–from ‘The Mistakes I Own’, by These Exiles
THE ECHO REBOUNDED AROUND the studio as I allowed the door to shut behind me.
It was an echo I knew well, but it had been weeks since I’d been in here. The box of cables we’d left half-sorted had been cleared away – a flash of guilt went through me at the thought of the poor intern who’d been forced to do it – and there was a fresh smell in the air that suggested the place had been cleaned recently.
I stepped slowly over to the electric keyboard. I plonked a few keys. It wasn’t plugged in.
Why did it feel so strange to be back? It hadn’t been that long; the studio was the place I was supposed to feel most at home.
The most centred.
‘There you are, Patrick.’
I turned and grinned at Wes, who was striding in with two coffees. ‘Please tell me one of those is for me.’
‘Sorry, I need the extra caffeine boost,’ Wes said breezily,setting them down and lifting one out of the tray to his lips. ‘You know I’ve recently discovered this new place, Maria’s?’
I hadn’t expected the visceral reaction, the shooting through my spine, the tearing in my chest –
‘She does this incredible –’ Thankfully, his voice got cut off.
‘There he is!’ The door opened and in stepped Matt, a wide grin on his face. ‘Taking one for the team there, catching all the headlines!’
My full-body wince must have been visible, because Wes said curiously, ‘What have you done now?’
‘The man’s done nothing,’ Matt began. ‘It’s that Jessy –’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I snapped.
Matt shifted on his feet. ‘My bad, man. Didn’t mean anything by it.’
Trying to force my hackles down, I gave my friend a brief nod. ‘It’s fine.’
It was not fine. Sleep eluded me, I still had absolutely no desire to eat, and every time I picked up my phone I half-expected to see a message from Jessy.
Then I remembered that I wouldn’t ever receive a message from Jessy again.
The boys moved on, catching each other up on their activities across the globe.
‘The reality show wasn’t all that bad,’ Matt was saying, stretching out on a chair as he swiped Wes’s spare coffee. ‘I could have done without the cameras in my face all the time, but after a while you start to forget about them.’
‘Yeah, well, I still think I got the sweet end of the deal,’ Wes replied, dropping down on to the piano stool and casting me another curious glance before continuing. ‘It was incredible.Some of the programmes they’re doing out there are truly life-changing.’
My bandmates’ chatter continued, though I couldn’t bring myself to pay much attention.
It all felt so … so far away. I could smile, nod at regular intervals, brave through it and pretend as though I was perfectly fine.
Because I should have been. Fine, that was.
Jessy was just a woman.
A woman I met almost accidentally on a dating app.
I hadn’t expected it to be anything – the contract had forced us to spend time together … and I hadn’t even noticed that I was falling for her until it was too late.
Until I had royally fucked it up.
And now? Now, it felt like there was a huge gaping hole in my chest. Something had been scooped out, and I felt irrevocably changed.
