“Okay,” she said. “Am I going to you, or are you coming to me?”
She was on a flight to Boston that night, and when I woke up the next morning, she was across from me, dozing in the slouchy blue chair. Ellie was the best kind of people, and aside from music, her friendship was the only real constant in my life. There weren’t many things I kept around, but Ellie was one of them. She was a better sister to me than Agapi could ever be, and between us, we had created more family than either of ours could offer. We didn’t need blood to bond us.
Four iced cappuccinos sat on the table, and a large paper sack from my favorite bagel shop. I downed half the coffee in one noisy gulp, and her eyes blinked open. She sat beside me on the sofa, draping her arm over my shoulder and pulling the blanket around us. “Thank you for coming. I know you’re missing shows and . . . I’m sorry.”
“Don’t thank me and don’t apologize. This is making the back-up fiddler incredibly happy,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
“I fell in love with him,” I said simply. “And then we almost got pregnant and some overly zealous bitch tried to kiss him. I flipped out and basically told him he was a whore and that he’d never change, and that’s where I was wrong.” I ran my hand through my hair and shrugged. “I think I really fucked it all up, and it’s the kind of fucked-up you can’t fix.”
“Okay, why don’t you rewind this story and slow it down for me,” she said.
We drank all the coffee and ate most of the bagels while I talked. Ellie listened, forcing me to repeat certain parts and asking questions in others, and she sat back, tapping her finger to her lips when I finally finished.
“Whatever it is,” I said. “Just spit it out.”
“Here’s what we can agree on: you’re sensitive about infidelity, he doesn’t have the cleanest relationship boundaries, and this Maggie or Minnesota or whatever her name is, she’s definitely overzealous. I’m tempted to believe her when she says it was her fault, but that doesn’t excuse the heightened zeal.”
“Right,” I said. “What’s up for debate?”
She went back to tapping her lips and I attacked another bagel.
“Is it possible that Sam proved why it didn’t work with Dillon?” I turned to her, my mouth full, and lifted an eyebrow. “Hear me out. Yeah, Dillon cheated on you, but he also had no idea who you were. You two had that weird instalove shit going on, and you were so busy being in love with being in love that nothing else mattered. You weren’t friends. You didn’t truly know each other.”
“And how does that prove anything?” I asked. “Aside from the fact I was a shallow teenager with a low threshold for affection?”
“You were friends first, and it seems like you authentically cared about Sam,” she said.
I nodded in confirmation.
“And . . . don’t hate me when I say this, but it sounds like you were convinced Sam was just like Dillon, even from the start, and you made that fit the circumstances?”
The comments about his sex life.Iwas the one who instigated those conversations.
The questions about his whereabouts.Iwas the one who didn’t accept his word.
The reactions to his relationships with Andy and Lauren.Iwas the one who couldn’t handle it.
The refusal to hear him out even when what’s-her-name admitted fault.Iwas the one who broke us up.
“Oh, fuck,” I groaned, and buried my head in the sofa. If I stayed hidden there, I wouldn’t have to acknowledge that I destroyed the most loving relationship of my life because I refused to believe someone was worth trusting.
“Let’s say Dillon never cheated on you. It still wouldn’t have worked out,” she said. “You would have realized that you were wrong for each other eventually, and while I don’t condone his methods, Dillon just figured it out sooner.”
“Okay, but—” I stopped myself because I didn’t have an argument to defend. Ellie was right.
“Again, don’t hate me but . . . Your real issue is that you’ve never been loved the way you deserve, and I think Sam might have done that for you. And maybe you didn’t know how to handle it. I don’t think Dillon hurt you when he cheated. You didn’t care enough to be hurt. He was just another in a long line of assholes who thought it was okay to fuck you over and abandon you.” I peeked out from behind a pillow, glancing at her in question. “Yes, I’m talking about your family. They’re assholes and you know it as well as I do.”
I finished the other half of the bagel without responding because once again, Ellie was right.
“Will you tell me stories about the tour now?” I asked. Her accounts from the road were my preferred fairy tales, and though I never saw myself playing with a band and traveling from city to city, I loved the vicarious experience. It was a sweet little escape, and that was what I needed at this moment.
Later, I sat on the floor of the shower while water rushed over me. I felt hollow and fragile, like I’d snap if I moved the wrong way. The lighthearted joy that usually came so easily to me was buried deep below the surface, in a spot I couldn’t access.
I wanted to find Sam, to explain everything, but I was all out of words . . . and there were too many old, tender wounds obscuring my thoughts. I needed the music to tell me what I was feeling, how to make sense of it all, how to go forward. This was the sort of thing I processed by myself, bleeding it out every time I brought my fingers back to the strings. I didn’t know whether I was built that way or I made myself that way, but it was my operating system.
And I knew where I had to go.
“ARE YOU COMING?”
