“I’m not looking,” I mutter, pulling out my phone. “I’m busy enough.”
They keep ribbing each other, but the noise fades to static once I thumb open our last thread. The screen glows, her name still pinned at the top, and something in my chest tightens even before I start typing.
studio day. everyone’s loud.still thinking about last night.
how far it felt from the cabin.
24 hours apart.
your lips. that endless kiss.
The others blur around me, their laughter, the scrape of strings, the crack of sticks, all of it merging into color that fills the air. For a second I let it anchor me. When I hit send, I set the phone face down on the amp.
“It's time. Let’s get this started.” Rithy looks up long enough to give me a small smile of approval, like something old in me just came back online. Maybe even in her absence, or because of it, she’s bringing something out in me I misplaced awhile ago.Passion.
I lose myself in it. The room becomes its own animal, cables vibrating on the floor, feedback curling around the mic stands. We wrap the collaboration with that self-satisfied look we always get when something finishes smoothly. Then I tell them I want to try something else, if they’ve got a minute. Everyone’s buzzing, so of course they agree. I start to play.
Twenty-four hours, and I’m still where we laid,
Tracing your outline with a razor blade.
You were spring’s sunlight, I was Hades’ shade.
You were mercy in full bloom, I was simply afraid.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her mouth form the wordno, and I push harder into the keys, shaping the melody into something that almost sounds like an apology. When I sing, the room bends. The bandgoes still in that way that means they’re listening, that they’ve felt it too. It isn’t rage, isn’t heartbreak, just honesty, finally, after too long playing it safe.
They fall in behind me, finding rhythm around the bones of my melody. Then we do it again, tighter, truer. By the third take, the air feels heavier. Rithy keeps glancing over, the edge in his eyes softening to something like respect. Ronan nods, steady and wordless. Kiri mutters, “That’s our Obelus,” under his breath like he didn’t mean to let it slip.
When we stop, the silence is complete. No tuning, no chatter, just the echo of the last note hanging in the room. My hands are shaking. I look down at them, still resting on the keys, and realize how long it’s been since I played like this, without crowd, camera, or expectation.Just played.
“That,” Ronan says finally, breaking the silence. “That’s something.”
Kiri lets out a low whistle. “Guess we found your therapy track for the next album.”
Rithy doesn’t speak, only smirks and adjusts his mic. I reach for my phone without meaning to, thumb hovering over her name. I want to send the file right away, to let her hear what she’s done to the sound of me. But I stop. Let it sit, let the song breathe. Instead I type:
finally found my muse. even if she's in hiding.
hope your day is all spring.
Then I hit send, slide the phone face down again, and rest my hands on the piano. The red light blinks on for another take. This time, when I start to play, it doesn’t feel like effort. It feels like purpose.
The next day drags, painfully. No studio, no bickering with the guys, just the slow drip of hours that don’t have anywhere to go. The city moves outside my window, but in here everything runs on half speed. I keep busy in small, stupid ways. Make coffee. Burn toast. Tidy things that don’t need tidying. Anything to pretend the silence isn’t watching me back.
So this is what it’s like on the other side, the waiting, the not-knowing. It’s a new kind of noise, one that gets under your skin instead of filling your ears. I’ve handed this feeling out like candy for years, vanishing between rehearsals, assuming everyone else would just understand.
Emily did. The old wound aches when I think about it, about what I did to her. She waited until she couldn’t anymore. Now I’m the one pacing rooms, checking the clock, hoping for something that doesn’t come. At least now I know. At leastnowit hurts the right person. Afternoon fades. I send a few messages, mundane, harmless things.
lunch attempt: catastrophic.
chef recommends fire insurance.
Still nothing. By nightfall I’m sitting at the piano again, fingers tracing soundless chords. The apartment feels too big,annoyinglyclean. I’d give anything tomake a mess of itwith her, to upend the neatness with hunger, to feel her weight against me, her breath on my neck, her laugh caught somewhere between a sigh and a dare. I imagine the scatter of clothes, the bruise of a kiss, the wild sound of misfired piano keys when we’d lose control and the world would finally make sense again. The thought makes my body stir, blood rushing, hardening. I drop the cover over the keys trying to disrupt the thoughts, the sound echoing through the quiet. My mind feels like an enemy in her absence.
I type one last message, thumb hovering before I send it.
goodnight, Persephone.
