Page 116 of Sounds Like Love
THAT FALL, Itook Mom to the VMAs, with Sasha in tow (though at that point he was still figuring out that bicoastal sort of life, so he was perpetually jetlagged), and for a brief moment on the red carpet Mom locked gazes with Roman Fell. Maybe when I’d met Sasha, I would have thought they looked like echoes of each other, but really they couldn’t be more different. Their hair had the same curl, the same shade of dark brown, and their jawlines were sharp, and their builds slight, but it was like looking in a fun house mirror at someone Sasha could be. Roman’s shoulders were rounded forward, and though his skin was weathered, it looked smooth from expensive chemical peels and surgery, and really—in the middle of this lobby full of countless faces and photographs, songs and histories and moments frozen in time—Roman Fell looked so small.
Roman turned pale, like he’d seen a ghost. And quickly disappeared into the crowd. For the rest of the night, he avoided us like the plague.
“What wasthatabout?” I muttered to Mom.
She looked perfectly unmoved as she cryptically declared, “He knows what he did.”
Willa Grey didn’t nab a Moonman for Artist of the Year, and I did not win for Song of the Year, but it was nice to be there anyway and be nominated. I promised Mom that I’d take her to the Grammys, too, if I was invited.
I was, but by then Mom couldn’t come.
We took every day the best we could. We got pit tickets for Roman Fell’s farewell tour and sang along to all his greatest hits at the top of our lungs. We might not have beenhisbiggest fans, but we didn’t go for him. We went for ourselves. We took every day as it came. We made our holidays bigger, our birthdays grander, and we shuffled through the memories in the office and storage rooms, all the ticket stubs my parents kept and the Polaroids they took and trinkets they stole from roadside attractions, and we lived the best we could in the moment. Without regrets.
Because it was all anyone could ask for, really.
Then one evening as I was closing up the Revelry, after another of Sasha’s impromptu shows, Mom grabbed a step stool and took the framed dollar bill off the wall. The frame was dusty from all the years it’d been there, leaving behind a square on the wall. She took out the dollar and smoothed it on the bar.
“Before I forget,” she said, tongue in cheek, and handed it to Sasha, “I bet your mom she’d come back. I guess I was half-right.”
Because the things that left never stayed gone for good—not really. The things that mattered always returned. Just maybe not in the way you expected.
“Go get my daughter something nice.”
In the end, you really couldn’t buy anything with a dollar.
And the days grew short and the nights grew longer and time went on.
Most evenings, we’d sit out on the bench in my parents’ garden and watch the sun set over the Atlantic, and I learned of the kind of patience that was bittersweet. The kind of patience that made you wish the passage of time hurt a little less.
Mom was right—grief was a love song in reverse. The notes were still there, but they sounded a little different.
And the truth was, there was no last good day.
There was just this slow fade, bit by bit, like the sun sinking below the waves of the Atlantic. There were beautiful moments—golden rays of light and warm orange shades, dipping into deep, heartbreaking reds. The last good day never came, or maybe it had, and I missed it as I watched the sunset, slow at first and then too quick. Much, much too quick. And when the last ray of light shimmered over the water at the end of it all, I held her hand and I watched it with her, until the light had gone and night set in.
And my mom was gone.
Chapter43Vienna (Waits for You)
I WAS SECOND-GUESSINGthe heels.
The plan was not to stand up for this long, but I was nervous and I needed to pace. The Revelry was packed. We’d sold out an hour after the tickets went on sale. That hadn’t happened here in …years. Now I watched from the private balcony overhead. Our AC had bitten the dust, and even though Uncle Rick and Dad were on the case, the venue was just getting hotter and hotter. It made sense—summer in Vienna Shores was like walking into a salty sauna. I just wished it hadn’t beentonightof all nights.
The crowd beneath me swayed like the ocean, conversations interspersed with bouts of laughter. Sometimes, I thought I heard a familiar voice—it sounded just like Mom’s—and my heart would speed up and then I’d remember, and the honeyed taste of hope on my tongue would turn bittersweet.
I had been home for two years when Mom finally passed, and this was the first summer without her. We were slow to find our new normal,but we were trying. Most evenings Dad would still go out to the bench in the garden, and then he’d come into the Rev and sit down at the bar beside where Mom used to sit, and he’d tuck something into his pipe and chew on the end, though he’d quit smoking a few months ago.
Things at the Revelry were hard sometimes, and even a bit weird. I never expected to have to budget for college kids stealingtoilet paperor an infestation of seagulls or an ancient AC unit (okay, maybe Ishould haveexpected to budget for that), but I never once doubted my decision to stay. Some months were great, and others we only managed to make ends meet because someone kept leaking which dates Sasha would come in to play. There was a whole Reddit thread that detailed his expected schedule, and I suspected with the accuracy that it was Mitch doing the posting. Even though both Mitch and Gigi had moved out to LA after Mom died.
Which was why I wanted to make tonight perfect … and why something was bound to go wrong.
We had ten minutes to go before call time. The AC wasn’t fixed. And I was beginning to stress sweat. Did I have to go to the roof myself and kick it?
So I walked the length of the private balcony, regretting my heels, waiting to hear Dad call in on the radio telling me that the AC was fixed, when I realized—why was I still in myheels? I owned this damn place.
I tore them off and threw them behind me. One went sailing over Sasha’s head as he slipped into the balcony.
“Well hello to you, too, bird,” he greeted me, carrying a bottle of cold beer for me, a root beer for himself. Just hearing his voice soothed my anxiety.
