12. Savannah #2
The arena felt better.
It always did.
The narrow backstage corridors were crowded with cables, equipment cases, security staff, dancers, musicians, and people wearing headsets who moved quickly without appearing to touch the floor.
No one asked me how I felt.
They asked whether I wanted the white guitar or the black one for the second set.
Whether the lift was working.
Whether I needed the monitor level adjusted.
Problems with answers.
I understood those.
The dressing room contained sandwiches cut into rectangles.
I chose not to take it personally.
While hair and makeup worked around me, the television replayed the market clip with the sound muted.
Ellie appeared every seven minutes.
On the seawall.
At my side.
Holding my hand.
Each time, someone had added a different headline.
A makeup artist named Dani followed my gaze.
“She’s cute.”
Rachel looked up from her tablet.
“Dani.”
“What? She is.”
I watched Ellie disappear from the screen.
“Yes.”
Dani smiled.
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“No questions,” Rachel said.
“I’m applying mascara.”
“You’re also collecting gossip.”
“Multitasking is valued in this industry.”
I closed my eyes while Dani worked.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
The sentence felt wrong.
Technically true.
Emotionally useless.
Dani switched brushes.
“Complicated?”
“Apparently.”
“Those are usually the good ones.”
Rachel looked at her.
“That is terrible advice.”
“I work in beauty, not risk management.”
When the first notes of the opening music rolled through the arena, everything else became smaller.
The headlines.
The conference room.
The unanswered messages.
The questions waiting behind every phone.
The stage lights came up.
I stepped into them.
The roar hit me in the chest.
Not as noise.
As recognition.
This was the part people misunderstood when they assumed Savannah was only a costume.
I loved this.
I loved the first second before a song began, when thousands of people became quiet together.
I loved the heat of the lights.
The weight of the guitar.
The band behind me, familiar enough to follow a breath.
I loved singing words I had written alone and hearing them come back through other people’s voices.
Savannah was not fake.
She was me at full volume.
I moved through the opening songs easily.
The crowd sang.
I laughed when someone near the front held up a sign that read:
APPOINT ME TO TURTLE GOVERNMENT
By the third song, there were six.
During a guitar change, I leaned toward the microphone.
“I leave town for four days.”
The arena erupted.
“That’s all I’m saying.”
More screaming.
Someone lifted a stuffed turtle wearing a tiny suit.
I looked toward the wings.
Rachel stood there with both hands over her face.
I smiled.
Then the band started the next song.
Halfway through the set came Hard Winter.
The song Ellie had mentioned at dinner.
The one that had helped her through a year she had never explained.
I had written it in a hotel room eight years ago, long before I knew what it might mean to someone sitting beside the ocean in Florida.
The first chord rang out.
The crowd cheered.
I stood beneath a single white spotlight.
For one second, I saw Ellie at the café.
Her elbows on the table.
Her voice casual because the truth beneath it was not.
That song got me through a rough winter.
She had known the song.
Not the woman who wrote it.
And somehow she had still known something true about me.
I sang.
Not differently enough for anyone to call it a mistake.
Just quieter at first.
Less polished.
I let the rough edge remain in my voice instead of smoothing it away.
By the final chorus, the audience was singing with me.
Thousands of voices.
One memory.
The last note faded.
The silence before the applause lasted half a second longer than usual.
Then the arena rose.
I smiled.
Not the market smile.
Not the meet-and-greet smile.
Mine.
The rest of the show was good.
Very good.
I missed one cue because a stuffed turtle landed near my boot.
No one noticed.
After the encore, I came offstage sweating, breathless, and completely awake.
The tour director hugged me.
The guitarist told me Hard Winter had felt different.
Dani appeared with powder before I had stopped moving.
Sophie was already typing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You type aggressively when doing nothing.”
“The video of Hard Winter is taking off.”
“Of course it is.”
“It was beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“We should post it.”
“No.”
Sophie lowered the phone.
I took a bottle of water from Rachel.
“Not tonight.”
She studied me.
“All right.”
That surprised me.
“No argument?”
“I’m capable of growth.”
Rachel nearly choked on her water.
Sophie walked away.
I looked at Rachel.
“She’s changing.”
“She’s conserving energy.”
Back in the dressing room, the adrenaline faded slowly.
The bracelet was still on my wrist.
My phone lay on the table.
I had one message.
Ellie.
I opened it too quickly.
Ellie: Rosa has added Turtle Government Toast to the menu. This is your fault.
I laughed.
Rachel looked up from the sofa.
“Good?”
“Rosa has monetized the crisis.”
“Smart woman.”
I typed:
What’s on it?
Ellie answered almost immediately.
Egg. Avocado. Abuse of public office.
I smiled at the screen.
Then stopped myself before writing too much.
Before apologizing again.
Before asking whether she had watched the show, whether she missed me, whether the bracelet was still on her wrist.
Instead, I sent:
Tell the mayor I accept responsibility.
The typing dots appeared.
Ellie: She’ll form a committee.
That was all.
It was enough for tonight.
I set the phone down and reached for the guitar leaning against the wall.
Rachel looked at me.
“You’re writing?”
“Trying.”
“About turtles?”
“No.”
I played three chords.
They sounded too cheerful.
I changed the second one.
Now they sounded like a pharmaceutical commercial.
I stopped.
Rachel returned to her tablet.
I tried again.
A simple progression.
Warm.
Then quieter.
I wrote one line in the notebook on the table.
Crossed it out.
Wrote another.
Crossed that out too.
Rachel glanced over.
“How’s the apology?”
“It keeps becoming a breakup song.”
“Occupational habit.”
“I don’t want to write a breakup song.”
“What do you want to write?”
I looked at the green thread around my wrist.
Something honest, I thought.
Something that did not ask Ellie to forgive me.
Something that did not turn her into a metaphor, a headline, or a woman waiting at the end of a chorus.
“I don’t know yet.”
Rachel nodded.
“That seems to be the theme.”
I played the chords again.
This time, one of them felt right.
I wrote it down before it could leave.
I had written hundreds of songs about wanting someone.
Apparently, writing one about having hurt them required better rhymes.