Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

Europe

forty-two

My album comes out in the last week of February.

It’s a surprise double album drop, which sends my fans into a frenzy. My team is ecstatic—I’m just numb. Isaiah is out into the world. Heartmender too.

The second album is exclusively for Eden, although I don’t think she will listen to either of them now.

“After this album, they will know,” Skye tells me. “They will now you, Isaiah, better than your own mother knows you.” Jude is nodding. “Are you ready for that?”

I bite my lip. “I just wanted her to know that I love her,” I say. “I didn’t care for anything else besides that.”

And now it doesn’t matter. I am just waiting for every day to be over. I am not living. I can’t live without her.

…

There will be a series of surprises with this release, surprises that Skye, Jude, Miki, my producers and I have been analyzing and planning for months. Surprise music video drops, surprise guests on my shows, added parts, performances of the new songs, and so much more. It’s going to be a full-on production from now on .

The audience has seen nothing compared to what’s coming.

I was so excited for this sequence of surprise drops. This is the work I am most proud of, compared to anything I have ever done in my life. My inbox is flooded with messages, but I ignore them all.

The only ones I’m eager to read are my mom’s, James’ and the Elliots’. They all love the new albums to various degrees. Faith and Walter can’t stop crying—what else is new? James doesn’t say it’s good. He just says one word: ‘wow’. I don’t think he realizes he said it himself, otherwise he never would have.

There’s nothing but radio silence from Eden.

The one person whose opinion really matters to me. I am going out of my mind. And not slowly, as they say. Very very rapidly.

And then the fan reactions come in. I couldn’t possibly have foreseen the astronomical success of Heartbreaker , but this… this is going stratospheric. This is surreal. Jude, Miki, Skye and I do nothing for an entire day but watch my songs climb the charts, the numbers of streams and purchases rising and rising. Eventually, we get tired and go to bed. But the numbers don’t stop swelling.

We wake up to reviews from music critics and industry websites that take themselves very seriously. They all seem a little shocked by the material they just heard, as if they are fumbling for the right words to express themselves.

‘Any song that makes you go numb inside and the world around you stop spinning while you are listening is really, really good music. And that is Enough Love .’

‘ Heartmender just destroyed me and put me back together. Isaiah is here to stay, and what’s more, he is the music industry.’

‘The new songs of Isaiah’s same-name album are a genre all on its own. It’s Issian, one could say. We should find a new word to describe his music. It’s VanGoghian, it’s Mozartish, DaVincish. No one has done what he has with this album. There aren’t any adjectives to describe a human soul in the form of a song, and that is exactly what Isaiah has given us. The album is a rock opera and a pop anthem of its generation. It is brave. It is truth.’

‘This is not an album. This is a heart breaking in front of our eyes. This is two people talking to each other with music and lyrics. Trying to save each other’s lives. We are listening to a conversation between two star-crossed lovers, and it’s as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. The only word that does justice to a work of this emotion and magnitude is ‘genius’.’

Faith facetimes me three days later, in the middle of the circus that is my life currently, still crying over how beautiful and sad the songs are.

“Has she listened to them? Do you know if…” I can’t help asking.

“I’m sorry,” she replies. “She can’t. I’m sorry, Zay.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s fine. I’m glad you called. It means so much to me that you like them,” I tell her.

“One more thing,” she says.

“Let me stop you before you say it,” I interrupt her, but I know I can’t stop her.

“Zay, I’m so sorry,” she says again. She is about to cry.

“Don’t do this, Fee, I can’t lose you or Manuela. Please don’t ask this of me.”

“I just… I think it’s not healthy for us to talk, or to… to rely on our communication like we currently do, you know? Not when you and Eden are…”

“Broken up?”

She doesn’t agree. She doesn’t disagree either.

“Broken?” I correct myself.

“When you and Eden aren’t speaking,” she says gently. “Her therapists agree. I don’t want to intrude.”

“You are not intruding, Faith, you are a lifeline. You are keeping me sane.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You two need to figure things out without any crutches. To heal. To grow. Wherever this takes you, it needs to take you on your own, Zay.” She sniffles. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

We hung up and I bury my head in my hands and cry. I’ve lost the last good thing I had. I’ve lost the last thing keeping me together. I’m all alone now, truly alone.

I have never felt the way Theo feels all the time, like there is nothing but despair in the universe for me. But right now, I know what it’s like to lose the last bit of hope you were clinging to. It’s utter despair now.

Utter darkness.

Just me and Saint Hope.

…

At the first show after the release, I perform Pierce Me , and then I ask:

“Do you want me to sing more Isaiah songs? Nah, it’s too early for anyone to be able to sing along with me, isn’t it?”

They scream “Nooo!” so loudly I think they’ll bring the roof down.

So I sing Enough Love and Coal , and then I sing the new lyrics to Boyfriend from Heartmender .

And they sing every single word with me. I am amazed. I just stand there, mouth agape, and listen to them sing, an entire stadium of people. Sing my new songs back to me without missing a beat.

“I am speechless,” I tell them at the end, and they laugh collectively, because they could tell by the way I stopped singing, jaw on the floor, and just stared. “I will never forget what happened tonight here. It will live forever, right here.” I tap my heart, and they mimic me.

A whole stadium of people, tapping their hearts with me—that’s a connection on a whole different level. She would love this , I think, and my chest goes hollow so quickly, I stumble. Then I perform the last song Eden and I wrote together: Her What If poem that I added a verse to, and then scrambled to add to the album at the eleventh hour. How fitting right now.

I get the applause and they think

I like the applause as if

As if it could ever replace seeing your face

Somewhere in the crowd.

As if the applause will ever make up

For the fact that you’re not here.

They will write in their posts tomorrow that I was crying because I was so happy and emotional by their response. And I am, I am both of those things. But this huge wave of love from these people who know me intimately, while I know nothing about them… It can never make up for the fact that the one person who is the reason I exist isn’t here.

As if this amazing night could ever make up for that fact.

I close my eyes, concentrate. I decide to be here for these people; to be here fully for them, with them. In spite of the pain. I make a decision to serve them with my songs, to give a voice to their sorrow and their joy, to keep burning my tongue with the coal of truth, just in case someone in the stadium needs to hear it tonight. Needs to feel it in my songs. Needs to feel seen, less alone. Less broken.

This is why I am here. This is why I sing.

Please help me. Please , I think. No, I don’t think it. I pray it.

In my weakest moment, when I think I can’t go on any longer, when I feel so empty I have got nothing more to give, this is what I discover inside me: I finally have faith.

I finally have enough faith to ask for help.

And the minute I ask for it, help is there. My broken heart doesn’t get magically glued together, but something like a burst of strength fills me and I am able to do what I have been called to do. The coal that has been burning my lips since this past June turns into a fire that keeps me alive.

So, broken heart and all, I sing.