66. That Was Her
That Was Her
Rafe
The sun hits too hard in L.A., the kind of yellow that makes everything look alive even when you’re not.
By the time I get to the studio, I’m running on half an hour of sleep, adrenaline, and the bitter aftertaste of too much coffee.
My hand’s bandaged, the gauze white and clean against the wreckage underneath.
I shove it into my hoodie pocket before anyone can ask again.
The room is full of its usual low chaos: cables, guitar cases, the smell of stale espresso and solder. We’ve been in this space for years to record, but today it feels like I’m walking into someone else’s life.
Rithy’s already behind the glass, headphones on, strumming half-heartedly through a riff. Kiri’s checking levels. Ronan’s at the kit, tapping out a rhythm, watching me like he’s waiting for a bomb to go off.
“Morning,” I mutter.
They nod, wary. The engineer glances up from the console. “You ready to roll, Obelus?”
I hesitate a second too long. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
The first few takes are nothing. My hands move, my mouth moves, the words come out, but they feel hollow, like I’m a lip-syncing ghost. The others keep glancing at each other through the glass.
Ronan slows the tempo, Kiri adjusts the mix.
They’re buying me time. I don’t deserve it.
Halfway through the chorus, my voice cracks, not the kind that adds grit, the kind that ruins the take completely.
“Stop,” I say, holding up a hand. “Just—stop.”
The track cuts. Silence floods the space.
Rithy pulls his headset off. “You sound like you’re coughing up your soul in chunks.”
“Maybe I am.” I rub my temple, close my eyes. “Sorry.”
Kiri leans against the glass, voice crackling through the mic. “You wanna take five?”
I shake my head. “No. Keep going.”
“Rafe—”
“I said keep going.”
The next attempt’s worse. The words hit wrong in my throat, the phrasing and melody collapsing into something raw and unfamiliar. My voice gives again, and this time I don’t bother to stop it. When the track ends, I rip the headphones off and shove the mic stand away. The metal clangs in the room.
Ronan’s the first to speak. “You’re trying to drown it.”
I look up, jaw tight. “What?”
“The noise in your head. You’re trying to drown it instead of sing through it.”
I laugh once, humorless. “That what you think this is? It’s just an off day.”
He shrugs, calm as ever. “You only break shit when you care, Rafe. So maybe stop pretending this isn’t killing you.”
The words hang there, no one says anything.
Rithy leans against the console, arms crossed. “We can cover for you with management. Say you’re sick, give you a few days.”
I shake my head. “No time. Apparently we need a ‘clear album identity’ and demos by Friday.”
“Then let them wait,” Ronan says flatly. “You’ve bled for every song on this record. You can take a breath.”
But I can’t, because if I stop, I’ll feel everything at once. The way she didn’t cry. The way she sounded already gone.
“I just need to get through this,” I murmur.
The next track cues up. The first notes rise, her favorite one, the one I wrote half-asleep after I’d sent her a video of the Warsaw skyline and said it felt like we were watching it together. She cried when she heard it. I can’t do it, not this one.
“Skip it,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “Next song.”
The engineer hesitates. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Next.”
I can feel the others watching me, but no one argues.
Rithy mutters under his breath, “You’re bleeding all over the music, man.”
“Good,” I say. “Maybe it'll turn into something useful.”
By late afternoon, my voice is gone. The band’s spent. I pack up my notebook, shove the bandaged hand deeper into my pocket, and head for the door.
The latch clicks behind me, and I hear Rithy sigh. “He’s going to burn himself down before we finish this album.”
Ronan’s answer drifts out faintly before the soundproof door closes. “Sometimes that’s what makes it a masterpiece.”
The city outside my hotel window is a blur of headlights and sirens.
Every few seconds, one flickers across the wall like a ghost trying to get in.
I should be asleep, but I can’t. It’s been three days.
Nothing since. No dots, no new message, no accidental call.
Just that final line sitting there like a gravestone.
I scroll through it again anyway. Her last photo, hair pulled back, eyes half-shaded by the sun.
I told her she looked like she was made of light.
She said it was just reflection, but I knew better.
She was light. I just didn’t realize how fast it could go dark.
I open the message box, my thumb hovers.
Please just talk to me.
Delete.
I’m coming back, I don’t care what you said.
Delete.
You don’t get to walk away without a fight.
Delete.
You don’t get to love me and ask me not to wait.
Delete.
I love you. I can keep you safe.
Delete.
Over and over, until the space is clean again, an empty screen that feels like her silence made physical.
I set the phone face-down and sit there, the ache building in my throat, the kind that can’t make it to sound.
My hand still hurts from the glass, every pulse of my heartbeat in the cuts.
I think maybe I deserve it. Maybe this is the tax for being the kind of person who destroys everything he tries to hold.
I’ve been at the studio since dawn. Didn’t sleep.
Didn’t even try. The others walk in one by one, slow, blinking, still mentally in bed.
Rithy's first, eyes bloodshot behind sunglasses; then Kiri with his takeaway cup; Ronan's last, hair wet, towel around his neck like a prizefighter.
They take one look at me, sitting at the piano surrounded by a scatter of crumpled notebook pages, and they know. No one says a word.
I start playing before they can ask. A few low chords, heavy as breath.
The progression from Don’t Wait spills into Artemisia, the one she never heard, the one I wrote the night she fell asleep against me in the cabin.
The others fall in almost instinctively, years of doing this together taking over before their minds catch up.
The sound fills the room, thick and alive. My throat burns as I start to sing. It’s not clean. It’s not careful. My voice cracks, stumbles, finds its footing again only to break once more. But it’s real. It’s the most alive I’ve felt since she said goodbye.
I can see Rithy choking up behind the glass, Kiri staring at the floor. Ronan’s playing softer than I’ve ever heard him.
Then I shift into Connaught on Mayfair. The chords are softer, the melody an echo of that night—the chandelier light in her hair, her whisper against my throat. I almost can’t get through the chorus. My voice shakes, then steadies on the next breath.
You said you’d choose the quiet,
but the night disagreed—
turning your skin into sculpture.
I forgot to breathe,
afraid worship might sound too human.
I just watched the light
curve around you in communion.
The song collapses into silence. For a second, I can’t move.
Then it hits all at once, every word I’ve swallowed, every note I’ve avoided because it hurts too much.
The flood breaks. I start pulling sheet after sheet from the notebook: Glitter, Underworld, 2AM, Persephone, ill-formed fragments that sound like love letters and obituaries at the same time.
I play them all, back to back, no breath between.
The air in the room changes, electricity, grief and catharsis bleeding into one another until even Rithy’s mouthing keep going.
My voice starts to fray at the edges, a rasp I can’t fight. Ronan hits the talk button.
“Rafe, take a minute, you’ll shred your voice.”
I shake my head, eyes burning. “Not until I get it out.”
He doesn’t argue again. So I keep singing, through the ache, through the memories, through the sound of my own breaking.
Sometimes I’m whispering. Sometimes shouting until the walls shake.
By the time it’s over, I’m drenched in sweat, throat raw, hands trembling on the piano keys.
The last note hangs in the air like a prayer no one believes in but everyone hears.
The intercom crackles. Ronan’s voice is quiet. “You done?”
I exhale, nod. “Yeah. For now.”
Kiri leans forward, voice barely a whisper. “That… that was an album.”
I stare down at my hands. The bandage is loose, pink blooming through the gauze.
“No,” I say softly.
“That was her.”