9. Chapter Nine #2
I braced a hand against the wall, palm flat to the paint, and tried to breathe like a person who wasn't unraveling in a venue corridor beside a stack of road cases and a trash can full of empty water bottles.
Backstage kept moving. A runner hurried past with a clipboard tucked under one arm, muttering into a headset. Someone laughed from farther down the hall, a quick burst of sound that made the quiet inside my head feel worse.
Lila. She still smelled like peach shampoo and old trouble. Still used sarcasm like a shield, still knew exactly where to put the blade even when her hands shook around it.
She looked good. Worse, she looked strong. Like she might survive this.
I didn't know if I could.
I pushed away from the wall and kept walking because stopping had already proved itself a bad idea. There was a schedule, a setlist, guitars that needed tuning, a show that didn't care who I loved, hated, missed, or wanted to shake until she admitted she was bleeding too.
The corridor turned. I followed it. My pass slapped against my chest with every step.
ARTIST.
Cute.
Backstage was too loud. The dressing rooms were too quiet. The tour bus already felt haunted, and we hadn't even slept on it yet. Everything echoed with her voice, even the silence.
Her question replayed anyway, sharp with betrayal. Why did you take the lead song for my parents' movie?
I hadn't. I hadn't asked for it. The studio had sent a brief; the label had pushed; management had spun it as an easy win.
I'd done what I always did: wrote what was in my chest and handed it over before I could get precious about the blood on the page.
Then the machine took it, mixed it, packaged it, turned the worst night of my life into a track people cried to over coffee.
And yeah, I could have told her all of that.
I could have turned around, gone back into the green room, and said, I didn't take your slot, I didn't know you submitted, I didn't know until too late, I said yes because Grant said it would help you, and because I'm apparently still stupid enough to help you walk farther away from me.
I could have told her the clean version. The one that made me look less like the villain she needed me to be.
Instead, I kept walking.
Part of me wanted to turn around and explain everything.
Another part wanted her to sit with the wrong version of me for a while.
Ugly, maybe. Honest, definitely. Because she had walked away with the right version of herself.
The brave version, the chosen-herself version, the one everyone would understand if she ever told the story.
I got left holding the version of me nobody saw.
The guy who stood behind an amphitheater and didn't beg.
The guy who wrote one line into his phone because if he didn't put the hurt somewhere, he was going to put it through a wall.
The guy who let the song go public and told himself it was for her career, when some rotten little part of him wanted her to hear every word and know he hadn't been fine.
So maybe I didn't mind, for one cruel second, that she thought I'd taken something. Maybe I wanted her to think I was capable of it. Not because I was. Because being misunderstood felt better than being invisible.
I stopped outside the dressing room door with my name taped crookedly above the handle.
EVAN WALKER. Black marker, all caps. Nothing about it looked real.
A crew member had drawn a tiny star beside my name, probably bored, maybe flirting, maybe both. This life was full of strangers leaving little marks on you and expecting you to feel grateful.
I opened the door.
The room smelled like stale coffee, clean towels, and the citrus candle someone on management kept insisting made venues feel "calmer." It did not. It made backstage smell like anxiety in a spa robe.
My guitar sat on the couch. Black, familiar, waiting.
I picked it up and checked the tuning even though it was already fine. My hands needed something to do besides shake. I plucked one string. Too sharp. Or maybe I was.
Lila's face flashed in my head. The way her chin lifted when she accused me. The way her hand bent that plastic fork. The way Finn stood next to her with his arm around her like he had rights I used to have.
I hated noticing that. I hated caring. Finn had always been Finn, loud, ridiculous, loyal in a way that made him hard to hate even when I wanted to. He had been there before the breakup, during it, after it.
That was the part that scratched. After. He got to be after. He learned what she looked like when the song found her. He probably got the call, got the couch, the snacks, the version of her who admitted things when she was too tired to sharpen them first.
I got the public version. The lifted chin. The accusation. The fork.
I pressed my thumb too hard against the string and felt the bite. Good. Pain was at least honest.
A knock hit the door once before Miles pushed it open without waiting. "Dude." He stepped inside, drumsticks tucked in his back pocket, hair damp from whatever chaotic pre-show ritual he called showering. "You alive?"
"Unfortunately."
"Great. Hate the tone, but love the confirmation."
I kept tuning. "Need something?"
"Grant's looking for you. Also, you've got that face."
"What face?"
"The one where you're about two minutes from writing a bridge that makes grown men text their exes."
"I'm busy."
"Brooding?"
"Tuning."
"The guitar is fine."
"I'm not."
Miles went quiet. That was the thing about him. He acted like an idiot until he didn't. Then he got annoying in a completely different way.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Green room?"
I didn't answer.
"Her?"
The string gave a clean, irritated twang under my thumb. Miles nodded like that was enough. "Right."
"She thinks I took the song from her."
His brows lifted. "Did you?"
I looked up. He held up both hands. "Asking the obvious question before someone else does."
"No."
"Okay."
"She thinks I did."
"You tell her?"
"I said I didn't."
"That's not the same as telling her."
I hated when people with drumsticks made good points. "I'm aware."
Miles studied me for a second. "So why are you in here murdering your tuning pegs instead of explaining?"
Because she should know me. Because she left. Because she walked into that room with Finn's arm around her and looked at me like I was another industry door slamming in her face. Because part of me liked that she was angry enough to care. Because none of those answers made me the good guy.
I set the guitar down too carefully. "She already decided what version of me she needs," I said.
Miles grimaced. "That's very tragic and poetic. Also kind of a dodge."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. I contain emotional range."
"I'm serious."
"So am I." He pushed off the doorframe. "Maybe she's wrong. Maybe you're letting her stay wrong because it hurts less than asking her to see you and finding out she won't."
I stared at him. He blinked. "Damn. That was good."
"Get out."
"Writing that down later."
"Miles."
He opened the door, then paused. "For what it's worth, you look miserable enough to be innocent."
"Comforting."
"Anytime."
He left. The door shut behind him.
I sat down on the couch, elbows on my knees, hands hanging between them. The citrus candle flickered on the counter. My phone sat facedown beside it.
I knew Lila's number by heart. Knew her contact photo too, a blurry shot of her in my old hoodie, flipping me off while laughing. I'd never changed it. Couldn't.
I picked up the phone, unlocked it, opened her contact.
Twilight
Still there. Still cruel.
My thumb hovered over the message box.
I didn't take it from you.
Deleted it.
I didn't know you submitted a song.
Deleted that too.
I wanted you to hear it.
I stared at that one until my stomach turned. Then I deleted it slower.
Because there it was. The ugliest piece. Not the whole truth, but enough of it. I wanted her to hear it. I wanted her to know. I wanted her to stand in a room full of people and feel, for three minutes and forty-two seconds, that leaving me had cost something.
I hated myself for that. I hated her a little too. Both things were true. Neither one made me stop loving her.
The hallway outside filled with noise again, footsteps, a burst of laughter, someone calling places too early because someone always called places too early.
I locked my phone and set it down. No explanation, no clean little bow tied around the wound. Not yet. Maybe that made me a coward. Maybe it made me petty. Maybe it made me human.
Grant's voice carried through the door. "Evan? We need you."
Of course they did. Everyone needed the version of me who could walk onstage and make heartbreak look profitable.
I picked up my guitar, checked my reflection in the dressing room mirror.
Rock star. What a scam.
Then I opened the door and went to work.