62. The Raven Rope
The Raven Rope
Rafe
Emily stays close when we reach the hotel, the kind of close that used to mean something. The lobby’s chaos, crew hauling cases, fans outside, the sound of muffled shouts even through the walls. She’s smiling like she belongs here, like no time’s passed.
Before she can turn to me, because I can feel it coming, the "mind if I come up with you?", Ronan appears out of nowhere, all grin and Irish timing.
“Em!” he says, looping an arm around her before she can get a word out. “Come on, I’ve got to show you some epic Swedish shit. R?vind sent it, let us listen to their new demos, completely unhinged. You’re gonna love it.”
Her eyes light up. “I love R?vind! I’ve been following them all tour.”
“Only the best for our guest,” Ronan says, steering her toward his room with the kind of good-natured authority only he can get away with.
I catch his eye for half a second, gratitude, warning, all of it unspoken. He just shrugs, like I’ve got you. Don’t make me regret it.
“Give me ten,” I tell them, voice even. “I’ll get changed.”
When the door to my room closes behind me, the silence hits. My chest still feels tight from the show, adrenaline, confusion, maybe both. I force a few deep breaths, counting them until my pulse slows.
I strip off everything that makes me visible, rings, bracelets, chain, the life.
I throw a hoodie on and tie my hair back.
I glance at my phone. Kasia’s name glows on the screen, just a tap away.
I think about calling, about saying I got ambushed tonight, that I didn’t plan any of this.
Emily's here. That there wasn’t a decent, human way to handle this without being cruel.
But it’ll be better to tell her after. Once I’ve handled it.
Once I know what this is. She’ll understand, I tell myself.
I knock on Ronan’s door, and it’s Emily who answers.
Her face brightens, the kind of easy smile that used to make my chest loosen before it ever started to ache.
“You can come in we’re just listening to the R?vind demos.
They’re insane,” she says, nodding toward the speaker where Ronan’s leaning against the minibar, pretending not to watch us.
“Yeah, I’ve already heard them,” I lie, stepping just far enough inside to look polite. “They’re great.”
I give Ronan a small nod, thanks for the buffer, and he returns it, subtle as ever. I can tell he’s reading every muscle in my face, but he doesn’t interfere.
“I can grab us an Uber,” I say. “We’ll go out the back, through the staff exit. Fewer eyes that way.”
We slip through the kitchen downstairs, long since shut down for the night. The clatter and noise from the dining room are gone, just us now, shadows waiting for an Uber notification to ping.
She leans against the counter, arms folded loosely. “How’ve you been?”
“Good,” I say automatically. Then, “Busy. You know how it gets. You?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Good, too.”
But it’s the kind of good that comes with a pause, the kind people use to plug a hole in conversation. Her eyes dart down, then to the floor, then back up, like the word itself doesn’t fit right in her mouth. I know that look. It’s the same one I’ve seen a hundred times.
“Why are you in Paris, Em?” I ask finally, soft but serious. “Vacation?”
She shakes her head. “Actually… I got married. To a Frenchman.”
I blink. “Married?”
“Yeah. Five years ago.” She forces a small laugh. “One of the students I met when I was studying here. He reached out not long after we split. Said he’d always had a crush on me but never had a chance, not while I was—” she trails off, eyes flicking to mine, “—with you.”
She swallows hard. “We were married for five years.”
Were. The word catches in her throat like a nail dragged across silk. I feel the sweat prick at my neck before I can stop it. My chest tightens, not from jealousy but from knowing exactly where this is going.
The phone in my pocket buzzes, the Uber’s here. Perfect timing. Maybe divine intervention. I glance at the screen like it’s a lifeline. “Car’s here,” I say.
She looks up at me, her face already forming the next sentence, the one I’ve dreaded since I saw her in the crowd tonight. And I wish, with everything in me, that I could stop it. Stop whatever’s coming next.
Stop from hurting her one last time.
I don’t talk in the car. I keep my hands buried in my pockets like they’re evidence and stare out at Paris sliding past in wet glass and neon.
Emily sits beside me with her palms splayed on the soft leather, fingers relaxed, not quite touching me.
It feels like a question, an old habit of being near, of giving me the option to close the distance.
I keep my head down. Breathe. Count the streetlights.
Lyrics swarm me on entry, like birds startled from the rafters. Napkin ink. Night-after-night scribbles. Her hair in those years was a black river that got caught in my knuckles and around my throat; I wrote it like a confession I couldn’t stop making:
Raven rope, I beg the bite,
your choke of mercy marks the night;
ink-dark thread I couldn’t sever—
kiss or kill, I’m drowned forever.
I shake it off the way you shake off a chill. We walk to our old table and it’s open as if the night itself has set the stage. Relief and ache strike together. I sit. She sits. My thumbs worry the edge of a napkin like there’s a melody trapped in the fibers.
“You always get espresso,” I say, just to touch something familiar. “I thought that was a student thing.”
“It’s just a me thing.” She shrugs. Her gaze is steady but soft. “What happened between you and Rithy? You’ve always been so close. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that.”
“He went intense for a while,” I say. “He’s better now. Didn’t know when to stop poking. You know Rith.” I keep the tone bland, the way you speak to a fire you don’t want to feed.
She nods, looking down, then back up. “So—married?” I hear the careful curiosity in my own voice. “Any kids?”
She nods again. It knocks air out of me. She slips her phone across the table. A baby girl stares up, maybe two years old, eyes like Emily’s, wide and absorbing, a mouth about to laugh.
“She looks just like you,” I say, a small breath of disbelief. “Beautiful.”
“Her dad and I are figuring out custody.”
There it is. The hinge of the night.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, actually.” She almost smiles and doesn’t.
“He cheated. A girl at work. He assumed I’d accept it, keep it quiet like a complication.
Like he didn’t do the dishes enough. I guess it’s the done thing here.
C’est la vie, les histoires d’amour sont difficiles (That's life, love stories are difficult.), they say in France.” Her eyes flick toward the window, toward Paris. “But I’m not from here.”
“No,” I say. “You aren’t, and you shouldn’t accept it. That’s… that’s a big deal.”
“I’m tired of accepting things I don’t deserve.” She meets my eyes. “I’ve done it too often.”
The words hit me square in the chest. I can feel the old guilt wake up like a thing that knows me by name.
“You have,” I say. “I’m sorry, for my part in that.” I don’t lace it with anything else. No excuses. No poetry to make it palatable. Just the truth laid down between us like a coat over a puddle.
She blinks, surprised. “You seem… different, Rafe.”
“I am,” I say, and before I can say why, the coffees arrive. Mercy by porcelain.
She looks at my cup, amused. “You know the French would disown you if they knew Obelus puts that much milk in his coffee.”
I laugh, the first one that feels like mine since she appeared.
“Maybe I should keep it up. It’d scare off the fans outside the hotel, at least. Remember that time I had to get a restraining order?
Think she’d have stopped stalking me if she knew my coffee is more milk and sugar than anything else? ”
We both smile at that. Shared joke, shared history. We sip. Night moves on the other side of the glass, scooters, umbrellas, a couple arguing under a lamp. We live in the pause.
“I heard your cover,” she says. “It’s beautiful. Why a Polish song? It seemed… different from your usual songs.”
I draw breath. Decide not to perform or avoid it. “I’ve met someone. She’s Polish.”
The air shifts. There’s the smallest fold in her expression, like wind hitting a flame just enough to lean it. I lift my cup to cover the cowardice of pretending I don’t see it.
“I see.” She sets her espresso down, lines it up with an old water ring, studies the circle like a map. “Is it serious?”
I stare at the white porcelain of my mug, turn it slowly with both hands. “It is, Em. Very.”
I hold her gaze because it’s the only decent thing left to give. Understand me, without me making you hold the weight of the explanation. I hope she can see it in my face: the terrace, the golden morning, Kasia’s name, I love you on the air.
She exhales, settles back with the cup in both palms, warming her hands. “Well. Doesn’t life have shitty timing.”
There it is, the night articulated. A check of the door to see if the past can still come in. A test of my hinge.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to hurt you again. It’s just not fair to her to act like it means less than it does. I love her, Em.”
The blink that means tears are ready. I’ve seen it before. I hate that my fingerprints are on that reflex. I want to say a thousand apologies in different keys. Instead I lean in.
“This is the last thing I want to leave you with,” I tell her. “You left and you were right to. You deserved more. You were too good to me.”
Her eyes meet mine, and I can see it there, the hurt and the warmth, both alive in the same breath.
“I didn’t respect your time,” I go on. “Didn’t see what I had until it was gone. I’ve wanted to say this a hundred times, but I didn’t want to wake old hurts. Didn’t want to bother you if you’d found peace.”
I pause, swallow the weight of it. “But you’re here now, and you deserve to hear it. Even if I can’t be whatever you hoped I might be tonight. I’m sorry, for letting you down, for hurting you in ways I still don’t understand.”
She slides her hand over mine. Old love echoes in the bones, a ghost chord.
“Thank you,” she says. Then, after a long look that searches and accepts, “You must really love her. I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”
It hurts her to say; it doesn’t make it less true. She draws back, smooths her dress, collects her poise.
“Well. It’s getting late, and you’ve got a hundred things to do. Like always.”
I nod, grateful for the grace she grants both of us. “It never stops. Let me get you an Uber?”
“No.” She stands, and I stand too. “I’ll walk. It’ll clear my head.”
We have the familiar awkwardness of people who used to know where to put their hands. She solves it by stepping in and kissing my cheek, palm warm on my face.
“I love you, Rafe. I hope you get to be happy, finally. Even if it isn’t with me.”
Something opens and stings. I only nod because anything else would be unkind to everyone involved. She leaves. The bell rings and the room breathes again.
I pay, step back into the night, walk for a while until the air cools my head.
Back at the hotel, the phone rings. Kasia's name pulses. For the first time when I could answer, I don’t.
Not because I don’t want to hear her. Because I need to find the words that won’t make ripples on water that’s finally calm. I need the right key.
I put the phone face down. Lie back. Stare at the ceiling where the shadow of the chandelier looks like a wheel. I tell myself: One minute. Then call. I watch the minute dissolve, and the black comes instead, heavy, swallowing me before I can form her name on my tongue.