“Every time I asked you what one of your songs was about, and you could never give me a straight answer, and Istill kept asking?”
“Too subtle!” I shout.
“You’re delicate!” Harry shouts back. He stands and grabs the wine bottle, sloshing liquid into a fresh glass for me. His voice softens as he pours. “You were already so far outside your comfort zone all through college. You told me so right from the beginning, remember?”
I do remember. I latched onto Harry, who was two years my junior but wise beyond his years, because he reminded me of Folly. Freethinking, bighearted, nebulous, untamable.
Ever since swapping song ideas in one of our first classes as freshmen, Harry and I have been best friends. And while I’ve seen him through a myriad of men who’ve broken his heart over the past four years, he’s watched me go on two limp first dates. Onlytwo men, with whom my chemistry fizzled out, the tiny sparks dimming until they went permanently dark.
“When you say you don’t have any songs about having your heart broken,” Folly says. “Is that on purpose? Or do you actually feel like you’ve never had your heart broken?” Her face is comically confused, like suffering from a broken heart is as inherent to the human experience as breathing or a bad haircut.
“Oh, it’s been broken,” I murmur quietly. “I just didn’t write much about it at the time. If I tried now, I don’t know that I’d have the words. It’s all gone numb.”
“Why didn’t you write about it then?” she asks. Folly doesn’t have to clarify who I’m referencing. She knows.
I cross my arms, squeezing myself. “He wasn’t my boyfriend.”
Liam and I never made things official or got to a stable point in our relationship. In the grand scheme, my claim to him is microscopic. Even writingonebreakup song about him felt too greedy, like I overindulged in my feelings for him.
“Technicality,” Folly says, waving her hand. “You and Liam were in earth-shattering, heart-pounding, overwhelming, twin-flames, fated-in-the-stars love. How could you haveneverwritten about the way it ended?”
Now would be the time to tell them about the song. To tellanyoneabout the song. I’m actually considering it when Harry chimes in. “What you need is a fresh, piping-hot breakup. Someone who makes you feel like Liam did. And this time, when it ends, Folly and I will makesureyou don’t avoid writing about it while the feelings are recent.”
My laugh is all nerves. “You’re suggesting I fall back in earth-shattering, heart-pounding love, then get the guy to break my heart?”
In sync, their heads tilt.
“I wasn’t serious about that.”
“Why not?” Harry asks. His eyes turn mischievous. “Havingyour heart broken is nearly the end stage of an entire relationship cycle. By that point, you’ve been throughallof it. The initial excitement. The flirtation. The honeymoon phase. The comfort of knowing a person, of implicitly getting their humor and quirks. Then the tension, the pull away, or sometimes the total blindsiding. And finally, the heartbreak.” He glances back at Folly, who’s watching him thoughtfully, nodding along. “I don’t know, Paige. Sounds like a damn good way to make your songsabout somethingto me.”
“For starters,” I say, “I don’t think it’s as simple as asking the first single man I come across on the street to do the job of getting me through, as you phrased it, an entire relationship cycle. I’d have to be invested in him. I’d have to really be in love, and if it were a situation with an expiration date, he’d have to mean it when he crushed me.”
“People have done stranger things in the name of art,” Folly comments dryly.
“True,” Harry agrees.
Something about that raises my hackles. I don’t like the idea of my music being fabricated. Is it even possible to do this and for it to be genuinely authentic?
“What’s Liam up to these days?” Folly asks softly.
My blood is simmering. “You can’t actually think he would—that we could—”
“Oh, now we’re getting somewhere.” Harry smirks, sipping his wine.
I’ve only told Harry the sparsest details about Liam, andonlywhen prompted. Who he was, what he meant to me, how things ended between us (badly). Harry was working on this song of his, “Discontinued,” which was about a relationship that ended abruptly right when things were getting good. He asked me if I’d ever had a person like that. To which I said yes, but he hadn’t cut me off like Harry’s person had.
I’d forced Liam out.
Folly, on the other hand, met Liam back in Knoxville. She more or less knows him, knows what our relationship was like back then.
I haven’t seen or spoken to Liam Bishop in four years. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t kept up with him. Last I heard, he was working for Live Nation as a concert manager for several big-name touring bands. And yes,maybeI’ve seen on Instagram that he’s helping operate CMA Fest this weekend.
He likes my posts. I like his. It’s the only way we acknowledge each other’s existence. But every time I see his username in my notifications, my head clouds with anger and my heart thrums with pulsing want.
I have lain in bed so many nights and thought at him,I’m not done fighting with you.But I never did find the courage to call.
Before I know what I’m doing—before I can process the emotional transparency of it—I whip out my phone, find the rough recording of my song about Liam, and play it for Folly and Harry. I slip the phone onto the coffee table and swap it for the glass of wine, glugging mouthfuls as the song plays out.
