“I still hear you, you know.In the chords I never finish.In the lyrics I don’t write down because they sound too much like you.They judge, they feel, and they try to shape the person I’ll never be.”
My eyes open, and I decide to write.Not lyrics, but to her.The stranger who’s making me feel something.
ChapterThirty-One
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
From: DeadStrings
To: StringTheory27
Date: May 8th, 1997, 3:03 AM
Subject: Re: Exes and other calamities
Your list feelslike looking into a mirror and not recognizing yourself, but knowing the reflection is still yours.Maybe that’s what heartbreak does.It distorts.But it doesn’t lie.
Who broke my heart, you may ask?Well, it was me.I broke it myself—and hers—and I don’t know if I can find every piece and put everything together.I’m also afraid of what I’ll find when I do it.Nothing good can come from what I became.
I won’t ask who he was.I won’t ask what he broke.But I hope you never have to see him again.
Not because you couldn’t survive it.But because you already did.
You survived him.And that’s enough.
I hit send.
And sit with it.
Let the silence surround me, crowded with everything I didn’t say, each second dragging as if it’s holding its breath—waiting for it to mean something.Anything.
And in that stillness, it happens—I swear I can feel her again.Not as a memory, not in some fucked-up nostalgic echo, but in the pull just beneath my ribs.
Kit.
The girl who once told me to play the silence.
The one I never learned how to live without.
The ache I reach for when I forget what it feels like to be wanted.
And no matter what I write, no matter how many songs I bleed through—she’s still the only thing I can’t put into words.
ChapterThirty-Two
Kit
May 9th, 1997
When I enter my father’s office, Bernice is already there—arms crossed, foot tapping as if she’s scoring the soundtrack of my downfall.
Fuck.
So, what if I skipped coming to the office for the past couple of days?I’m on top of things.Does she seriously have to look at me like I broke curfew, and this is the walk of shame?
Believe me, there’s no shame here.I haven’t had sex since ...well, several Fridays.My devoted boyfriend is in Japan.If I didn’t know how uptight he is, I would think he’s found a pretty Japanese girl to replace me.He wouldn’t, though, it’d disrupt his schedule, and we certainly can’t have that.
See, he’s safe.I don’t have to worry about him cheating because that would be inconvenient.
