Page 38 of The Song We Lost

Hotel rooms blur into after parties blur into backstage corridors. I wake up with my mouth dry and my head pounding and no memory of how I got there.

My phone is dead more often than it isn’t.

My hands shake.

My skin feels wrong.

I lose hours. Then days.

I tell myself I’m fine, that once I get home, I’ll fix everything. But home stops being a place I’m moving toward. Home becomes a word I can’t say without choking.

I feel like I am going to be sick. I try to move, to focus on something, anything.

“It’s your anniversary,” Noah says, voice like stone. “It’s Bailey’s birthday.”

The words don’t make sense.No.

What day is it? How did I lose so much time?

They come to me in pieces.

The wedding.

The choice.

The show.

The guilt…

Anniversary.

Birthday.

Bailey.

My stomach drops.

I sit up too fast and the world sways.

“No,” I whisper. “No... no, that’s not...”

Noah’s eyes burn.

“You missed the wedding,” he says. “You missed everything, and then you disappeared. Do you know what Mom looked like? Do you know what Sadie looked like? Do you know what Bailey...”

“Where is she?” I choke.

Noah’s laugh is bitter. “You don’t get to ask that.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“You don’t deserve to know where she is.”

My chest tightens.

I fling my arm across the bed, searching, searching… I look around the room.

My phone is on the floor, plugged intonothing.