Chapter 33
August, Now
I keep circling back to why I never wrote about Liam beyond that one song. It seems like I should’ve done one or the other—contacted him to keep the door open or written more extensively about him to lock it closed.
One or the other, and I did neither. Almost as if I’d been in a four-year-long holding pattern.
Even after I enrolled in school. Started classes. Made friends.
Even after I worked through my disappointment with Zara and Maren, over one tense weekend when all four of my sisters came to Nashville for a surprise visit.
In a family as big as ours, we were bound to grow up fundamentally different.
But we finally reckoned with just how vast our differences are in a therapeutic conversation.
“We wanted you to stop selling yourself short,” Maren had said to me in defense. I’d heard that line from her a million times. Which had, over the course of my young adulthood, made me resent the sentiment.
“If it had ever been a suggestion,” I remember explaining, “instead of a prescription, then maybe I’d have developed some agency a long time ago.”
In exchange, she and Candice finally shared with us what it was like for them to grow up with memories of Mom, to witness her leaving, to claw the burden of our family onto their backs alongside Dad.
Folly apologized for deserting us, Zara for shutting down, me for infantilizing myself.
We all agreed that we love our dad, but that he’s fallible and imperfect like the rest of us.
Most importantly, we promised to have better grace and understanding for each other for the rest of our lives.
I forgave my sisters almost immediately.
That Christmas, when we all visited our father in Southern France, he and I went on a long walk and developed better communication skills.
I admitted to him that I’d always felt like I needed to hide away how much I loved to play, that I was constantly worried I was setting him on edge by reminding him in any way of Mom.
“I have always loved that you’re gifted with music,” he’d said. “And I’m so proud of you for pursuing it, Strawberry. I’m sorry I haven’t made that explicitly clear, but from now on, I will try.”
He succeeded. Over the next four years, bookended by my graduation day, I felt his pride.
And still, I told myself a lot of different theories about why I couldn’t let Liam back in, and why I couldn’t let him out, onto the page.
His betrayal was the worst; he was the one to actually share my private songs.
If I let him back into my life, he’d only keep pushing me, and I couldn’t take being constantly thrust outside of my comfort zone.
And back then, he wouldn’t even apologize.
But at the same time, I owed him my whole future. I loved him. I understood his perspective. I wanted him to be okay, to heal his body, to mend the distance with his family.
I watched social media for signs of life, mostly through Carlos, and self-soothed his absence every time I saw his smile. The first time I posted about being at Belmont, and Liam liked the photo, I stared at my phone for days, wondering if he’d reach out.
He didn’t.
I didn’t.
Holding pattern.
You were on track, and I was a mess.
I thought of dropping out all the time.
I’m scribbling all this and more in my journal, at a city park a few blocks from my and Liam’s DC hotel, when I hear a voice I’d recognize in any city, any decade.
“Paige?”
I glance up at her, nostalgia bolting through me in a clean slice.
Maisy Morgan.
I’d been thinking of her. And my family, and Evan, and my professors, and Harry, and really any person who ever altered me. And now I wonder if I conjured her from thin air.
Maisy’s bright red hair is cut into a bob now, even shorter than the last time I saw it. She’s dressed in a walking outfit, headphones around her neck.
“Recognized those curls from clear across the park,” she says.
“Oh, my God,” I murmur, breaking into a wide smile.
Maisy giggles and kneels in front of me, drawing me into a tight hug. I return it enthusiastically and can’t help the soft sob that leaves me when I say “It’s great to see you.”
“You, too.” She pulls back, settling onto her heels, and we look at each other with twin expressions that seesaw between routine and surreal.
Maisy and I have kept in very loose touch, purely through social media and the rare, odd text, like my show of support when she transferred colleges, or her congratulations when I started at Belmont.
We send birthday wishes every year and promise to get together if we’re both in Bristol, but she’s as unfamiliar to me now as a once-beloved, now-absent children’s toy.
“Do you still live here?” I ask.
Maisy nods, tucking her short hair behind a heavily bejeweled ear. “I’m in law school now.”
“Law school,” I repeat, completely dumbfounded. It shows in my voice, and she laughs again. “How did I not know this?”
“Because no one in your family visits Bristol anymore, and I only lurk but never post on social media these days.”
“Right,” I say, suddenly realizing I haven’t stepped foot in my hometown in three years.
We fall quiet for a moment. It stretches out for just too long.
“And you went to music school,” Maisy says with equal awe.
“I did.”
“I was actually at that show the other night. When you sang.”
I smirk through my shyness. “Did you ever imagine, in this reality, you’d see me on a stage?”
Her cheeks pinch up beneath her warm eyes with that signature dazzling smile. The one that made all of Bristol fawn over her, possibly still. The one that won her dozens of child-pageant trophies.
“You took off your old skin, and I took off mine, right?” she asks.
My eyes glisten at the memory. The healthiest breakup in the world.
“Right,” I say. “Though I don’t think being onstage is something I ever want to do again. I like the process of creating music, less the act of performing it.”
“Funnily enough,” Maisy says, grinning, “I had this weird feeling.”
“You weren’t blown away by my stage presence?”
“I got the sense you were counting down the seconds until it was over.” I laugh lightly and Maisy readjusts, her palm on the grass. In a smaller voice she adds, “I thought about texting you after. But I figured there was a small chance it was about me.”
My head cocks. “The song?” She nods, and I shake my head, though I get why she thought that. I suppose the theme of betrayal was more universal than I’d intended it to be. “That song is about Liam. It’s kind of a long story.”
She hums in acknowledgment. “I saw you two were dating other people.”
“We’re back together. Just recently. But things are—confusing.”
I don’t elaborate, and Maisy doesn’t pry. I may be happy to see her, but she’ll never be the person I want to talk about Liam with.
“I hope it works out. I want you to be happy, Paige.”
My head bobs softly. “I want that for you too, Mais.”
She perks up, her tiny shoulders straightening. “I am happy. These days I actually like myself. That feeling came the second I discovered that if I’m not the center of attention, life goes on, and in all likelihood, it goes on even better.”
“Wise,” I say.
Her smile is sly. “Don’t give me too much credit. I get power hungry during mock trial.”
My laugh is warm. Then I notice the tiny charm bracelet on her wrist. A silver car, just like the one she gave me, nestled among at least a dozen other charms. But it’s there.
“I didn’t realize you had one too,” I whisper, nodding at it.
“Oh, yeah. Well, home, you know?” She’s blushing now. Obviously, they’d been made as friendship bracelets. Maisy gave me mine the last time we saw each other in person, like she knew our friendship needed a commemorative tangibility.
I lift my jeans and show her the charm she gave me, which I transferred a few years ago to an anklet I never take off. “Home,” I repeat, smiling at her gently.
“The twin city,” she says.
“Country music’s birthplace,” I say.
Equally lame monikers. No wonder we claimed the far less official slogan, It’s Bristol, baby!, with such fervor.
We catch up a while longer about her classes, my summer on tour, but eventually, there’s a sort of mutual acknowledgment that we’ve reached the endpoint of this encounter being casual. There’s also an unsaid acknowledgment that casual is what it needs to be.
We’ve hurt each other, me in ways Maisy will probably never fully reveal to me.
She didn’t decide to make an exit from my life without accumulating a few wounds of her own.
We can root for each other’s futures without needing to be closely involved in them.
In fact, it’s probably the way we can love each other best.
Maisy stands to go.
“Hey, Maisy?”
“Hmm?”
I clear my throat. “If that song had been about you, how would you feel about it?”
She bites her lower lip, thinking. “I’ll probably always imagine it being a little bit about me anyway. So, I guess that means the way I feel about it is honest.” She cocks her head, like she knows I’m asking her from an introspective place. “Does that help?”
“Yeah,” I say, while an answer to a long-standing question takes shape. “It does.”