I play quietly, close to her, my fingers finding a progression that sounds like a door unlatching.The chorus was born on a night I didn’t drink, a lullaby I wrote for Arlo that keeps surprising me by how soft it wants to be.Between songs, I lift my head and say, “More?”She nods, or shakes her head, or slides her tea toward me so I’ll steal a sip and keep going.Each small motion is a vote for the world, and I count them like fortunes.
We take breaks.She eats—small, stubborn victories: strawberries that stain her thumb, two careful bites of toast, then half a bowl of chicken soup Eddie has simmered until it smells like someone tried to make comfort happen on purpose.Eddie sets the bowl down with that look he has, equal parts worry and worship, and I see him unclench a little when she eats.
Today might’ve been the day the therapist warned us about, the day a breakdown could come like a wave.Hopefully, this is rock bottom, and it holds long enough for her to choose the next breath and for us to hand her a rope to pull herself out of that hole.
Maybe she’ll want to go downstairs and not sprint for the trees tomorrow.Maybe she’ll hate the idea so fiercely she won’t leave the bedroom.I don’t know what tomorrow looks like.I try not to bet on hours I don’t own.Instead, I play the next few notes, watch the corners of her mouth relax when the melody finds the place inside her that remembers how to breathe, and I let that be enough for now.
Near evening, the gray outside turns deeper and softer (not darker—just thicker), and her eyes start losing the fight with the day.She falls asleep before the last chord is done, head tipped toward the window like she’s still bargaining with the horizon.I want to stay—stretch along the base of the bed, keep guard with a guitar pick and bad posture—but I don’t press my luck.I lean in and kiss her forehead, soft as a thought I’m not ready to say out loud.
Door open.Window closed.If I leave it cracked, the night will slide in and punish her bones.I check the latch twice anyway.My hands hover, then leave the room.
Eddie’s in the doorway of the room he’s been using since she arrived—no tie, the first three buttons of his shirt undone, sleeves pushed up, shoulder against the jamb as if he propped himself there to keep from pacing a trench in the floor.
“How is she?”he asks.
“Asleep,” I say.“Window shut.Door open.”
His sigh is quiet enough not to wake a house.He steps back and gives me space to pass.I don’t.I lean on the opposite wall.We stand like that for a breath while the house ticks.
“About earlier,” he says, eyes catching mine before flicking to the pick I’m still turning in my fingers.“The kiss.”
I swallow, unsure if I should look away.
He studies me for a long moment, then—quiet, almost like he’s testing the air—“Can I have another?”
I snort.“I needed it, just like I’m sure that would’ve distracted you from wanting to chase after her,” I explain.“I also needed to learn I could stop at one.”
“You did—it helped,” he admits.“You didn’t run after her, either.”Eddie’s temporary room is the opposite of his usual life—no framed art, no curated anything.Just a bed he barely touches and a chair.He gestures at the chair.Instead, I drop to the floor, back to the bed, legs stretched out.He lowers onto the edge of the mattress, hands clasped like he might pray if we were different men.
“We should talk,” he says.
“We really should.”
He rubs his knuckles like he’s checking to make sure they still work.“When she ran, I wanted to chase.Then I wanted to call the pilot.Then I wanted to call every therapist we have on speed dial.You told me to hold.You kissed me and told me to hold.That kiss got me through thirty minutes I didn’t think I had.”
“I know,” I say.“I also know you were saving yourself with it as much as I was.”
“And you?”he asks.“What did it do to you?”
I let out a laugh that’s both small and a little mean.“Everything.Nothing.I wanted it to, and nothing I’m going to follow through on—not tonight.It was a hand on the panic button with a sign that said: not yet.”
He nods, like he’s filing the line away under a tab labeled Things To Learn.He doesn’t move to fix this.Good.“I’m trying,” he says.“Which sounds like a coward’s sentence.I don’t want to keep failing you.”
“Say it differently,” I tell him, letting my head fall back into the mattress.These conversations sometimes are so fucking hard.However, my sponsor and my therapist insist I have to have them.They’re the difference between keeping myself clean and finding the life I love versus just barely hanging on.“Say you’ll keep doing it even if you fail—more so because it scares you.That’s the one I want to hear.That’s what counts.”
He looks at me like I handed him a script.“I’m going to keep doing it even if I fail—more so because it’s fucking scary.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
I slide my hand into the front pocket of my jeans and come up with the smooth pick—worn edges rounded from a thousand lazy riffs.It’s the one I carry like a ridiculous talisman, the thing that lives in my pocket when I sleep and comes out when I need to prove the world is still mine for a minute.I slide the pick into my thumb and roll it until it clicks—small, private.My breathing eases, a quieter rhythm that isn’t performance or for anyone’s record.
Eddie’s beside me.Today, he’s the man in the room who needs keeping whole.A strange statement when he’s the one usually keeping everything together.He glances at the door, then back at me, simultaneously with wonder and fear burning in his eyes.
“Can I ask for something you probably can’t give?”he says.
“Ask.”
“Stay with me tonight.Just—” He swallows.“I need a person in the room who isn’t a problem to be solved.”
