Chapter 3 #2
The room shifted and every eye fell on me. Heads turned, mouths curved, a couple of women at the bar clapped their hands over their hearts as if they’d been waiting all night to hear it. I could feel heat rising up my throat, my eyes pricking.
Across the room, Noah didn’t move. He watched me, his slate-gray eyes the color of a wintry ocean at dawn, the whisky glass clutched in his hand as his younger voice bled into the pub.
Skye, you were the wildfire I couldn’t hold …
I could’ve handled a breakup song, if he’d kept it vague.
But he’d named me. He hadn’t even bothered to give me a metaphor or a fake name like “Rose” or “June.” He’d carved my actual name into radio history, and for over a decade I’d changed the station when the song had come on and pretended it hadn’t gutted me.
At the table, the Book Bitches drew a collective breath.
“Bloody hell,” Shannon said, hurriedly topping up my drink.
“What odd timing,” Meredith murmured.
“I’ve always liked this song,” Esther admitted, her tone apologetic. She surprised me by reaching over to squeeze my hand.
It felt like the room slowly dissolved around the edges.
Time blurred.
The pub, now. The garage, then.
Our last fight.
Me walking out because he wouldn’t believe what I could already see happening.
Six months later I’d been sitting in traffic, on a trip back to, ironically, the Isle of Skye, where I’d gone to camp out, nurse my wounds, and get my head on straight, when the song had come on the radio.
Those intro chords had me pulling my car to the side of the road, my hands gripping the wheel so tightly the skin at my knuckles had gone white.
My name, thrown back at me, crooning through my car speakers.
And I, idiot that I was, had felt both fury and gratitude that he’d ever loved me enough to write it. The latter emotion I’d never shared with anyone.
The song had exploded.
It was everywhere.
Impossible to avoid, I’d had to lock down my emotions as Noah’s stardom had risen off the back of the song that bore my name.
The co-op queue, months later, two teenagers humming it behind me, one saying, “Imagine being her.”
A graduation party I bartended for cash when the inn’s books looked grim and the song had come on. A group of women swaying, crying, no idea that the woman refilling their Prosecco flinched every time the chorus hit.
And now here, the village I’d chosen over touring vans and dirty green rooms, pinning me to the wall with my own name.
My body moved before my brain. I stood so fast I banged my knee, the glasses clinked, and wine sloshed.
“Skye—” Esther started.
But I was already out of the booth, threading through bodies, avoiding his look, ignoring my name. The chorus began, and I hit the door at a run.
Outside, winter grabbed my face and held it, and I gulped air so sharp it burned the back of my throat. The surf was a low growl beyond the dark. A light over the community center door flickered like a warning.
You’re fine. It’s fine. This is fine.
Behind me, the song rolled on, as relentless as the tide, growing louder as the door opened and slammed shut.
“Skye.”
He didn’t get to say my name like that. Low and rough and full of history.
I turned anyway.
Noah stood under the pub’s sign, lamplight cutting his face into planes. He hadn’t bothered buttoning his coat. The whisky was still in his hand, the glass catching fairy lights like a tiny, breakable planet.
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have run then.”
“Run?” I laughed, and it wasn’t a nice sound. “Your bloody anthem starts blaring and you think I should stay there and subject myself to it?”
He flinched, minutely, like I’d flicked a finger at a bruise. “I’d have switched it off if I could.”
“You can’t switch off things you put into the world,” I said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You press ‘release’ and then the rest of us just have to live with it.”
He took that, let it hit, but didn’t parry. His breath fogged in front of him. Somewhere behind us, someone whooped, and the chorus faded into the next verse like a bad idea you kept indulging. Kind of like this conversation with Noah.
“I wrote it because I loved you,” he said, finally.
The worst part about Noah Byrne is that sometimes he meant what he said.
“I know.” The wind flicked hair into my mouth, and I shoved it away. “That’s why it hurt.”
A beat. Two. We stood there like stupid statues while the village went on being itself around us—a car door slamming, a dog pulling its person down the lane, the wind shaking the trees.
“You look tired,” I said, because apparently I prefer small talk to open arteries.
He huffed. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
His mouth curved, exhausted. “You always did call me on my crap.”
“Perk of being the one who knew you before you were … whatever it is you are now.”
He looked past me to where the dark fields began, his voice flattening. “I’m still me.”
“Mm.” I crossed my arms to keep from reaching for him. “Tell that to the version of you that signed with a man I told you not to trust.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is life.”
“Skye—”
“No.” I lifted a hand. “We’re not rehashing old history on the footpath outside The Royal Unicorn while someone murders Fairytale of New York inside.”
The radio had moved off Skye and lurched into a Pogues cover that sounded like two cats fighting in a bag. I took it as divine commentary.
Or maybe it was the ghost that was rumored to still haunt the pub from time to time.
Noah scraped a hand over his jaw. His knuckles were red from the cold. “I came here because I needed … because it was the only place that made sense.”
“And by ‘place’ you mean—”
“You.” His eyes were steady. Stupid man. Stupid, brave, honest man. “I meant you.”
That guitar string of emotion plucked painfully, and it vibrated through me, the reverberations of what once was echoing through me.
“Good night, Noah.” I swallowed against a lump that had formed in my throat, unable to speak anymore lest I start crying and knowing how I’d explain all of the emotions that whirled inside me.
“Skye—”
“Good. Night.”
I turned and thankfully, he didn’t follow. Unsurprising, given his past of not following me when I left, but maybe a tiny part of me had hoped he would. I sighed. It wasn’t easy being so at odds with old hurts and what I wanted for myself now.
I didn’t go home right away. I couldn’t. The sea called to me, as it always had, inviting me to share my secrets, something I’d also always found comforting.
Cutting down the path by the church, I walked toward the dark ribbon where the fields fall away to sand. At the water’s edge, I let the roar fill my head until there was room for exactly one thought.
I am not going to do this again.
I was not going to be twenty again and full of hope.
Once upon a time, I’d believed in a fairy tale that said Noah and Skye would live happily ever after.
We’d make beautiful music, we’d be a team, a family, and if fame found us, great, but if it didn’t, we’d still be happy. But then everything changed and …
And I grew up.
Even if there was a chance that Noah was here for me, I was not going to be a name in a song he threw to a crowd when he needed a climax. I was not going to make my life an afterthought to his.
I gave myself a mental pat on the back. There. Priorities sorted.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. Digging it out with fingers that had gone stiff from the cold, I checked the message from Esther.
Kitchen shears?
Despite my mood, I laughed.
Stand down, soldier. I’ll be fine.
Copy that. Back to work on the charity fundraiser then. I’ve got your scarf by the way.
I’ll get it tomorrow. Thanks.
I shoved the phone away and stared at where the moonlight rippled across the surface of the sea until the song in my head drained out and the wind stitched me back together enough to function.
By the time I trudged back into the village, the pub noise had hit a warm lull.
Through the window I could see Gregory conducting a carol with exaggerated solemnity and the Book Bitches swaying dramatically.
Noah was nowhere in the slice of view my nosiness allowed.
For a second, I wondered if he’d left Kingsbarns already, if he’d walked into the night and kept going until London or oblivion.
Then the door opened, and he stepped out with his collar flipped up, and I remembered he was not courteous enough to evaporate.
He fell into step beside me, and neither of us spoke on the short walk back to the inn. My brief peace from the sea was shattered by every step he took next to me.
Back at the inn, I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do …
I cleaned things that weren’t dirty. As soon as we stepped inside, I grabbed a broom from the closet and stepped into the lounge to sweep the already clean floors.
Ignoring Noah’s pause in the entryway, I stayed focused on my task, refusing to look up.
Finally, after I re-cleaned the entire lounge and front entryway, I went into the kitchen and made tea, even though I wanted whisky, and sat at the kitchen table pretending chamomile could solve anything.
A floorboard creaked, and I looked up. Noah leaned in the open kitchen doorway, not crossing the threshold like we were in a vampire film. Sensible of him.
“I didn’t want to leave it like that,” he said. His voice. It was one of the first things that had attracted me to him. Smooth like whisky, but raspy as if he was growling. Do not reminisce about who you were once.
“Tough. That’s how it’s left.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I believed him, and that was almost worse. “For the song. For … putting us out into the world like that. I can’t fix that.”
“Would you? If you could?” I stood, taking my cup to the counter, my insides buzzing with nerves.
“I … I don’t know.” Noah sounded surprised. His words stung, but at least I could appreciate the truth of them. “Skye was such an integral part of launching my career. But it’s always been this pivotal moment for me. Before Skye and after Skye.”
My eyes pricked. He was talking about more than just the song.
If on the other side of the truth was that a part of me had applauded him for writing it. One of the reasons Skye had been so successful was because it had been blindingly honest. It takes courage for an artist to be that honest with his songs.
“I understand.” A bit, at least. I didn’t know what it was like to sing to stadiums full of people, but I did know how it felt to have before and after moments that defined my life. Before Noah and after Noah. Before divorce and after divorce.
“Let’s just get through this week,” I said, rinsing my cup, my back to him, forcing myself to gather my composure. What else was there to say? He’d apologized for the song that had shattered me all those years ago, and now what? There was nowhere to go from here.
“You make it sound like it’s a penance,” he said, and for once I had no smart remark.
Turning, I looked at him, needing him to go lest I do something stupid like cross the room and pull his mouth down to mine.
Even after all these years, I couldn’t deny the man still had unmistakable charisma.
It followed him around the room, changing the molecules in the air as he moved, and hit me straight in my core.
“Good night, Noah.”
He nodded once, like a man agreeing with a judge, then stepped back into the corridor. “Good night, Skye.”
He left. The floorboard above creaked again minutes later, moving from one end of the room to the other.
I poured the rest of the water from the kettle out, flicked the lights off and stood there for a moment, because sometimes the dark is honest with you in a way the light refuses to be. Like when I’d lie awake at three in the morning and wonder if Noah ever missed me.
Shaking my head, I climbed the stairs and paused because, apparently, I liked to punish myself, and listened.
At first, nothing, then the brush of strings. Not a song. Just fingers testing a chord.
Yearning swelled, and I hurried up the stairs to my flat on the top floor and rushed through a basic bedtime routine.
It wouldn’t do me any good to think about what ifs.
What if I had stayed with the band? With Noah?
Would I, too, be a household name? Would playing my music on the world’s stage have brought me joy?
In bed, the duvet smelled of laundry soap and loneliness, so I made a list in my head to put myself to sleep—buy a new washer hose, find a new plumber who wouldn’t call me “hen” in a way that made me murderous, make extra scones for the Austrian tourists who were eating like locusts, delete Skye from Harper’s playlist at the pub.
Tonight I’d been the woman who ran from a pub to escape the pain from a song written in her past. Tomorrow I’d be the woman who runs an inn like a boss and knows better, because at the end of the day, keeping the inn running was the only thing that I could control.
When I finally drifted, I dreamed of a garage, frosted breath, fingers raw from strings, with a boy looking at me like I was his future. I woke up with my jaw clenched and tears drying on my face.