“Then you have to show me.”
She sighs. “I know. I want it to be a duet, but I can’t crawl inside your head for your parts. But maybe I can show you the chorus and that’ll spark something for you.”
I nod, and she hands a sheet of paper over. The top says chorus in big letters, and clearly she’s holding onto her verses for now.
You’re gone but not forgotten
It was good while it lasted
So good, so good, so good
But it’s over now
You’ve abandoned me
I’ve abandoned us
It’s over now
I stare at the words, and a strange feeling twists in my gut. It’s over now. It’s so over, in fact, that the chorus mentions those words twice. But even as I read the words, I can hear the melody we wrote behind them, and the words perfectly fit the feel.
“It’s exactly right,” I finally say. “You want to show me the verses?”
She shakes her head. “Nine lines, starting around seven syllables and averaging there but ranging from four to ten, with no distinct pattern because we can still bend the melody a bit if we need to. Tell your favorite story of abandonment in two verses and try to tie it back to the chorus.”
She presses her lips together in a thin smile, and that’s all I need to know exactly what to write.
You tapped me on the shoulder
In that hotel lobby bar
You were so different and so pure
Intoxicated me with who you are
Made me want something more
For once I wanted someone to know
The one I never show
I wanted you to see
The person inside me
We spent three days together
Wanting, needing, craving
I let my walls come down
You let me see inside you too
I could have stayed forever
I never wanted forever before
Until I met you
But then you had to leave
Abandoning me
I stare at the words as I wonder whether I can really share them with her.
How do you literally rip off a piece of your soul and put it out there for her to judge?
Not to mention the MFB guys, the others in the competition, and, eventually, everyone who watches the show.
It’s frankly terrifying.
But, then again, every step I’ve taken since the day she tapped me on the shoulder in that hotel lobby bar has been terrifying. What the hell difference does it make at this point if I give her another piece of myself that she can take and crumble into oblivion?
I pass the sheet over to her.
She glances up at me before her eyes fall onto my words.
When she’s done reading, she shuffles the papers around a little. She covers her mouth with her hand, and I can’t tell if it’s to ward off tears or some other reaction she’s not ready to share. She stands, sets all the papers down on the end of the lounge chair I’m sitting in, and walks over to the railing, where she grips on and stares out over the water.
The paper on the top of the pile is labeled Verses: Lexi in her neat handwriting.
I scan the page, and then I slow down and read it through again.
It mirrors my words exactly. It’s her point of view of what happened between us, and I’m about to stand and walk over to her, to take her in my arms and tell her everything I’ve been feeling over the last couple days...
And then the paper marked Bridge catches my eye.
(Both) We left something behind
(Gage) The kind of soul-crushing loss
You can’t ever come back from
(Lexi) We know what we lost now
But we can’t ever go back
(Gage) Because I’m different now
(Lexi) And I am too
(Both) You didn’t just abandon me
I abandoned you
The bridge is supposed to be the part of a song where something changes.
I stare at the fifth line.
We can’t ever go back.
Something did change. We parted, and she left her number, and I found it, and I used it, and I had hope that maybe someday we’d find our way back. Somewhere down the line, when the timing was right, it would just magically all work out.
But the words she wrote right here tell me a totally different story.
And that’s what keeps me from going to her, from wrapping my arms around her, from telling her how hopelessly in love with her I really am.
Because I am.
But we can’t ever go back.
CHAPTER 37: GAGE
My fingers dance along the piano keys as I play the melody we came up with. She stands beside me, voicing the lyrics we wrote—both parts. We have thirty minutes left before we need to turn in our lyrics, and then we can take whatever time we need until tomorrow afternoon to set the bassline. We won’t need much time to complete the task, but we’ve agreed we’ll use it to practice and perfect our work.
This song came together like magic, and the ones that do that often seem to be the ones that stand the test of time.
We make a few tweaks here and there to fit the melody, but the sentiment remains the same. She feels just as abandoned as I feel even though it was a mutual decision to leave our weekend right there at the hotel.
We couldn’t have known that our goodbye was only hours, though. Not weeks, or months, or even forever like we thought it might be.
And every time she sings the part about how we can’t ever go back, another shard of my heart cracks apart.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt lyrics the way I feel them when her powerful voice claims them. I’ve felt music before, of course...but hearing her voice my pain aloud is downright agony.
Still, though, even in the pain, it’s gorgeous, and the ache she leaves behind is something I don’t know whether I’ll ever recover from.
Instead of falling out of love with her after she moved on from me to Tyler, listening to her sing is having the complete opposite effect. I’m falling even harder for her.
I need to get away from her.
After we turn in our lyrics, Kat calls me into a confessional.
“How’s it going, big boy?” Her voice is all low and husky.
I roll my eyes, and she glares a little.
“I was expecting at least a cursory laugh at that one. What’s wrong?”
I lift a shoulder.
“Someone took his crabby pills this morning.”
“I’m not crabby,” I mutter. “Let’s just do this interview.”
“Fine.” She nods, suddenly all business. “How did writing the song with Lexi go?”
“It went fine.”
She narrows her eyes at me and huffs out a sigh. “You know I can’t use that as a soundbite.”
My brows are heavy as I try not to look up toward the ceiling again. I feel like folding my arms across my chest and slouching petulantly. “Writing with Lexi went fine.”
“Fine? That’s all you’ve got for me?”
She’s poking me, and I feel like I’m not going to respond well. Not in my current mental state. And then, out of nowhere, I let it all out.
“It was really fucked to pair me with her when everyone here knows what went down between the two of us,” I begin, and then I can’t seem to stop. “We wrote a song, and it was fucking magic, okay? It was incredible. I’ve never fallen into such an easy rhythm writing with somebody before. We have the same basic process for writing, and the lyrics we came up with are haunting and beautiful and entirely true of the weekend we spent together.”