The temptation is strong enough that I make it to the bottom step before I manage to stop myself.
Romeo climbed that balcony, and they both wound up dead.
I light a cigarette and inhale deeply, relishing the smoke as it swirls around in my lungs. The rush of nicotine is a soothing balm on the sharp blades still cutting me up inside. It’s merely a bandaid fix, a temporary numbing agent, but it’s better than nothing.
I cut down a few side streets and start the twenty minute walk toward the river. It’s late — almost four — and the city is quiet this far from the main strip, which suits me fine. It’s always easier to brood alone in the dark.
I’m relatively sober now, which is impressive given the amount of alcohol I consumed earlier. When I left Lacey after the Red Machine meeting, I proceeded to put a considerable dent in the bottle of whiskey we’d ordered for the booth. Lincoln and Aiden tried to get me to leave when they headed home, each with a groupie in tow, but I refused to budge. Hell, I felt so damn guilty for keeping them in the dark about the potential deal that I could barely meet their eyes.
I’d be an idiot not to consider this opportunity. It’s the dream. Everything I’ve been working toward since I started playing music in this town, when I was a lanky sixteen year old kid with no idea what I was doing on the stage and even less off it.
Record deal.
Los Angeles.
Freedom.
They’ve been my goals for so long, I barely remember a time I wanted anything else. So, yeah. I’m considering it. I’d be crazy not to…. even if accepting it makes me the shittiest friend known to man.
If you’re on the Titanic, post-iceberg, and there’s only one spot left in that lifeboat…
Do you take it?
Do you leave your friends to go down with the sinking ship, and save yourself?
I asked myself these questions as I poured glass after glass of amber liquor down my throat, as if there might be answers lurking at the bottom of that bottle.
There weren’t.
I don’t remember passing out in the booth… but I’ll never forget waking up to the prettiest damn voice I’d ever heard in my life. Not thin and overly sharp, like Lacey’s soprano has a tendency to be. This voice reverberated along my senses, sunk into my nervous system and seized control. A stunning, rich alto that made my eyes spring wide, even before I recognized its owner.
Felicity.
I told her the song was good. It wasn’t good. It was un-fucking-believable. It was poetry and pain, the kind of music that grabs strangers by the heart the instant they hear it on the radio and squeezes until they’re bleeding internally, begging for mercy.
Hearing her sing, knowing she’s a writer… it only makes this inexplicable pull I feel toward her stronger. Unfamiliar sensations tug at me as I walk along the Cumberland River, blowing smoke out my nostrils into the night sky.
I want to make things with her — music she won’t sing, promises I can’t keep, love that won’t last.
I want to know her. To unravel her secrets, layer by layer. To strip her bare.
Not her clothes. Her goddamned soul.
I stub out my cigarette and immediately reach for another, knowing full well that no amount of nicotine is enough to ease this ache inside me.
When I finally let myself into our dark loft, hearing a chorus of snores through the thin walls of Aiden and Lincoln’s rooms, I crawl into my bed alone and I stare up at my ceiling, thinking about record execs with robotic smiles and friends who become enemies; cowards who hit women and songbirds who only sing without anyone around to hear.
I’m still tossing and turning when the sun starts to rise.