This Love

by Hilaria Alexander

  I chuckled. “Jeez, thanks man! You’re a real friend,” I patted him on his shoulder.

  “Anytime Lou.”

  I nodded and smiled, but I still couldn’t focus on what he just said.

  “Seriously though, man, what’s up? You’re usually a machine when you’re in the studio. You seem to be all out of sorts. Is it because of the divorce hearing? Is Ashley trying to get a bigger payout?”

  “What?” I asked, a little confused. Oh, the divorce. Yeah, the divorce hearing was in a couple of days, as my attorney had called to remind me. Apparently I was the one that had to be present since I was the one who filed the petition. Putting it mildly, it wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Ashley and I had been apart for so long that it just felt like a formality. The hurt, sadness and pain of our relationship ending had dissipated long ago. From time to time, a veil of disappointment clouded my thoughts; I believed it stemmed more from the fact that I, or better we, failed our marriage. I should have been a better husband, I knew that now, and yet, I wasn’t the one that had cheated.

  Sometimes I did wonder if we could have made it, had I been more present, not always so focused on work. After months and months of dwelling on the “what ifs,” I had come to the conclusion that this was how it had to be.

  “No man, nothing like that. She’s getting alimony, but you know she isn’t the type to ask for more. Plus, she isn’t even going to be at the hearing. She’s in California for the show,” I told Josh.

  “What’s wrong then?”

  “I think I’m not done with this album yet. Something is missing. One more song, maybe.”

  “Well, you better clear this shit with Otto. He ain’t going to be pleased, you know,” he groaned.

  Otto, wasn’t going to be happy to hear about any further delays. I had already taken all the time I could possibly take to get this album done.

  “Are you coming to bowl with me and the guys tonight?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so, buddy. I’ve got a song to write.”

  I went home and kept messing with the guitar trying to come up with something.

  It didn’t work, and I got even more frustrated with myself. Then I decided to think about all the things I loved about her, all the things I loved about us. I missed her so fucking much. I wanted nothing more than to be able one day to go back to her, climb the stairs to her room and see her surprised face. She’d take me in her arms, and I would feel at peace. As the fantasy took over my mind, I started scribbling everything down. The lyrics were a wish.

  A few hours later, I had a song.

  I still remember

  The stairs to your room,

  Creaking under my foot

  The gate to your world,

  a line of white painted walls

  An old fireplace

  From some time ago

  Keeping you warm

  The nights I was gone

  The memories are so clear

  But I’m filled with fear

  The fire has disappeared

  I’ll come back to you my love

  I’ll come back to you one day

  I’ll come back to you if you’ll have me, love

  Tell me you will let me stay

  I’ll climb those stairs again

  In the dim evening light

  We’ll hold each other until morning light

  You let me in your heart once

  And I couldn’t stay

  You let me in once,

  Will you let me in again?

  I’ll come back to you my love

  I’ll come back to you one day

  I’ll come back to you if you’ll have me, love

  Tell me you will let me stay

  CHAPTER 22

  I couldn’t stay away. I wanted to know. I wanted to know what he was up to. It had been a few weeks since I got back, and things were slowly getting better. I was researching schools and I was performing again. I was playing in the streets with the guitar, at the pancake house with the piano. I played piano for hours on end. I made myself stay busy. But I still couldn’t get rid of him. He never left my mind, he was everywhere. I didn’t regret my decision, and I wanted to believe that he truly understood me. I didn’t want a man to define me, I wanted to find my own path, make choices, make mistakes, and conquer my fears.

  But I still thought of him all the time. And I was curious, so curious. I wanted to know what was going on with him, I wasn’t even sure if I would find anything.

  Surprisingly, as soon as I put his name in the search engine, the internet rewarded me with his most recent pictures. They were of him and Boyd at some event. It was still so weird to think he and Jackson Boyd were brothers. There were a couple of red carpet shots, and a few other ones from a club where the two of them were surrounded by people, mostly ladies. Then there were a few blurry shots of him talking to and smiling at a blonde. Ugh! Yes, I was jealous, and I had no right to be. I looked at the date on the gossip article, and it was from a few weeks before! That had to be right after he had gotten back from Italy…well, he sure didn’t look too beat up about it. He didn’t look like the guy who pleaded with me to follow him.

  I couldn’t find any more recent photos. He must have gone back to Tennessee to finish the album. He had things to do and so did I.

  I went back to the picture on the gossip site. I gave it one last look and shut my computer off.

  I might have had a dream—or a nightmare—about this, but I didn’t think my parents and I would end up having a Western-style standoff in the middle of Amsterdam’s Dam Square. In August. Simply put, the busiest place in the busiest damn month of the year in one of the busiest cities in Europe. I had given my parents specific direction of where we should meet, and by some kind of miracle, I had managed to find them easily near the place I told them.

  Now I was just standing a few feet away from them, and we were staring at each other.

  My mother showed a slight trace of emotion on her face, but my father was impassible as ever. They both looked good, just slightly older than the image I had in my head. There was something in my mother’s eyes I had never seen before. Her hair was shorter than it used to be, her complexion much paler. But it wasn’t just the subtle changes in her appearance. I felt there was something different about her. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. I was sweating profusely, and not because of nerves, but because it was one of the hottest days of the whole summer.

  Since I figured none of us were going to draw a gun, I made my way toward my mom. When I came back from Florence, I had a letter from my mom waiting for me. I don’t know how they had gotten the exact address where I was, but now they knew.

  In her letter, she apologized for how she had been with me on the phone and she was hoping that I would call her and talk to her again.

  So I did. It wasn’t easy at first, but she seemed committed to mending our relationship. She said that my father was still upset with me, but that she was hoping to change his mind.

  “I don’t want to waste my time holding a grudge, Ella,” she had told me one time over the phone, “only to later realize it’s too late to mend things or we don’t have any time left. We were wrong, I know that now. We should have encouraged you but we shouldn’t have forced you down a path that wasn’t what you wanted.”

  It was the first time I had heard such words come out of my mother’s mouth. The fact that she finally seemed to understand me, filled me with such joy and relief, I could hardly hold back the tears. We ended up both crying on the phone for a long time, listening to each other sob and then laugh when we had cried all our tears.

  We had started making plans for them to come visit me. I had advised them not to come in August, but my father refused to plan a visit during any other month, citing his many commitments. He was a music professor, amongst other things, so he would have only been able to come during summer.

  I had been nervous for days, but now the time had come for me to face them.


  My mother ran to me, hugging me tightly, almost knocking me over. I was startled by her gesture, and it took me a moment to reciprocate. The whole time, I stared into my dad’s cold eyes.

  We seemed like relatives that hadn’t seen each other in a lifetime. We were all nervous, and our long awkward pauses were interrupted by my mother and I accidentally talking over each other. My dad barely said a word when I hugged him, and he still hadn’t spoken. The trip was not his idea, it was my mother’s way to try to patch things up. Part of me was worried that this was all to get me to come back home. I knew how they worked, always trying to manipulate me. I couldn’t deny there was something different about my mother. She radiated warmth and affection; affection I hadn’t felt in a long time. We went to a café and talked and hung out for a while. My mother was sitting to my right, and she wouldn’t let go of my right hand, so much so that I had to hold my cup of coffee with my left hand.

  Eventually, she started talking to fill up the awkward void. She gave me updates on everyone I knew back in New York. I listened to her, pretending to be interested, but the more and more I listened to nonsense, the more I felt the urge to let them know things were different now.

  “I just want you both to know I’m not coming back home right now,” I announced, staring into my dad’s eyes. “I’m enrolled in school and that’s the end of it. Just so we’re clear.”

  “Your mother has been sick, Ella,” my dad said in a reprimanding tone.

  “Edward!” my mother yelled, “I thought we decided not to talk about it. That’s not why I wanted to come visit, honey.”

  I looked at her, confused, my eyes already brimming with tears.

  “Is it true?” I asked her, and she gave me a nod. “What is it, what do you have?”

  “It’s nothing life-threatening, Ella.”

  “What is it, mom?”

  “I have rheumatoid arthritis. It’s an inflammatory disorder. It affects your joints. It’s chronic, so I’ll have to learn to live with it. I’ve only been diagnosed a few weeks, and I’m still trying to find the medication that works best for me.”

  “She can’t play the violin anymore,” my dad said. “Or at least she hasn’t been able to play the last few months.”

  I looked at her in shock, only to see her biting her lip, trying to hold back the tears, her hands slightly shaking. Playing the violin was maybe the only thing my mother truly loved above anything else. Sometimes I suspected she loved playing more than she loved her own daughter.

  “I’m so sorry, mom.” I leaned over to give her a hug, and when her and my dad exchanged a look, I saw him give her a tight-lipped smile. “This must have been hard for you too, dad. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you both.”

  He gave me a nod, and exhaled a deep breath.

  “As you can see, it would have been nice to have you back home.”

  My mother gave him a stern look and cleared her throat.

  “I know I need to apologize too,” he said hesitantly. “You wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t been so tone deaf all these years. We should have stopped trying to control your choices a long time ago.”

  Hours later, I still wasn’t sure what part—if any—of my dad’s apology had stemmed from him, and how much of it was due to my mother’s desire to mend things between us.

  My mother reassured me she was okay, overall, although she had to make several changes to her lifestyle—she used to be an avid runner—but she could not stand or walk for long periods of time. She told me the medications she got on were helping, but she still had some pain and had to take it easy. The doctors weren’t too happy with her taking a trip across the Atlantic, but she had promised them she wouldn’t overdo it.

  We made plans for the next few days. I asked them what they wanted to see the most, and my mother said, “I want to see where you live. I want to see this famous pancake place.”

  I thought things would be awkward when I introduced my parents to Johan and Helga, but they were really on their best behavior. They were extremely graceful and I heard them say many times how thankful they were I had ended up living with such caring people.

  One night, we even went out with Ally, and probably in an effort to soften them and show them how good I was doing, she started telling them all about Lou and our collaboration. When the subject of money was brought up by my dad, she assured him that she had taken care of me and I had been compensated properly. I was terrified at the thought of more questions about Lou Rivers. I really didn’t want to have to discuss him with my parents. Besides Ally and Helga, I had not talked about him with anyone else. Talking about him felt like tainting the memories I had of him. I wanted to keep them all to myself. I wanted the time spent together to belong only to us.

  I was convinced the subject wouldn’t be brought up again, but one evening, while my mother and I were strolling arm in arm along the canal, she mentioned him.

  “So, after we talked on the phone and you told me you were in Florence with this Lou Rivers, I looked him up…”

  “Mom.” She’s never been interested in my love life or more accurately lack of one, so why now? She had done enough of a one-eighty. Discussing boys, when your daughter was twenty-four, was not necessary. Regardless of age, it was always so fucking awkward talking about this stuff with your parents.

  “He’s quite the looker, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” I said, raising one eyebrow.

  “And really talented. Recently divorced, no kids…”

  Divorced. I hadn’t even checked on that. I remembered the divorce was scheduled at some point during the summer, but after I had googled him that first time, I had been sad for days. The image of him and that blonde was etched in my memory. I knew it wasn’t healthy to internet-stalk him, so I avoided it. If my mom had used the word divorced, it must have meant that it was official. I wished I could have stopped the fluttering in my heart after I heard the words. My heart was so, so stubborn. It still believed we were destined to be together…one day.

  “Mom! It sounds like you’re stalking someone’s dating profile…what do you want to know? Ask me and let’s get this over with.”

  “What’s going on between the two of you?”

  “Nothing is going on. It was going on and it’s not anymore,” I huffed.

  “Are you sure?” she asked teasingly.

  “Yes, mother. I think I would know if I were in a relationship.”

  Day by day, little by little, we covered all the important places in and around Amsterdam. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time the three of us spent so much time together. Without fighting. Miracles do happen.

  My dad had given me the slightest eye-roll when I told him I’d be studying digital music recording and voice training, but he never verbally protested.

  I had been so used to having them opposing any decision, I still couldn’t believe how supportive they were being.

  Before they left, my mother had to throw in her mea culpa too.

  “I know I haven’t been the most supporting mother,” she said, her shoulders sagging in defeat as I helped her pack her suitcase. “I thought…I really thought I would motivate you more by being stricter with you. I always saw incredible potential but I didn’t…I wasn’t able to see that I was pushing you in the wrong direction. If there’s anything good that has come from me having all these issues, is that I know now how it feels not being able to do what you want. I miss playing the violin so much. But that’s not all…I should have been more of a mother with you and less of a teacher.”

  She took my hand and with the other I caressed her face.

  “No worries. We’re good, mom.”

  I had dreaded my parents’ visit, but surprisingly, the hardest part was saying goodbye. I was a frazzled mess when I took them to the airport, barely holding my shit together. My mom held my hand as if I were a child going on a trip without her parents. In a way, it almost felt like that. I had gotten used to relying on myself for so long, hav
ing them in my life again and being able to rely on them felt weird. Good, but weird.

  We had to say goodbye soon so they could go through customs. My mother hugged me tight, and kissed me on both cheeks.

  “So European of you,” I teased her. She gave me a smile and pinched my cheek lightly.

  “If you need any money—” my dad said, but I interrupted him.

  “I don’t need anything.” I just need you to love me and accept me for who I am. “I just need you to be supportive of my choices.”

  He gave me a nod. “You’ll have that, I promise. But no more running away. Understood?”

  I exhaled. “Okay, Daddy,” I said, hugging him goodbye.

  CHAPTER 23

  From time to time, I honestly wished I could go back to the person I was before I met him. That was until I’d remind myself I didn’t like that version of me very much.

  That girl had tried to break free from her parents, but she still didn’t know what she wanted, and wasn’t confident enough to pursue anything. I just wished I could think about him less than I did. The hollowness I felt since we had parted in Florence was still there. It hurt, always, but I still wouldn’t change things. I didn’t regret anything. If there was one thing all the pain was good for, it was songwriting. I was killing it in that department. Almost every thought I had about him was a line in a song. What kept me going was that I knew I was doing what was right for me.

  I hoped that when he thought of me he understood why I couldn’t follow him. On an attempt to get ready for school, I started playing music publicly more and more often, but not in the street this time. Johan gave me access to the pancake house a couple nights a week, granting me a place where I could play the piano and practice in front of an audience. It was no more than our usual clients and our neighbors showing up, and that was okay with me. I shouldn’t have been nervous performing in front of friends, and yet, it was still quite nerve-wracking. Sure, I had done it before, but I had Lou by my side. It was easier baring your soul to people when you had a partner who shared the spotlight with you, or maybe it felt easier because we got along so well. I had gotten a keyboard, so I usually would practice songs up in my room with my headphones on, and then in the evening I would play them on the piano. My repertoire was a perfect mix of old and new. If there was a thing I had always been good at, it was making awesome playlists. I pretended playing for our friends was just like making a mix tape.