21. Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-One
Willow
Two weeks in rehab have taught me that getting better is not some graceful little rebirth in which a woman wakes up one morning with sunlight on her face and forgiveness in her bones.
It’s uglier than that.
It is waking up at seven because a schedule says you must, even though your body wants to stay buried under the blanket. It’s sitting across from strangers while everyone holds cups of coffee and pieces of themselves they don’t know what to do with.
The first few days were fucking awful.
I hated being watched and cut off from the outside world like a prisoner. I hated the soft voices and the group sessions because nothing says personal dignity quite like sitting in a circle admitting you were never in control as you worked so hard to appear.
Mostly, I hated the silence.
They call them triggers here. The moments your brain keeps running back to because they taught it that pain should be followed by escape.
Mine always led back to Phoenix.
For the first few nights, I laid awake, thinking about the last thing he said to me outside this place.
Then I’ll fucking learn.
It should have made me roll my eyes. Phoenix has always been better at making promises to himself than at keeping them for anyone else.
But the words stayed with me anyway.
By the end of the first week, I stopped checking the doors every time someone came in.
By the beginning of the second week, I stopped expecting the ache to kill me every time I looked at what I had done to myself.
It still hurt. Of course it fucking hurt.
Recognizing I had let my life deteriorate to a point where the pills seemed like an escape is not exactly a gentle little self-discovery.
It’s progress, apparently.
The days here have a rhythm now. Breakfast at the same tables. Morning check-in. Group. One-on-one sessions. Lunch. Some kind of activity that always sounds harmless until it finds a bruise and presses its thumb into it. Journaling. Walks outside when the weather behaves. Dinner.
People talk. People cry.
Pain, I am learning, has shitty timing and no manners.
I’m better now than when I first arrived.
The notebook sits open on my lap as I sit in the shade of a tree in the courtyard. My knees are drawn up and a pen sits loose between my fingers.
The afternoon is bright and the grass smells freshly cut. Somewhere behind me, a woman laughs too loudly before apologizing as if joy were something she needed permission for. A bird lands near the path, takes one look at all of us recovering from disasters, and wisely fucks off.
I stare down at the page.
There are words on it. Not enough to become a song yet. But they belong to me. Two weeks prior, that would have seemed unattainable.
I have written little lines in the margins. Half-thoughts. Phrases with teeth. One set of words that keeps pulling at me, almost close enough to become a chorus. And because my heart apparently enjoys terrible ideas, I can already hear Phoenix singing it.
A shadow falls across my notebook.
I gaze upward.
Marigold Hayes stands at the edge of the path, wearing black leggings, oversized sunglasses, and a cream sweater that probably costs more than my first song ever made.
Her blond hair is twisted into a messy knot.
A tiny gold pendant rests against her throat, the letter A catching the afternoon light.
I have never seen her without it. Everyone calls her Goldie.
Some people wear their grief loudly. Goldie wears hers like expensive perfume.
She is beautiful in the sort of way that makes people look twice, then feel guilty for staring. The kind of beautiful that magazines love because they cannot photograph the damage beneath it.
Her husband was Adrian Hayes. The Adrian Hayes.
Famous singer. Beautiful voice. Tragic death. The kind of man the world mourned so loudly for that they forgot grief was not a fan club.
Goldie married him young and buried him young. Then fell apart in front of people who thought that loving his music gave them ownership of her pain.
The world did what it always does. It turned a woman’s worst year into something to click on. Because she had once stood beside a man they loved, they decided her grief belong to them too.
She drops onto the bench beside me.
That is how our friendship started, too. On day three at lunch, she sat across from me, looked at the untouched soup in front of me, and said, “You know, sweetheart, eating it is generally considered the easier option.”
I stared at her and she stared back, before she stole my bread roll.
We have been friends ever since.
“What have you got?” she inquires, moving closer to examine my notebook.
“Seven lines.”
“Promising. Most artists have built careers on less.”
I laugh.
Goldie leans back against the bench and stretches her legs, ankles crossed, face tilted toward the sun. She looks annoyingly beautiful doing it. All sharp cheekbones, blond hair slipping loose from its messy knot, oversized sunglasses hiding eyes that always seem to see too much.
“Did you write about him?”
I don’t ask who she is referring to. We have discussed the men in our lives.
“Not directly.”
“So yes.”
I open the notebook again and gaze down at the page. One line is darker than the others because I wrote over it three times.
You can be a wound and still feel like home.
I hate it but for some reason I can’t seem to cross it out.
“Phoenix is hard not to write about,” I say.
Goldie’s mouth curves. “Famous men usually are. Their egos take up all the available seating.”
“Famous men get away with a lot,” I say.
Goldie lets out a laugh. “Famous men are worshipped for the same behavior that would have the rest of us labeled unstable.”
“That feels accurate.” I chuckle, before averting my gaze.
“You know, before the fame, he was just Phoenix to me. Annoying. Too cocky for someone with no actual evidence yet. He used to come over to my house and eat everything Mom put in front of him.” My chest pulls around the memory. “We wrote songs under a tree when we were kids.”
“Do you still love him?” she asks.
I stare across the courtyard at the lavender swaying in the breeze. “Yes. I think I always will.”
The truth comes out too quietly for the damage it has done. When I turn back, Goldie is staring across the courtyard as well, her face unreadable behind her sunglasses.
“Phoenix once told me I was the talented one,” I say. “Told me he would be shit without me.”
“And then he became the kind of man the world screams for.”
“Yeah.”
Goldie’s mouth curves. “I know the feeling. Loving a famous man is a special kind of stupidity. You give them the softest parts of you, then watch strangers scream for the version that would not exist without your fingerprints all over it.”
The silence between us settles comfortably for a moment.
Then she says, “Adrian left a song behind.”
I glance at her.
Her fingers have found the gold pendant at her throat, her thumb rubbing over the tiny A as if grief has a pulse and she knows exactly where to press.
“Nobody’s heard it,” she says. “Not even the vultures who still pretend they loved him more than I did.”
I close the notebook. “Why not?”
“Because it’s mine.” Her answer is instant.
“Because it was his.” She swallows. “And because the second the world gets its hands on a song, it stops belonging to the person who bled for it. They stream it, quote it, tattoo it, cry to it, fuck to it, and somehow decide that means they know what it cost.”
The words slide beneath my ribs and stay there. I know precisely what that is like.
“That makes sense,” I say quietly.
Goldie’s laugh is bitter. “According to the label, it makes me difficult.”
She looks at me. “Adrian would’ve wanted it heard. I know that. He loved being adored. Christ, he pretended he hated the attention, but he would’ve fucked applause if it had a hole.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
“He was a nightmare,” she says, shaking her head. “Brilliant, but a nightmare. People always do this when someone dies. They rewrite them. Suddenly, the selfish bits disappear, the ugly bits get edited out, and every asshole becomes a tragic fucking poet.”
I don’t say anything.
“They turned him into the perfect husband,” she says, still rubbing the pendant.
“Tortured genius. Tragic angel. Soulmate. All that sentimental bullshit people throw around because grief looks better in photos when it’s pretty.
” Her lips purse together for a moment. “Adrian was selfish. He was impossible. He’d pick a fight just to have something to write about, then charm his way out of it with that stupid fucking smile.
” A sad laugh escapes her. “And I’d usually let him. ”
She looks out over the courtyard. “He was also the greatest love of my life.”
The words land softly.
“He was a beautiful, talented asshole, and I’d still choose him. That’s the part nobody understands. Loving someone doesn’t end just because they were hard to love.” Her thumb drags over the tiny A again. “Death made him shiny.”
She lets the words sit.
“Grief does that,” she finally says. “It buffs away all the rough edges.”
Phoenix flashes through my mind so hard it almost steals my breath. The smirk. The voice. The version the world screams for.
“You only get one great love,” she says. “If you’re lucky or stupid. Honestly, most days I still can’t tell which one I was.”
I study her. “You really believe we only get one?”
“Yes.” She looks toward the fountain. “And no.” A sad smile touches her lips. “Then yes again. He was my great love. That doesn’t mean he was always good to me. People love pretending those are the same thing because it makes for prettier documentaries.”
I let that sit. “He hurt you?”