2. Geo #2
She slides the latte across the table, and her fingers are long and elegant, a musician’s fingers, built for a guitar neck. “So. How are you? Like, really. Not the Instagram version.”
It’s such a genuine question, delivered with such obvious concern, that I almost tell her the truth.
Almost say: I’m exhausted. I’m invisible.
My husband forgot our daughter’s recital to make music with you, and I don’t know how to feel about any of it.
I don’t know if I’m being paranoid or perceptive, jealous or justified, and the not-knowing is eating me alive.
Instead I say: “Tired. Val’s in that phase where she wakes up at 5 a.m. no matter what time she goes to bed.”
“God.”
Vivian shakes her head, her dark hair catching the light from the window behind her. “I don’t know how you do it. I can barely keep a cactus alive.”
She takes a sip of her coffee, and I notice she’s drinking a complicated thing with foam art and two syrups. “Seriously, though. You look great. Tired, maybe, but great. Motherhood suits you.”
“That’s generous.”
“It’s true.”
Her face softens, and for a moment she looks exactly like the nineteen-year-old who used to sneak me cigarettes at family barbecues. “Hey, I’m sorry about the other night. The recital thing. I didn’t realize what time it was, and Harrison never said anything about it. I feel terrible.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Still. I should’ve asked what his evening looked like before I just… settled in.”
Vivian traces the rim of her cup with one finger, a nervous gesture I remember from years ago. “He gets like that when he’s working, you know? Tunnel vision. The rest of the world just disappears.”
“I know.”
“Yeah. You would.”
The silence between us is almost comfortable. Almost.
“Can I tell you something embarrassing?”
Vivian asks suddenly.
“Always.”
“Okay, so…”
She takes a breath, and her posture goes almost confessional, the slight hunch of her shoulders, the way her eyes drop to her coffee cup. “You know I’ve been a fan of Harrison’s music forever, right? Like, embarrassingly long.”
“I remember. You used to play his stuff constantly.”
“Constantly. I was obsessed.”
She laughs, but there’s an edge to it, self-deprecating and sharp. “I had his album on repeat for like three months straight when I was sixteen. Mom thought I was losing my mind.”
Sixteen. She was sixteen when she fell in love with his voice, when she started building a fantasy around a man she’d never met. And now she’s sitting across from his wife, drinking a latte she bought with her own money, and I’m supposed to find this charming instead of terrifying.
“I used to have this whole fantasy about what it would be like to write with him someday,” Vivian continues, and her voice has gone soft with memory. “Like, I’d be lying in my room with headphones on, listening to ‘Midnight Drive,’ and I’d think, ‘If I ever met this guy, I would just die.’”
My chest twists. I keep my face neutral, take a sip of my latte that I can barely taste.
“And now you’re writing songs together in his studio.”
“I know.”
Vivian laughs again, and this time it sounds more genuine.
“Sixteen-year-old me would be screaming. It’s so weird how life works out, right?
This guy was like… untouchable to me. This voice coming through my headphones.
And now he’s just Harrison. Arguing about chord progressions and drinking too much coffee and being annoying about mic placement. ”
“The teenage crush is over, then.”
Vivian rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh my God, so over. I was a child. He was a poster on my wall. It’s like finding out your celebrity crush is actually kind of a dork in real life.”
She grins at me, all warmth and sisterly affection. “No offense to your husband.”
“None taken.”
“Good. Because I also had a poster of the guy from Twilight, and I definitely don’t want to make out with him anymore either.”
I laugh despite myself. It feels strange in my throat, like a muscle I haven’t used in a while.
Vivian reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. Her skin is warm, her grip firm. “I’m really glad we’re doing this. I feel like I never see you anymore. We should be better about staying in touch.”
“We should.”
“I mean it. You’re my sister. The whole step thing is just paperwork.”
I nod. Smile. Say all the right things.
We talk for another hour, about Vivian’s career, about Val’s milestones, about our parents’ twentieth anniversary party next summer.
She tells me about a gig that fell through and a guy who ghosted her and the tiny apartment in Brooklyn that she shares with two other musicians who never do their dishes.
I tell her about Val’s recital, about the school drama with another parent, about nothing important at all.
But driving home, I can’t stop thinking about it.
I used to have this whole fantasy about what it would be like to write with him.
If I ever met this guy, I would just die.
And now he’s just Harrison.
She’s being genuine. I know she’s being genuine. Vivian has always seemed exactly what she appears to be, open, enthusiastic, incapable of guile. Or I’ve always needed her to be.
She bought me coffee and held my hand and called me her sister.
The crush was a decade ago. A teenager’s fantasy, the kind everyone has, the kind that evaporates the moment it makes contact with reality.
Harmless.
So why can’t I shake the feeling that the floor is moving under me?
On Thursday night, I try.
The gold dress hangs in the back of my closet, protected by a garment bag I haven’t unzipped in years.
I bought it for our third anniversary of dating, four months before he proposed, back when Harrison still planned dates that didn’t involve industry events, when he used to look at me like the rest of the room was set dressing.
The fabric is heavy silk, the kind that moves like water when you walk, and the color, a warm, burnished gold that sits somewhere between sunset and champagne, made Harrison catch his breath the first time he saw me in it.
It’s the dress I was wearing when he proposed. He told me once that the color made me look like sunlight given form.
I haven’t worn it since.
I shower with care, using the expensive products that have been gathering dust under the sink.
My hair goes up, then down, then up again, because I can’t decide which version of myself I’m trying to resurrect.
I put on makeup for the first time in weeks, foundation, concealer for the dark circles, mascara that clumps twice before I get it right.
The dress still fits. Barely. My body is different now, softer in places, wider in others.
Val’s body came from mine, and it left marks: stretch marks on my hips, a softness in my belly that no amount of yoga will ever fully erase.
The gold silk clings to curves I didn’t have five years ago, and I can’t decide if that’s better or worse.
I look at myself in the mirror for a long time.
I look like a woman trying too hard, like someone attempting to compete with a memory, with a version of herself that no longer exists. I look desperate and hopeful and terrified, and I hate that I can see all of that in my own reflection.
But I go to the studio anyway.
Because what else is there to do? What else can I offer except myself, wrapped in the dress that used to make him want me, hoping that somehow the silk and the memories will be enough to bring him back?
The door is closed.
I can hear them through it: Harrison’s voice, low and intent, working through a melodic phrase that I almost recognize. And Vivian’s answering it, her tone pitched to match his, the easy back-and-forth of people who have found a creative shorthand.
I knock.
“Yeah?”
I open the door.
Harrison is at the piano. Vivian is beside him on the bench, close enough that their shoulders touch when either of them moves. They’re reading from the same sheet of paper, their heads bent together, and when they look up at me their faces wear identical expressions of interrupted focus.
“Hey.”
Harrison’s eyes sweep over me, registering the dress, the hair, the effort. His face softens for a moment, recognition flickering beneath the surface. “You look nice.”
Nice.
He said I look nice.
I’m wearing the dress from the night he proposed, the dress he said made me look like sunlight given form, and he said I look nice.
“I thought we could have dinner,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected. “Just the two of us. My mom offered to take Val for the night.”
“Oh.”
He glances at Vivian, a quick, automatic check-in that makes my stomach drop. “We’re kind of in the middle of something.”
“You’ve been in the middle of something for three days.”
“We’re close, Geo. Really close. You don’t understand what this song is.”
He shakes his head, and I recognize that gesture too, the way he looks when he’s chasing a phrase he can’t put words to. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever written.”
“We’ve finished,” Vivian corrects gently.
“We’ve finished,” Harrison agrees, and the smile he gives her is proud and easy and completely unguarded. It’s the smile I fell in love with. The smile I used to think was mine.
I stand in the doorway in my gold dress, the dress I wore when he promised me forever.
So that’s that. The bridge he carried around for years, the eight bars he played at me across a hundred rooms and never solved, is done, and it got done in a room I’m only allowed into with coffee.
That’s the part I’ll be turning over at two in the morning, and it isn’t the song. It’s the doorway I’m standing in.
The cold comes back, heavier, displacing the hope I’d carried up the stairs with me.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll just, okay.”
Harrison stands, crosses to me, kisses my cheek. His lips are dry and distracted, already somewhere else.
“Tomorrow night,” he says. “I promise. Dinner, anywhere you want.”
He’s back at the piano before I make it to the stairs.
Vivian’s voice drifts down after me: “The second verse is still mush. Try landing on the word instead of leaning past it.”