‘Apart from your amazing kid?’
‘Apart from that.’
He looks at me closely. Vulnerably, actually. We haven’t had a conversation like this in so long I can’t remember the last one. Maybe never. ‘I’ve only been properly in love once,’ he admits. ‘It all went wrong and hurt so badly, I never allowed myself to get that close to a woman again. You think I’m happy in New York? You see me connected with singers and actresses and Broadway stars—’
I actually don’t keep up with the New York social scene or his apparently leading role in it, but that’s not the point.
‘I’ve never been more lonely.’ He checks how I’m taking all of this and adds, ‘You know I lost her twice.’
I’m not getting into an argument with Josh about Audrey and which one of us hurts more.
‘It all goes wrong for you, and you go back for more. You’re a fucking romantic, Fraser. I bet you’re still capable of falling in love, even after the worst has happened, third time around. You’ve gone through all of this, and you’ll still end up married fifty years.’
That jolts me. ‘That’s what I promised Audrey. Fifty years.’
For the first time since her death, a revised timeline presents itself. No. Notrevised, exactly. The same timeline. Revised expectations. Maybe my time with Audrey, which had felt so bright and promising, was always intended to be just this short, dazzling slice.
‘You didn’t get fifty years with her,’ Josh is saying. ‘But you still could. With someone else …’
I loatheeverything happens for a reason. I loatheGod’s willandshe’s at peace now. The people who speak like that have never had to donate an unworn wedding dress to a charity shop.
Of course it was Rachael who helped me do that, too. She helped me with everything, starting at the end, at sunset the night Audrey died. Breaking the news to her sister. Cancelling the wedding. Arranging the funeral and then being around, every step of the way, with Parker, who just days ago asked her to get in the car and drive to us at the beach, the way I know she’d drive to us anywhere. She hasbecomethe hygge in our lives. The cosiness. The comfort. Against the ‘overhead lights’, Rachael is our candlelight.
The more I put this together, the faster my heart beats. This is the woman with whom Parker and I have formed aplaceholder family. The one who has been there from the very beginning, whocan’t wait around for everything else to fall into place.
And now I have taken her for granted for so long, she has scrambled together an international escape plan and is leaving.While I do what? Fling open the door and usher her through?
I look at my brother. A man who so often gets romance wrong. Someone who has famously blundered through a string of consecutive dalliances that have left him with nobody to share his gleaming life at the top. Yet somehow he has seen straight through me. And he is absolutely clear. Despite the shuddering loss I’ve experienced—or maybe because of it—we could have fifty years …
48
AUDREY
Explosive, he’d said.Lit up the sky. Dangerous, impulsive, electric.The protagonist in his film was all those things. And now he can’t handle me?
The music that bursts from me now has an edge of rage. Red tones. Fiery staccato. Turbulent, clashing chords over which a pristine melody soars that’s probably the best thing I’ve ever written, annoyingly, because it’s emerging from furious, unbridled disappointment and, worse, jealousy.
What did he mean, ‘You’ve read the tabloids’? First, I would never! My source is April, and she ignores salacious gossip.All my research is based on photographic evidence and statements from the verified accounts of people involved, Audrey. I’ve got you!
So what’s he saying, then? That I should believe that stuff? That I can’t trust him, despite having been cajoled into exposing everything, becauseRead the magazines, Audrey! He’s Lotharioing his way through the cast and crew of all the latest theatrical releases!
I fold in on myself, head down on the lid of the piano, emotionally exhausted. I’d handed this man my whole story. He had stared at it, and at me, as if we were precious. He’d looked for all the world as if he was about to step up and be incredible, only to flee the room with every last secret. Even the stuff I’ve hiddenfrom some of the people closest to me, because I couldn’t bear to disappoint them!
My head is starting to pound. Something about Beau and the way we’ve been together the last few days convinced me he could take it.Ugh, the rawness of how I acted on that clifftop!It just makes me cringe now, because my addiction admission was chased almost immediately by this brooding backtracking, which tells me everything I need to know. Ihavescared him off. I was too much. I’ve literally run him out of this room.
Dragging myself upright again, I cycle through a steadying breath, press record on my phone, and start playing. Having fought my way back here, I can’t discard my creativityagain. Not for some emotionally volatile, Alist cowboy with a Sydney penthouse and a story about writer’s block that might not even be true!
So it all bursts out of me. Everything, all at once, as I bash the keys, trying to expunge my distress, pushing through regurgitated shame, eventually sifting my way through to some mellow chords while I go all Drew Barrymore with myself about it:I am worthy of love. Even the worst parts of me. Fraser would never have abandoned me like that! I deserve better!
I’m about four soundscapes into this personal music therapy session when the door bangs open again and I lift my fingers off the keyboard right in the middle of a climactic line. He’s back. Disassembled. I pull myself to my feet as he crosses the floor and I back into the piano, jangled notes clanging as my body leans against the keyboard, his expression all regret and desire andeverythingI just conveyed in my frantic composition.
‘What were you just playing?’ he utters in a low tone.
I won’t tell him it was us, burning up on impact. A dangerous tornado that’s going to rip through my heart, upend my life, and come out through my fingers in a composition I know I’m goingto be absolutely thrilled with. ‘It was nothing,’ I say. ‘Just a vague attempt to—’
‘There was nothing vague about that. It was explicit.’ He traps my gaze in a way that I can’t evade and don’t want to. ‘And don’t take this the wrong way, because I mean it with respect. But I don’t think that music was about your husband.’
My heart throbs, exposed. That music was so far from being about Fraser, I am consumed in equal parts by the unfolding of intense captivation and by remorse. And yet I’m desperate to play it again. Over and over. I can barely breathe with how much I want this electric new sound in my life.
