Page 19 of The Song We Lost

Miss you. I wish I were with you.

I look at the lineup again. We’re performing close together. Same day. Different stages, but close enough. It feels like a sign.

I type before I can talk myself out of it.

What if I come to your festival?

I can stay for your set. Maybe an hour after.

His reply comes almost immediately.

I don’t think that’s a good idea.

My stomach drops.

He doesn't think it's a good idea for me to go see him?

Why?

There’s a pause. Just long enough to sting, just long enough for all the rumours and speculation to creep into my mind.

It’d be a distraction. For me. For the crowd.

I need this to be my moment.

I stare at the screen, rereading the words until they blur, until I realize I am crying.

I wouldn’t stay long. I just want to see you.

Another pause.

People will make it about you.

I need this to be about me.

I feel the tears run down my cheeks. This hurts more than the tour rejection ever did. Because this time, I didn’t offer him my stage. I offered himmy presence.

A memory crashes in before I can stop it.

The last show I went to for him.

I’d slipped into the side of the stage quietly, baseball cap pulled low, hoodie zipped up. I just wanted to watch him. Support him. Be his wife.

It lasted all of thirty seconds.

Someone recognized me.Then another.Then the crowd shifted, energy spiking in a way I felt more than heard. My name rippled through the audience, soft at first, then louder.

Luke saw me.For a split second, his face lit up the way it used to, shock, pride, something dangerously close to joy.

The chants started.

He laughed into the mic, shook his head, and without planning it, without even looking back at me, he launched into one of our old songs.

The one we wrote on the floor of our first apartment.

I stepped up beside him like it was instinct.

The crowd went wild.