FORTY-SIX
LILY
Watching my boyfriend onstage tonight sparks a deep-rooted grief that I’ve tried to bury while on tour. Not sure why tonight, of all nights, it’s decided to stab me in the heart with a thousand mini little needles. But grief knows no time or boundaries. I’ve learned it’s not there to torture you, but to make you remember great love that’s now buried beneath heartbreak.
“Our newest album,Four Stages, is unlike anything we have ever done, and it was scary to put it out in the world, not knowing how you guys were going to respond to it.” Leonidas speaks as Elijah strums his guitar.
It amazes me how the arena is completely quiet when a band member speaks to the crowd. If I dropped a pin, I would hear it hit the floor.
“The album is a symbol of what we’ve expressed in the past ten years, and we see your posts online and how much you all love this next song coming up. If you’re here with your parents tonight, look past the dark theme of the song and embrace your parents in this next song, ‘The Sorry Never Came.’”
I grab the barricade behind my back, and moisture clouds my vision as I try to focus on their voices rather than the messagebehind the song and the screen showing mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters hugging.
Leonidas’s raspy voice sings into the microphone.
I was just ten, crouched low on the stairs.
You screamed through the walls like we weren’t even there.
Glass hit the floor, then knuckles met skin.
That’s the night fear moved in.
All I needed was your love, not your rage.
But the sorry never came, just the slam of the door.
The sorry never came, only silence and the floor.
You vanished from my life like love could fade to war.
I feel a tear drop to my lip, and my tongue licks away the salty liquid. My chest tenses, like a tornado is starting to form in my body, ready to destroy me from the inside out.
Everywhere I look, people are embracing their loved ones, singing along to Leonidas’s voice, while I’m standing all alone, feeling like a lonely, scared, and confused five-year-old who has lost her parents in the mall.
I can’t do it. I need to leave.
I run backstage, hopefully leaving the music behind. The bodyguard the team has hired to follow all my movements falls back and gives me much-needed space.
“Honey, are you okay?” Fay’s face falls when she sees my tears, but without stopping to chat, I send her a small smile.
“I will be outside the dressing room if you need anything, Miss Papas,” the gentleman says before the door clicks shut.
I stand in an unfamiliar room in a city I just arrived in hours ago. It makes me feel so lost.
The sound of my ringtone has me striding to my bag.
Pulling my phone out, I don’t check it before answering. “Hello?”
“Bitch, did you forget about me?” Thea yells over the line.
Frowning from both her tone and the volume of her voice, I attempt to speak clearly when all I feel is zero energy. “I’ve been sending you updates when I get the chance.”
“But that isn’t enough. I miss you too much.”
I plop down in Elijah’s director’s chair in front of his vanity.
I balk, blinking rapidly, like it’ll help her words make more sense. “Thea, I haven’t forgotten about you, but with the constant new cities, time zones, and work, my phone is my last thought of the day.”
