Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I’d made this big move in front of the whole world. How do I take it back without making myself look like a fool? My phone buzzed on the table next to me, and I saw that it was my manager on the line. It had been a while since I’d been on tour or done anything, really. A tour sounded good right about now.
Yeah, I should get out of the city for a while. Go somewhere else, and get back into the swing of things. My fans have been dying for a new album for years; too bad I haven’t been in the mood to write anything in a while. Funnily enough, the thought didn’t fill me with dread any longer. For a while there, I thought I was done because my muse was gone.
Wouldn’t that be a laugh if the world learned that I couldn’t produce anything worthwhile because the woman I’d jilted and fucked over was the very one who made me work as hard as I used to in the past? Without her, my creativity was wildly stunted.
I answered him on the way inside, and his words filled me with a certain warmth that had been missing from my life. I used to live for this shit. “It’s about that time, you still have one more tour left in your contract, and you haven’t been in the studio in a while. Unless you want to piss your career down the drain….”
“No, I’ll have something ready for you soon.” That’s all he needed to hear because he knows me well enough to know that if I say it, it will be done. I jogged up the stairs and locked myself in the studio when I heard Janie calling after me.
She’s a real pain in the ass. Probably wants me to do one of those stupid videos for some social media platform to show the whole world that we’re joined at the hip. If she could get away with it, I think she’d try to convince the world that we were attached from the womb.
I looked around the room that I hadn’t stepped foot in, in years. I’d just put an album out a little before the disaster, and there was another one about a year later, but that was all music that had already been made and just waiting. Since then, I haven’t been able to even look at this place without the memories making me sick to my stomach.
She’d spent a lot of time here. I could still hear her laughter when I goofed around just to see her smile. I could still see her here, in the corner with one of her books as I recorded in the booth just across the way where I could see her.
It was bittersweet being back here again, just as it was wherever I walked in my house. I’d refused to sell it no matter how hard they’d pushed in the beginning. Maybe that should’ve been my first clue that I’d chose the wrong horse. Just the thought of losing this space, the place where we’d made so many beautiful memories, had filled me with a dread I knew I would never recover from.
My heart thundered in my chest as the memories came hard and fast as I stood in front of the locked door, trying my best to regulate my breathing. A part of me almost expected to see her waiting for me, in her little corner, her cute little head bent over the book she’d be lost in until I ruffled her hair to get her attention.
Did she ever know how her just being there had helped me? What a comfort her presence had always been? Did I ever tell her? I hope she knew, I hope that even after all this, she remembered and never forget, that she was my solace, my safe haven in a hail storm. “I miss you so fucking much baby. Damn!”
My vision grew blurry and then things grew dark. I started to freak until I realized that there were tears flooding my eyes and I wasn’t going blind. That rage that I’d felt in the beginning came back, and I had to bite into my fist to keep myself from screaming out loud.
I wanted to scream at her for leaving me, for all the things that had led to this, but somewhere inside, I knew that this was all on me, that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life all on my own. I don’t know when I stopped believing the lies that I’d been told, not sure at which point I came to my damn senses.
Oh, yeah, it was at the point where she poured her heart out in a song and told her story in words set to melody. Nowhere in there did she speak of her betrayal, only mine. If there’s one thing I know about Elena Gianni, she’s no liar. Besides, what woman who had betrayed her lover would be so butt hurt that he returned the favor?