asked me why I never told her I had daughters. One of her friends had stalked me online, scrolled back years to the last time I shared my girls with the public.
When people started to pay attention to my music, I wanted to make sure they paid attention to the music, and the music alone. I didn’t want to mix in my home life—with women or the public.
I wasn’t hiding anything. I just wasn’t sharing the intimate stuff.
You want to know me? Listen to my music. That’s where I live.
I wanted to know who Sonnet was, though. And since she was equally evasive, I turned to the pages of her novels. I watched her gain fans and followers. I noted the questions being thrown at her as she gained popularity, observed the way her life was picked apart. I watched the way her words both saved her and exposed everything vulnerable inside her.
When you put “Inspired by a True Story” on a book, there’s no hiding. Sonnet would have done better with being a poet. Hell, she was named for it. At least with poetry and songs, you can get away with creative license. But she went right for the jugular.
So they took her words seriously. And shit, so did I.
I was forgettable. So, when Sonnet and I didn’t talk for three, six, nine months at a time, I let her forget me. I didn’t press or push my way into her little bubble.
Because she always remembered—eventually. I just had to be patient.
I knew her marriage would end. I predicted it. The clues were there. The way she texted me when she was lonely, on her bachelorette party night no less. It was very telling.
She was drowning in that small town she settled for.
I did it once. I gave more than I got in my marriage. I wouldn’t do it again, but Sonnet made me reconsider.
I look at her now, in front of me. Bundled up with a colossal sweater pulled close around her small frame. Big brown eyes and red-stained lips. She’s not a songwriter, but she could be. She’s not a poet, but she should be. That woman’s got the kind of words that feed the soul.
I want all the words she puts out into the world. Her ex-husband never read them, never cared. And by overlooking that part of her, he missed out on her.
If you don’t water a writer, they wither up like the pages they should be filling. It’s pretty simple, yet so few get it.
I pull my guitar out, strum, slow, and purposeless.
There’s a notebook in my back pocket with pieces of her in there. I hide her in songs. Songs about blue-eyed girls, even if hers are dark as the night. Songs about the one who got away, which are more direct and daring.
She’s a song, and I still want her to write one with me.
Peter Pan
Sonnet
How many chances can two people have before they realize it’s all just a joke and they shouldn’t try anymore? I’m looking at him, hard. Brown eyes and a smile that m
akes my stomach dip. I love his hands, and I don’t know why I’ve never told him that. I don’t know why I can’t just open my chest and let Hunter Hart peek inside.
Everything is coming back. The ache and the flood. The words I wrote about him but never published. They’re in the trunk of my car—a piece of the past I couldn’t throw away.
“Can you write a song with someone if you’re scared of them?” I ask, surprising myself. He sets down his guitar and leans back in his seat. His legs are spread wide. He’s so tall, and I want to hear what he has to say just as much as I want to crawl all over him. I want to listen to his southern drawl around words that can both wound me and wake me.
“I reckon it wouldn’t be a good one.” He runs his hands along his jaw, drawing my gaze there.
I shake my head, lowering my eyes. “What would a good song cost me?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything I could take from ya that you weren’t willin’ to offer me,” Hunter admits.
I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with anything Hunter says when he’s like this and I’m a brick wall. “If only it were like that with everyone,” I say.
“Well, there’s no one you owe anything to anymore, right?” He cocks an eyebrow at me.
The way I went back and forth with my ex-husband, the breakups and reconciliations, I can see why Hunter would question my relationship status. I told him I was getting a divorce, but how many times prior had I told him it was over, only to ghost him after I made up with my husband?
“It’s really over this time, yes,” I tell him. And I’m relieved, but still, there’s a stone in my belly. “Have you ever killed yourself to make it work with someone you loved but just weren’t compatible with?” I ask, pushing further into where we’ve always lived. I could ask him almost anything when I had a drink in my hand, and he never questioned the questions. He just answered. He listened. He drew me in.
Hunter starts nodding his head immediately. “Yeah, with my ex-wife. When you’re in your twenties, you think of love differently than you eventually do later.”
“So, why do you keep dating girls that are in their twenties?” If he thinks a few months of no contact will make me forget his dating habits, he’s in for a rude awakening.
Hunter smirks, and we both know the answer. Why wouldn’t a guy date a girl in her twenties? They make him feel desired, young again. Less jaded, maybe. I can see it on his face.
“I don’t seek them out, necessarily,” he replies, his shit-eating grin blinding me.
“You don’t push them away either,” I counter, laughing and thinking of the girls he’s spent time with over the years. Pretty blondes who are ten years younger, on average—and nothing like me.
“And what about you?” Hunter asks. “I know you like young guys. Or, young muses anyways.”
“A muse and someone you wake up to each day, those are completely different things.” I know he’s as sensitive about his age as I am.
“So when do you stop chasing muses and settle down with someone real?” It’s a good question. One he should be asking himself instead of me.
“I was married,” I reply, as if that’s an answer.
“And you texted me on the night of your bachelorette party, second guessin’ it all.”
I feel like I’ve been slapped. I buried that down—so deep down—and didn’t want to think about it ever again. It was embarrassing. I texted a one-night stand, asking him to talk me off a ledge. Asking him to tell me it was stupid, that I shouldn’t do it. It was a low point. I never told any of my friends.
“I don’t want to talk about that. Why would you bring that up?” So quickly, we go from laughing to sparring. Just like we always have.
“You brought up bein’ married,” he says. “Listen, you and I are gonna have to get down to the bone of this if we’re gonna write a song together. We gotta be real with each other. You’re not gonna like it. I’m not gonna like it.” He’s right about me not liking it, but I think he’ll like opening me up plenty.
“Who said I was writing a song with you? We tried that years ago. Didn’t work. Just like this never works.” I motion between us, heat rising in my chest.
“Sonnet, you’re at a writing retreat for songwriters.”
“I’m not writing a song.” With that, my voice gets louder, and I see someone by the fire turn toward us.
Hunter sees it too, lowering his voice when he says, “Then what are you doing here? You’re here to write, aintcha? You can write a song. I see it in your words. And I know you don’t half-ass shit when it comes to that. Could you half-ass a novel of yours?”
“I should’ve. Being too real is what ruined my life. It’s what got me here, in the middle of the woods surrounded by people I don’t know. And you, for some reason.”
“Nah, writing that book just shed light on the thing you were tryna’ hide from everyone. But I could see it. I could see it from miles away.”
“Well, that’s terrifying,” I say, chuckling. It’s such an awkward laugh. I can feel the desire between us, heavy in the night.
“It’s why you didn’t want to do this before.”
“Do what?” I ask.
“Write with me. It’s a vulnerable thing, I get it. But it’s just a damn song. Quit being so scared of life.” He leans his head back, taking his eyes from me.
I groan, annoyed, vulnerable as he says I am, wondering what mask I can pull out. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll write with you, best I can. And if I clam up, just let me know. Just call me out on it.” This could be dangerous. But I’m not writing anyway, so I might as well step outside my neat little box. The one I placed myself in years ago.
“Don’t I always call you on it?” Hunter asks.
“Yeah. I don’t know why I even put up with you.” I do know why. Look at those arms.
“You’ve missed this. You’ve missed my friendship,” he teases.
Could we ever be friends? It’s strange, but I never felt jealousy when I knew he was hanging out with some young girl. Because I knew it would end. It always ended with him, and I feel like a real fucking asshole for thinking that, but the receipts don’t lie. When was the last time he had a girlfriend? In his twenties?
We’re both pushing forty now.
Two Peter Pans, looking each other in the eye.
“You’re right,” I say. “I have missed you.”
Don’t Close Your Eyes
Sonnet
“Have you ever hurt someone? With your words?” I ask, my hand warm from the contents of the mug.
After I said goodnight to Hunter, I retreated to my room for the night. The blinds were drawn, and I was alone. I could hear everyone still out by the fire. Hunter’s voice found me once again as he sang songs with the other songwriters, but even his voice couldn’t lift me from the wreckage of my life.
You can love someone and not like them. I know, because that’s where my ex-husband and I ended up.
He loved me—that, I never doubted—but at some point, he started critiquing everything I loved. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. If I turned on a show I loved, he told me it was dumb. A movie I loved from childhood? He’d never seen it, couldn’t understand why I even liked it. It happened with everything. The subtle and slow chipping away made me start to like him less, too.
I loved him, so fucking much. But you can only feel the sharp pain of someone’s rejection for so long before it wears you down so thoroughly that you have no idea who you are anymore.
Because if the one person who’s supposed to love you more than anyone else can’t stand to be around you—without anything but bitterness falling from their mouth—who are you? That’s why I’m at this cabin, to find out.
I am not defined by my marriage, its failure, or what his love for me changed into.
I am defined by who I’m choosing to be, and humans are ever-changing.
My shift irri
tated my husband. In the end, I realize he thought I was moving away from him. He was so happy to stand still, not in every area of his life, but in all the places I was moving toward. Although I thought it was fine for us to have our own interests, I learned he’d ideally have us wearing matching Halloween costumes. Or spending every waking moment together, sharing one identity.
Love is more than how you look on camera. I know that now. Maybe he will learn that with someone new.
Sera is at the cabin with her husband today. She stares out the window, pondering my question. We’ve spent the entire morning getting to know each other, while Brooklyn’s been busy cleaning the dining area around us.
I don’t want Sera to know what a huge fan I am of her work. I’ve seen what it does to other authors like me. It makes them feel weird, like they are no longer a person, like they’ve been placed on a pedestal. I want to be her friend. I need friends I can spend time with, face-to-face.
“Yes,” she replies, sipping from her own mug.
“Do you regret it?”
“No. It comes with the territory. I am who I am. Anyone who gets involved with me knows who I am. They know if they hurt me, I’ll turn to my words. My inner voice is one that needs to scream out. I won’t yell at someone who hurts me. I won’t physically harm someone who hurts me. But I’ll work it out with my words. I don’t like hurting people—I’m not a sadist. I’m more of a masochist.”
I laugh, because I consider myself one as well. “So, no regrets?”
“I hurt my mother when I wrote about what my grandfather did to me. I hurt Chace when I wrote poetry about what my ex, Tristan, did to me. But they know me. They know it’s a part of me. And writing is our way of opening the door to talk about the hurt.”
“You wrote about Tristan?” I always wondered if some of the poetry she wrote years ago was about her movie star ex.
